The man with the key smiles like a knife that wants to be used.
"Gold or your life?" he says again, friendly as a baker.
I keep my face still. I breathe slow. My coin pouch presses hard against my ribs, warm under the seam.
"Neither," I say. "You get nothing."
He tilts his head. "Then I take both."
Kirella slides a half step closer—not enough to start a fight, enough to draw a line. Behind the fence the soldiers rattle iron with their hands. The key turns once, twice, and the gate yawns wider with that tired sigh.
"You're fast," the man tells Kirella. "I am patient. Patient men eat fast men."
He gestures with the key. "Hand me the coin, little red. Kneel, and I'll call you brave. Run, and I'll call you dead."
I make my mouth curve like I have a secret. I do. It's small, but it's mine.
"You want the coin?" I say. "Then come get it."
I step back into the dark and let the cloak slide from my shoulders so the light catches my hair—bright, blood red. A lure. My hands stay low, empty. I angle the seam with the pouch away from him.
Kirella understands. I feel the change in him, like a held breath.
The man laughs soft. "Bold."
He slips the key into a second lock, eases the gate open. Soldiers file through two at a time. The bored guard from the bridge isn't bored now. He lifts a whistle.
Kirella moves first.
He kicks the whistle from the man's hand and slams the gate with his shoulder. Two soldiers squeeze through, but the third hits iron and swears. Kirella rips a plank from a crate and jams it between the bars.
"Run," he says.
I run.
We cut the yard, zig behind wet crates, through a torn curtain into a narrow washing hall where rope lines hold rows of soaked cloth. Soap and city and the last hands that wrung it.
Boots slam the stone behind us. The man with the key doesn't shout. He doesn't need to.
"Left," Kirella says.
We turn and nearly collide with a small figure crouched by a bucket. Green skin, soft ears, yellow eyes wide—the child from the alley crate.
He puts a finger to his lips, then points to a floor-level hole under a loose grate.
"Down," he whispers.
Kirella kneels, fingers on the iron. "Can you fit?" he asks.
The boy nods, proud. "I live there."
Boots hit the hall. Voices spill after them. "They went this way—"
Kirella lifts the grate. "You first," he tells me.
The hole smells like damp earth and pepper. I slide on my side, drop to my elbows. Tight, but darkness is kinder to me than light. I wriggle forward. Kirella comes after. The grate settles back with a soft clink.
We crawl.
The tunnel is low and muddy. My hair catches on a nail. I breathe through my mouth. Above, the city hums. Here, water drips in slow patience. The boy scuttles light and quick. Behind me, Kirella's breath is steady. It steadies mine.
After twenty breaths, the tunnel opens into a pocket under a room. Candlelight leaks through floorboards like thin rain. The boy taps a loose board, and hands pull it up—broad, careful hands.
A face peers down. Grey skin. Heavy brow. Kind eyes.
The "Brute" I didn't kill.
He lifts me like I weigh nothing, sets me on my feet, grateful shock in his face—as if the world finally let him pay a debt.
Kirella climbs out, quick and quiet.
We're in a warm room that smells like tea and sage. A kettle sighs on a brazier. Blankets on the floor, three cots pushed together—a family's corner of safety. Two more faces watch from the back: a woman with moss-green hair, and a tall person with bark-brown skin and ringed eyes. Not human. Not quite monster. Just people.
The boy slides under the woman's arm and peeks out.
"Ward," Kirella murmurs.
The grey man dips his head. "We don't call it that," he says. "But yes. Family."
He presses his fist to his chest. "You spared me," he says, voice low. "I am Bora. This is Lelia. That is Root." He tips his chin to the tall one.
Root raises two twig-slender fingers in greeting. Lelia pours tea into three little cups without asking, the way mothers do when they recognize thirst.
"Thank you," I say.
Bora glances at Kirella. "He is human. Soldier boots."
"He helped me," I say.
Bora studies Kirella a moment longer, then nods.
We sit on cushions. Floorboards creak above, then settle. Wherever the man with the key is, he isn't here yet. He will be. Patient men always are.
Lelia slides me a cup. "Drink," she says. "It clears the glass-sickness."
Smoke, mint, a curl of lemon. Warmth loosens my neck.
"We can't stay," Kirella says, not unkind. "They're close. We need a way to the old tunnels."
Root's eyes move from him to me. "Old tunnels lead to old doors," they say, voice soft and deep, like soil after rain. "Sometimes those doors open."
"Sometimes they don't," Bora says.
"Sometimes they kill you," Lelia adds. Not cruel. Honest.
"Do you know the Shrine?" I ask. "The one people whisper about. The Happiness Light."
Silence.
Root answers first. "People whisper many names—Temple, Shrine, Lantern House, Promise-Gate. All the same place, or all different. Hard to say."
"Hard to find," Bora says.
"Hard to leave," Lelia murmurs.
"But it exists," Kirella says. Not a question.
Root holds my gaze. "We know a way to a way," they say at last. "Not for free."
"Nothing is free," I say. "Name the price."
Lelia looks at the boy. He pretends not to listen and fails.
"A ferry," she says. "For three. Inner canal. Men who sell space take coin, but they take blood first—from palms, as a mark. The mark binds you to the boat. Not safe for us. We need a way past their mark."
