“Sitting a nasty vigil seemed a small enough thing to do to save him,” Coriander says. Her brow wrinkles with pain and agitation. “He’s going to be executed.”
“Is he really in prison for murder?”
“Yes.” She isn’t even ashamed.
“You want to free a murderer?”
Her contempt glints more brightly than the blade. “What the king calls murder is what others call truth. Anyway, what do you care? Lord Gargaron is a murderer eight times over if we can’t get out. He’s far from the only one. How many Efeans have died in the last hundred years as Patrons enrich themselves on our lands? How many Patron women have been entombed in this ugly City of the Dead because Patron lords wish to rid themselves of inconvenient girls?”
“Oracles and their servants go to the tombs willingly.”
She snorts. “You’re such a fool. Girls raised from infancy to believe this is their destiny? I don’t call that willing.” She takes an aggressive step toward me. “How are you getting us out?”
I gesture toward the ceiling. “Through the air shaft.”
“Do you expect me to believe that? We can’t reach the shaft and we can’t climb it without assistance. You’re lying.”
“I have accomplices outside with a rope. They lowered me in.”
“Who would dare help a person like you break into a tomb?”
I’m not sure it’s true anymore, and yet I cannot fathom that he would abandon me here. “Lord Kalliarkos.”
She cocks her head to one side, almost laughing. “Is he your lover? After your father told you never to speak to him again?”
“Yes,” I lie, hoping it isn’t a lie, that Kal is still out there.
She nods. This is a story that makes sense to her. “I’d have defied them too, just to show them! All right. I’ll help. But your mother and Cook won’t fit up the shaft.”
Hearing the words forces me to acknowledge the ugly truth. Mother and Cook both are too big. No, I won’t give up! There must be a way out of this maze. First I have to see if Kalliarkos has truly abandoned me, but the thought of discovering that he has makes me almost afraid to try to get out.
She nudges me hard enough that I have to take a step. “If my brother was free, he knows people from the masons’ guild who can break into a tomb and get your mother out. If he was free.”
“No one can break into a tomb without the priests seeing.”
Her sneer reasserts itself as a mask of derision. “You think you know so much because you speak and act like a Patron. You know the lies they tell you but you don’t know the truth.”
Hands on hips, I lean assertively toward her. “Insult me all you want, but I know how to climb that air shaft!”
With a grunt of laughter she sets down both lamp and knife. “That’s true enough.”
I show her how to brace her hands on her knees. We practice her taking my weight on her shoulders until I am sure she can keep her balance. The gods are merciful because she is strong, and we are both determined. When she tremblingly straightens to her full height I can just snag the bottom of the shaft. I feel along the old brickwork for any sort of handhold. Fortunately it gives me a finger’s width of purchase.
She cups my feet in her palms and, shaking hard, lifts me as I finger-climb my way up the shaft. The coarse grain chafes my skin. My nose scrapes the wall, drawing tears, but I keep going until I can’t go farther. I push off her hands to give me momentum to arm-climb up enough to get my knees wedged in.
Someone has torn my arms out of their sockets and crammed them back in again but I can’t stop now. Back and knees pressed against opposite sides of the shaft brace me; my arms have a moment to rest. Sweat breaks down my back. Grit tickles in my nostrils. I dare not sneeze.
Bracing and pushing, I creep my way upward one grunting exhalation at a time. This is not different from climbing a blind shaft, just tighter and more fearsome, and I’ll die and my mother and sisters will die if I fall. Tears flood from the dust sifting into my eyes. My upward movement is so agonizingly slow but I can’t fall.
I will save them. There must be a way if I can remain patient and stubborn.
At last my head breaches the top of the shaft and I hook myself over. I sprawl forward with my face pressed onto the tile and my lungs on fire.
Men’s voices rise from nearby, loud as clarions in the night’s hush. “Did you try to ignite the tombs to burn a way in?”
“No, my lords,” says the hero of Marsh Shore in the tone of a man pretending to be a humble servant. “I am here as escort to my lord master, who visits the tomb.”
