Free The Last Of The Wilds by Trudi Canavan Page B

completely shut away.
    Imi found that the curved wall did block noises enough to allow her to creep about without waking her aunt. Ironically, Teiti had not been a snorer in those days, but had recently developed the habit. Now Imi had two reasons to be grateful for the wall.
    She brushed droplets of moisture off her skin, then paused to listen for Teiti’s snoring. Earlier that day, Imi had sent her aunt on several errands—tasks that only the princess’s guardian could carry out—in order to wear Teiti out. As she’d hoped, her aunt had wanted to retire early and had quickly fallen into a deep sleep.
    The soft wheeze of Teiti’s breathing continued. Imi walked over to a carving on the wall. Reaching behind, she found the bolt that held it fast and carefully pulled it aside. The carving swung outward like a door, revealing a hole in the wall.
    A large box lay on the floor under the carving. She stepped on top of it, then climbed into the hole. Looking back, she wedged her webbed toes in a bolt loop on the back of the carving and pulled it closed.
    It was utterly dark in the tunnel. Imi crawled forward, bothered less by the lack of light than by the closeness of the tunnel. She had grown quite a bit in the last year, and soon she would have trouble fitting into the small space.
    When the sound of her breathing changed subtly, she knew she was near the end of the tunnel. She reached forward and touched a hard surface. Tracing her fingertips over it, she found the bolt and slid it open.
    The hatch became visible as it opened and allowed in a faint light. She crept forward until her head was exposed. The inside of a wooden cupboard surrounded her. She paused to listen, then crawled farther forward so she could put her eye to the crack between the cupboard doors. The narrow room before her was empty and dim. Grabbing the frame of the hatch, she pulled herself out of the tunnel, unlatched the cupboard doors and stepped out.
    She went straight to the door of the room and peered through the little spy-hole in its center. It was high up, and she had only recently been able to reach it. Before she had been forced to open the door a crack to check outside.
    The passage beyond the door was empty. Satisfied, she turned to regard the room. The walls on either side were a mass of pipes. The end of each flared outward and were shaped like ears. Her father had told her long ago that he had a device that allowed him to listen into other people’s conversations. He had never shown her this room, however: she had found it herself.
    What he
had
shown her, years before, was the hole behind the carving in her room. He’d told her she was to hide there if the palace was attacked by bad people. She didn’t know whether he feared attack by landwalkers or from bad Elai. The landwalker raiders that had robbed and attacked Elai in the past couldn’t enter the city. They couldn’t hold their breath long enough to swim along the underwater entrance.
    If her father hadn’t meant for her to discover the room, she reasoned, he wouldn’t have shown her the tunnel behind the carving. For years now she had been venturing here every few weeks to listen in on conversations in and out of the palace.
    Through the device she had learned a great deal about many important people, and that people in different parts of the city lived very different lives. Sometimes she envied the other children she overheard. Sometimes she didn’t.
    Though she knew her father used this room, he had never discovered her here. She was also lucky that Teiti had never woken and found her missing, or caught Imi entering the hole behind the carving.
    Moving to one of the pipes, she put her ear to it. The voices that came whispering down the tube were quiet, but soon her hearing adjusted and she began to make out the words.
    “...
not
marry him, mother! He is more than
twenty
years older than me!”
    It was the voice of her cousin, Yiti. Imi frowned. Had she chosen the wrong