Night of Masks and Knives (The Broken Kingdoms Book 4)

Right on his mark, Gunnar pulled back bits of the sod and twigs in the rooftop of the booth and tapped Malin’s head.

She startled and looked up. “Gunnar?”

The nimble Kryv crouched over the dusty eaves and pointed at the narrow aperture in the roof. “I hope you can climb, Mal.”

I straightened from my crouch, hands bloody, and pulled mesmer around my face and eyes.

Malin held my stare, a dozen things to say dancing behind my teeth. Confessions about the sick rage Doft spurred when he’d pinned her with his body. The relief it brought to cut out his tongue for daring to speak about her. She heard, and I could give no answer should she ask more questions.

She broke away first and reached for Gunnar’s hand.

He helped her onto the eaves and through the hole in the booth. Isak and Ash followed. I went last, climbing onto the uneven rooftop without a look back at the gore in our wake. Gunnar took the lead with careful steps to the edge of the roof, then plunged off the side.

″Go,” Ash said with a nudge to the small of Malin’s back when she hesitated.

She cracked her thumb twice. Took a deep breath in, but never released it before she jumped after Gunnar.

It wasn’t a long drop. A pace or two before our feet thudded one after the other onto a narrow ledge where laborers and serfs could walk the length of the stands, making any repairs undetected.

Our next move would unite us with the rest of the guild, then slip out through a back alley to the Falkyn nest. A whimper interrupted my step by step repeat of our plan. Malin stood near Gunnar, her palms on the side of her head, trembling.

″I don’t want to be here anymore,” she said to no one but the night.

Hells, panic was gripping her. All that had gone on tonight, doubtless, was settling in now. At times it happened, even to Kryv. Stun from a great deal of blood or violence would wrap around our minds until the instinct to keep surviving dragged us out of it.

There wasn’t time for panic now.

I took her face in my hands. “Look at me.” Her eyes blinked to mine, and I tightened my hold on her. “Breathe with me. I’ll be here until it passes.”

Malin’s palms covered the backs of my hands and she never looked away as I drew in a long breath through my nose, guiding her through her own, then together we blew them out. Three more times until her body was less rigid.

″Better?”

She nodded; her thumb drew slow circles on my hands.

Before I could think too long the haze in my head, I took her elbow, and led her toward the edge of the platform.

″We’re not out of this yet,” I said, returning to the brisk tone I needed to keep. “Don’t lose your head on us. Now, keep your arms in.”

″Arms in?”

I released my hold on her. Malin tumbled over the edge of the stands. The only sound I caught was a shaky gasp before she landed into the back of a hay cart directly below.

I peered over in time to catch sight of Raum helping her out the back. No broken limbs, no injuries. He muttered something I couldn’t hear, handed her a knife, then laughed when she gave her response.

″Ash,” I said, anxious to keep moving. “You next. Meet us at the gate.”

Too many of us leaping off the edge would draw attention. Gunnar, Isak, and I took a slier route. We scaled the rickety beams of the stands until we worked our way to the muddy streets.

I led us to one of the arched entrances leading into the arena where the rest of the guild waited in the shadows, muttering amongst each other.

The entrance was covered in a stained white canvas with a harsh vomit scent in the threads, but it was secluded and shadowed. To our back, a gate separated us from the game field, locked tight as the last ride roared on.

We’d have a few moments before crowds trampled us as they left the arena.

But something was wrong. The moment I stepped into sight, Dagny dug her fingers into my arm. “The back avenue is blocked. Most streets are.”

Damn the hells.

I stiffened, then cursed myself for reacting at all. “Blocked by what? You said they’d be open.”

My voice was harsh as vinegar and misplaced.

Dagny knew it and returned my venom with a frown. “They were supposed to be, but as it is, two of the Lord Magnate’s councilors are here for the Wild Hunt. The skydguard have flooded the streets with their caravans. They’re a bleeding infestation!”

Think. Pivot. Work a new way out.

″Rooftops?” Tova offered.

I shook my head. “Too many of us.”

″Let’s wait them out at the Lark,” Raum said.

″We do not know how long that will be, and we need to keep moving. There’s more to find in Skítkast before it disappears back to Klockglas.”

Doft’s courier. Whatever Malin saw in the memory was still here. Somewhere.

We could not be seen, but wandering the streets with a swell of new skydguard would be impossible to do so concealed. Unless . . .

″Dag, are there still storm walls surrounding the city square? The ones that block the alleys, I mean.”

Being in the south with warmer seas, Skítkast was known for heavy sea storms, and since the little wealth they had was in the rounded center of the city, naturally any protection would be offered to the area.

″Yes, why?”

A wicked smile curved over my mouth. “We’ll go through there, then.”

Vali snorted. “Like fish in a barrel. We’d be surrounded walking out in the open. The city square has four alleyways leading to and from, and the skydguard will be able to come at us from all sides.”

″Ah, Vali, that’s exactly what I’m counting on,” I said.

″Care to explain?”

They’d protest, but when an idea settled in my head, I was hard pressed to ever shake it. When I knew a step was right, it clung to my chest like an entirely new entity.

I tapped the iron grate over one of the pungent sewer holes. “I never said we’d cross above ground.”

Malin wrinkled her nose much the same as the others. I rolled my eyes. Were the Kryv made of bleeding royals afraid to get their boots dirty?

I ignored them all and slid the grate off the opening. “Tova and Gunnar, you’ll cover us with your bows until we get outside the city center.”

