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

he said, “I’m sorry for being a bastard, it’s because I’m so scared I can hardly breathe, it makes me irritable. There may be a guard the other side of this door, or there may not. From now on, guards and fighting are your business, while I do the rescuing. All right?”
    She nodded, too startled to speak. “Thanks,” he said, and turned the key.
    Just another corridor, also with a propped roof. “Oh, God, right or left?” he moaned, then turned left. Soon they were passing heavy oak doors, with small sliding panels at eye level; so, probably not the wine cellars. The doors were numbered, in chalk; some of the numbers had been rubbed out. “Sixty-two, we want,” he whispered. “Trouble is, they’re not in bloody order.”
    True; forty-one was next to twenty-seven was next to a hundred and sixty-six. The corridor was so narrow that if a cell door opened it would block and seal it, like the hatch in the hypocaust. She glanced up at the roof and tried to remember if Blemya had a history of earthquakes.
    Sixty-two; he’d gone past it. She grabbed his elbow, pulled him back and pointed. “Shit,” he said. “Just as well one of us has got a brain.” He handed her the keys. “Right, you stay here, and when I say the word, unlock the door and pull it open. It’s the longest key.”
    Now she understood the reason for the bizarre architecture. It took two men to unlock a cell; one man couldn’t do it on his own, he’d be blocked by the door and the prisoner could bolt. “Right,” he said. She turned the key and hauled on the door, and was suddenly alone.
    Presumably the door had a handle on the inside. It moved away from her, and she saw Oida. He had his elbow round the throat of an impossibly thin, bald young man – she assumed he was alive, but he could easily have been dead, the way he was propped up against Oida’s body.
    “He’s completely out of it,” Oida said sadly. “This is going to be no fun at all.”
    They ended up carrying him, because he couldn’t or wouldn’t move; she had his ankles, while Oida held him under the arms. They had to keep stopping so Oida could adjust his grip. The young man’s feet galled the blisters on her ribs. “This is hopeless,” Oida said, several times, and then they reached the first door.
    Getting through it was complicated; they had to prop the young man up against the wall, and she kept him steady while Oida did the lock. Then it was Oida’s turn at the feet end, and hers to do the heavy lifting. The young man wasn’t exactly a burden. She realised, in the small, detached part of her mind that still gave a damn, that she was probably stronger than Oida, or at least better educated in managing heavy weights.
    The stairs were all manner of fun and games. Oida seemed to have forgotten about the possibility of guards; he made a lot of unnecessary noise and barged through the door at the top of the stairs without looking. But the luck held, or the plan worked better than anticipated; surprisingly quickly, they made it out into the alley that led to the courtyard, and there Oida stopped.
    “Got to get my bearings,” he muttered, breathing heavily. “Fifth stable yard, it’s where they keep the horses for the garbage carts. How’s your sense of smell? I haven’t really got one.”
    But she had, and it led them across the courtyard, through an unlocked gate to the main palace midden. “Needless to say they work a night shift,” Oida whispered, as they peered round a corner. “But it’s dark as a bag, and they don’t light lanterns, for fear of spoiling the sleep of the nobs on the upper floors. Just imagine you’re the kitchen staff and we’ll be fine.”
    Leaning against a wall were big stretchers, wide as doors, for carrying trash to the midden. They got the young man on one of these, carried him across the yard and dumped him in a heap of cabbage stalks and turnip peel. Then they put the stretcher back where they’d got it from and retraced