lightly armed boatman looked up, squinting in the gloom. “Right, you piece of—” He swallowed his words as he realized he was speaking to a meister.
The meister disappeared and the boatman starting haranguing his rowers. Both boatman and wytch thought the other had made the sound.
Without pausing to consider how lucky he was, Kylar secured his end of the line and hid the crossbow. The next boat was still a good distance away. Kylar threw a leg over the line, approached the precipice that sloped off to the river, and slipped out into space.
For a long time, he thought he was going to die as the silk rope drooped toward the river. It’s come free! But he held on, and the rope finally accepted his weight. He climbed across the chasm almost upside down, pulling himself with his hands, his legs crossed over the rope. The droop of the rope meant that after he crossed the halfway point he was climbing sideways and up.
Instead of fighting it, Kylar just pulled himself as far as the second-to-last piling. He looked at the iron sheathing. It was pitted with age and exposure. It was also vertical. Not exactly the best climbing surface.
There was no good choice. Kylar had to get off the rope before the next boat came. He was invisible, but the drooping rope wasn’t.
He flung himself from the rope to the piling—and fell. He slapped all of his limbs around the iron sheathing, but its diameter was so great that his arms couldn’t reach around it. The uneven iron surface didn’t provide enough friction to stop his descent, but it was enough to tear at the skin on the insides of his arms and his inner thighs.
He hit the water slowly enough that the splash was quiet. He clambered back up to the surface and held himself against the piling as the next boat passed.
With the number of weapons he was wearing, he couldn’t swim, but when he pushed himself off the piling, he sank close enough to shore that he was able to walk along the river bottom and pull himself out of the water before he drowned. Barely.
He moved north, along the same route he’d followed the night before. Kylar was glad Blint was dead. The wetboy would never have let him live this down. Between the missed shot and the undoubtedly embarrassing cuts he’d have on his inner thighs, Blint would have had gibes for a decade. Kylar could hear it now: “Remember that time you tried to hump the bridge?”
Kylar found a perch inside the boathouse and cleaned his weapons. He’d have to assume that all of his poisons had washed away—for the second day in a row. He wrung out his clothes, but didn’t dare take the time to let them dry fully. Now that he was here, he wanted to get in and get out, fast. He looked around the boathouse. It wasn’t guarded. Evidently the Khalidorans thought their patrols were enough.
Two men guarded the long ramp down that led to the Maw. They were tense, obviously uncomfortable with their assignment. Kylar didn’t blame them. Between the stink, the periodic cries, and the occasional rumblings in the earth, he wouldn’t have been comfortable either.
Retribution slashed left and right and the men died. He pulled their bodies into the brush and took the keys to the door.
The entrance to the Maw was designed to terrify the men and women incarcerated there. On opening the gate, Kylar saw that the ramp down did indeed look like a tongue leading down a gigantic throat. Hooked teeth were carved out of the black volcanic glass around him, and torches were set behind red glass to look like two flickering, demonic eyes.
Nice. Kylar ignored everything except for the sounds of men. He glided down the tongue and turned down a hall toward the nobles’ cells. From Durzo’s friends he’d gained a rough idea of the layout of the place, but he’d certainly never had any wish to visit.
He found the cell he was looking for, checked the door for traps, and spent a moment waiting in the hallway, just listening. It was insane—he was afraid to open the door. He was more afraid to face Elene and Uly than he was to sneak past wytches and fight the Sa’kagé.
Gods! He was here to save Elene, and he was scared what she would say. Ridiculous. Or maybe what she wouldn’t say, just how she’d look at him. He’d given everything