Oramen swivelled, took Droffo by the shoulders and forced him to turn with him and step towards the adit. “Come,” he said, forcing Droffo forward. He began pushing through some of the workers waiting to descend. “Excuse me; excuse me, if you would, excuse me, thank you, excuse me,” he said calmly.
“Sir?” he heard Broft say.
Droffo was dragging his feet. “Prince,” he said as they approached the entrance to the adit. A glance up it showed no trace of Vollird and Baerth.
“Run,” Oramen said, not loudly. “I’m ordering you to run. Get out.” He turned to the men remaining on the platform and bellowed, “RUN! Get OUT!” then he pushed the uncomprehending Droffo forward, darted past him and started running as fast as he could, pounding uphill, the boards slamming and quaking under his feet. After a few moments he heard Droffo following, his feet too hammering on the boards, whether because he also thought there might be danger or because he saw Oramen running away and thought he ought to stay with him regardless, Oramen did not know.
How slowly one ran, he thought, when one’s mind was racing so much faster. He could not believe that he could run any quicker — his legs were pistoning beneath him, his arms swinging and his chest pulling the air into his lungs with an instinctive functionality no mentation would improve upon — but he felt cheated that his furiously working brain could in no further way contribute to the effort. It might be a doomed effort, of course. Looking at it logically, rationally, it probably was.
He had been too trusting. Naïve, even. One paid for such laxness. Sometimes one got away with it, escaped just punishment — rather as he’d escaped and Tove had paid, that day in the courtyard of the Gilder’s Lament (and maybe Tove had not paid unjustly) — but one did not escape every time. Nobody did. Now, he had no doubt, was when he paid.
Embarrassment. He had worried about being embarrassed because he might overreact to some perceived, perhaps misperceived threat. How much more embarrassing to have missed all clues, to have wandered through this violent, kinetic world with a babe’s wide-eyed innocence and trust, to have ascribed innocence and decency when he should have seen duplicity and iniquity.
I should just have tugged at the blasting wire, he thought. Tried to pull it free. What a fool, what a selfish fool. Together we might—
The explosion was a dirty yellow blast of light followed almost immediately by what felt like a warbeast kicking him hard in the back with both hind legs. He was lifted off his feet and propelled through the air up and along the adit so that it seemed like a vertical shaft he was falling into. He was upright and flailing for a long moment, then suddenly tumbling; limbs, shoulders, behind, head and hip smacking off the surrounding surfaces in an instant cacophony of pain, as though a dozen accurate kicks had all been landed at once.
He blinked up at a ceiling; rough wood, right above him. His nose was pressed against it. He might be crushed. Perhaps he was in a coffin. His ears were ringing. Where had he just been? He could not remember. There was a crazed ringing sound in his head and the air smelled wrong.
He rolled over, making a small noise as bruised, broken parts of his body protested. The real ceiling was visible. He was lying on his back now, the floor beneath him. This must be some part of the palace he hadn’t encountered before. Where was Fanthile?
Dim yellow lights flickered on the wall, linked by loops of wire. The loops of wire meant something, he knew. He’d been doing something. Something he ought to keep doing. What had it been? He tasted blood. He brought one hand up to his face and felt stickiness. He squinted at his hand, raising his head off the floor on quivering, complaining neck muscles. His hand looked very black. He used it to support himself and peered down the corridor. It was very black down there too. Smoke or steam or something was creeping up the tipped ceiling, gradually obscuring the lights further down.
Somebody was lying on their side down there. It looked like that what-did-you…
Droffo. It was Earl Droffo. What was he doing here? That cloud of smoke was creeping up the ceiling above him. Droff had lost some of his clothes. He looked a bit tattered altogether. And not moving.
The realisation, the memory, came crashing back on him as though the ceiling had caved in, which, he thought, might be exactly what was about to happen. He dragged himself to his knees and then his feet, coughing. Still the cough, he thought; still the cough. He could hear it in his head but not through his still ringing ears.
He staggered down the tunnel to where Droffo lay. He himself seemed to be as poorly clad as the young earl; in rags, all torn and shredded. He had to keep his head down, out of the dark overcast of smoke still drifting up the adit. He shook Droffo but the man didn’t move. His face looked pale and there was blood coming from his nose. The smoke was getting lower down all the time. Oramen bent, took Droffo by the armpits and started hauling him bodily over the boards.
He found it hard going. So much hurt; even the coughing pained him. He wished Droffo would wake up and that his hearing would return. The smoke coming up all quiet and dark from down below seemed to be catching up with him again. He wondered if he might have to let Droffo go and run away to save himself. If he did and they’d both have died otherwise, it would be the sensible thing to do. If he did and they might both have survived, it would be the wrong thing to do. How simple that seemed. He decided to keep on dragging Droffo for the time being. He’d think about dropping him if he really couldn’t see and breathe. His back hurt.
He thought he felt something through his feet, but his ringing ears let him down. By the time he realised that what he was feeling through his feet might be footsteps, it was too late. You pay, he had time to think.
Next thing he knew there was a rough hand round his nose, mouth and chin and a terrific thudding sensation in his back. Possibly a shouted curse.
He found he had dropped Droffo. He wrenched himself away from whoever had grabbed him; their grip seemed to have loosened. He turned round and saw Baerth standing there looking thunderstruck, a broken long-knife in his hand. Its blade lay between them on the wooden boards, in two pieces. That was careless, Oramen thought. He felt round to the small of his back, through the remains of tattered clothing, found the gun that had stopped the blow and tugged it free.
“You broke it on this!” he shouted to Baerth as he brandished the gun and shot the fellow with it. Three times, just to be sure, then, after the knight had collapsed to the boards, once more, through one flickering eyelid, just to be even more sure. Baerth had had a gun too. A hand on it, at his waist; should have used it earlier. Oramen was glad his ears were already ringing; meant he didn’t have to suffer the sound of the gun going off four times in such a confined space. That would really have hurt.
He went back to Droffo, who was moving on his own now. “You’re going to have to get up, Droff!” he shouted, then hefted the fellow one-armed under his armpit, side by side this time so that he could see where they were going and not be surprised by murderous fuckers with long-knives. Droffo seemed to be trying to say something, but Oramen still couldn’t hear. The tunnel ahead looked long and hazy but otherwise empty. He kept his gun in his hand all the same.
People came down the tunnel eventually and he didn’t shoot them; ordinary labourers and a couple of guards. They helped him and Droffo out.
Back at the adit entrance, in the looming darkness of the under-plaza, all studded with little lights, they got to sit and lie down in the little encampment round the tunnel mouth and he thought he heard — muffled, as though his ears were full of water — that somebody had run away.