Free The Two of Swords: Part 9 by K. J. Parker

her voice didn’t seem to be working. He unhooked the brooch from his cloak, took a firm grip on her foot and burst the blisters with the brooch pin, one after another. “Right,” he said. “Can you stand?”
    Only one way to find out. Turned out she could.
    Oida knelt down and unlaced his boots. “You’ll have to wear these,” he said, “and I’ll just have to slop along in my bare feet, there’s no time to get anything from the rooms. God, what a shambles.”
    Time was short, he explained, as they limped down the colonnade, because there was an incredibly small window of opportunity between the evening watch and the first night watch, most of which she’d dissipated by being late. Any moment now, the night watch would come on duty and the whole place would be swarming with guards.
    “Where are we going?” she managed to ask.
    “Work to do” was all he said. Then he tightened his grip on her elbow and made her walk faster. “Where’s the knife?”
    “Left it behind.”
    “Oh, you didn’t.” He sounded so disappointed in her. “It just keeps getting better. Well, if we run into trouble, you’ll just have to rend our enemies with your teeth. Try and keep up, will you?”
    She wanted to cry, but she knew she couldn’t. Further or in the alternative she wanted to cut Oida’s throat, but crying would be better. “Where are we going?” she repeated, but he didn’t seem to have heard. He was getting ahead of her and she had to run to keep up.
    “This is now all incredibly dangerous,” Oida observed, opening a door at the far end of the colonnade. “If we aren’t caught it’ll be a miracle. For God’s sake try and keep quiet, I don’t want to have to slaughter half the garrison.”
    There was a long corridor, which came out in a small, dark courtyard which led into a narrow alley, at the end of which was an arch, past which was a gate with a small wicket set into it. Oida fumbled with the keys for a long time, until she heard a lock click. It was too dark to see his face, but he paused for a long time before opening the door very gently and peering through the crack. “Fool’s luck,” he whispered. “Come on.”
    It was too dark to see anything inside, but the floor under her feet felt like boards rather than slabs. “Carefully,” Oida whispered, too softly for her to be able to place where he was or, by implication, which direction she should take to follow him. So she did the only thing she could, and stopped dead. “Keep
up
,” she heard him hiss, loudly enough to give her a fix on his position; she hurried towards him and heard the floorboards creak slightly. She reached out on both sides and the fingertips of her right hand contacted what felt like unplastered brick. Now it made sense; he was following the wall. Reasonable enough, but he might have mentioned it.
    She heard keys in another door, then he said, “Stairs”. She shuffled forward, but in his boots, with blistered feet, she had real trouble feeling for the change between flat floor and stair. When it came she stumbled and was only just able to steady herself by clawing at the wall.
    She counted sixty-five stairs, going down.
    “Stop,” she heard him say. She stopped. More keys. A click, and then he whispered, “Probably guards on the other side of this door.” Then he opened it, and light hit her in the face.
    Another gallery – it reminded her of mineshafts she’d been in, not her happiest memory; there were props every yard, supporting rafters, but the floor was paved with brick and there were lanterns hanging from hooks. The roof was rock, not earth. “We’re in luck,” he whispered. “There should be a guard here. Arrangement was he’d be paid to be somewhere else, but I didn’t get a confirmation on that. Looks like Division got something right for once.”
    She counted a hundred and twenty-five paces, and then they came to another door. Oida had the key. He inserted it, then turned back to her.
    “Look,”