“I’ll need a light.”
“Typical highblood. Never prepared.” Darrow unclipped a small iron-bound firestone lantern from her belt and handed it over. “Can’t have you falling down a hole and breaking your neck, can we?”
Josiri nodded his thanks and twisted the knob at the lantern’s base. Quartz blazed to life behind the glass as captive magic roused. Fitful light granted shape to cracked and peeling walls, to collapsed stairs and a bowed ceiling.
He edged into the entrance hall. Somehow it felt colder inside than out, the mist thicker about his feet than before. A filthy chandelier hung from a twisted chain, the glass of its firestone housings shattered and its crystals smashed. Water-stained portraits stared down from the walls like weary vigil-spirits. And the smell. Musty and cloying, with a sour, metallic tang. Forgotten years and old death.
He pressed on across the hall. Lanterns bobbed as constables pressed after him.
“You want upstairs, or down?” asked Darrow.
Josiri peered at the rotting staircase and the equally uncertain ceilings. “Down.”
She offered a crisp nod. “Right you are. Kressick? Treminov? You’re with me. Jorek and Narod, you keep his lordship from getting into too much trouble. And that goes double for you, Vladama. Still can’t believe you talked me into this.”
Kurkas shrugged. “Can’t help my silver tongue, can I?”
Darrow shook her head and stormed away towards the stairs.
Kurkas relieved Narod of his lantern. “You two see to what’s left of the kitchens and the service quarters. His lordship and I will take the rest.”
The constables withdrew. The glow of Jorek’s lantern bobbed along the kitchen passageway and out of sight. Josiri gripped the pommel of his sword, fingers clenching and unclenching without conscious bidding.
He followed Kurkas through the great hall’s mouldered furniture. Marks in the filth betrayed recent travel, but such was hardly proof of illicit business. The wretches outside might simply have needed a roof over their heads – even when that roof was more open to the sky than not. But of the spent fires and refuse that went with such habitation, Josiri saw no sign. Strange, given the downpours of recent days. Sommertide was but a memory, and Fade had its cold talons tight about the city – even the leaves of the Hayadra Grove were curling.
“Now here’s a thing.”
Kurkas stumbled past the fireplace and out into what had once been a wide stairway, now clogged with debris from the upper landing’s demise. The lower stair was clear of rubble. At its foot, a wooden door practically gleamed among the decay, unsoiled by mould and lichen as it was. The heavy bar set across its jambs and a second crow charm all but demanded investigation.
Josiri started down the stairs. Kurkas’ hand fell heavily on his shoulder.
“Now you’ve not forgotten our little chat about lumps and the taking thereof, have you, sah?”
Instincts screaming reluctance, Josiri allowed Kurkas to pass him on the stairs. The captain reached the bottom and dealt with the second crow charm much as he had the first.
“Who knows,” he said conversationally, as bone splintered under his boot. “Maybe if you break enough of these things, bad luck comes good again. You know, like a wheel turning. Can I trouble you for a hand with this bar?”
Josiri set down his lantern. Taking a firm grip on the bar, he hoisted it aside. A soft chorus reached his ears. Muffled. Barely more than whispers, and readily lost beneath the creak of timber floorboards.
Caution demanded he call for Darrow and her constables. Impatience insisted he press on.
Impatience won.
Josiri drew his sword and eased back the door. Wooden stairs and cracked plaster gave way to bare stone and deepening mist. The sounds, no longer muffled, betrayed themselves as soft whimpers and hurried breaths uttered by those hoping to escape notice. Josiri reclaimed his lantern. Kurkas set his own aside in favour of drawing his sword.
With a last, shared nod, they continued their descent.
The stairs opened into a vaulted cellar, heavy with the rank stench of sweat and bodily waste. Corroded iron cages lined the walls. Most stood empty, though trampled straw and other detritus suggested they had not always been so. As Josiri approached the foot of the stairs, a handful of gaunt, filthy faces turned away and shuffled back into the darkness. All save one, belonging to a red-haired lad. Where his neighbours shrank away, he pressed close to the bars, eyes widening at Kurkas’ tabard.
“The Phoenix…” A grimy hand reached through the bars, the dark whorls of the rose-brand stark against a pale wrist. “Are you here to free us?”
Crouching beside the cage, Josiri took the lad’s hand. The fingers were cold and thin, but he took encouragement from the strength of his grip. “We are.”
“Did Lord Trelan send you?”
Josiri ignored Kurkas’ soft chuckle. Another unwanted reminder of his changing circumstances. Traitors, however high-born, didn’t merit the statues and portraits by which common citizens might recognise their betters. But for Kurkas’ phoenix – long the symbol of the Trelan line – there’d have been no clue at all. The lad looked barely old enough to have been born at the time of Exodus, some sixteen years before. To him, Lord Josiri Trelan, the duke of vanished Eskavord, could only ever have been a stranger.
“In a manner of speaking.” Josiri pulled free and turned his attention to the cage’s iron lock. Too sturdy to force, and he lacked the skills for anything subtler. It would have to wait for Darrow. “What’s your name?”
“Altiris. Altiris Czaron.”
Josiri cast about the cages. Fewer than a dozen captives, and all save the lad reluctant to meet his gaze. A drop in the ocean to the hundreds still missing. That cellar alone could have held two or three score. “Where are the others? There were others?”
He nodded, hesitant.
“How many?”
Altiris stared past him to a slatted iron door behind the stairs. “I don’t know. Couple of dozen, perhaps? They took them in there. One at a time. They don’t come out, not ever, but we all heard the screams. It was my turn next. The woman with the feather-cloak told me so. Said it was necessary. She smiled. That was the worst of it.”
“Feathers?” asked Josiri. “Black feathers?”
Altiris bit his lip and pinched his eyes shut. “Black as nightmare.”
A chill brushed the back of Josiri’s neck. He’d no memory of seeing a feathered cloak among Darrow’s prisoners. Which meant the woman was still here. And if she was what Josiri suspected…? He stared at the iron door, his fingers closing again on the grips of his sword.
“Captain?” he murmured.
“Might be a good time to fetch Captain Darrow, if you take my meaning?” Kurkas sounded no happier than Josiri felt.
Josiri glanced from Altiris to the iron door. “Feel free. I’ll wait.”
Kurkas shook his head. “Oh no. I’m not falling for that. Not again. But if you get me killed, I’m never speaking to you again.”
“Noted.”
Josiri’s doubts resurfaced as he approached the door. Kurkas was right about fetching Darrow and her constables. But what would that do, except drive others onto the kernclaw’s talons in his place?
The door whispered open on the oiled hinges.