Читать книгу The Black Khan - Ausma Khan Zehanat - Страница 24

THE HOWLS OF THE DOGS HAD SUBSIDED, THOUGH ELENA COULD HAVE wished now for their barking to cover the sound of their bodies wriggling through the tunnel. The space was narrower than she remembered, or perhaps it was only that she was better fed, fitter, and stronger than the last time she’d used the tunnel for safe passage.

Larisa found the end of the tunnel, pulling her sister up and out into the darkness of the prison block’s silent wing. The sisters worked without light, feeling their way along the walls. There would be a pair of guards at the end of the wing, but the guards would have grown lax in the absence of resistance. They knew the inmates the wing housed were too drugged to be capable of rebellion. Elena held her bow in her hands, a knife strapped to her leg. She anticipated using both. She passed ahead of her sister, using a hand signal to mark Larisa’s palm. The tunnel had led them a level or two below the place the screams originated from. Those screams had fallen silent now, and both women feared the reason for it. They had to find the stairs, quickly.

Elena brushed by the window of a cell. A prisoner within murmured at her. It was too dark for him to see her, but somehow he’d sensed her presence. His calls became more insistent, drawing the attention of the Ahdath.

Cursing to herself, Elena crossed to the ward with Larisa, and waited for the Ahdath to approach the cell. Both drew their bows, but only one man came. The sisters exchanged another signal. Larisa slid to the head of the ward while Elena put away her bow to use her knife. When the Ahdath rattled the door of the prisoner’s cell, Elena slipped up behind him and slit his throat. Before his body could fall, Larisa had loosed her arrow on the guard at the head of the ward.

A prisoner’s face showed at the bars of the cell. “Free me,” he begged.

A grim anger invaded Elena’s thoughts at the pitiless nature of her choices. She shook her head. “Not yet. Wait and be quiet.”

He sobbed to himself as they left him.

Pain struck her hard and deep. Were she here for any other reason, she would not have been able to bear leaving the prisoner behind.

This Companion had best be worth it.

Elena slipped after her sister, helping her drag the Ahdath to join his friend. Another signal passed between the sisters to indicate the passage to the stairs. They were careful with the heavy door, climbing the stairs in the dark.

They had reached the prison’s upper level, and now they could see the torches lit at the watchtowers. The ward was periodically swept with minzars, modified starscopes angled to face the upper levels of Jaslyk. They were stationed along the ramparts that linked the towers. This was the Technologist’s Wing. Sinnia’s screams had come from here. Elena’s thoughts flew to the Companion.

You must bear this. You must survive until we reach you. Else I risked my sister for nothing.

The guard was doubled on this ward, two members of the Crimson Watch positioned at either end. Two more were guards stationed outside a door in the center of the ward. The Salikh sisters crouched low, inching their way along the wall. If the guards on either end of the ward turned, the sisters would be caught in a cross fire. They needed to take the guards by surprise.

They never spoke of their fears or their memories of Jaslyk, but each action they took now was weighted with their determination to protect each other from the consequences of failure. The two women were at their strongest, single-minded with purpose. They had no choice: as leaders of the resistance and as sisters bound to each other’s survival, they couldn’t afford self-doubt.

Larisa and Elena separated. Each moved in a different direction, their bows strung. They waited a heartbeat for the minzars to sweep the ward, then came to their feet and whistled. The guards at both ends turned. Two pairs of arrows found the weak spots in their armor. But they couldn’t catch the men at the door, who wheeled and drew their swords. The sisters were soon engaged in close combat, and they fought as they always did, back to back, using back-alley tricks against the size and strength of their opponents, utterly without fear.

Elena grunted as a sword thrust nearly slashed her ribs. Larisa took her weight, flashing a sharp knife up and under Elena’s arm, stabbing the guard in the chest. Elena whirled around, taking her sister’s place.

The minzars swept the ward again, catching the fierce and soundless tussle. Horns rose in warning. Two more men spilled from the inside of the cell guarded by the Crimson Watch, pressing the sisters back. It was Larisa’s turn to cry out. She dropped her knife as her sword arm was slashed. Elena stabbed her blade through the assailant’s eye. They were losing ground, losing strength. The Ahdath forced them back toward the stairs.

A loud metallic clang rang inside the cell.

Sinnia’s scream pierced the air again—edged with something new—something bold and eerily familiar.

Prisoners came to the doors of their cells, shouting and banging at their doors, distracting the Crimson Watch. Elena tripped one man, then rolled with his momentum to stab through his armor with the full weight of her body. She lay on him for the space of a breath, wiping the sweat from her eyes. Boots stamped down an intersecting corridor, the sound drawing closer.

In the courtyard below, the dogs began to howl.

A guard grabbed Larisa by the hair, yanking back her head, his knife at her throat.

A minzar’s light found her face, and the guard who’d seized Elena’s knife arm staggered around, Elena struggling in his grip.

“Stop!” he shouted. The other man stilled.

“Look at her,” he went on. “Look at them. Don’t you know who they are?”

Now the ward was filled with soldiers, half a dozen members of the Watch clambering up from the level below and from the corridor that linked to another block. Larisa and Elena stood panting.

Men shouted all around them, prisoners, guards, adding to the noise coming from inside the cell—a gurgling noise that petered out.

Illarion appeared at the head of the ward, escorted by a handful of men, just as the door of Sinnia’s cell was thrown open. Elena caught a glimpse of the woman on the table. She was unrestrained. Somehow she had snapped the hose attached to a dark green canister. Blood leaked from her eyes, ears, and nose, glistening and sticky against her mulberry skin.

What she’d attempted had nearly killed her, yet when she raised her head, her eyes blazed with a contemptuous conviction that said there was no man who could defeat her.

A man taller than any of the others stepped out of the room, a nightmarish mask covering his face. Elena shrank in her captor’s arms, suddenly unable to breathe.

Illarion strode to meet him, and the tall man unhooked his mask with sleek and raptorial movements. His face emerged into the sharp light cast by the sweep of the minzar. Beneath the mask, his ghastly skin was waxy, his lips without blood. His colorless eyes bulged from their sockets, a disfiguring effect of the mask.

At the sharp clap of his hands, two of the guards lit torches.

The tall man bent to look first at Elena, then at Larisa. A smile spread over the cadaverous planes of his face. He clapped his hands together lightly. “How beautiful,” he said with delight. “I’ve missed you.” His natural voice rasped like the spike-edged barbs on his gloves.

Elena’s sob caught in her throat.

The tall man noticed Illarion. “Captain.”

“Technologist.” Illarion nodded in return.

Elena’s frantic eyes sought out Illarion’s face. The teasing warmth he’d shown her earlier had vanished—the mask he’d worn over his purposes as a soldier of the Ahdath, as a tool of the Technologist’s will. His high-planed face was set and hard. She hadn’t believed she had anything left to lose—anything to hope for or believe in—yet a savage sense of betrayal pierced her thoughts, and hard on its heels, a passionate, volatile fury. She would kill him with her bare hands.

But Illarion had dismissed her without a glance, his eyes fixed on the Technologist.

“You’re a man of your word,” the Technologist praised him. “You delivered the sisters as promised.”

Illarion nodded curtly. “It was easy enough to deceive them—they were desperate to believe.”

Elena made a throttled noise in her throat, thrashing against her captors, her hands scrabbling for a blade to plunge deep into his heart.

“What beautiful misery,” the Technologist said, his smile deepening to a leer.

“And now I require what you promised me in turn,” the captain said. “The talisman. The one that unlocks the Plague Wing.”