Page 103 of City of Stone and Silence

“I suggest,” Garo says, “that you watch your tongue.”

The tunnel is narrow, and stinks of shit.

It’s one thing to know, intellectually, that Kahnzoka boasts a large and intricate sewer system. A dozen small streams that once ran down the hillside have been captured, diverted into cisterns to provide drinking water, while their beds were hidden under bricks and earth. Waste washes down the hill in a disgusting tide, spewing into the ocean from hidden outflow pipes. The system is hundreds of years old, steadily patched, expanded, and repaired under a long succession of emperors, although I doubt any emperor ever devoted much personal attention to the problem.

Thul, or his predecessors, obviously had. Or, at least, to a related idea: if ancient rivers and human waste could pass unnoticed under the ward walls, why couldn’t people?

Many of the secret ways he’d grudgingly surrendered had been cleaner than this one, since aristos returning home from a late night of rutting and smoke were hardly likely to want to trudge through a sewer. But this forgotten tunnel offers something none of the others do—not just a way to circumvent the wall, but passage into the gatehouse itself. The Ward Guard, it seems, aren’t above illicit comforts.

I try to breathe shallowly, sticking close to Garo’s back. I do my best not to think about what’s coming.

We’d had a serious argument as to whether I should be here at all. I’m not a fighter. As far as he knows, I’m not even mage-born. This isn’t like the march on the Immortal safe house, where we’d hoped to convince them to surrender. Garo and the others are going down into the tunnel, and when they come out, people are going to die.

With my help, though, it might be fewer people. So I ignored Garo’s pleas to stay behind, and the twisting of my own stomach. I think about Isoka, and Grandma lying cold and dead, and the cuts on Kosura’s body.

There are a dozen of us, moving in single file down a narrow, brick-walled corridor. No actual sewage runs through it, thankfully, but from the smell and nearby gurgles it can’t be far away. This tunnel goes all the way from a fountain in the Eleventh Ward to an accessway in the Fifth, just across the road and through two sets of gates. We’re only going half that way, underneath the gate on the Eleventh Ward side, then back up.

“I’ve found the ladder,” Giniva reports.

She’s in the lead, a tiny Myrkai flame kindled in one hand to light our way. Two others from the sanctuary are with us: Nari, a grim, skinny girl whose dark clothing matches her Xenos Well, and Vekata, the boy not much older than me who uses Rhema and swears he can fight. Then come Garo and I, followed by a small group of volunteers from Hotara’s street fighters, men and women whose toughness she vouched for. We’re all armed, even me, if only with a dagger.

At least I know I can kill someone with a dagger.

“If Thul hasn’t screwed us, the grate at the top should be unlocked,” Garo says. “It’s supposed to lead into a storeroom. Get it open as quiet as you can.”

Giniva nods, her flame bobbing, and then disappears. We can hear her footsteps on the rungs as she ascends.

“Got it,” her voice drifts down. “Come on up.”

One by one, we climb the ladder. It’s just brackets set into the brick, rusted and rough under my hands. I follow Garo up, feeling cramped and helpless in the narrow vertical passage, and I’m breathing hard by the time I emerge into a long, narrow room. Shelves line one wall, stacked with gear—uniforms, crossbow bolts, lanterns, and jugs of fuel. There’s barely room for all of us. The last of the volunteers, a big, heavily tattooed woman, swings the grate closed behind us.

“Main guard room is just outside,” Garo whispers. “Normally five men. Maybe ten now. Giniva opens the door. I head to the stairs and keep any reinforcements from below bottled up. The rest of you deal with whoever’s in there. Got it?”

Muttered assents. I wonder when Garo learned to speak so casually of “dealing with” people. Maybe it’s another thing they train you in, being a noble.

“Ready,” Giniva says.

“Go,” Garo mouths.

Giniva pulls the door open. The guard room is lit by a large fireplace and several lanterns, and the light dazzles me for a moment. Garo plunges onward, Melos gauntlets already ignited, barreling into a surprised-looking Ward Guard. A slam and a crackle of power send him crashing against the wall, and then Garo’s past, heading for the darker archway of the stairs leading down.

“Rebels!” a woman shouts. “We’re under attack—”

The others charge. There are the expected ten Ward Guard in the room, unarmored and without their spears, but still wearing swords. Most of them are sitting around a big table, where a card game was in progress, while another pair are sitting by the fire. They all go for their weapons.

It’s so fast. When the Immortals had attacked us at the sanctuary, the battle seemed to be over in an eyeblink, but I had chalked that up to my panic. Fights on stage and in books seemed to go on for ages, with plenty of time for the opposing parties to exchange dramatic lines. But here half the Ward Guard are down before they have a chance to even draw their swords, our people hacking at them as they tangle themselves in the benches or bump into the table, sending cards flying.

A few manage to back off, forming a circle near the hearth. Vekata and Nari move in on one side, Vekata glowing with golden light and moving faster than he has any right to, Nari cloaked in sticky shadows. The volunteers charge on the other side, and for a moment steel skitters against steel. The tattooed woman grabs a young guard’s arm, breaks it with a twist, and cuts his throat with a dagger. The sergeant of the Ward Guards, the woman who’d called the alarm, delivers a cut to the arm of a young rebel that sends him reeling away in a spray of blood. Vekata slips behind her with Rhema-driven speed and buries his dagger in the small of her back. Nari screams as a young Ward Guard’s wild swing slashes her hand, and she drops her blade. When he runs her through the stomach, he seems as surprised as she does. A moment later, a firebolt from Giniva sets the boy ablaze, and he’s screaming, too.

Less than a hundred heartbeats, and it’s over. Nari’s on the ground, dying noisily, shadow energy evaporating around her in little puffs of darkness. The burning Ward Guard has gone still and silent, sheathed in flame, and the rest of them lie around the hearth in pools of blood. I’m trying very hard not to be sick.

“Winch room,” Garo says, glancing over his shoulder. “Tori, take Momo and get the gate open. Everyone else with me!”

I can hear the clatter on the stairs already, weapons and armor. A Ward Guard with a crossbow appears at the next landing down and fires, the bolt glancing off Garo’s Melos gauntlets in a shower of green sparks. She ducks out of the way as Giniva sends a firebolt back at her, and I hear raised voices.

Momo, the tattooed woman, falls in behind me as I take the other side of the stairway, up to the top of the guardhouse. This room is empty except for the winch, a contraption of rope and pulleys with a single big crank-handle on one side. I suspect Garo sent me up here in case the mechanism needed puzzling out, but all I have to do is point Momo at it. Muscles bunch and strain in her back as she goes to work, and I can hear the rattle of chains and counterweights through the walls.

There are windows here—arrowslits, really, but enough to get a decent view. The guardhouse is built into the wall itself, a tower just beside the gate. Looking south, toward the Eleventh Ward, I can see a crowd gathered in the squares of the High Market. They have spears, clubs, and torches, driving back the gathering darkness of early evening. The Ward Guard is spread out along the wall, armed with crossbows, but so far holding their fire. The mob can’t get to them, after all.