The sound of the door locking was as final as the last shovelful of dirt on a coffin. We were buried alive. Outside those bars wasn't just the enraged mob and the threat of a sham trial at dawn at Father Michel's hands. There was worse. There were wolves dressed as priests, our sworn enemies, moving through our same labyrinth. That awareness was an icy grip around my heart, a pressure that made the damp cell walls even more oppressive.
"No more waiting," Margot hissed, already on her knees in front of the cell door. I saw the faint glint of a pin she'd pulled from her hair. "Either we die in here at the priest's hands, or out there at those others' hands. I'd rather choose how myself."
"What if they hear us?" I replied, my voice a hoarse whisper. I moved to the grate, peering at the empty corridor.
"Think about it, Margot. If we get out, where do we go? Out there is Thomas the innkeeper, who wants us dead with a hatred that makes no sense. There's Father Michel, who wants to try us for a murder we didn't commit. Further out there's a monster made of shadows that kidnaps people to turn them into puppets. And as if that weren't enough," I added, my blood freezing at the mere thought, "our friends from the Silent Veil are in this same building, probably because they sensed the echo of my 'wall of thorns' all the way to Strasbourg. Whichever way we go out, there's someone waiting to kill us."
Margot joined me at the grate, her short breath a little cloud of vapor in the cold air. Her eyes, usually full of calculating fury, were now veiled with a shadow of true desperation. But it lasted only an instant. She clenched her fists, the fighter within her refusing to surrender.
"So?" she hissed, her voice hard as steel again. "What do we do, Victor? Stay here and give up? Choose who gets to kill us first? I'm not doing it. I'd rather go out and kick anyone in the face who gets in our way, whether it's an innkeeper, a priest, or one of those crows in black robes."
"That girl has more rage than good sense," the old man croaked from the shadows. "But she's right about one thing. Waiting here is like waiting for the executioner. Only with more people in line to cut off your heads."
Bastien's cynical voice made us turn. He'd moved closer, his shrewd eyes gleaming in the darkness. "Going out the main door is crazy. But there's another way. The rat's way."
Margot stopped, intrigued. "What way?"
"Listen!" the old poacher said, his voice a conspiratorial whisper. "The door is iron, and that corridor is a rat trap. But there's another way."
He looked at us, making sure he had our complete attention.
"On the other side of this corridor, right after the guardroom where the jailer sleeps, there's the old woodshed. It's almost always empty at this hour. Under a pile of rotten wood sacks, there's a trapdoor. I saw it used once, years ago. It leads to the old salt canals—they go all the way to the river."
"We have to get out of the cell, get past the guardroom without waking anyone, and reach that trapdoor?" Margot asked, incredulous.
Bastien gave a toothless smile. "Exactly. And we have to do it before your friends in black come back or before the priest decides to move up your trial."
I stared at him in the darkness. *We have to*, he'd said. Not *you have to*. He was offering the key, but in exchange he wanted his own freedom. An experienced prisoner using his information as trade goods. He wasn't a selfless ally; he was a survivor, just like us. And right now, that made him more reliable than any benefactor.
"You guide us to that trapdoor," I said, my voice a whisper sealing the pact. "And we take you out with us."
Bastien gave a toothless smile that flickered in the dark. "Deal, boy!"
Our plan took shape in that silence heavy not with hope but with desperate, pragmatic necessity. A three-act plan. The first: get out of that cage.
Margot went back to work on the lock. She was born for this. Her fingers, accustomed to handling stilettos, moved with unnatural delicacy on the rusted metal. Bastien and I stood watch, ears straining, listening to every sound. We heard the constant drip of water, our own breathing.
Then another sound. Footsteps. Slow, heavy. A guard.
We froze. Margot withdrew the pin, her body melding with the door's shadow. I heard the footsteps stop right in front of our cell. An eternity of silence. Maybe he'd heard something. My heart was a crazed drum. Then, after a bored sigh, the footsteps resumed, moving away.
Margot didn't waste an instant. She returned to work. A few seconds later, an almost imperceptible click, sweet as a promise. I looked at her, and even in the dark I saw her triumphant smile.
We pushed the creaking door with excruciating slowness, just enough to slip out one at a time. The corridor was a tunnel of cold stone, illuminated only by a single lantern dripping light and shadows several meters away.
