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Before he left the room, he flicked his fingers. The skyds heaved Dagny to her feet, each guard taking one of her arms.
In the doorway of the dungeons, Dagny looked over her shoulder, her eyes locked with mine.
She winked before the door slammed shut.
Mark three.
CHAPTERFORTY-FOUR
THE MEMORY THIEF
Niall had leftbehind two bulky skydguard to keep watch. One had burns across his chin that left his beard patchy and stringy on half his face. The other was thinner, but the sneer on his face reminded me of a cat cornered and ready to lash out.
Both formidable, yet at our mercy.
“What a girl could do with such men as you.” Sofia’s singsong voice filtered through the darkness. She leaned her shoulder against the bars of her cell. The sleeve of her tunic slipped, revealing her smooth skin.
The guards shifted, dropping their weapons, and nearly spilled blood over which of the two earned the pleasure of unlocking her cell door. They fumbled inside, oblivious to their movements as they locked the door behind them.
Sofia purred against the burned guard’s ear, then traced the cat-like skyd’s flat nose. She giggled like a woman in love and tugged on their tunics, a flash of her glamour burning in her eyes as they disappeared out of sight.
Ragged breaths, a few groans, then two wet grunts followed.
After a few moments, Sofia reappeared, wiping a lock of hair off her brow. “Well then, shall we get to it?”
She beamed, spinning the key ring around her finger.
“You are terrifying,” I said with a laugh.
“So I’m told.” Sofia winked, already out of her cell and racing to Ari’s door.
The ambassador slipped through the small gap.
“Get going,” I told them in a low hiss. “More will return soon.”
Ari’s lip twitched. He’d protested more than once at the thought of leaving me unattended in the cells.
“Ari,” I said. “You need to go. Your illusions must reach this room and with Sofia as she works.”
Ari would be stretched to the brink, no mistake. He’d need to perch somewhere in the middle of two separate rooms in the dungeon to create believable illusions that if Niall returned, he would think nothing was amiss, but also enough tricks of the mind to hide Sofia’s plans in the deeper cells.
“Ambassador, I work quickly, you know this,” Sofia said. “Not even half a toll will pass, then we will all be back.”
The next moves were critical, and they were our only window of rescuing more than a few lives without getting our own throats slit.
“Half a toll,” Ari demanded. “Not a moment longer. Malin.” He strode to my cell door. “I will tap on the bars for three fast, then two long beats when the illusion has passed. It can be disorienting in the dark like this.”
I nodded, hoping it wasn’t obvious how reluctant I truly was to bid them farewell. Even for half a toll.
Ari gripped my hand through the bars, his gaze rife with the worry of a loyal friend, then with Sofia he drifted toward the heavy iron door in the back of the cells.
The silence was suffocating. I hated my weakness, but after only a few moments, I slid down the wall and hugged my knees to my chest. Soon, humming came from Ari’s cell. Hilarious lamenting tunes of his piss poor luck. From this angle, the frightened face of Sofia was visible in her cell.
Gods. All so lifelike. Even the two guards once again stood watch in the corner. When, in truth, their bodies were shoved in the corner of Sofia’s cell.
I reeled through the moves in my head. With the Kryv’s knowledge of the bowels of the palace, we’d taken strongly educated guesses on how and where to meet certain marks.
If I recalled correctly, Ari would be somewhere in a mop closet halfway between these smaller cells and the long stretch of cages used during the Alver trades at the Masque av Aska. His illusions would keep suspicion off Sofia who, if all went well, should be trudging toward the long cell corridor underground in Hodag’s previously dug tunnel.
