He chose to stay where he was, eating hurriedly, while I turned to the others and held up my picks. They shrank back, behind the oldest girl, who shook her head.

  “They’ll kill us if they catch us without the chains,” she said. “They’ll kill us if we try t’ run. There’s more slaves comin’ in every week this time o’ year and we’re the cheapest sort. You’re mad t’ take the little lad, and Daeggan there is mad t’ go with you.”

  “I wasn’t born t’ this,” the cross one—Daeggan—said. He must have been all of eight. “They already know I’m bad. How long before they break me?”

  I nodded to him. “Do you know a way out, then?” He made a face in a way that told me he did.

  “ ’Tis risky, and none’ve ever come back t’ say if it works. Could be they’re still layin’ in there, gone to see the Black God,” he told me.

  “We’ll learn soon enough,” I replied.

  “You’ll be in the woods,” protested the oldest gixie. “Where can you go after that? You’ve no horses. They hunt runaways on horses, with hounds! And all the land hereabouts is my lord’s. Anyone on it would give you to him. Is your magic enough?”

  “The lords will be occupied, I think,” I said. “I know how to travel in hostile country. If I’m lucky, I’ll have a better mage with me.” At the very least Pounce and I could reach the road. With Achoo already in the woods, we would do even better. It wrenched at me to leave these other children behind. I knew they would slow us down. Daeggan at least looked to be in good shape, but most of them were exhausted and starved. They would be frightened in the dark woods and terrified of other people. And we had to hurry to take advantage of the distraction provided by Farmer and Elyot. Still, I had to offer the chance to them. “Think again. I’ll take off your shackles. Go with me and Gareth, or stay. You’re fed here, I suppose, and warm enough. If we make it away, I can promise you’ll be free, and I’ll find places for you.”

  “You’re mad,” the oldest girl said firmly. “And nobody’s lucky here. There’s bears and mountain lions and wolves in the forest, and snakes and traps. All this is Lord Thanen’s, all of it. They’ll brand my face and I’ll never get anything but hard work again.”

  One by one they all refused to go with Pounce, Daeggan, the prince, and me. Seemingly dying a slave was better than the forest and the chance of dying or being fetched back for punishment. I thought I’d be relieved, but I wasn’t. Daeggan made more sense to me. He wanted to leave before he was broken. It was no wonder, after he’d been working with the broken all of the time.

  We bundled up food in a hurry. I made a strip of sacking into a sash where I tucked the food pouch and four good, sharp knives. Then Daeggan led us down a hallway littered with straw and splinters, plainly used for deliveries. I could have done so myself, as the map in my head lined the path to his tunnel in yellow. About five hundred yards along Daeggan took a turn into a lesser hall. We trotted down a set of stairs and along another hall. By then Pounce had disappeared again, gone off on some errand of his own. We were in the stone under the castle now, the air cold and forbidding. I liked it no better than I had liked it in the dungeon.

  Gareth was shivering and laboring to keep up with me. I took pity on him. First I set my knives aside so they wouldn’t stab me in the gut. Then I knelt, motioning to my back. “Up with you,” I told him quietly. “Piggyback, let’s go.”

  “Go on,” Daeggan urged. “Ye’re slowin’ us down, honeytongue.”

  I frowned at him. “The lad’s name is Gareth, please.” I turned my head to look at the prince, who had frozen in place. Tears ran down his cheeks. “What is it, my boy?” I asked him softly. I swiveled on my feet to wipe his face with my hand. He was no prince to me in that moment. He was just a little fellow who’d gone through a month of ruin with no understanding of why.

  “My—friend, Tassilo, that protected me,” he whispered. “He—he’d give me rides on his back. He fought right in front of me and they killed him.”

  They had made him afraid to name his guards and surely his parents and servants. Either that or they’d spelled him. I smoothed his hair, hating Thanen and his fellow traitors myself. I could not let hate distract me. Mine was the task of getting clear of these monstrous conspirators with the boy in one piece.

  “You will have justice for your friend,” I told him. “Now, come. We’ll go faster this way.”

  He linked his arms around my neck. I grabbed my knives and rose to my feet, sticking the blades in my belt before I gripped his legs with my arms. My bad rib stabbed at me, but I ignored it. I started forward, surprised to find Daeggan had waited for us.

