She kept pulling herself along, though she tried to listen over the sound of her own breaths and of her clothing scraping and tearing against the frozen sludge lining the walls.
If he did succeed in slipping inside, and if he caught up with her, would he be able to kill her from back there? Crawl up as close as he could and drive his dagger into her femoral artery, so that she’d bleed to death? He wouldn’t get his information about Starcrest then. No, he’d probably have the strength to drag her out of the drain backwards, with her fingernails snapping off as she tried to retain a hold on the walls.
Your imagination is worse than reality, she told herself. He might not even be back there. What if he’d decided, upon realizing he couldn’t squeeze in, to wait for her on the other side? She’d see the exit ahead and lunge for freedom, only to tumble into his grip.
Stop that, she snarled at herself and her all too frisky imagination.
It would, however, be useful to know if he’d managed to enter the drain or not.
Amaranthe licked her lips and called, “You know… when I imagined us getting horizontal together, this isn’t at all how I thought it’d go.”
She didn’t slow down to wait for a response, but she did listen intently, ears straining to hear any sign that he was behind her.
A startled squeak came from the other direction, followed by something scampering away. So. Room for rats down there after all.
“I,” Sicarius said, but that’s all he managed. Even that syllable broke off with a grunt of exertion.
Amaranthe renewed her efforts, pulling herself along as fast as she could. He might be fighting the wizard, but he wasn’t winning, not if he was that close behind her.
The blackness ahead seemed to lessen in intensity, fading to a dark, dark gray. The exit? Or some storm drain in a nearby street? Either would work, so long as she could escape through it.
A hint of a breeze brushed her cheeks, carrying the fresh scent of snow, of the outside. Her situation might be improving.
Her fingers smashed into fresh rat droppings.
Right. She’d better wait to see what lay ahead before wasting her energy on optimism. If she ran into a dead-end…
The sound of breathing reached her ears. It was strained, like Sicarius was trying to fight the wizard, but trying wouldn’t help her. He was close on her heels.
The tunnel curved slightly, and Amaranthe’s hips caught in the bend. The dark gray turned to a less dark gray circle ahead. An exit. There were bars across it, but only two and widely spaced, relatively speaking. She might be able to squirm her way between them. She grunted. If she could escape the cursed bend. Extra sludge had accumulated on the walls in that spot.
“Should have grabbed some lubricant before thrusting myself into a tight space,” she muttered, scraping and clawing, trying to find a larger handhold, something to offer her a good grip. There. She caught some nodule on the ceiling and twisted, using it to pull. The fresh angle let her shimmy free. The escape sent a surge of exhilaration through her, and she brazenly called, “That, on the other hand, might have been appropriate for our first horizontal meeting.”
She didn’t know if he’d heard her first mumbled comment, but somehow hoped he had and that he might find the notion amusing. She didn’t know the secret to breaking that hold, but figured displaying her personality, however quirky and inappropriate it might be at times, would remind him of his fondness for her and give him ammunition to continue to fight against the wizard. In lieu of that, she’d be fine with him getting stuck in the bend.
Amaranthe squirmed the rest of the way to the exit and to the two vertical bars, both coated with so many layers of frozen grime that they were twice their original size. She pressed her head into the gap between the two-that would be the sticking point. If she couldn’t get her head through, she wasn’t going anywhere. If she could, she figured she could twist and gyrate enough to wriggle the rest of her body out.
Out into what, she wondered, even as she scraped the skin off her temples in her first attempt. It was almost as dark outside as inside. If not for the fresh smell of ice and snow beneath her nose, she might not have believed she’d come to an end of the drain. She rotated and ended up on her back before she found an angle that allowed her to slip her head through the barns.
Dear ancestors, I’m vulnerable, she thought, staring up at something dark, her head hanging out of the drain hole, her neck exposed and her body sticking out on the other side. If Sicarius came up on her…
She thrust her arm through and clawed around the outside even as she crooked her knees, trying to push off the bottom of the drain. She flayed off more skin, but she managed to get her other arm through and from there her shoulders.
Oh, those are boards up there, the part of her mind that wasn’t busy panicking realized. The underside of a dock. She’d made it to the lake.
She wasn’t sure yet where she would run when she had the opportunity, but the notion that she’d be able to do so gave her the strength to haul more of her body between the bars, though it was a painful experience.
“Wonder if… Akstyr’s healing book… covered how to graft… new nipples onto a woman,” she panted.
When her hips made it through, there was nothing left to hold her back. She skidded down the slope and landed on the frozen lake, her momentum enough to send her skidding several feet. She hardly cared. She was free.
Of the drain, she reminded herself, not Sicarius. Where to next? If his head was any bigger than hers, he wouldn’t make it through that grate, but she couldn’t swear that it was. They’d never taken out measuring tape and compared. No doubt that was one of those things people waited to do until after they’d engaged in physical intimacies.
She rose to her knees, the first part of a plan cementing itself in her head. Race back to the factory, close the grate, and push a bunch of heavy stuff on top of it so he couldn’t escape that way. Yes, and then she could run into the city and check in on Starcrest’s team-what had they been doing all this time, anyway? Inviting that wizard to a teahouse to share a plate of Emperor’s Buns?
“Amaranthe?” came Sicarius’s voice from the depths of drain. From around where that bend had been, she guessed.
She’d found her feet and was poised to scramble up the bank and enact her plan, but she waited. “Yes?”
“I’m stuck.”
She’d expect him to make that statement in his usual monotone, but a hint of plaintiveness accompanied it.
“Sorry about that, but that was the point.” She wondered if he’d believe she’d planned for it to happen like that, not that her plan had simply been to desperately survive the next moment, and the next, in the hopes of chance favoring her.
“Did something happen to the practitioner?” Sicarius asked.
“Uh? Why do you ask?”
Maybe Starcrest had done his job. Had Sicarius been freed from his captor?
“I don’t sense him any more,” Sicarius said. “It’s possible he was distracted and forgot about me.”
Amaranthe crept back up the slope. Though she wanted to believe him, she approached from the side of the hole, so he wouldn’t see her from inside. Even he would have a hard time firing a throwing knife from the bowels of a drain that tight, but she wouldn’t believe it impossible for him.
“Where are you stuck?” she asked. “That bend?”
“Yes.”
“What do you want me to do? I love you, but there’s no way I’m scraping the rest of the skin off my head to try to get back through these bars.”
“No, I understand. Perhaps some of that lubricant you mentioned…” He chuckled.
A sick feeling washed over Amaranthe. He… chuckled? When had he ever…?