"Quiet!" Bastien hissed, pressing us against the cold wall. "The guardroom is that way." He indicated with a nod the direction the light came from. "The storage room is right after. But we have to get past the light."
We moved along the wall, one step at a time, our breaths suspended. Our world had shrunk to that small stretch of corridor. As we approached the illuminated corner, we heard voices. Sweat beaded my forehead.
It was the village guards, the ones who'd thrown us in here. They were standing right in the guardroom, a few steps from us, their silhouettes projected on the wall. They were speaking in low voices, complaining about the cold and the priest.
We were blocked. To reach the storage room, we'd have to pass right in front of them.
Bastien approached the corridor corner, sticking his head out for a fraction of a second to peek into the illuminated guardroom, then pulled back immediately.
"Two!" he signaled. "Playing cards. Bored."
He looked around, his shrewd eyes darting in the darkness. Then, with an almost imperceptible movement, he picked up a small stone that had come loose from the mortar. He looked at Margot.
"You're the fastest," he whispered. "When I throw, you have three seconds. No more. Run to the storage room door and open it. We'll follow right after."
Margot nodded, muscles tense, ready to spring.
Bastien took aim. With a quick, precise movement, he threw the stone through a side archway toward an adjacent dark room. We heard the stone bounce off something metallic, maybe a shield hanging on a wall, producing a sharp, unexpected CLANG.
"Who goes there?" we heard one of the guards say.
"Stay here, I'll check!" said the other.
We saw one guard's silhouette rise and move slowly toward the archway where the noise had come from, the lantern projecting uncertain shadows. The other guard had remained seated but had turned around, his attention completely absorbed by his companion's search. Both were distracted.
"Now!" Bastien hissed.
Margot sprang. She was a shadow, a breath of wind that crossed the pool of light without making the slightest sound. She reached the storage room door. Bastien followed immediately, clumsier but surprisingly fast. My turn. Heart in my throat, I launched myself, swallowed by darkness.
We slipped inside one after another, closing the heavy wooden door behind us with excruciating slowness to keep it from creaking. Margot, with her thief's skill, immediately found an old rusted iron bolt and clicked it into position with a dull, reassuring sound. We were safe, at least for now.
The air in the storage room was heavy, thick with the smell of dust and wet wood. Bastien pointed to a corner where old crates were stacked. "It's under there," he whispered.
We started moving them, lifting with excruciating slowness, trying not to make the slightest noise. Every creak of wood was a blow to already taut nerves. Under the last crate, we saw it. A square trapdoor, its lines almost invisible under a layer of grime.
While Bastien fiddled with the iron ring embedded in the wood, we heard voices.
Cold voices. Disciplined. Coming from the corridor.
We froze, hidden in the room's darkness. Through the thin gap between the bottom of the door and the stone floor, I saw two pairs of boots pass. They moved in unnatural silence, without the heavy noise of the village guards. They were accompanied by their long, thin shadows, projected by the lantern one of the guards had left in the corridor.
There was no doubt. I recognized the silent discipline, the aura of cold determination. It was them—Silent Veil adepts.
"The trace is stronger here, on the ground floor," one of the voices said, sharp as glass. "The anomaly, or whoever's disturbing it, must have passed through here."
My blood froze. Were they talking about us? Or the Crow?
The footsteps stopped right outside our hiding place's door. We held our breath.
"Are there prisoners?" asked one of the Veil's cold voices.
We heard the hesitant voice of one of the village guards. "Yes, sir. Two strangers, captured tonight. Suspected in Mathis's murder."
"Show them to us," the monk ordered.
We heard heavy footsteps moving away toward our cell. Our empty cell.
We exchanged a terrified glance in the storage room's darkness. Bastien brought a hand to his mouth, eyes wide.
An eternity passed in a handful of seconds.
Then, from downstairs, an explosion of noise. A shout of rage.
"THEY'VE ESCAPED!"
An instant later, the guardroom's alarm bells began ringing, a frantic, hammering toll that tore through the night.
"Seal the building!" the Veil adept's voice thundered from the corridor, now charged with icy fury. "No one leaves! Find them!"
We were one step from salvation. One step. And now we were trapped in a newly sealed fortress, with the local garrison and a team of professional witch hunters who knew exactly we were in there.