The anteroom contained two guards, true. There were many weapons and clothes scattered around the floor, and also cushions. Also the guards themselves. And also four women. All six were asleep, all unclothed. The air stank like a wine shop.
Andor hiccuped, staggered, and . . .
Sagorn slid the sword awkwardly back into the scabbard. Kadolan followed him across the room, trying to keep her eyes averted from the remains of the orgy, but that was impossible. There were very few places safe to put feet, and she had to hold her skirts high lest they trail on the tangle of bodies and limbs. She breathed a sigh of relief as the door closed behind her.
“Fortunate that Thinal did not call your bluff,” Sagorn remarked, steadying her arm on the stairs—or perhaps letting him steady her; two old fools, stumbling down a league of unlighted steps in a palace like an armed camp.
“I had noticed some of the maids yawning a lot.”
“West.”
“Beg pardon?”
“We just turned west. I am keeping track.”
“Oh, that’s nice.”
Eventually they ran out of staircases, and a short exploration brought them to kitchen quarters, large and echoing and smelling of rank meat. Junior drudges snored in corners and under tables. Soon they would be roused to perform the first duties, but they would be unlikely to question well-dressed persons, and even less likely to raise an alarm. The intruders picked their way through the shadows from one guttering lantern to another, from window to window. Things scuttled along the skirting—rats, maybe, or worse. Kadolan wondered about snakes and scorpions, not sure if she wanted more light here or less. Cockroaches like terriers! If any of the castle kitchens had looked like this in Krasnegar, Mistress Aganimi would have hurled herself from the battlements.
Then a door that obviously led to the exterior. “Cover your face, ma’am,” Sagorn said. “There may well be a way to the jail that does not require going outside, but I can’t take a week to find it. Walk behind me.”
He shot back the bolts, and the hinges creaked . . .
3
The Palace of Palms was a city in itself. Some of the buildings were interconnected, others stood apart in parkland. It had streets and alleys, wide courtyards and shady cloisters, its many levels connected by ramps and wide stairways. Sagorn stayed close to walls, as much as he could; he headed east, and generally downhill. He seemed to know roughly where he was going. The sky was starting to turn blue overhead, and above the lip of the sea it held a reddish stain like washed blood.
Twice he pushed Kade into doorways as patrols went by in the distance. There must be guards on high places who might see. It was madness, total madness. At last he brought her to an alley and stopped. He wiped his face with a thin, pale hand. For a minute he seemed to lack breath.
“This is the building! How to get in, though?” The stonework looked older than most, but Kadolan doubted that even Thinal could scale it, and the windows were all barred, even on the topmost, third story.
“We shall have to find a door,” she said, and set off along the alley. His footsteps followed. She found a door. It was very small, and very solid, with a small peephole but no handle or keyhole.
“Bolt hole,” Sagorn muttered. “Back exit. Not an entrance.”
That one looked hopeless. Kadolan continued her progress. Maddeningly, the buildings on the other side had several doors, most raised a couple of cubits above ground level, as if for unloading wagons. One of them was ajar, too. She wondered if the cellars might connect belowground, but as Sagorn had said, they did not have a week to explore. The alley led to a courtyard. She peered cautiously around the corner, along to the main entrance, an imposing archway with guards posted. She backed hurriedly.
“It will have to do!” she said firmly, and retraced her steps to the obscure little door they had found earlier. She stopped a few paces back from it and racked her brains.
“Even Darad can’t break that down!” Sagorn protested. His deep-grooved face was gray with worry. “If he had an ax and an hour and no interruptions . . .”
Kadolan’s heart was fluttering like a butterfly, and she felt light-headed. Somewhere she had cast herself adrift; she was reckless with a victory-or-death sensation she had never known before. It must be her jotunn blood showing, a trait from some ancient berserker ancestor. She wondered if she might have a seizure before the problem was resolved, and discovered that she did not care. She was staking everything now.
“I can’t go back, can I? Let’s knock and see what happens.”
He closed his eyes and shuddered. “Then I must call Darad.”
“Andor? If I knock, and someone comes, then Andor could talk him into opening the door.”
Sagorn shook his head wearily. “Andor is drunk.”
“Drunk? Sir Andor?” That did not sound like the cultured young gentleman she had known in Kinvale. “It was in a good cause.” Sagorn leaned against the wall and rubbed his eyes. “Andor is drunk. Thinal is dazzled by his own importance and dizzy from lack of sleep. Jalon, of course, would be totally useless in an escapade such as this.” He shook his head. ”And you and I’re both too old for such nonsense. It is hopeless!”
“Rubbish!” Kadolan said. “Listen! If that is a sort-of-secret way out, then it may also be a sort-of-secret way in, may it not? These djinns are all half crazy with intrigue . . . spies and double agents, coming to report? There may very well be a doorman within earshot, waiting to let them in. Now you call Sir Andor . . . No?”
“It will lead to swordplay. Even sober, Andor is only an amateur swordsman.”
“You called him earlier.”
“Thinal called him. He didn’t think. It will have to be Darad, whichever one of us calls him.”
“Not Darad!”
Darad had killed a woman for half a word. Baled silence and angry glares.
“You are the thinker, Doctor! Think!”
Sagorn sighed. “Listen, Kade, Darad might be all right. Especially if you talk to him about Rap! Darad likes Rap now.”
She found that hard to believe. The faun had set his dog on Darad, and his tame goblin, too. He had smashed chairs on Darad. But if it had to be Darad, it had to be Darad.
“Very well. Go ahead! I’ll risk it.”
Sagorn gave her a disbelieving look. “Very well. Gods be with you, my dear.”
Impudence!
Then the green clothes ballooned, and stitches ripped, and the giant was there.
Clenching fists, she raised her head to see the scars and tattoos, the battered nose and an enormous wolflike grin. “Good morning, Master Darad,” she said faintly.
An earthquake of silent laughter shook his monstrous form. He leered. ”And good day to you, lady. Need my help now, do you?”
She fell back a step. “I am truly sorry that I hurt you when you were in Krasnegar. My loyalty to my niece, you understand—”
A guttural chuckle stopped her. “Jotunn blood?”
“Er? Oh, yes. Our family is about half imp and half jotunn.”
“Jotnar breed good warriors,” he agreed. “Shows in Rap, too.”
Ah! “I want to visit Master Rap. He is in serious trouble.”
A nightmare scowl replaced the leer. “Yes. To make him a mage, right? Filthy djinns! And time is short, right? Good man, the faun. Must hurry. Well, you knock, and see what happens!” The jotunn ripped off his cloak and dropped it. He drew his sword in a flash of steel that made her jump; then he stepped back against the wall beside the door.
Shivering, Kade checked that her yashmak was in place. She placed herself in front of the peephole and rapped on the wood. She wondered if that puny noise would be audible at all inside. She kept her eyes down—blue eyes, not red djinn eyes. She could see Darad’s feet, his toes protruding from the remains of Sagorn’s boots. She could see the sword. Dawn breezes ruffled her robe and brought soothing scents of morning, of grass and flowers. There were still songbirds in the world, too, and not far off.
She counted fifty heartbeats. Then she raised her hand to knock again, and a voice spoke from the grille. “The cricket sings low.”
Password? Merciful Gods, what would be the reply to that?
“I have a message from the Big Man.”
“The password?”
“I was not told the password!” she cried, still not looking up. She remembered the lionslayers—”Women are not told the passwords.”
“Women don’t bring messages from the sultan.”
“Then his message will not arrive, and he will want to know why.”
The man grunted. After a long, nerve-wrenching silence, she heard a bolt being drawn. The hinges swung in well-oiled silence.