  “Thank you,” I said when we caught up.

  “I’m goin’ soft,” he replied. “Keep up, now.”

  We had gone but a hundred yards or so more, past a handful of sets of stairs leading up and away from the corridor, when I heard the approach of running feet. I put Gareth down and sent the lads up a stairway into the shadows. Then I took a torch from a bracket in the wall, waiting to see what nasty surprise the gods had arranged.

  Pounce rounded a curve first, with Farmer in his wake. Like me, he looked like himself, not the guard in the cells. It was all I could do not to cry out. The ribbon was gripped in my man’s fist, the flesh red and swollen around it. The ribbon itself was unmarked. Farmer was burned on the side of his head and on his chest. Half of his tunic was charred, but he still gave me his looby grin. The moment he embraced me, he sent healing into my body, mending that bad rib at last and getting soot and scorched cloth on me. I struggled, but he wouldn’t let me go until he’d kissed me well.

  “Take care of your own self, you great cracknob!” I scolded. Luckily for him, I could see his burns slowly healing. “And don’t overdo. We’ve got company. He knows a way out.” I looked up into the stairway. “It’s all right. He’s with us.”

  Daeggan, knife in hand, came down first, keeping Gareth behind him. He looked Farmer over, then he pointed at Farmer’s fist. “Don’t that hurt?” he asked.

  “Only when I laugh,” Farmer replied with a straight face. He rubbed the swelling with a wince as the red flesh began to shrink. “Did someone mention a way out?”

  Gareth hung back on the stairs, eyes wide, his thumb going into his mouth. I took my knives from my belt and set them down, then crouched on the bottom step with my back to him. “Farmer’s all right,” I said to him. “A little odd, but you know how mages can be. Come here, lad.”

  I heard a sound and looked back. Gareth had backed up two steps rather than come to me. He pulled his thumb from his lips. “Mages were there,” he whispered, his eyes huge. “They let the murderers in. They burned everything.” He put his thumb back in his mouth.

  Daeggan glared up at me, then at Farmer. “Now see what you done?” he demanded. “We nearabout had him not suckin’ his thumb, bein’s how my lord and the mages pinch ’im whenever they catch ’im at it. Lookit ’im!” I thought of the ugly round bruises that I’d glimpsed, pinch marks, showing up against Gareth’s dyed skin, and bowed my head so no one would see my fury.

  Farmer crouched where he was, in full view of the stair. He had to be as on edge as I was now that the crash of the fight was ended. Folk would be moving about soon, mayhap even down here, but Farmer acted as if we had all night. “I wasn’t one of them that attacked your friends,” he said. “The mages that did that were wrong. We need to catch them. I just came from fighting one. Elyot.”

  “Tell me you killed him,” I said quietly. I knew him, knew what his answer would be, but a mot can dream.

  “No,” Farmer said, shocked. I sighed and my soft-hearted man told me, “It is not my right to kill him. It’s the law’s right, and the king’s right as wielder of the law. I knocked him halfway to Midwinter and laid a sleep on him.”

  “Faw,” Daeggan said with scorn, and spat on the floor. “All the slaps and pinches I’ve had from that one, and he only gets a nap?”

  I glanced at the prince. Gareth had taken the thumb from his mouth. “The law?” whispered the lad. “You work for the law? The law belongs to my papa.”

  “It’s your papa who sent us, and your mama,” I said. “I promised them we’d bring you home.”

  “We all swore to serve the law and bring you home, and find out who took you,” Farmer added. “Come along, lad. We need to hurry.”

  Gareth trotted down the steps and climbed onto my back.

  “That’s better,” Daeggan said as Pounce leaped onto his shoulders. He flinched, but he accepted the cat’s weight and looked at Farmer.

  “We need to go back a way,” Farmer told me. “There’s another tunnel. It looks better suited to us than the one you were aiming for.”

  “Are you certain?” I asked quietly, following him back down the corridor. “I want to get the swive-all pus mouse out of this sarden castle.”

  “Those are bad words,” Gareth said in my ear. “Lunedda spanked me when I said swive.” I waited for him to weep at the mention of his dead nursemaid, but he only buried his face in my shoulder.

