Jame glared at her. “Was it? These are mostly children. Would you give them rules and then not hold them to account?”
“Not entirely. Remember, they won’t always be under our eyes. Nothing they do today will be held against them, short of a blatant breach of honor, but we watch and remember. We also note what their superiors do. What’s that, around your waist?”
“Something held in trust.” Jame flicked open her jacket to reveal Addy’s triangular head questing upward between her breasts.
“And you’ve got a mouse sitting on your head. Let me guess: the Falconer’s class.”
Pink nose in the air, Mick started chittering.
“At last!” said Jame, adding to Twizzle, “Small thanks to you.”
Under the randon’s bemused gaze, she revolved to see in which direction the mouse squeaked the loudest, then set off at a run for the Randir barracks.
She found most of the Falconeers in the Randir basement gathered around a gaping well mouth.
“She’s down there?”
“So Mack says.”
“And my trock,” added Dure.
“And Torvi.”
Addy slithered out of Jame’s coat, disconcertingly like a short length of glistening, spilt bowel, and disappeared down the shaft.
“That settles it. Shade, can you hear me?”
Her voice echoed hollowly off stone walls, down dank depths, to fall flat on a stone ledge just visible by torchlight.
“Where’s the water?” asked Tarn.
“Below the shelf, I think,” said Mouse, leading perilously over the edge to peer down. Gari caught her by the belt. “This must be the Randirs’ shallowest well, not always useable.”
“It’s raining in the mountains,” said Drie.
Gari snorted. “And dark on the other side of the moon. So?”
“I think he means that the water level is about to rise.” Jame stripped off her jacket, adding to forestall the others’ protests, “It looks convoluted down there. Which of you is skinnier than I am? Someone, find a rope.”
A nearby bucket supplied the latter. Anchored at the top, Jame swung over the rim and descended, touching the slimy walls as little as possible. Some twenty feet down she landed on the ledge. It looked as if in excavating this well, the Randir had run into a slab of rock too hard to be easily removed, so they had circumvented it. Running water sounded around its edge. Jame wriggled down a crack and dropped into a lower tunnel extending west to east. Water rushed by on one side in a channel down toward the Silver. On the other, under the overhang, lay a dark, trussed-up figure. Firelight reflecting off wet stone caught Addy’s golden coils looped over it.
“I sent her to you for safekeeping,” said Shade’s voice out of the shadows.
“What, not to summon help?” Jame considered this as she probed the other’s bindings: stout chain and rope tight enough to stop the blood. “Maybe that’s also why Twizzle wouldn’t lead me to you. D’you want to die?”
“Do you know who put me down here?”
“At a guess, Reef and her cronies.”
“There you’re wrong. Reef would have saved me as her lady’s granddaughter if the others hadn’t kept her busy all day. Some Randir would follow the rightful heir if they could. To them, I’m the Witch’s freak.”
Ouch. Shade would also serve Randiroc if she could, but who in her house would believe that? Both sides must see her as the very emblem of the enemy.
“So, if you escape, that proves you guilty, or so they think. Only death can assure your innocence. And, if they’re lucky, the coming flood will wash your body down to the Silver. I hate double binds. These, on the other hand, you should be able to escape.”
Shade’s mulish silence was answer enough.
“All right. Here’s something they didn’t consider: you have friends.”
“I do?”
“God’s claws and small, furry fishes, of course you do. Who d’you think tracked you down here and is waiting on top to help pull you out? Half the Falconer’s class, that’s all.”
Shade stirred for the first time. “I have friends,” she repeated dubiously, with an undernote of wonder.
“And we have company.”
The shadows rustled. Reflected light glinted off hundreds of beady eyes: wild trocks, scavengers capable of stripping flesh from bone in seconds. Then from up the tunnel came the approaching roar of water. The eyes blinked out and claws scuttled away.
Jame cut the ropes. To deal with the chains, she hoisted an outraged Addy by her tail and held her twisting over the metal. Venom dripped on iron, ate into it.
“Too slow. Shade, do something!”
The nascent changer grunted and flexed her hands. They became long and narrow enough to slip through the chains, likewise her bare feet, leaving scraped skin on the links.
“That hurts,” she said through her teeth.
“Would you rather drown?”
The water beside them was rising, starting to fill the tunnel. Shade wriggled through the gap and started to climb the rope to urgent cries falling from above. Jame followed her. The rushing water nearly plucked her off the rope, but then she emerged from the cleft onto the ledge. From there, it was up the rope with the rising flood lapping at her heels.
By now, it was nearly midday and cadets were returning to their barracks for a noon meal prepared by their ten-commanders. At the top of the stair, still well within the Randir precincts, the assorted cadets who made up the Falconeers encountered Reef. The master-ten Randir was gray with dust and fatigue after a morning-long punishment run, but not too tired to notice their presence within her domain. She stopped short, staring.
“What are you lot doing here?”
Then she noticed Shade, covered with well-slime.
“And what happened to you?”
A Randir ten-commander came up behind her. Jame noted Reef’s scarf tied around her arm. She stopped, stony-eyed, when she saw Shade.
“So.”
“Just so,” Shade answered her.
Reef looked from one to the other. “What in Perimal’s name is going on here?”
“A mistake,” said Shade, eyes still locked with the commander’s.
“We’ll see about that. The rest of you, get out.”
The cadets left, glad to have escaped the crossfire. Jame hesitated.
“Go,” said Shade. “It’s over for today.”
“What was that all about?” asked Tarn as they gained the arcade boardwalk.
“House business,” said Jame. “Just be glad it isn’t yours.”
Trinity, what a mess the Randir are, she thought, and the Ardeth too. Ha. Let’s not forget the Knorth. How many other houses are secretly coming apart at the seams?
At the square, they parted, each to his or her own quarters, Mouse with Mick and Mack again settled in her hair.
“That just leaves you,” said Jame to Twizzle.
The pook wriggled what was presumably his hind end and jumped up into her arms.
“All right,” she told him as he licked her face. “At least until your master returns.”
VIII
New Year’s Eve
“There you are!”
Jame found herself in the grip of Rue. “Come on. D’you want to be scalped?”
They made a dash back to the Knorth barracks. Brier Iron-thorn met them inside the front door. Her bruises were settling into two black eyes and a swollen lip. How the rest of her looked, Jame could only guess.
“Did you get into the Caineron barracks?”
“No. But I still have this.” The Southron indicated Higbert’s scarf bound around her upper arm.
“What will you do when you catch him?”
Brier smiled, revealing missing teeth. “Something appropriate.”
Rue tugged at Jame, fussing. “Come upstairs and change. You’re dripping with muck.”
“Shouldn’t I be helping in the kitchen?”
Brier waved her off, disgusted. “Go. We don’t need green slime to garnish the soup.”