Page 90 of The Thirteenth Count

The answer to Darkwater’s When? had gone back down the hill as it had come, with a folded scrap of parchment, a sprig of dried fern, no words at all. The fourth night. The night the wine came.

The ninth bell was still shivering in the stones when Willem eased the panel open behind the disused pantry, and the veins took them in.

Fern knew the way now, knew it in her feet, in her shoulders, in the map Willem had burned before they left her hearth. Left wall to the kitchens; right, and down, to everything else. They went right. The candle stayed dark. Willem moved ahead of her through the absolute black with the unhurried certainty of a man walking his own house, and Fern followed the sound of him and counted turnings, and the mountain’s heart got louder—thrum-thump, thrum-thump—and then softer again as they passed beneath it, into the old cold stone where the mortar ran out.

At the last junction, he stopped, and she felt more than saw him turn.

“Say it back,” he breathed.

“Grate opens at the half-bell, when the warder’s at the far turn.” Her whisper was steadier than she’d expected. “Mother first, then Father, then pin the grate from our side. Back the way we came, out by the tack room, casks are in the third wagon, the driver knows. Twelve minutes, gate check at the⁠—”

“And if it goes wrong?”

“We were never here. The veins are never here.” She’d hated this part. “Whatever happens on the other side of the wall—the wall stays a wall.”

“Whatever happens.” Willem’s voice sounded like a man setting a stone on a grave in advance. “Your word, Miss Silverbell. There are forty people breathing behind these walls who are only alive because the Blackwells think rats made these tunnels. The wall stays a wall.”

“My word.”

The grate was where the map said, low in the old stone, its bars furred with dust, except she saw when Willem finally struck a shielded stub of light—at the pins, which were bright with fresh oil.

Through the bars was the corridor. The tallow smell. The tin-bowl silence.

And Willem’s copied key turned in the first lock.

Her mother came out of the cell and collapsed into Fern’s arms in the dark. She weighed nothing and was shaking like a leaf, or Fern was, she couldn’t tell, but it didn’t matter because there wasn’t any time.

Corvus filled the cell doorway behind her, one hand on the frame, and stopped dead when the candle stub found Fern’s face.

“No,” he breathed, all the wryness gone. “No, we agreed—Willem⁠—”

“She outranks me,” Willem muttered, already at work on the lock’s face with a slim iron pick, scoring it, roughing it, making his clean key look like a desperate man’s night of scraping. “Take it up with her estate.”

“Fern.” Her father’s whisper was terrible. “You promised me⁠—”

“I promised not to trade myself.” She got her shoulder under his arm; he was lighter than her childhood, lighter than grief. “I’m not trading. I’m collecting. Now walk.”

They walked, four people down a corridor built for secrets, past the closed hatches and the careful breathing of the other cells, and Fern’s heart was so loud she was sure it would bring the mountain down, and the grate was fifteen feet away, ten, and her mother’s hand was in hers⁠—

The ninth bell’s half-toll came.

And under it, wrong, early, impossible… were boots. On the spiral stairs. Not one warder at the far turn, several men, unhurried, descending, and torchlight beginning to butter the stone at the corridor’s mouth.

Willem went rigid. In the light of the dying stub, Fern watched him run the numbers and watched the answer arrive on his face.

“The pattern’s changed.” His whisper was flat and fast. “That’s not a round. That’s a watch. Someone talked.” His eyes cut to the grate, to the distance, to the four of them strung out along the corridor like beads off a snapped string. “We have time for two crossings. Not three.”

The words didn’t mean anything for a full second. Then they meant everything.

“Mira.” Corvus was already moving—already turning his wife by the shoulders toward the grate, already pressing her hand into Fern’s with the calm, absolute economy of a man who had made this decision long before tonight, in some quiet hour none of them had witnessed. “Go with our girl.”

“Corvus—” Mira’s whisper cracked down the middle.

“Every escape needs a story, my love.” And there it was—the wryness, coming back up through him, warm and steady and deliberate. “One prisoner. One picked lock. One old fool who overpowered no one and got twenty feet. That story keeps the wall a wall. It keeps the warders looking at me.” His eyes came to Fern over her mother’s head. “A Keeper’s whole trade is knowing what a story needs, honey cake. This one needs someone standing in the torchlight when it arrives.”

“No.” Fern’s whole body had gone to iron. “No—Father, we can bring the stone down, I can⁠—”

“You can be unheard.” His whisper cut her off, fierce and soft. “White smoke in this cellar signs your name to everything, and his name, and hers, and theirs behind the walls. Bank the fire, Fern. That was his last gift, and it is my last asking. No smoke. Not for me.”