Page 35 of Devil’s Doom (Jaga and the Devil #2)

Chapter thirty-five

Tower

“Lech, did you see that?” I ask, stopping to look around.

She’s gone, not a trace left. Even the faint note of summer dissipates, frozen to nothing by the cold winter air.

“See what?”

I turn around once more, but we are alone on the bridge. Lech watches me impatiently, and I finally shake my head, muttering that I thought I saw something. On the other side of the bridge, the air fills with the sizzling aroma or roast meat from the nearest eatery, golden light and raucous shouts spilling onto the frozen cobbles. Lech casts a longing look at the door.

“You want to go in?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I would, but now isn’t the time. It’s been so long since we could all just relax, have some fun. Years passed since we had a proper celebration. It’s getting harder, not just for me.”

A shadow slithers along the wall of a dark house, slender and agile like a tail.

“What do you want to celebrate?” I scoff. “It’s not like you’ve won anything. Your master is busy fucking his consort day and night.”

Lech gives me a fleeting look, too quick for me to discern his emotion.

“True,” he admits. “He spends more time with you than with anyone before, but he works hard, too. You know time doesn’t constrain him. I hope we’ll finally have cause for celebration soon. Let’s take a turn around the neighboring streets. We’ll see if there are many passersby around.”

The narrow streets are only marginally less cold than the open space on the bridge. There’s nary a soul around, even the beggars gone into hiding. We pass a ruin destroyed by lightning that used to be a beautiful, three-floor building, and Lech scoffs under his breath.

“If there only was a way to just put an end to it, once and for all.”

I jolt at the quiet vehemence in his words. They make me think in panic that somehow, he knows , that maybe Woland told him I could stop the war by letting myself be claimed, but Lech doesn’t look at me. His face is pinched, eyes down as we trudge up a set of narrow stairs.

Do you really think Woland would make the world a better place?

I almost ask the question before I remember we’re not down in the tunnels but up in Perun’s world, where spies listen even when most people are hidden away in their homes, crowding around fireplaces and waiting for spring. It’s useless to ask Lech, anyway. He’s committed to the devil.

“Let’s go. The streets are deserted.”

The guard tower is a tall, cylindrical building made of gray stone. Torches light both sides of the entrance, a dragon standing guard with a bored expression. He doesn’t spare us a look as we rush down the side of the tower, our steps echoing.

“Here.”

Lech leads me almost to the other side of the tower. Hidden in the shadow cast by the wall Wera and the others wait. A set of wide steps leads below the street level, to something that must have been a second door right at the foot of the tower, now walled in.

“Finally. I was about to start without you,” Wera snaps, shooting me an impatient look. “Everything is as planned. We go in, grab our brothers, go out. Sara, you can start.”

The latawica doesn’t move, but the air around us does. It’s not wind, exactly, but a sort of vibration that tickles my nostrils on every inhale. When I look at the tower, it seems to vibrate, too, even though there is no sound, and the ground under my feet is steady.

“She’s cloaking us,” Lech explains in a whisper. “We’re invisible unless someone looks at us from up close.”

Wera strides over to the walled-in doorway. She grabs a knife from her belt and slices her palm open, using her blood to draw a rough rectangle on the stones, barely tall enough to fit her size. When she’s done, she draws a sign in the middle of the door. Triangle and horns. Weles.

The spell she whispers is too quiet for me to catch, but it works immediately. The rocks inside the bloody rectangle vanish. A dank, foul scent blasts outside, piss and sweat and death, and Wera nods.

“Let’s go.”

Lech grabs my hand, his hold brusque, and I know it’s because he sees in the dark, just like Wera. I follow his lead uneasily, hating to be blind. The darkness inside the guard tower is fuzzy and even colder than outside. Out in the open, there’s a faint promise of sunlight in the morning. Here, the cold is centuries old, protected by thick walls and the lack of fire.

