The Liar's Key (The Red Queen's War 2)

Fear is marvellous stuff. Not only will it get you running considerably faster than you thought possible, it will lend you more strength than you should rightly own. Not enough strength, sadly, to break the hold a dead man has on your neck, since being dead seems to lend some men strength as well, but enough for me to drive my assailant back across the chamber. I slammed him into the bars of a cell. I think I also managed to knee Racso in the face on the way past as he sat up, groaning . . .

The charge took everything out of me and I hung in the dead man’s grip, black spots crowding my vision and a feeling of distance sliding over me. The pain in my neck and lungs receded as the world drew away, shrinking to a single bright spot. I had time in that soft and enfolding darkness to reflect on two things. First, that being choked by corpses was becoming something of a habit, and second, that my only chance for survival depended upon the greed of the many and the quick thinking of a singular child.

As the last traces of my vision faded from me I saw a dozen hands reach out through the bars, pinning the dead man to them. And just before the pounding of my heart grew so loud as to drown out all other sound, I heard the grating of a sword being dragged across stone.

•   •   •

I woke suddenly, freezing and wet.

“Hold it!” Hennan’s voice in the dark.

“W—” My throat hurt too much to say more.

“Take this.” Something hard pressed into my palm and brilliance erupted, filling the space with razored white light. I closed my hand around the orichalcum and screwed my eyes shut. The boy had thrown water over me . . . I hoped it was water.

It then occurred to me that I appeared to be a lot more naked than I had been. My next question started off as a “Where are my clothes?” but changed swiftly into “Where the hell is my money?”

“They took it.” Hennan pointed at the last few grey backs pressing on down the corridor, a very trampled Racso in their wake. The guardsman who had been choking me lay twitching close by, furious glare fixed on me, though lacking the limbs required to make good on the threat.

“I gave them the sword through the bars and they cut him into pieces.” Hennan winced at the memory of it.

I levered myself up. The linen wraps my coins had been sewn into lay strewn around, stained by pooling blood. Unclenching my hand, I found Loki’s key still in my grip, my flesh marked with its impression.

“How did they—” I rubbed my bruised throat. “Get out?”

“I got Racso’s keys,” Hennan said.

“You let them rob me!”

“They had you by the legs and were taking your gold anyway. The big one said if I let them out they wouldn’t hurt you.”

“Uh.” I supposed he had an excuse. I levered myself up, pulled on my ripped trews—they’d been very thorough in their search for florins—and got unsteadily to my feet. “C’mon.”

We hurried after the departed debtors.

•   •   •

As hoped, close on two hundred well-motivated debtors put quite a hole in the prison’s security. Instead of following them toward the front entrance where they were either rioting or busy buying their way out, I found a passage leading further back. We came through three locked gates, past a deserted guard post, and out via a heavy door into a stinking high-walled yard. A full moon bathed the scene in a silvery light that disguised rather than revealed. I wrapped the orichalcum in a cloth and shoved it deep into my pocket.

“Come on.” I led the way, stepping around the lime pits where they put the remains of debtors whose relatives had paid the body-price. Two rickety carts stood against the wall, one heaped with several skin and bone corpses bound for the pigs.

“But . . .” Hennan grabbed my hand and anchored me.

“What?” The anger at finding myself penniless broke out to colour my tone.

“They’re dead,” Hennan whispered.

“Well I’d hope so . . .” I frowned at him. He might only be a child but he’d seen plenty of dead bodies before. Then it dawned on me why we might have been better off chancing the rioting and the possibility of recapture in the front of the prison. “Shit.”

A dry scraping sound came from the lime pits behind us and on the cart the three emaciated corpses started scrambling to untangle themselves. “Run!”

I’m only a little ashamed to say I outsprinted the boy. Old habits die hard. It’s good to be faster than what’s chasing you, but really the important thing in running away is to be faster than the slowest of those being pursued. Rule number one: be ahead of the next man. Or child.