Gnasher stopped and grunted. He stepped away from the rope, spreading his fingers out to ease the pain in them. Logan put his feet back on semisolid ground—the sewage here was only a few inches deep—with a sigh. He hadn’t held nearly as much weight as Gnasher had, but he was still exhausted.

Then he saw the rope. It was loose.

“Gnasher,” Logan called, his throat tight. “How long’s there been slack in the rope?”

Gnasher blinked at him. The question didn’t mean anything to the simpleton.

“Gnash, Fin’s alive! He could be—AH!”

Something sharp stabbed into Logan’s back and he fell.

Fin more fell than jumped on top of him. The convict moved like he’d dislocated his hip, and he was bleeding from his head, his mouth, both shoulders, and one leg. In his right hand, he held the broken, bloodied tip of a stalagmite. As he fell on Logan, he began slashing. He was injured and pitifully weak, but Logan was weaker.

Fin’s sharp rock bit into his chest, gashed open his forearm as he tried to block, cut from his forehead past his ear. Logan tried to throw Fin off the ledge, but he was too weak.

There was a feral roar louder than the roar of a sudden eruption of the vent below them. Hot steam and fat drops of boiling water flew past them a moment before Gnasher hit.

He knocked Fin off of Logan and bit his nose, rising a moment later with a bloody chunk in his filed teeth. Fin screamed a bubbly scream. Before he could scream again, Gnasher grabbed Fin’s dislocated leg, pulling him away from Logan.

The wounded man screamed again, louder, higher. He reached out, tried to grab anything to get away from Gnasher. Then Fin’s body caught between two stalagmites. Gnasher either didn’t see or didn’t care. He had decided to pull Fin away from Logan, and that was what he was going to do. Logan saw the misshapen man’s shoulders bunch, the muscles stringy knots of power. Gnasher braced his feet and roared as Fin screamed.

There was a rending sound as the dislocated leg gave way. Gnasher stumbled and fell as he ripped Fin’s leg off and sent it sailing into the abyss.

Fin locked hateful eyes on Logan as he gasped his last breaths, his life’s blood spurting from his torn hip, his face ghost-pale. “See you …in hell, King,” he said.

“I’ve already done my time,” Logan said. He held up the key. “I’m leaving.”

Fin’s eyes flared with hatred and disbelief, but he didn’t have the strength to speak. The hate slowly left his open eyes. He was dead.

“Gnash, you are amazing. Thank you.”

Gnash smiled. With his filed, bloody teeth, it was a gruesome sight, but he meant well.

Logan trembled. He was bleeding pretty badly. He didn’t know if he’d make it, even if they ran into no problems getting out of the Hole and out of the Maw. But there was no reason for Gnash to die, too, or Lilly. And Gnash wouldn’t climb the rope without him, he knew that.

“All right, Gnash, you’re strong. Are you strong enough to climb out of here?”

Gnasher nodded and flexed. He liked being called strong.

“Then let’s get out of this hell,” Logan said, but even as he grabbed the rope, he felt a slackness in it. A moment later, the entire length of the sinew rope fell around them. There would be no climbing out. There would be no using the precious key. There would be no escape. The Holers had dropped the rope.

“Where the hell are they?” Tenser Ursuul demanded. The Holers barely recognized him in his fine tunic with his face shaved and his hair washed.

“Where do you think they are? They escaped,” Lilly said.

“They escaped? Impossible!”

“No shit,” Lilly said.

Tenser flushed, embarrassed in front of Neph Dada and the guards accompanying him.

A magical light bloomed in the Hole, illuminating everyone. It even dipped to the cutout where Logan had so frequently hidden. There was no one there.

“Logan, Fin, and Gnasher,” Tenser said, naming those missing. “Logan and Fin hated each other. What happened?”

“King wanted—” Lilly started to say, but something cracked across her face and sent her sprawling.

“Shut up, bitch,” Tenser said. “I don’t trust you. You, Tatts, what happened?”

“Logan wanted to build another pyramid. He wanted to attract Gorkhy and see if we could grab his legs and get the key off of him. Fin wouldn’t go for it. They fought. Fin threw Logan in the Hole, but then Gnasher attacked him and all of them fell in.”

Tenser cursed. “Why didn’t you stop them?”

“And fall in myself?” Tatts said. “Anyone who’s tangled with Fin or Logan or Gnash gets killed, buddy—Your Highness. You were down here long enough to know that.”

“Could they have survived the fall?” Neph Dada asked in his icy voice.

One of the newer inmates yelped and everyone looked at him. “No,” he shouted. “Please!” A bright ball of magical light stuck to his chest and another to his back and lifted him over the Hole. Then he fell.

Everyone crowded around the hole, watching the light disappear into the darkness.

“Five …six …seven,” Neph said. The light winked out right before eight. He looked at Tenser. “No, then. Well, I can’t say your father will be pleased.”

Tenser cursed. “Take them, Neph. Kill them. Do whatever you do, but make it painful.”

51

Hu Gibbet crouched on the roof of a warehouse deep in the Warrens. In a more prosperous time, it had been used to store textiles. Later, smugglers had used it. Now, it was a crumbling ruin that housed guild rats of the Burning Man guild.

None of that mattered to Hu, except for the inconvenience of having to kill the ten-year-old boy who was standing guard. Or maybe it had been a girl. Hard to tell. The only thing that mattered to Hu was a slab of stone on the floor by one crumbled wall. It looked like it weighed a thousand pounds and it was as weathered as all the other stones, but it opened on hinges that not even the guild rats knew about. It was the second exit for one of the largest safe houses in the city.

Right now, if Hu’s source was correct, the safe house held approximately three hundred whores, enough food and water to keep them for a month, and the real prizes: Momma K and her lieutenant, Agon Brant. Hu didn’t expect those two to be here, not really. But he could always hope.

He always had trouble with the big jobs. A big job required such balance. The pleasure in so much blood threatened his professionalism. It was so easy to get caught up in the sheer joy of it—watching blood spill or dribble or spurt, blood in all its glorious hues, the red red blood fresh from the lungs, the black blood from the liver, and every shade in between. He wanted to bleed every body dry to please Nysos, but on the big jobs he couldn’t usually take the time. It made him feel like he was doing things halfway.

Plus it always left him depressed. After he’d killed and bled thirty or thirty-two at the Gyre estate, he hadn’t been the same for weeks. Even all the killing during the coup couldn’t satisfy him. It was all a letdown. The Gyre estate had been the best. He’d still been in the estate when the duke got home. He’d watched Regnus Gyre run from room to room, mad with grief, slipping in the Nysos-pools Hu had left in every hall. He’d been so excited by watching that he couldn’t even kill the duke, though he knew the Godking wished it.

He’d finished that job the next night, of course, but that had been nothing. Not even close.

This job wouldn’t be too hard. There would be some tight moments early on. First, he had to get in. He’d kill the children if he had to, but guild rats were slippery. They knew every hole in the Warrens the size a walnut and could fit into it with room to spare. It would be better not to give them the chance to warn anyone.

After he got in, there would be a guard or two on the back exit. It was an exit that had never been used, and there was only so long a man could stare at a wall before he got bored and tired, so the guards there might well be asleep.