“Impressive,” Gill said, stepping forward. As he approached the former barrier, he could feel the heat of the metal, which he reckoned was still enough to fry an egg. He stepped through, careful not to make contact with any of it; he knew it would burn through his clothes and sear his flesh.
The far side of the shaft bore all the hallmarks of somewhere that no one had been for many years. It was cold, dark, and damp, filled with cobwebs and the sound of dripping water. The thought popped into his head that it must make Pharadon feel right at home. In the next instant, he felt ashamed of the idea. He still had trouble separating the enlightened dragon from his more savage brethren, and from Gill’s own preconceptions.
“It’s safe to come through,” he said.
Dal Ruisseau Noir lit a narrow-beam lamp and shone it up the passage. “Looks to be clear the whole way up. Let’s get moving.”
They all knew what they had to do, and now that they were getting closer to the palace, silence was essential. They discarded the oilskins they had worn on the fishing boat to complete their first disguise, revealing their second—the palace’s service livery of white with gold embroidery.
They moved off at a brisk pace. Gill felt naked without a sword strapped to his waist, but there was a balance to be struck between getting into the palace without drawing attention to themselves, and being able to handle a fight. Dal Ruisseau Noir assured him that their operative in the palace had left a stash of weapons for them near their objectives. Gill thought it an empty gesture. If they found themselves in need, it would be too late to seek out their arms. Claim them too early and they revealed themselves.
Guardsmen’s uniforms would have made more sense and allowed them to carry weapons, but were a far more complicated disguise to put together in the short time dal Ruisseau Noir had had to prepare. There was also the fact that the nature of a royal regiment was such that any mistakes or omissions would have been noticed by sergeants and officers straightaway. Gill had hidden a dagger in his tunic. It wouldn’t be much use against a guardsman with a broadsword, but it was better than nothing, and Amaury’s powder-blue vestments wouldn’t pose much trouble for its point.
The shaft was dead straight for the most part, occasionally turning back on itself as it worked its way up through the heart of the hill. There were larger open spaces at irregular intervals—some were natural formations, while others had been cut by men harvesting some of the dazzlingly pure white limestone used in the palace’s construction. He wondered at the backbreaking labour required to cut their way down here, and at the hubris of the king who had commanded it, all to find stone that was perfectly white enough for his new palace. The end result was magnificent, but at what cost? Years of chiselling stone in the darkened bowels of the hill.
Finally they reached something Gill recognised—the double doors leading into the palace. Dal Ruisseau Noir extinguished his lamp and turned to the group, illuminated only by the light coming in through the cracks around the door.
“Everyone ready?”
CHAPTER 13
The door provided a little resistance—mainly from long lack of use. Dal Ruisseau Noir listened by it for a moment, then pushed it open with a gentle squeal of protest from the dry hinges. The door led out into an old storeroom at the back of the palace, deep in the heart of the service area, and somewhere the building’s aristocratic inhabitants ventured only for an illicit liaison.
The room didn’t appear to be in regular use—other than some stacked furniture covered in dust sheets, it was empty.
“I suppose this is where we go our separate ways,” dal Ruisseau Noir said.
Gill felt the first flutter of nerves in his stomach. Events had been unfolding so quickly he hadn’t had the time to consider them properly. He preferred it like that—the waiting was always worse than the doing. What made him concerned was that while dal Ruisseau Noir seemed to have a clear plan of action, he himself only had a vague notion of the result he sought, with no real idea of how he was going to effect it. Getting into the palace had been such a dominating obstacle that he didn’t know what to do next. Should he simply walk up to Amaury’s suite of offices and make an appointment with his secretary?
“Good luck,” Gill said.
“All being well,” dal Ruisseau Noir said, “I’ll see you here within the hour.”
It sounded optimistic to Gill, but he supposed if it took them any longer than that, their mission was going to a hell in a handcart.
Dal Ruisseau Noir gave Val and his anonymous, silent colleague a nod, and they were off, leaving Gill in the storeroom, with Solène and Pharadon staring at him expectantly.
Gill thought hard. It was early, so if he was keeping true to form, Amaury would be in his office doing administrative work. He almost certainly had the Cup with him. Now that they were inside the palace, getting there shouldn’t be too difficult. Pretty much every guard the palace had seemed to be stationed at the gates and on the walls when Gill had gone on his walk the previous morning. Even if there were roving patrols, he didn’t think three random servants would garner too much notice as long as they didn’t do anything stupid.
“Let’s head for Amaury’s offices,” Gill said, leading the way.
He had to fight the impulse to run. He wanted to get there as quickly as he could and get the whole thing over with, but palace servants didn’t rush—it was a rule. Gill wasn’t sure if there was a practical reason for it, or if one of the old kings had simply found running unseemly. Nevertheless, a decorous walk was all that was allowed.
They had not gone far before they encountered another servant, dressed in the same white and gold they were wearing. Gill’s heart was in his throat as the man drew closer, but the stranger just passed them with a nod and a friendly “Morning,” which Gill had to remind himself to return. Safely past, he wanted to let out a deep sigh, but restrained himself—so long as we do nothing out of the ordinary, we’ll blend in, just like the furniture.
They continued their slow progress through the palace. There was nothing about the experience Gill was enjoying. He was looking forward to getting into Amaury’s office and having a fight—this cloak-and-dagger stuff was too much for him. Far better to rush a bridge filled with hundreds of men who want to kill you, than to sneak around risking heart failure like this.
Even so, as their journey through the palace’s service passages went unhindered, Gill gradually relaxed. The passages themselves were a stark reminder of the polarised life of people in Mirabay. Here, the walls were roughly rendered and whitewashed. They had perhaps been touched up over the years, but not often, and they bore all the scuffs and marks of long use. Inches away, on the other side of the wall, there would be wood panelling, plaster mouldings, gilt work, and paintings and frescoes worth thousands of crowns, if a price could be put on them at all. Rich opulence everywhere you looked, hiding a world of whitewashed plaster.
While he was not familiar with the palace’s service passages generally, he had used the route down to the quarry shaft a great number of times over the years, and knew the general direction of the Prince Bishop’s office. As he led the way, the trio passed numerous servants, all too busy to care about another unfamiliar face amongst many.
Finally, it was time to exit the hidden world of service and enter the opulent world of the rich and titled. Gill took his bearings and set off. His shoes squeaked on the polished parquet floor, a marked contrast to the austere stone flags in the corridors they had just left.