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“They have fuckingbows, Temarian,” I hissed. “You’re both going to get shot before you make it even halfway there.”
“Do you have a better idea?”
“Of course I do,” I said, having no such thing.
“Then do it!”
What if he makes us,Dima had said in an echo of the thoughts he was hearing. What had our opponents been thinking about?
I cleared my throat. “Gentlemen,” I said loudly, making sure my voice projected down the tunnel. There was a rapid intake of breath, some shuffling feet and a faint whimper, and I bared my teeth at the darkness. In making me into an enemy of the continent, Navar had inadvertently handed me a weapon. “You’ve been advised, I assume, of what I can do to you with a mereword?”
They only gave me their silence.
That was okay. The anticipation made it more terrifying anyway.
“Have you ever seen anyone under the compulsion of the Voice?” I asked them thoughtfully. “I have. What would it feel like, do you imagine, if I were to Tell you to put your own blades to your veins and bleed you out without even touching you? Or maybe I’ll have you blind yourselves. Blunt fingernails clawing at your own eyes, compelled to scratch and scratch andscratchuntil you’ve carved them from your head, and then I’ll Tell you to gouge deeper into your skull until your fingers scrape against-”
“Please!”
I hummed. “Pleasewhat?”
“Please, Your Highness! Don’t…we won’t…”
“What you’lldo,” I said clearly, “is lay your swords on the ground and walk over here slowly with your hands on your heads. Reckon you can manage that, or do I have to start instructing you on how to best pull out your own fingernails?”
By the time I’d finished talking, I saw nearly a dozen shapes moving steadily towards us in the gloom, a lantern unfurled a moment later as one of the soldiers at the back raised his hands and pulled his cloak from where he’d been keeping the light covered. And thank fuck for the terror on their faces keeping them from realising that if I really had the Voice, I could have just Told them to surrender without the need for threats. Some admittedly looked less convinced than others, yet with more than half their number eagerly surrendering, the rest fell into line for fear of being singled out by my alleged magic.
But there were too many soldiers to tie up with the scraps of rope we had with us. I faltered, not having a plan beyond disarming them, and wondering how the hell we were supposed to keep them still and quiet without killing over a dozen of my people in cold blood.
And then Starling slipped wraithlike between them, fingers gliding across their shoulders and hips, and each one dropped like a stone to the tunnel’s floor. It wasn’t pretty, and more than one of the men ended up with someone else’s elbow or knee to their face as they collapsed, but they were still breathing and it was more than they would have given us.
“You have one hell of a gift,” Velichkov remarked to Starling, impressed.
“Back off,” I said. “She’s mine.”
The healer scowled at that and stalked away with Wolf at her heels, leaving me and the northern prince to hurry after them. An unconscious Dima was unceremoniously slung over Velichkov’s broad shoulder and I scooped up the soldiers’ lantern, catching up to Starling as she began to ascend the steps that led to her surgery. Emerging directly from the tunnels to my old rooms would have been better, considering what Mat had Seen about Yanev’s eventual location, but there was no reason to believe that the exit had been unblocked since I’d last been down here, and the fact that so many men had been waiting for us in the darkness had me more unnerved than I wanted to admit.
Navar, as one of my father’s trusted councillors, would have been made aware of the tunnels’ existence. But to sacrifice the secrecy of his own escape route to send guards to lie in wait…on the mere chance that someone might pass through here? And that someone would also have to know about the tunnels and have in their possession one of only a handful of keys ever made in order to enter them, and…fuck me, that was what Dima had meant bytrap.
“They knew I was coming,” I hissed, and the dawning horror of that realisation drowned out even my ability to snigger at my own word choice. Had we been sold out? Were Welzes and Navar’s spies just that good, or had Panarina set us up? Had-
“What happened?” I heard Velickov ask from ahead, and finding myself alone, scurried through the tunnel’s opening to find Dr. Sánchez passed out cold on the floor of his bedchamber, his nose and cheek squished into the rug. “Did you really knock him out without touching him?” His tone was lilted in wonder.
“No,” Starling said, amused. “He fainted. I’d like to say it was at the sight of the apprentice he thought long dead, but I believe it was the wolf sitting in his favourite chair.”
Wolf yipped happily and jumped down from the rocking chair before fastening his jaws around the unconscious doctor’s ankle, dragging him back towards me. I skipped out of the way as the man began to tumble down the steps into the dark, and then slammed the tunnel door firmly shut on him.
“They knew we’d be here,” I said again, but the shutting of the door had been for more than dramatic effect. We weren’t turning back now, no matter what stood in our way, although Navar anticipating our arrival had suddenly made this a thousand times more difficult. Perhaps he’d assume the dozen guards would be enough to stop us, and we’d encounter less resistance now we were inside the palace, but if any of my companions hadn’t been at my side: Dima, Starling, Valeri…I’d already be dead.
I could only hope that wherever he was – hopefully somewhere far, far away from this whole mess, and preferably still on the northern side of the border – Mathias was faring better than us.
*
Chapter Thirty-Nine
They hadn’t tortured me like I’d expected. Perhaps that would come later.
Perhaps they couldn’t be bothered dirtying themselves with my blood and tears.
