The Burning White (Lightbringer #5) - Brent Weeks Page 0,313

though Ironfist had never found an exit or even eavesdropping holes up that high.

Maybe some previous Prism or White had filled those in, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of thing Ironfist could have asked anyone about.

Ironfist hadn’t done this climb often enough that he was comfortable doing it quickly. And before now, he’d always made his ascents and descents during the day, so that he could burn a lux torch without worrying that the light would shine through the cracks into all the rooms along the route and announce his presence.

Now the darkness whispered to him as he slithered through its fist. Small men probably think that being a big man only has advantages. The squeeze between rungs forty-three and forty-seven argued differently. Ironfist had to remove his sword belt and pistol bag and hold them above his head, and then he had to wedge one shoulder down into the vise. He got stuck.

He couldn’t breathe, and he almost forgot everything. His lowest foot was touching forty-seven, the next trap rung. He had to skip that one.

He was wedged in tight, taking little shallow breaths.

I’ve done this.

But never in this hellstone darkness.

He closed his eyes. They weren’t doing him any good anyway. He visualized what he knew to be true. Then he expelled all his breath and slid.

The forty-eighth rung was as jarring as ever. His shin pressed so hard against the forty-seventh rung that he was terrified it would trigger whatever trap lay there, as ever.

Funny how he never remembered that in time. Not ha-ha funny, rather ha-ha-I’m-glad-I-didn’t-wet-myself funny.

But he’d made it. And from there, he worked down to the bottom of the ladder without incident. He found the hinges by touch, and applied oil to them, using a boar-bristle brush to push the oil into all the cracks as well as he could. A little noise above had been comforting. Here, it could be catastrophic.

Then he listened at the hidden door for several minutes.

This door opened to the passage between the back docks and the Chromeria’s main hall. Large, serious gates covered both front and back. Ironfist had had one of his men surreptitiously check that his keys to the gates still worked. They did.

Thank Orholam for lazy or ignorant successors. Of course, usually a commander of the Blackguard trained his or her successor for a year or more. Ironfist had simply been deposed and banished. That still stung. He’d valued that office far more than he valued being a king.

After hearing only silence, he opened the door. The hinges were quiet, but not silent, and his heart thudded with tension.

Waiting was agony for any soldier, but Ironfist thought he hated it more than most. He was a frontal-assault man, not a skulker in shadows.

But then he was in the passage, and there was no one in sight. He closed the hidden door carefully, and headed toward the back docks.

It was a relief to see the gate, because there was light there—even the natural darkness of night was brighter than that terrible passage, and the moon was shedding considerable light.

In peacetime, only the front gate was guarded—after all, the gates guarded a tunnel with only one exit and one entrance, so why guard it front and back?

But this wasn’t peacetime. There were two Blackguards stationed at the back gate.

Ironfist didn’t know who these men or women were—men, judging by the silhouettes in the darkness—but he had to be willing to kill them. If necessary.

But it shouldn’t be necessary. Having found an escape tunnel, Iron-fist had figured no one would build an escape tunnel that would lead to a locked iron gate. It had taken him months, but he’d found it: a simple hidden room that had a crawl hole out the back.

It was open to the outside, and a skulk of foxes had taken up residence in this cozy cave. Which meant that even after Ironfist’s first, horrific encounter, it still—years later—stank of musk and fur. He’d liked foxes, before.

Responsible commander that he’d been, he’d collapsed the tunnel so that there were no secret entrances into the heart of the Prism’s Tower.

But he’d only collapsed the outermost few feet. He could dig through it if he must.

If the Blackguards stationed back here stayed exactly at their stations until they were relieved rather than walking back into the tunnel when they heard their replacements coming, it would be necessary.

He really, really didn’t want to deal with the stench of a fox den and the pains of digging underground.