The two Kryv shared a dark grin, and gripped the bows slung over their shoulders.

″Be glad to,” Gunnar said.

″Ash,” I went on. “You and Hanna go with Dagny and make sure the skydguard hear you.” Hanna held the drums, and I pounded the rawhide once. “Make sure they come to the center. Be ready to lock them in. Now, Dagny, explain the tunnels with as much detail as you can.”

″But I don’t know this side of the ducts well,” she insisted.

″Do you wander the sewers regularly?” Malin asked.

I tilted my head, smiling. “Dagny smuggles cheeries out, don’t you Dag?”

Her eyes widened. “Didn’t realize you knew.”

Why wouldn’t I? Dagny knew I always tracked what my connections did. Even friendly ones.

″The tunnels?” I pressed again.

Dagny wrung her fingers together. “As I said, I don’t know this side as well.”

″What do you know?”

Dagny gnawed on one thumbnail and crouched in the mud. I followed. She drew in the dirt, marking the main shape of the square. A rounded center with a fountain, treasury vaults, a small schoolhouse, and tenement homes. There were four covered roads branching off the city square. Those roads were the only ways in and out. Each would be armed in a heavy storm door, cutting the square off from the rest of the township.

I asked few questions as my mind raced with steps, marks, assignments for each member of the guild. I listened with care as Dagny described any detail coming to her mind. Size of the sewer ducts, different manholes along the way, curves, corners, down to how full the bleeding ducts might be.

This would work. I lifted my eyes once I had the mud-map in my head and looked at the Kryv.

″We won’t make it to the nest if guards are roaming the streets, no matter which direction we take,” I said. “We can trick the skydguard into the square, then walk beneath them in the ducts. Then, we’ll use the storm walls to keep the skydguard locked in place and out of the streets until we surface here.” I pointed at a northside mark on the mud map.

″What if you don’t move swift enough and get trapped behind the walls, or the ducts are blocked, and you’re stuck beneath the square?” Dagny curled her fingers in the lace of her dress.

″Tova and Gunnar will be there for cover should we need them,” I explained. “We need to get skydguard out of our path to the nest, right? This is the best way to keep them contained. Even still, this’ll need to move fast. Shutting the guard behind the gates will give us a head start, that’s all.”

I stood, blood racing in anticipation for a new twist in our plan.

″Keep watch on them, Dag.” I nodded at Ash and Hanna, then lowered my legs into the sewer shaft.

Dagny led Ash and Hanna away. Tova and Gunnar waited behind in the archway as one by one the rest of the guild followed me below the streets.

The sewers of Skítkast were wide with bloated caverns, like great halls for rats and vermin.

Isak clapped a hand over his nose, he choked until he stomached the smell. The hot, rank dregs burned my throat, into my lungs, and each step sunk into shin-deep water. In the few raised areas were chairs, even a few makeshift beds where Dagny hid her runaway cheeries until they could make for the coast.

The tunnel rounded a bend, we took five steps down, three up. Every overhead access hole played tricks on my eyes as shadows and light danced in the dark, and it wasn’t long before I had a dagger in my hand.

Something about the leather and steel in my grip calmed my sickeningly fast pulse.

The sewers forked. I held up a fist, stopping those at my back. Above, a foreboding drumbeat filled the cracks and crevices above us.

″It’s working,” Fiske muttered. “They’re coming. Listen.”

Everything stilled, from the slight trickle of water to the soft breaths of the Kryv. No one moved.

Over the drums, shouts spilled into the sewers like the skydguard were there with us. Loud commands. United footsteps. The streets weren’t terribly thick and in places the shuffling boots sounded mere steps away.

″About fifty paces and we’ll be at the final opening on the northside.” I pointed to the left tunnel, rehashing Dagny’s rough map in my head. Shapes, lines, obstacles, I could memorize the lot quickly, but combine those shapes with words, and it only added chaos in my brain. “Be ready to defend yourselves.”

With my free hand, I withdrew my blacksteel sword and quickened the pace of our steps.

Halfway into the new tunnel, Raum cursed. “Bleeding Hells. Kase, wait!”

My stomach twisted, hard and fast, but I reeled back around as Raum took the lead. Brow furrowed, he studied the pitch dark for a few heartbeats before cursing the gods and facing me. “There’s a damn wall over the tunnel, only a small pipe takes the water away. Dag must not have known.”

I despised when plans did not unravel in nice, neat moments the same way they played out in my head. But we would not have survived this long if the Kryv didn’t know the meaning of changing course.

We go back, then we face the same trouble. Too many skydguard, too few open roads to the Falkyn nest. But it left us with going up the manhole above our heads, placing us in the city square, where those drums were currently herding the bastards in one vicious clump.

Still, it was the best chance, the location with the widest roads, and most direct route to the nest.

″We’ll need to surface,” I said. My pulse pounded in my ears. The Kryv, I knew they would be swift, their instincts sharp. There was one person in my head, and I had no idea how she would thrive or fail against a direct battle with skydguard. I cut through the Kryv, stopping at Malin’s pale face. “You know what to do in a battle?”

″What do you think?”

I leaned in, so my lips were against her ear. “Focus on your fight. Leave others to theirs.”

Her tongue swiped over her lips when I pulled back; each breath came faster, but she nodded and tightened her hold on the knife in her hand.

Then, I turned away and began the climb toward our new fight.