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“Intention or not, they’re here,” Dakin snapped as he strode over to the wardrobe and flung the pair of doors open.
He revealed a bland interior with a few clothes hanging from hooks. Our host leaned in and yanked on one of those curved bits of metal. The back of the wardrobe swung into the cave wall and opened a secret staircase carved from the stone that led down into the earth.
He looked over his shoulder at us. “Follow me and shut the door behind you.”
The increasingly louder voices gave us little choice, and the three of us followed our guide into the underworld. I was immediately struck by the scent of water, and that only grew the deeper we traveled down the slippery stairs. A faint noise reached my ears far before I could see the source.
“An underground stream?” Ben guessed.
“Not quite,” Dakin replied as we reached the bottom of the flight of stairs. He lit a torch that hung nearby and held aloft the light to reveal a long tunnel and the dark shimmer of water. “More like a river.”
Ben, Qita, and I gawked at the large body of water that glided past us. Its easy waters lapped against the steep sides, carved through ages of continuous flow. The bank dipped into the river at a gentle angle and the clear waters allowed me to see the shallow depth in the center.
“So this is where you got that barrel of water?” I guessed.
Dakin nodded. “It’s called the Sirun.
“Dak!” a voice shouted from above. “The palace guards are coming! Where are you, Dak?”
Qita’s eyes dilated and my heart skipped a beat. Dakin grabbed an arm from both Ben and me, and yanked us toward the river. “You have to get out of here.”
“What? Why?” I questioned him before I stumbled into the waters. A yelp escaped me at the bitter cold of the river.
“They can only be searching for you,” he pointed out as he stabbed a finger upstream. “Follow the waters to an oasis north of here. It’s a hell of a trudge and there are some paths on the way that lead back into the city, but you should get there-” Shouts rang up from above us.
“Get out of the way!”
“They’ve been spotted here before! Where are you keeping them?”
I turned to Dakin. “I think we’ll have plenty of encouragement to get our asses moving, but what about you?”
He grinned and patted his stomach. “I’m a little too big to fit through those thin crevices now, so I’ll bide you as much time as I can manage, but you’d better get going.”
Qita stood at the edge of the river and clawed the air above the water. “I am not going-hey!”
I had scooped him into my arms and held him close. He wriggled a little and I playfully glared at him. “Keep doing that and you’re getting dropped.” That made him stop.
The sound of cracking wood made us all look up the stairs. Faint torchlight flickered into view.
“Run!” Dakin shouted as he rolled up his sleeves. “Now!”
Ben grabbed my arm and pulled me upstream. I looked over my shoulder and watched as Dakin marched up the stairs toward the light. We rounded a gentle bend and he vanished.
The sounds of our splashing feet drowned out anything I could have heard as we hurried through the drifting waters. Complete darkness overcame us and only Ben’s hand on mine stopped me from running into the walls. I cradled Qita in my other arm and he clung to me with partially splayed claws.
After a few tense minutes, I felt us turn sharply leftward and we stepped out of the water. “Is this the way to the oasis?” I asked him.
“No. I’m going to stop the soldiers from taking Salah and his family to the Thaqiba.”
“About time!” Qita hissed.
“But how are you going to do that?”
I felt his sleeve brush against my hand and the cloth had changed thickness and style. “I won’t, but the Dragon Thief will.”
“By the gods!” Qita exclaimed. “What sort of getup is that?”
Ben’s voice had a slightly bemused tone. “The best kind.”