  “You have no idea of the bad words Beka knows, my lad,” Farmer murmured back. “Once she starts, she nearabout sets my ears on fire. We’re very, very lucky she’s no mage, or the power of her words would split every lawbreaker she arrests from top to toe.” He led us up a flight of stairs. The downward end was the way to the dungeons.

  “Stop blathering,” I ordered Farmer, as if he’d listen. Truth to tell, I was grateful for his folly, as the boy seemed to take comfort from it. He was relaxing in my grip. His trembling eased until it was the slightest of quivers. I doubted that he’d stopped shaking since he was yanked from his home.

  “You arrest people?” Gareth whispered.

  “Farmer and me are Provost’s Guards,” I explained as we continued to climb. “There’s three of us and a lady knight who came here seeking you.”

  “I want to be a Provost’s Guard when I grow up, before I’m … you know,” he said, stumbling to a halt before king, I was sure. “I thought you all had uniforms and batons and boots and badges.”

  It was good to hear him so eager. “This is my uniform. It’s very dirty,” I explained. “One day you’ll see me properly kitted out.” Farmer was hand-signaling for silence. I put my finger on my lips so the boys would understand and the three of us ducked into a hall that opened onto the stair. Farmer did something to the nearest door that made it open partway. The room beyond was dark and smelled of lack of use. Silently we three moved out of the light that shone in through the opening.

  Farmer bumped me with his hip and tugged Gareth. Gently he shifted the boy onto his own back. He would do so when I couldn’t object, not aloud, and not with hand signs that he would see. When I put my hand on Gareth’s side, though, he was trembling no more than he had on my own back. I relaxed. Seemingly the chatter between Farmer and me had made him feel better about my man, better enough that Gareth didn’t mind riding on Farmer’s back instead of mine.

  I moved to the crack between the hinges on the door, where I could see the stair. I heard the approach of booted feet and voices. The folk were arguing softly and passionately. I took out two of the knives I’d stolen, just in case. Then I realized that one voice was Sabine’s. When they came in view, I nearly gasped. Nomalla of Halleburn walked with Sabine and Tunstall as if they were taking a stroll after supper. Only the fact that all three carried four heavy packs and the belt with my baton put the lie to their appearance. Tunstall was in uniform again, his baton hanging at his waist. He even had boots!

  I clicked my tongue twice, in the way Tunstall had taught me, the way hillmen do it. He stopped the two mots. “Cooper, it’s all right, I think,” he said quietly, with a glare at Lady Nomalla. She’d put her hand on the hilt of her sword the moment he spoke. “The lady has rethought things.”

  “Go,” Farmer’s voice whispered beside my ear. “We’ll wait.”

  Pounce left Daeggan to join me. We went out onto the stair, keeping distance between us and the Halleburn knight. Sabine gripped me by the shoulders and looked me intently in the eyes. “We were coming to release you from the dungeon,” she explained. “Farmer’s gone somewhere—he locked Elyot into a substance like glass and tore the main hall apart.” She picked up Pounce and kissed him. He even let her. “Have you seen the boy?” she asked. “We got into Prince Baird’s rooms, but there’s no sign of him. We just found some of the kitchen servants. They told us they fled when the mage fight began upstairs. We have to find the boy and Farmer before we can get away.”

  I pointed to Nomalla. “Why are you trusting her?”

  “She freed us,” Tunstall said.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” Nomalla told me. “You’re a Guard, you’re for sale to anyone with a sufficient bribe. A knight has her honor.”

  “That’s enough,” Sabine barked, her eyes fiery. “Nomalla, if you speak so of these two Guards again, you’ll face my sword. Their honor is every bit as good as yours. Better. They’ve not turned on the Crown for so much as an hour.”

  “May we brandish our shields at some better time?” Farmer asked wearily as he stepped from the darkened room with Gareth on his back and Daeggan at his heels. The prince whimpered and struggled to flee when he saw Nomalla, but Farmer hitched Gareth around to sit on his hip and bounced him as if he’d been a mother all his life. “Easy, lad. She’s on our side, for now.” He looked at Nomalla with eyes that had turned the color of ice. “If she isn’t, I’ll make her very sad.”

