Jak nodded. “We’ll all meet up in the catacombs. Bring your things, with food and water for a day or two. The less we have to be out on the streets, the safer it is. Once we finish recon, we’ll head to another safehouse in the Tavern District to make further plans.”
“What are we watching out for, in the catacombs?” Bartolo asked, tightening his knife-belt around his hips.
Dagan watched stupidly for a moment, amazed at how quickly the other two scouts seemed to process this sudden call to arms. He still felt half-asleep, muddle-headed and uncertain, and just wanted to hug his friend. Meanwhile, Bartolo and Gareth were ready for deployment.
“The odd priest might be doing maintenance, but for the most part they’re deserted. Except around the full moon, when there’s an inheritance.” Jak glanced at Hen, whose jaw was twitching fiercely.
“That’s where you were?” Dagan asked quietly.
Hen nodded.
Suddenly, Dagan had an idea why dark caves and tunnels might make Hendrik nervous. He felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner. “You could stay—”
Hen’s glare cut off his sentence at that, though.
Dagan just nodded. He wouldn’t suggest it again, but he had to at least once.
“Do you want to go with Innan?” Hen asked through clenched teeth.
“Bartolo’s choice,” Dagan replied. “You?”
“I’m with you and Kajja, wherever that is.”
Another nod. A long look between them, heavy with a million words, hopes, dreams, fears.
Dagan’s chest tightened, aching and throbbing with unspoken thoughts and feelings. But all it boiled down to, in the end, was, “I’ve got you, Hen.”
Hendrik put an arm around his waist, pulled him in tight, and kissed him breathless.
Chapter 3: The Great See, Stone City
As they climbed higher via cobbled streets, the City rose whiter, larger, more intimidating overhead. Through the foggy gray pre-dawn light, square buildings softened into something more elegant, with scrollwork over doors and windows and slate roofs glistening with morning dew. There was a strange, manmade kind of beauty to it, stark but awesome, Dagan had to admit. And yet it was so utterly lacking in life, in breath, in spirit by his reckoning. Perhaps because the streets were almost deserted, more silent up here in the High City than in the Ag District with its ever-present background hum of productivity and animal pens. It smelled better up here, but it felt surreal. Fake, somehow. An idea of human civilization imposed on a blank space rather than fitted into the natural ecosystem.
The City wasn’t soulless, though, and neither were her people. Beneath this fabricated facade, there was plenty worth saving. All they had to do was not get caught, right now. The rest, they’d worry about when the time came.
Hendrik and Kajja kept their heads down under their hoods, but Piret held her chin high, as if daring anyone to question whether she belonged on these winding mountain streets. The few people they did cross between the High City gate and the hulking building they pointed out as the See didn’t even look at her, kept their eyes down, as if she still wore a guard’s uniform. Hendrik, though he kept his face covered, had the same stride, as if he’d never left, never stopped being a guard for a day. Dagan tried to emulate them but could feel his inadequacy, and so he simply followed along, acting the part of a servant carrying something for masters.
The Great See had a massive wooden door covered with intricate, interlocking geometric patterns. The casing was of carved, brightly polished stone, as was most of the facade, its pieces fitted so as to appear seamless. The roof extended over part of the courtyard before the door, casting long shadows over the cobbles. To Dagan’s surprise, Piret didn’t approach the large door but turned off to a smaller portico at one side. A priest in dark robes sat on a stool there, nodding off beneath his hood. They walked past him without a word, and he mumbled something that might’ve been a blessing.
Inside was even more impressive. Massive stone pillars and buttresses lofted the ceiling to heights Dagan had never seen, making the long, ritual hall feel open and full of potential for light. Now, it was gray, lit by flickering candelabras here and there, its long stone benches gaping and hungry. “It could swallow you whole,” he whispered to no one in particular.
Hendrik glanced over his shoulder and nodded solemnly.
Dagan hadn’t known that manmade things could feel like this: overwhelming, sacred, terrifying. He’d experienced similar sensations at places like the Heart Spring or deep within Innan’s cave, but never in a settlement, let alone a building. Surely, something on this spot had been a source of natural energy, like a hot spring, a grove, a waterfall. What else could make it feel so heavy when it was so dead?
