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

Returning to the stairs behind Guardian, I could hear cries of alarm from the levels above us. Evidently the jailer’s strangled squeak and subsequent flattening with a blunt instrument hadn’t gone unnoticed.

“Up! Up!” I clapped my hands. “And you, stay close.” I motioned Hennan to my side and held my short sword ready. The fear had started nipping at my heels now. Guardian led on. The jailer on the second level had kept his station, standing with brass-banded club in hand and flanked by two guardsmen, steel drawn. Guardian advanced on them, arms wide, as they stared in disbelief. The jailer dropped his club, one guardsman managed a half-hearted thrust that glanced off the soldier’s armour, and all three were swept up into a metal embrace.

“We’ll lock them up.” I hurried past to unlock the door to the corridor and then the first door off the corridor. Guardian followed to toss its captives into what proved this time to be an empty cell. “Quickly!” I didn’t know how much time we had, but I knew for sure it was running out fast.

Guardian set off up the stairs with me right behind. Almost before the soldier had taken its first step a prison guard hurtled down the spiral hollering the kind of battle cry that sounds mostly like terror, his short sword raised on high. The man had no time to register what he was up against before being backhanded into the wall. Guardian caught the guard’s limp form in both hands on the rebound.

“Damn.” The crimson smear along the stonework told an unpleasant story. “Careful! You don’t need to hurt them!” I’m not perhaps the most generous of souls but generally there’s no murder in me. It’s not conscience so much as being squeamish, and also afraid of the repercussions. For Edris Dean though I would make an exception and call it justice.

Guardian took three more strides carrying the guardsman, clearing five steps a time and leaving them spattered with blood. Without warning the guardsman’s head snapped back up revealing a gleam of fractured white skull in the scarlet mess where the left side of his head should be. His eyes found me and the appetite in them made my legs too weak for stair climbing. Hennan crashed into my back.

“He’s dead!” Fear reduced my voice to a squeak. The guardsman started to struggle in Guardian’s grip. “Quick! Make an end of him!” I found my shout.

Guardian carried out his instruction with gruesome efficiency, ramming the corpse’s head into the wall with a steel palm and pressing until nothing remained but a splat of bloody porridge and bone shards dribbling down the wall. I vomited acidic yellow drool onto the step in front of me.

“Keep hold of the body and keep moving.” I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand then looked for somewhere to wipe the back of my hand. I moved on past my own mess and the one on the wall, clutching at my nose which being sick had made throb like a bastard for some reason, and trying to shield my eyes so I didn’t have to see the corpse still twitching in Guardian’s grip.

“At least they’re easier to deal with when you’ve got help.” Hennan, close behind me, sounding less scared than I felt.

“One dead man isn’t the problem,” I said, still sounding nasal. “They know where we are now.” If the Dead King had looked at us through those eyes he could be steering every dead body in the city our way. I wondered just what might be waiting for us outside when we came back down the stairs. Up until this point the worst my imagination had shown me was rank upon rank of city guard.

We stepped from the stairwell through the arch onto the third floor, keeping close to Guardian. It looked identical to the floor below, absent the jailer and guards. I could see down the short corridor into the passage that circled the Tower—something seemed off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

“We’ve got to check for guards,” I said. “Can’t have them escaping to raise the alarm.” Or creeping up behind us.

Guardian took three heavy steps into the room. Another heavy footstep and something huge loomed from the side where the column of the stairs had hidden it. It came out swinging—swinging a large iron door, which immediately resolved what had looked wrong about the place: the corridor to the cells should have been hidden behind a locked door.

The impact of the blow knocked Guardian off his feet and sent him slamming into the wall, reducing the jailer’s desk to splinters on his way. For a moment Hennan and I stood horrified, gazing up into the gleaming red-copper eyes of a clockwork soldier both broader and taller than Guardian. The thing held the dented iron door over its head in a pincered grip, ready to squash us like flies. And, unlike flies, we were neither of us quick enough off the mark when the soldier began to swing the door down toward us. Cogs whirred as great brass and steel muscles contracted and the iron door came speeding down, on course to reduce us both to stains.