Wera leads us to spiral stairs, which we descend in complete darkness. The chochol woman stumbles once, her gasp of surprise echoing against the circular stairway. Wera tsks and conjures a globe of cold, blue flame that gives barely enough light to see the next step.

“Aren’t there guards down there?” I ask in a whisper so low, I barely hear myself.

“Guess we’ll see.”

Lech’s voice is quiet, but it vibrates with glee. When I glance at him, his fangs flash blue in the faint light, and I realize he’s grinning. Good. At least the upir is having fun in the dungeons.

At the foot of the stairs, the way is barred by a thick door. The chochol artisan makes quick work of the lock, and we go into a low corridor lit with torches that stink of cheap animal oil. The space is smoky and badly ventilated, and each side of the corridor is lined with rows of doors. A moan comes from behind the nearest one.

Wera closes her eyes with a frown, turning her face this way and that. Finally, she points Lena toward a door halfway down the corridor. “There. Open it.”

Soon, the door stands open. Inside the impossibly narrow cell that would be too small to hold even one person are two men. They both stand. There is no room to sit or lie down.

“Fuck, you came!”

They are upirs. Their faces are swollen and bloodied. They lean against the wall for support, but even though the one who spoke is lucid enough to understand what’s happening, his friend’s eyes roll slowly as he tries to focus on us. His nose is broken, a few clumps of hay-colored hair torn out.

The more aware upir falls out of the cell, landing on his hands and knees on the filthy floor of the corridor. His trousers are soiled. I understand immediately the cells offer no way for the prisoners to relieve themselves with dignity.

“Come on. You, too.” Wera reaches impatiently for the other upir, but he shakes his head, his pale, chapped lips opening and closing even as no sound comes out.

“No, he’s chained to the wall,” the first upir says, gesturing at his ankle circled by a thick ring of metal. “You’ll have to open it, but it’s some kind of magic.”

Lena crouches to examine the shackle, her nose buried in her elbow. She probes at it with tools from her belt, but not even a minute later, she’s up, shaking her head.

“No can do. There’s no lock.”

Wera sighs and looks down both sides of the corridor. “How often do they come in to check on you?”

The upir laughs bitterly. “They don’t. The only time a dragon comes down here is to lock up someone new.”

“Stand aside.”

The strzyga spends three precious minutes poking at the shackle and murmuring spells under her breath. The metal glows silver for a moment before growing dull again. When she stands up, her face is grim.

“It won’t open for anyone who’s not a dragon. It can’t be broken, either. We’re almost out of time.”

I glance at the upir. He looks half-dead already, but his eyes finally focus, and they watch us with a kind of calm, almost serene despair. He knows he’ll die, probably tortured and ridiculed, and he’s made his peace with it.

“Can’t we grab Foss?” I ask, the words out before I can think. “He’s on our side, no? And a dragon. He’ll open it.”

Wera thinks it through. “No. The upper levels teem with hostile dragons, and we don’t know where he is. It’s too risky.”

I think faster, eyeing the thick shackle. It’s way too tight to slip out of, and the other end is securely attached to the wall. If we can’t take it off or cut it, there’s no way to free the upir.

“We need to go,” Wera says grimly. “I can offer you a peaceful death, brother.”

The upir blinks at her. His eyes are wet. I clench my fists and shake my head.

“No.”

The strzyga turns to me, impatient and angry. “Then what else do you propose? Can you open that? Because let me tell you, if I couldn’t, there’s no way a novice like you will know how.”

I shake my head. “No, I can’t open it. But I can cut off his foot and then probably reattach it later. Maybe. I’m almost sure of it.”

In the sudden silence, the upir’s hoarse whisper is clearly audible.

“Do it. Please.”

My stomach roils, but as I stare into his gray eyes, one clear, one bloodied from a burst vessel, I can only nod. I don’t care what the dragons think he did. I don’t care if he’s Woland’s follower. I’ll save this man, because no one deserves to rot in a cell like this one or be torn apart by bloodthirsty beasts while hundreds of people make bets and chant.