Though the cavernous space was mostly empty, a few heads bowed in the benches. No one looked up at the sound of their footsteps, however, so when Piret led them off into an alcove, it hardly seemed to matter. A clicking sound, and Piret disappeared through a door that shouldn’t have been there. Hendrik shuffled Kajja past him, then Dagan, before bringing up the rear and closing the door behind them. The passageway in the wall was dusty and disused, not to mention dark; Dagan reached for a beeswax candle from his pack, but Piret had already acquired a tallow one from somewhere. She lit it deftly, then started down the narrow hall, saying only, “Quiet as you can be; we’ll go past the priests’ quarters.”
The world shrunk around them, until nothing existed but dusty passages in a massive, man-made hellscape. Dagan’s belly roiled, and he touched his thigh for reassurance. Finding this not quite enough, in the alien circumstances, he reached behind him. Hendrik’s hand found his and squeezed it. Dagan didn’t let go.
Kajja and Piret stopped suddenly, and then Piret’s head and the light both disappeared.
Hen said, into his ear, “Down,” by way of explanation.
Silently, they followed her down an iron ladder for some ways, into even more darkness. The walls were different, down here in what must be the catacombs or cellars: small stones stacked and half-hewn, rougher in spots. The ceiling was low and faintly moist with condensation; it smelled of old water and rot, like the underground should. That much, at least, was reassuring.
Eventually, they spilled out into a storeroom of sorts, full of dusty barrels and boxes. Dagan opened his mouth to whisper again, but Hen grabbed his hip with one hand and put the fingers of another over his lips.
Then, Dagan heard it: a voice, clear but unfamiliar. “We’re sure they’re down here?”
Another voice replied, high and nasal and sickeningly familiar, though Dagan couldn’t place it at first. “Shut up and do your job, assassin. If they’ve infiltrated the catacombs, it’ll be your ass thrown over the walls, not mine.”
Hendrik nudged Dagan aside and reached for Kajja. When he had her arm, he yanked her backwards and pushed her behind him, too. Piret blew out her candle and set it aside, leaving them in darkness.
“Kajja, don’t move,” Hen hissed under his breath. “Dagan, we’ll distract; you finish.”
Before he could reply, Hendrik and Piret were on the move, directly toward the voices. Faint candlelight spilled around a corner—no, through a doorway, now he could see it properly. Dagan glanced back to make sure Kajja wasn’t moving, then crept after them, peeling off and secreting himself against the wall. Hendrik and Piret burst through the open doorway, knives in hand.
“No! You’re not supposed to be here!” the nasal voice cried.
With a grunt, Hendrik threw his knife. A wet thock sound said it hit home, as did the slump of a body falling to the stone. Piret brandished hers as she jumped beyond his line of sight, turning the room’s occupants away from the door frame concealing Dagan.
Someone screamed, Hendrik gave a grunt, and another body hit the ground. Dagan dared a look into the large cavern beyond the doorway to see three unknown figures still on their feet, one coming at Hendrik with a sword over her head, the other fully focused on Piret’s knife.
Swift as lightning, Dagan padded up behind the third and jammed his long knife into his kidney. There was no resistance; it might have been a sack of grain or sand, if not for the wet, tearing sound. The man crumpled with a shout of agony, his blood rushing hot over Dagan’s hand. Dagan kicked his victim’s knees out from under him, sending him toppling, and threw his now-slick knife at the woman trying to hack Hen’s head from his shoulders. It sprouted between her shoulder blades, and she dropped her huge sword with a clatter, trying to reach the knife instead.
In the meantime, Piret had pinned her quarry, the oval-faced Brother Gregor they’d met only hours ago at the safehouse. She had him against the wall, her forearm pressing into his windpipe, her knife pressing into the laces of his leather pants.
Hendrik picked up the heavy sword and cracked the still-standing if slightly knife-riddled guard over the head with it. He finally went down like a cord of wood. Someone was groaning nearby, probably the man bleeding out through his kidneys. Dagan would mourn his first ever kill later. They had bigger problems, just then.