  “Will you turn her to ice, too?” Daeggan asked. “She’s all right, you know, for one of them. She made her brother stop whippin’ me.”

  Nomalla backed away from Farmer a step. She put both hands on her weapons, one on her dagger hilt, one on her sword. “You buried Elyot in stone, or ice, or something up to his neck,” she whispered, her voice shaking. “He’s screaming for someone to let him out.”

  Farmer’s smile had no warmth in it. “Only Cassine Catfoot could free him. Let’s be on our way, shall we? You first.”

  “One moment,” Tunstall said. He smiled at Daeggan. “Who’s this?”

  “This is Daeggan. He’s a slave who wants to change his place in life,” I said. “He knows a way out.”

  “So do we,” Sabine told us. “Nomalla and I played in the tunnels as girls. I know one that’s best for our purposes.”

  Daeggan looked up at me. I nodded, knowing he was asking if my friend could be trusted.

  “I think you’d best make your own way out of here,” Tunstall said, resting a hand on Daeggan’s shoulder. Gently he told the boy, “If not that, go back to your place and wait for us to return with soldiers to arrest the lord. We have a rough journey ahead. A deadly one. Too risky for a lad, even one as brave as you.”

  Daeggan gave Tunstall his clenched fist of a scowl. “I’m stayin’ wiv her,” he said, pointing to me. “Her I know better’n you. I go wiv her or I tell my lord ye’re down here.”

  “Clever lad,” Farmer remarked.

  “Daeggan’s my friend,” Gareth said.

  “That settles that, then,” Tunstall said, grouchy. “If we live, I’ll find him a good position scrubbing privies. Let’s move.” He passed my belt and pack to me while Sabine set Pounce down and gave Farmer’s shoulder pack to him. I took the kitchen knives from my makeshift belt and put them in my pack before I donned my true belt and felt for my own blades and my baton. Then I checked my pack and nearabout yelped with delight. My arm guards, each with ten thin knives as ribs, lay on top of my other belongings. Hurriedly I slid them on. Though I could manage the ties myself with one hand and my teeth, Farmer did them up for me. As I bent to close my pack, I saw light near the bottom. It was my stone lamp. I slid it into my pocket. A little light is always useful.

  Once Farmer and I had our packs in place and Farmer had settled Gareth in his arms, Nomalla and Sabine led the way down the steps. Pounce walked between Tunstall and Farmer, whilst I brought up the rear. Daeggan trotted along with me. I started to feel uneasy as we went deeper. So did Farmer, from the looks he gave Tunstall, and so did the lad beside me.

  Finally Daeggan halted. “She’s takin us t’ th’ cells, she’s gonna lock us up and turn us over!” he whispered, clutching my arm. We weren’t far from the guards’ station. He had a point. All we needed was a cove with a short run to an alarm bell.

  Nomalla and Sabine halted on the last landing between us and the dungeons. They turned left and walked three yards down a small corridor there. Farmer followed while Tunstall put his finger to his lips and frowned at Daeggan. Into the hall we went. I paused on the landing, trying to hear any noise from either way on the stairs. All was silent. Wouldn’t they come to the dungeons to find me, knowing Farmer was out? Had they tried to find Gareth, or had they gone for Sabine and Tunstall, believing them to be more important just now? I rubbed the back of my neck and caught up with the others.

  Sabine and Nomalla had turned to face the left-hand wall. Like the rest of this part of the castle, it was old stone. The rock was not all cut to the same shape, but the pieces were fitted together, round, square, and rectangular. The differences between them were filled in with mortar. Among them one small, reddish stone hardly stood out, though the other ones were gray. The red one was at chest height for Lady Sabine. She set a couple of fingers against it and pushed.

  A section of the wall in front of the lady swung in like a door. Gareth, who seemed to know to be silent, gasped and almost clapped his hands with delight, stopping himself just in time. Beyond the door lay a dank tunnel, barely high enough to fit Tunstall and scarcely wide enough to fit him and Farmer walking abreast. It was veiled in cobwebs and thin roots. I checked the map in my head and found this place. The tunnel that opened into that corridor was one of those that led off the edge of the map.

  Tunstall grabbed the nearest torch from its bracket.

  “I can light the way,” Farmer protested. I reached in my pocket for my light stone.