Читать книгу The Last Warrior - Susan Grant - Страница 17

THE KUREL LED TAO INTO a passage that led from the dungeons to the very bowels of the palace, where the air was so dense he imagined it could be sliced with a blade. There was barely enough light to see the pair with their black cloaks as they sprinted and then crawled through the ever-narrowing passageway. Here the scent of dampness was strong, and yet familiar. The odor brought him back to childhood, when danger was excitedly imagined, never imminent.

Pipes, dead ahead.

The boy unlatched a heavy iron grate, lowering it carefully. Torn spider webs draped the opening. Light from the lantern penetrated the tunnel only as deep as the length of a man. Tao helped the boy replace the grate after they slipped through the opening. Then they were on their way, the lantern flickering as it swung from the boy’s hand. The silence was as heavy as the air at this depth, the entire palace atop them, floor upon floor. The very thought threatened to turn him claustrophobic.

Inside, their footsteps echoed unimaginably loudly after all their stealthy silence. “It’s slippery,” Elsabeth warned. “The muck is like ice.” She and the boy hesitated at a confluence of pipes, the boy holding the lantern high until Elsabeth found a marker they’d left and snatched it off the dank wall.

“Keep to the right.” Tao knew the labyrinths of the drainage pipes as well as any formerly mischievous child raised in one of the noble families could. It had been years, but racing through the darkened passages, it came back as if it were yesterday. “I know the pipes well.”

“That’s what Markam said.”

“So, you’re in on his plan to free me. A Markam loyalist.”

Her disdainful gaze sought him out in the gloom. “Markam is helping me—us. The Kurel. Any enemy of this king is an ally of ours. That’s why I’m helping you.” She looked him up and down, as if finding it difficult to absorb the very concept. “I also promised Markam.” She seemed no more pleased with that promise than she did helping him to hurt the king. “I’m going to hide you where no one will look,” she said. “The ghetto.”