Shard, page 26
part #2 of Cruelly Made Series
“Those I can kill,” Blood says. “Come here, my disgusting little pets. You keep going! They want Pebbles.”
“But—” I start to say.
“Don’t you dare use your magic!” Blood snaps. “We had a deal!”
“I can help!” I shout.
“You’ll leave evidence,” Blood retorts.
“Don’t go fucking it up now.” Smoke pushes me on the back to make me start going again.
The tunnel goes up, and up, and up—shit. My legs burn, my heart is racing. Blood deals with all the goats before catching up. The BlightWorm is right behind us. So behind us when it bellows, it spits gobs at us.
“Don’t!” Blood shouts as I instinctively half-turn to cast a shield. “Don’t use your magic!”
“It’s just ahead!” Atrament shouts.
It’s still deep night, but a slightly-lighter darkness glows up ahead. We pant and stumble to the gate.
The arena, empty and washed blue in the waning-moon’s light, greets us.
The Blightling bellows.
I slam Aether into the gate. It unlocks and slides upward.
We stumble out into the arena itself. I spin around and raise my hands, reaching for the Aether that will trigger the gate to fall again. The gate slams down. The Blightling roars and slams into it, and everything seems to shudder.
“That’s going to summon the guards.” Smoke eyes the Aether-lantern illuminated parapets in the distance. He yanks off his pendant and throws it into the air. His familiar soars on a summer-night thermal.
“Good. A distraction,” Atrament says. “Blightlings do occasionally get loose into the arena.”
The gate shudders again and the Blightling roars. I raise my hand to reinforce it.
Blood grabs my hand. “Let it be. If they’re busy cleaning up a loose Blightling, they can’t worry about us.”
“What’s next?” Smoke asks. “Horses, I hope.”
“Horse thievery,” I confirm.
“I prefer to think of it as commandeering, in the name of the Empress,” Blood says airily. “Put in a good word for us with your mother.”
“She’s not my mother,” I sigh.
Rot swings up behind ScatheFire. “Come on, let’s get going.”
“I don’t know what’s more impressive,” I say, “That there’s a horse that can carry Rot, or that Rot could probably carry that horse.”
Rot grins at me. “Room for you too.”
“You know I like to ride,” I shoot back, then cough and blush.
“We know what she’s going to be after once we’re out of here,” Blood says. “So you going to ride one of us, or are we going to have to find you some willing tow-headed stable-lad to amuse you?”
“The Guards are coming this way. Time to go,” Smoke says.
Atrament weaves the shadows back onto us and tells us to stay close to the walls as guards come racing to investigate. We run past them, moving shadow to shadow to the stables where we’d negotiated for my familiar’s skeleton. The doors are open against the hot summer night.
“Perfect.” There are eight stalls, and a horse in each one, with their saddles and bridles on racks outside the stall. To Atrament I say, “Tell me you know how to ride.”
“I am capable,” he says.
All the horses are palfreys: meant for easy riding up and down the long twenty mile elevated road to town. Nothing exceptionally sturdy, and absolutely nothing I’m going to want to ride in a fight. I pull one of them out of the stall. It’s a bay gelding with a fine face and pretty lines. Maybe it’s the Warden’s personal horse.
Mine now.
He’s confused by being taken from his hay in the middle of a hot night, but doesn’t give me any trouble to saddle, bridle, and ride him out of the barn.
The Aether guards are running towards the arena, and the parapet guards are distracted by the rogue Blightling. The lights in the Warden’s tower are on.
“Too many to obfuscate,” Atrament says.
“Then we move fast, because their hooves are going to make a hell of a lot of noise,” Blood says.
The final gate, like all the others, has an Aether lock. I throw it, and the gates swing open under their own power. The narrow road through the swamp out to freedom, lined by Aether-lanterns in the hazy, disgusting swamp, beckons.
There is no way for the Pit to send word to the town on the other side, and there’s no way for the Pit’s guards to come at us from any other direction than this road.
“And this,” I say as we cross onto the road, “is how you escape the Pit.”
“How not to imprison an Aether Mage, you mean.” Rot grins, shifting ScatheFire’s body.
We put our heels into our horses, and gallop down the road, intending to put as much distance between ourselves and the Pit before they realize we’re gone.
About the Author
K. M. Hade is the not-so-secret alter-ego of Merry Ravenell.
More fantasy, fewer shifters, more heat, less quantum superposition, and all the “I do what I want.”
She lives in the Napa Valley of CA with her husband. She survives off a steady diet of coffee, cheesy movies, and nerdy documentaries.
www.kmhade.com
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