“You have three minutes, and then we’ll have to go,” Wera says, her voice tight.

I drop to my knees in front of the upir, not caring how filthy he is. The stink barely bothers me as I cut off the leg of his trousers, using magic, and touch his skin around the shackle to find the best place to cut. It’s too tight, and his leg is swollen. I could do with some oil, but I didn’t bring any supplies.

When I asked Nienad earlier today what I should bring, he told me my magic and my hands. Battle healers don’t carry supplies, only eggs, because there’s nothing you’ll get done with tools faster than with magic alone.

His words, not mine.

Swietko’s face flashes in my mind’s eye when I palpate the swollen shin right above the shackle. It’s unbelievable that this won’t be the first limb I’ll cut off in my life, but at least this time, I get to do it with magic. I asked Nienad almost at the start of my lessons with him how to safely remove a limb. His explanations were terse, but I committed every word to memory.

The chain is so short, the man can’t sit down unless his foot stays right by the wall, and that would mean no space for me. He has to stand, which complicates things.

Steady, I command his leg, and when he wobbles, I huff with impatience and freeze his entire body.

“You won’t be able to move for a moment.”

Then, because I’m not an asshole like Nienad, I disregard my teacher’s rule to “never waste magic on pain relief—they are rebels, they can take it.”

Freeze, I tell his skin and muscles, numbing the area I’m about to operate on. Clean. Steady.

Cut.

It’s a hundred times easier than using a saw, and yet more difficult, too. The blade I cut with is magic, and it only exists in my mind. My only task is to guide it with absolute focus, taking the sharp edge through skin, muscle, and bone. There is a faint sound, soft and wet, and then, the upir’s leg slides apart, the foot staying on the floor, his bleeding stump slowly rolling away as he loses his balance.

“Catch him,” I growl, already directing his blood vessels to slow the pumping, or he’ll bleed out before I manage to sew him back.

Someone stands behind me, treading on my carelessly spread skirts, and steadies my patient. I heave and growl, pushing his swollen foot out of the shackle, until it finally slides out, lubricated with blood.

“Out with him. Into the corridor.”

Lech, who turns out to be the one holding my patient, lays him out on the floor. I drop to my knees and get busy reattaching the foot. My eyes are closed, my magic feeling into the severed skin and arteries as I do my utmost to align everything perfectly.

“ Seal.”

Under my hands, his skin grows hot, and I pour more and more magic into him, until a deep shakiness settles in the pit of my stomach, my chest aching and void. Putting a cut off limb back where it belongs demands so much more magic than merely taking it off.

Sweat pours down my back, and behind me, someone coughs, someone mutters, and a moan of wretched agony comes out from a locked cell down the corridor. The torches flicker, the smoke making me want to sneeze.

Finally, it’s done.

“He shouldn’t put pressure on it,” I say, looking up to meet the bemused gaze of my patient. “How do you feel?”

He shakes his head, his mouth loose and shapeless. Wera huffs.

“Are you done?”

“Yes. We can go.”

It takes me two tries to stand. Wera wordlessly offers me her arm while Lech and the other prisoner support my limping patient. Lena closes the cell door, and we’re off, not yet out of danger, but so close to freedom, I almost taste it.

The way up the stairs is grueling. I do my best not to lean on the strzyga, until she snarls at me.

“For fuck’s sake, use my support. You’re slowing us down.”

And even though I expect her to make me lean on her and then trip me up so I tumble down the stairs, Wera does nothing of the sort. She helps me out through her magical doorway and seals the door behind us until all that’s left is Weles’ mark painted on the guard tower in blood.

By the time we make it back to the base, all I can think of is a hot bath and a hotter supper. But as we enter the large cavern where I once fought Wera, it’s filled with people. Rebels big and small welcome us with hoots and clapping. Colorful orbs dance under the ceiling, and someone pours mead, while someone else plays on a fiddle.

Wera turns to me with a sharp grin. “Congratulations, consort. You are finally one of us.”