on brains and swordcraft. Carroll had never drawn his sword outside the practice floor, had never even been in a fistfight. Yes, he was a Queen’s Guard, but in this moment, he felt that he would have traded his grey cloak in an instant, no bargaining, in return for a staircase that led straight up to daylight. Even the steady drip of water, a sound that Carroll enjoyed on rainy nights in his room, now began to seem oppressive, as though it were the voice of the darkness speaking steadily in his ear.
He began walking upward again—if for no other reason than that up was surely better than down—moving as quietly as he could, trying not to think of the seer or of the fight he had seen. Getting out of here, that was the problem at hand, and Carroll hurried faster up the tunnel, keeping an eye on his torch, which was beginning to burn out. Well, if need be, he could light his trousers as well.
But there was no need. He had backtracked perhaps half a mile when he heard men’s voices, the scuffling of footsteps ahead of him.
“Hello?” Carroll called.
The footsteps stopped, and so did the voices. Now Carroll could see several pricks of torchlight in the distance. He hurried forward, continuing to cry out joyfully, but when he was perhaps fifty meters away, something made him stop.
There were four of them, he could see now, though they were only dim shadows in cloaks and hoods. Two were tall, two short, and each held a torch. But they did not come forward, and they said nothing. Carroll had the impression that they were studying him.
“Hello?” he asked again, hesitant now. Belatedly, perhaps, he had remembered where he was, what he had seen of this place. Carroll had always believed, deeply and fundamentally, that the world was full of men of goodwill. He believed it still. But he did not think he would find many of them down here.
The shortest of the men suddenly began to howl with laughter, nearly doubling over. His hood fell back, and Carroll saw that he was a round, ruddy man, with several days’ worth of stubble on his jaw.
“Ask and you shall receive, Ellens!” he guffawed. The slur of consonants told Carroll that the man was very drunk. “Not even your birthday!”
“Great God, you’re right!” the tall man on the left—Ellens, presumably—boomed back. He too was drunk, though not quite so sloppy as his friend. “A good night at the tables, and then God sends me a pigeon as well!”
Pigeon. Carroll took an involuntary step backward. He had never heard that word applied to anything but birds, but there was no mistaking the threat in the men’s tones. Pigeons were for plucking. They would rob him, perhaps take his sword.
“I am a Queen’s Guard of the Tearling,” Carroll announced clearly. “Let me pass.”
All four of them collapsed in laughter, holding each other’s shoulders for balance. Four drunks at the end of a long night were no danger to anyone . . . but Carroll’s nerve endings said differently. There was an undercurrent here that he did not understand, and he felt anew his own lack of preparedness for this mission, how little he knew of this world. Realizing that he was half naked, dressed only in trousers, Carroll drew the sword from the scabbard at his back.
“Stand by and let me pass.”
Three of them continued to chortle, but the tallest, who had not spoken yet, straightened up, staring at the sword.
“Where did a little cagey bird like you get a piece like that?”
Carroll hesitated. He had heard the man’s voice before, though for the life of him he couldn’t remember where. At court? It seemed unlikely. He knew all of the Queen’s courtiers, even their voices.
“I am a Queen’s Guard of the Tearling,” Carroll repeated steadily, holding the sword in front of him as though it were a cross. “Let me pass, or the wrath of the Guard will find you.”
The tall figure drew his hood down over his brow, and Carroll, who had been a perceptive boy all his life, suddenly understood that here was a highborn, a man with something to lose. Oh, Carroll knew that nobles went down into the Creche, just as he knew that they abused their tenants and withheld food from the starving. But knowledge was easier to ignore in the Keep.
“You take this seriously, lad?” Ellens demanded. But he was not speaking to Carroll.