I picked up my pace, aiming for one of the many ramps leading up into the city stacked on itself. The entrance into the tunnels that I was looking for was, officially, just a drain for runoff from the constant drizzle overhead. I hiked upward until I reached the top of the ramp, following Marco’s instructions, until I heard running water. The source of the sound was a trough running along a corroded metal roof. I followed it, ducking and weaving between the traffic of city dwellers and the ever-present machines, until it gushed out of a drainpipe and into a gutter that led down a different ramp.
The city was like a three-dimensional maze—here and there I had to leave the gutter to follow another path, sometimes heading up in order to ultimately find another path down. It took me the better part of an hour, but finally I ended up splashing into the gutter as it flowed into an alley between two dwellings. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure no one had seen me vanish into the shadows and then dropped to my knees in the rushing water.
The drain was covered by bars, each about a hand’s width apart—too small to fit through. But Marco had prepared me for this, too. I pulled out Oren’s knife and dug at the top of the bars with its tip. The “mortar” there was nothing more than wet clay, high enough out of the water that it wouldn’t get washed away, but damp enough that it could never truly dry. I pulled several of the bars free until there was a gap wide enough to fit my shoulders, and then I wriggled through.
Even as my lungs constricted, an automatic response to the close quarters, the rest of me had to suppress a thrill. This was exactly the kind of thing my brother would’ve done. More than ever, I knew we were on the right track.
Inside the drainpipe there was enough room to get up on my hands and knees, and I took enough time to put the bars back, replacing the clay and wedging them in until I felt confident they’d stay put. Then I crawled forward, my sleeves and trousers soaked from the water. The tunnel branched—Marco had said nothing about this. One tunnel was significantly smaller than the other, but I was used to tight spaces. It was too dark to see anything, but from the way my labored breathing echoed, I could sense a larger space somewhere ahead down the smaller path. I made my way toward it.
Just as I spilled out of the pipe and into what felt like a broad cavern, a pair of hands grabbed me and threw me against the wall. Instantly my senses knew it was a Renewable, but the power signature was so muted and well hidden that it kept slithering out of my grasp. I opened my mouth to shout, hoping that Marco and Parker were close enough to hear me, but before I could get out a sound a hand clamped over my mouth.
“Hush!” It was a woman’s voice, strangely accented. “Don’t scream. I’m going to let you go—slowly—and when I do you’ll tell me your name and what you’re doing here.”
Her grip over the bottom half of my face eased and then pulled away. I could still sense her close, though, ready to silence me if I screamed. Her other hand still pressed me back against the wall.“My name’s Lark,” I whispered. “I—I got lost.”
Her other hand loosened, and a quiet chuckle echoed over the chamber. “Like hell you’re lost,” my captor said. “You’re almost exactly where you’re meant to be. My name’s Nina. Marco and Parker are at the other end, where you were supposed to come out.”
I tugged my shirt straight as I got back on my feet again. I squinted in the darkness but could make out no more than a dim outline of someone a few feet away. “You could’ve just asked me without smashing me into the wall,” I pointed out.
“Well, you could’ve actually come out where you were supposed to,” she responded, sounding unfazed.
I heard a tiny trickle of magic, and then a flame flickered to life. It was nestled in the palm of Nina’s hand, and she cupped it to the end of a torch.
“Is that a good idea? Wasting magic?” I spoke to cover the wave of wanting that coursed through my other, darker half at the display.
“The torches are too wet to light any other way.” Sure enough, the torch hissed and popped loudly as the water evaporated—and finally came to life.
We were in a stone room, different from the tunnels the rebels inhabited, which were formed by alleys and forgotten buildings. This must’ve been part of the original city that now lay in ruins overhead. A sewer system, perhaps, not unlike the one my brother and I explored beneath our home city.
Nina was about my height but several years older. The torchlight revealed the barest hint of crows’ feet at the corners of her eyes, but she didn’t look more than twenty-five. She had dark hair and skin, though in the tricky firelight it was hard to tell exactly what shade. She smiled, her teeth white, and jerked her head toward a corridor that led off away from the drainpipe.
“We’ll grab Marco and Parker, and then it’ll be up to you to take us where we’re going.”
When we reached the others, Parker greeted me warmly while Marco stood off to the side, arms crossed over his chest, his every movement radiating dubiousness as he watched me. We were in an intersection of tunnels, three paths in addition to the one we’d arrived through.
Parker had brought the journal, after a long debate about whether it was worth risking such a priceless artifact. But both Parker and I had argued that there might be clues in the journal that wouldn’t translate into a copy, and because we were going on the mission, we ultimately won out. He pulled the journal out of his coat lining and handed it to me.
“As best I can tell, this here is the cistern where Nina was waiting,” Parker said, stabbing his finger at a rounded star shape at one edge of Basil’s diagram. “It’s the only thing I know that’s shaped like that, and it’s the only distinctive mark on this map.”
“If it even is a map,” Marco interjected.
“Oh, shut up, Marco.” Nina dismissed him with a roll of her eyes. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
“Nice to see you too,” Marco muttered in reply. Despite the banter, there was an obvious affection between them, and I wondered how long Nina usually went undercover without direct contact with her fellow rebels. Her life must be an exceedingly lonely one.
I took the journal from Parker, my eyes on the mark for the cistern. A series of crosshatches led in different directions, but I could see a rectangle leading off from the cistern—Basil’s symbol for a pipe—and I knew which way we must have come. I traced the path to an intersection—the symbol was like an asterisk, but with five branches. I looked up, scanning the other tunnels. There were only four in total.
Where was the fifth?
I handed the journal back to Parker absently and headed for the far wall, where the fifth branch would’ve been. It was stable, even—the stones looked undisturbed, no sign that there had been a rockfall or a recent change to brick up the tunnel. I frowned, running my hands over the stones.
“What’s she doing?” Marco’s voice echoed.
“Shush,” said Nina. “Let her work.” She lifted the torch, giving me more light to see by.
I could feel their eyes on me, all expecting me to pull some kind of miracle out of the shadows. How badly they must need this exit, to allow this wild goose chase on the word of a girl they barely knew. Forcing them to the back of my mind, I concentrated on the stones.
I could see nothing out of place, but my fingertips felt something different, a ridge where there shouldn’t be one. I dropped to my knees until I was eye-level with the stone. It was covered in algae and mildew, and I scraped my fingernails along it, clearing some of the gunk away. There was a design scratched into the stone, the barest of indentations. It was shaped a little like a V, only the lines were curved.