It was a good thing Kylar wasn’t planning on getting into the castle. It was a good thing he’d come with a small arsenal. Dodging from rock to rock, tree to shrub, Kylar moved to the bridge. He unlimbered the heavy crossbow from his pack. He hated crossbows. They were unwieldy, slow, and could be shot by any idiot who could point.
Kylar fitted the special bolt in place, checked the silk spool and braced his body against the side of the bridge. What was it that Blint used to tell him? That he should practice more with weapons he didn’t like?
Scowling, Kylar aimed. Thanks to the iron sheathing on the bridge pilings, his target was tiny. He’d have to hit the last piling above the iron sheathing where the wood was exposed, a target four inches wide from forty paces away, with a slight breeze. This crossbow’s accuracy at that range was within two inches. So he had two inches to spare.
If he erred, he had to make sure he erred right. Up or down and the bolt would hit iron—and the sound would wake the dead. Left and the bolt would fly past the bridge and hit the rocks of the castle, and probably rebound to splash in the river.
Kylar hated crossbows.
He waited until the boat was almost directly underneath the bridge. If he made the shot—when he made it—he’d take advantage of the boatmen having just left the brilliance of the dying sun and coming into the shadow of the castle. Their vision wouldn’t be good. He exhaled half a breath and pulled smoothly, riding the release point until the catch gave.
The bolt sped from the crossbow, the spool whizzing faintly—and the bolt sailed four inches to the right of the last piling.
Kylar grabbed the still-unreeling rope as it went taut. The bolt jerked to a stop not three feet from the castle wall.
The bolt started falling and Kylar pulled it in hand over hand as fast as he could. The rope draped over one of the crossbeams to the right of the piling he’d aimed for. It swung back toward the piling. Kylar dragged in rope as fast as he could, but the bolt pinged off the iron sheathing.
The hooks on the bolt caught and Kylar drew the rope taut, flush against the underside of the bridge.
A meister stepped to the edge of the bridge, holding onto the railing nervously. He looked down and saw the boat passing under the bridge. “Hey!” he called. “Watch it!”
A lightly armed boatman looked up, squinting in the gloom. “Right, you piece of—” He swallowed his words as he realized he was speaking to a meister.
The meister disappeared and the boatman starting haranguing his rowers. Both boatman and wytch thought the other had made the sound.
Without pausing to consider how lucky he was, Kylar secured his end of the line and hid the crossbow. The next boat was still a good distance away. Kylar threw a leg over the line, approached the precipice that sloped off to the river, and slipped out into space.
For a long time, he thought he was going to die as the silk rope drooped toward the river. It’s come free! But he held on, and the rope finally accepted his weight. He climbed across the chasm almost upside down, pulling himself with his hands, his legs crossed over the rope. The droop of the rope meant that after he crossed the halfway point he was climbing sideways and up.
Instead of fighting it, Kylar just pulled himself as far as the second-to-last piling. He looked at the iron sheathing. It was pitted with age and exposure. It was also vertical. Not exactly the best climbing surface.
There was no good choice. Kylar had to get off the rope before the next boat came. He was invisible, but the drooping rope wasn’t.
He flung himself from the rope to the piling—and fell. He slapped all of his limbs around the iron sheathing, but its diameter was so great that his arms couldn’t reach around it. The uneven iron surface didn’t provide enough friction to stop his descent, but it was enough to tear at the skin on the insides of his arms and his inner thighs.
He hit the water slowly enough that the splash was quiet. He clambered back up to the surface and held himself against the piling as the next boat passed.
With the number of weapons he was wearing, he couldn’t swim, but when he pushed himself off the piling, he sank close enough to shore that he was able to walk along the river bottom and pull himself out of the water before he drowned. Barely.
He moved north, along the same route he’d followed the night before. Kylar was glad Blint was dead. The wetboy would never have let him live this down. Between the missed shot and the undoubtedly embarrassing cuts he’d have on his inner thighs, Blint would have had gibes for a decade. Kylar could hear it now: “Remember that time you tried to hump the bridge?”
Kylar found a perch inside the boathouse and cleaned his weapons. He’d have to assume that all of his poisons had washed away—for the second day in a row. He wrung out his clothes, but didn’t dare take the time to let them dry fully. Now that he was here, he wanted to get in and get out, fast. He looked around the boathouse. It wasn’t guarded. Evidently the Khalidorans thought their patrols were enough.
Two men guarded the long ramp down that led to the Maw. They were tense, obviously uncomfortable with their assignment. Kylar didn’t blame them. Between the stink, the periodic cries, and the occasional rumblings in the earth, he wouldn’t have been comfortable either.
Retribution slashed left and right and the men died. He pulled their bodies into the brush and took the keys to the door.
The entrance to the Maw was designed to terrify the men and women incarcerated there. On opening the gate, Kylar saw that the ramp down did indeed look like a tongue leading down a gigantic throat. Hooked teeth were carved out of the black volcanic glass around him, and torches were set behind red glass to look like two flickering, demonic eyes.
Nice. Kylar ignored everything except for the sounds of men. He glided down the tongue and turned down a hall toward the nobles’ cells. From Durzo’s friends he’d gained a rough idea of the layout of the place, but he’d certainly never had any wish to visit.
He found the cell he was looking for, checked the door for traps, and spent a moment waiting in the hallway, just listening. It was insane—he was afraid to open the door. He was more afraid to face Elene and Uly than he was to sneak past wytches and fight the Sa’kagé.
Gods! He was here to save Elene, and he was scared what she would say. Ridiculous. Or maybe what she wouldn’t say, just how she’d look at him. He’d given everything for her! But she didn’t know that. All she could know was that she’d done nothing and now she was in jail.
Well, it wasn’t going to get any better by waiting.
Kylar picked the lock, released the ka’kari’s cloaking, and pulled down his black mask.
The ten-by-ten cell was occupied by a pallet and a pretty little urchin sitting on Elene’s lap. Kylar hardly noticed the little girl. His eyes were glued on Elene. She stared back at him, stunned. Her face was a mask—more literally than Kylar would have liked, since both of her eyes were blackened from when he’d hit her. She looked like a scarred raccoon.
If it wasn’t his fault and it were someone else, Kylar would have chuckled.
“Father!” the little girl cried out. She squirmed out of Elene’s lap. Still staring at Kylar, Elene barely noticed her go. Uly threw her arms around Kylar and hugged. “Mother said you’d come! She swore you’d save us. Is she with you?”
Tearing his gaze away from Elene, whose eyes had suddenly narrowed, Kylar tried to pry the little girl loose. “Uh, you must be Uly,” he said.
Mother? Did she mean Momma K? Or her nurse? He’d straighten out this “father” business later. What was he going to say? “Sorry, your mother’s probably dead and I’m the one who killed her but I changed my mind about it and gave her the antidote so it’s not my fault if she is dead, and I killed your father last night, too. I’m his friend. Sorry.”