Page 61 of The Cradle of Ice

Pratik stopped abruptly. Frell nearly collided with him.

Other figures appeared behind the first. They were all cloaked in byor-ga robes, marking them as baseborn servants. Frell was surprised to recognize the one in the lead. It was a woman of small stature. Her robe was adorned with a ring of beads that marked her as a maid. He remembered her bursting out of the spiral stairway, hesitating, then dashing away.

He had thought she was trying to escape. But now he suspected otherwise. He remembered the robed servants he had spotted lurking among the shelves with cloaked lanterns.

Did they plant all these bombs? If so, why? Was it an act of vandalism or one meant to aid our escape?

The woman stepped closer, ripping away her headgear. She swept back the sweaty bangs of her close-cropped blond hair. Cold eyes, glinting with copper, glared at them.

Pratik gasped.

Frell took a step back in shock. “Llyra…?”

He struggled to work the gears in his head to accommodate her sudden presence. The last time he had spotted Llyra hy March had been this past summer. She was the guildmaster of a den of thieves out of the city of Anvil in the Guld’guhl territories. She had aided Nyx’s cause back then and parted ways afterward. When she left, she aimed to rouse as many of her ilk as possible, to forge a secret army in case they were needed, one that was spread across whorehouses, thieveries, low taverns, and dark dens.

Frell finally found his tongue, still struggling with the impossibility. “How … how are you here?”

She scowled. “We can wag tongues later. Let’s keep going before all the hairs are burned off your arses.”

With fires roaring all around, she turned and headed off with her crew. She set a hard pace, making sudden turns, never slowing. She seemed to know the best route through the flames. Then again, she had planted the bombs. Still, the fires continued to spread rapidly. The heat had become an inferno. Ashes choked the air, making it hard to breathe.

To hold his fear in check, Frell studied the woman. Llyra looked the same as when last he had seen her. Even hidden in the robes, her body remained lithe. Though she bore the short stature of all Guld’guhlians, she had none of their stockiness. She moved like a caged lioness, all power and quickness.

As they continued, more figures folded out of the smoke and shadows and joined them. All wore baseborn robes, though some carried their headgear, revealing hard faces, bearing old scars, whiskey-red noses, and perpetual sneers.

Frell searched around him, then focused back on Llyra. He could not stop from asking again, “How are you all here?”

She huffed with irritation. “Symon thought you all could use my help. We’ve been working in tandem since you all arrived on these shores.”

“Symon?” It took him a full breath to put pieces together. “Symon hy Ralls? With the Razen Rose?”

She shrugged. “We knew you were intent on scouring these stacks. So, while you’ve been idling up top for months, I used the time to infiltrate down here and plan accordingly, in case something drastic needed to be done.” She picked up the edge of her robe. “Easy enough work when you don’t have to show your face.”

“And no one grew the wiser?”

She scoffed. “Dresh’ri need to eat, have their floors mopped, the cobwebs dusted off their precious books.” She eyed Frell up and down. “All you scholars are so full of yourselves. With your noses buried in books, you don’t bother to see who’s cleaning the privy of your watery shites, which, trust me, does stink, as much as you might claim otherwise.”

Frell felt his cheeks heat up—not from the inferno growing around them, but from the truth of her words.

Pratik drew alongside them, his gaze searching around. “Where are we going? This can’t be the way to the lift.”

“That’s not the only way out.” She arched a brow at the Chaaen. “Are you so daft to believe the Dresh’ri would want to share their grandest of entrances with baseborn servants?”

Pratik stared hard at her. “There are other exits?”

“Ten that I know of. Probably more. Some that even the Dresh’ri have likely forgotten about. There are quarters, kitchens, baths, smithies, dungeons that burrow around the librarie and extend in every direction. Many areas are so old they’ve crumbled into ruin.”

Frell had a thousand more questions but remained abashed, even humbled, at how much had escaped him.

Llyra pointed ahead and increased their pace. “Save your breath. We still have a ways to go. And from what little I know of Symon, he’ll not wait long.”

29

KANTHE PACED IN front of the steaming wingketch. The ship’s tethers creaked under the strain, matching his own tension. The palace gongs had also fallen ominously silent. He groaned with exasperation.

It didn’t help that Symon kept looking at the moon as it drifted across the opening above. The man had given them until the sounding of the next bell before he would force them to depart.

For the thousandth time, Kanthe glanced at the shadowy door into the palace.