Kirella rubs the pale scar across his lifeline. "I can talk. I wore their boots."
"Words aren't enough," Root says. "They smell fear and faith."
"I have coin," I say evenly. "Enough for a ferry and a month of food."
Bora shakes his head. "They don't count coin the way you do. They count cruelty."
Of course they do.
"Then not the ferry," Kirella says. "The tunnels."
Root lifts a hand and draws in the candle smoke—a circle with a line through it, a small bright point where the line breaks the circle. The smoke holds the shape a breath longer than smoke should. Not magic. A habit of people who live under stone.
"The tunnels are watched," Root says. "But the old bathhouses—those the soldiers fear. In the oldest bath there's a door that opens to a throat of stone. The throat leads down to the Lantern House."
"The Happiness Light," Lelia echoes, soft, as if loudness could erase it.
"Show us," Kirella says.
Bora looks to Root. Root to Lelia. Lelia to the boy. The boy to me.
I hold his gaze. "If we get out," I tell him, "I'll come back for you."
"You promise?"
"My word." I lift my palm, open, the way Kirella did with me.
He slaps his palm to mine, solemn as a priest.
Kirella watches. I feel his attention like a warm light that doesn't burn.
Lelia stands. "Listen. The bathhouse is through the spice lane, behind the broken lion. The alley smells of pepper and mold. Don't breathe deep." She hands me a square of cloth. "Wet this. Hold it to your face."
I tuck it into my sleeve. "Thank you."
Bora cracks the door. He stiffens. "They're searching. Not soldiers. The quiet ones."
"The man with the key," Kirella says.
Bora nods. "And his friends."
Root pinches out the candle. Soot-sweet dark falls. Lelia gathers cups without a clink. The boy slips under a cot.
"Time to go," Kirella whispers.
We ghost down a shadowed hall. A doorway where someone snores. A tilted stair like a broken tooth. The building breathes—old wood, old hope, new fear.
At the back, a yard strung with drying herbs. The smell is so strong my eyes water. We thread the strings like fish through reeds.
"Spice lane," Root breathes, pointing to a gap.
We squeeze through, drop into a narrow cut between buildings, run low. A cat hisses and bolts. From the street ahead: a clear, sharp sound—the tap of iron on stone. A signal.
Kirella stops, hand up.
We back a pace. Two. The tap rings again, further right. Another answers left. A third behind.
"They're netting the block," Kirella says.
"Bathhouse?" I ask.
"Straight," Root says. "Left at the broken lion. There will be steam."
We move. Straight. Left. The broken lion is a faceless stone, its mouth worn smooth by ten thousand hands. Warm damp air leaks from a crack behind it, sweet and foul at once.
I wet the cloth at a leaky pipe, press it to my mouth. Pepper stings my tongue. Steam kisses my lashes. The crack widens into a door if you know how to see it.
Kirella fits his fingers in the grooves and pulls. The seam sighs open. We slip inside.
The bathhouse is a ghost. Empty pools. Dead lamps. Tile slick with a skin of moisture. In the central room a round pool holds black water that doesn't move. Even sound bends around it.
Root crosses to a far wall and sets a palm to a tile carved with a faint sun. "This door opens for three," they say. "Not for one."
"Why three?" I ask.
"Because the first time it opened, three were brave. Doors remember."
Bora sets his hand. Root sets theirs. Kirella looks at me.
I lay my palm beside theirs. Cool tile. Something under it wakes and listens. A soft click. A breath from the wall—relief. Stone slides on stone.
A stair waits beyond, steep and narrow, cut from the same black as the pool. The air smells of old dust and something else—like sun caught in glass.
"The throat," Root says.
Bora faces Kirella. "We can't go. If we leave, they'll tear this place apart for those who remain. We'll mislead the hunters."
Lelia steps from shadow. "Take the boy," she says to me.
He shakes his head. "I help here." Chin up. "I'm not scared."
I kneel so our eyes are level. "Then keep your promise too," I say. "Live long enough for me to come back."
He nods once, very solemn.
Boots scrape in the outer hall. Taps answer: close.
Kirella drapes his cloak over my shoulders, tugging the hood low. He knots it quick and sure. His hands are steady. Mine aren't.
He notices.
"Breathe," he whispers. "Floor, not glass."
I breathe.
"Together," he says.
"Together," I answer.
We start down the throat—single file, one hand on the wall, feet learning each narrow step. The door begins to slide shut behind us.
Just before it seals, a smooth voice curls through the crack like smoke.
"Little red," the man with the key calls, gentle. "You can run in circles forever down there. I have all night. I have all year."
The seam closes. Darkness holds—cool and close.
I find Kirella's hand. He laces his fingers through mine like he's afraid I'll vanish.
"We won't run forever," I whisper.
"No," he says. "We steal a light. Then we leave."
Below us, a faint glow wakes in the stone. Not bright. Not holy. Not cruel. A memory of sun.
We descend toward it.
Above, the bathhouse door opens again with a patient sigh.
---
If this chapter kept you reading, please Add to Library and drop a quick Comment—your support keeps the updates daily! 🖤