Read Online The Two of Swords: Part 9 by K. J. Parker - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: K. J. Parker
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Luckily he wasn’t stiff yet; if she’d left it much longer, it could’ve made things interesting. It turned out that there was just enough of a gap for her to squeeze past him if she stamped on his head enough to pack him down and then pretended she was a liquid rather than a solid. She got stuck, her stomach pressed hard against the scalding pipe, and had to claw her way inch by inch, doing all the work with her hands because her legs had nothing to act against. She got through. As an afterthought, she hooked the scarf off his neck and wedged it between her skin and the pipe. It helped, a bit.
That was the hard part. All she had to do after that was drag him down a way – one hand hooked under his chin, the other with fingers hooked into one of the clever clerk’s calibration grooves, the only handhold she could find – then scramble back up out of the hole, lift the flagstone, balance it with exquisite precision so that it’d topple down exactly into the hole when she nudged it from underneath; back down again, unseat the slab, then get her head out of the way before the slab came crashing down and smashed her skull like an egg.
And then, of course, it was dark again. She crawled over the dead man’s face like a slug, then remembered the knife. She’d dropped it, she knew that, but where was it? She was guessing it was the presentation piece the garrison commander had given to Oida, and which he’d passed on to her; so of course it could be recognised and traced, and if they lifted the flagstone and shone a lantern down the shaft, there it would be. Turning round wasn’t possible, so she had to backtrack, crawling feet first, back over the dead man again. It took a long time to locate the knife by feel, not really knowing where to search, since the slab had been replaced and it was pitch dark. She found it more or less by accident; also her dress, which she’d completely forgotten about. Lucky, because the scarf on its own wasn’t really enough to protect her from the hot pipe.
When she passed from the pipe channel into the hypocaust it felt like coming home; just those extra few inches of space. There was, of course, the matter of the wedged-open hatch, jammed against the hypocaust wall. Nothing would shift it, and she felt the panic building up again; just in time before it swamped her, she thought of sticking the knife into the hatch frame as hard as she could, then looping the scarf round the handle and pulling on it. To her great surprise, that actually worked. She slithered through the hatch into the main hypocaust and burst out laughing.
Enough of that. She now had room enough to pull the dress back on – God only knew what state it was in, but at least the hot pipe had dried it out a bit, and it wasn’t like wearing algae. She tried to stand up, but the soles of her feet had got burned on the pipe – she hadn’t even noticed, at the time – and it took a substantial effort of will to put her weight on them, crushing the fat blisters and feeling the pus move as she bent her foot. But the keys were still looped round her finger, and she could walk again, instead of crawling. Onwards.
Forty careful paces, cross-referenced with the brick piles, and then she stopped. She couldn’t remember. Was it ninety-two yards or ninety-six? For a moment, she panicked and lost her nerve, until she realised it didn’t matter. Try both, and one of them will be right. And pull yourself together, for crying out loud.
Ninety-two, as it happened. She put the back of her head against the slab and heaved; it started to move, then disappeared; light, brighter even than the last time, and Oida’s voice, hissing, “Where the
hell
did you get to?”
“You’ve made it very difficult for us,” he said, lifting her foot. She was flat on her back. “Getting yourself in that state. Just look at you, for crying out loud. We’ve got that presentation tomorrow.”
She tried to tell him it hadn’t been on purpose but
That was the hard part. All she had to do after that was drag him down a way – one hand hooked under his chin, the other with fingers hooked into one of the clever clerk’s calibration grooves, the only handhold she could find – then scramble back up out of the hole, lift the flagstone, balance it with exquisite precision so that it’d topple down exactly into the hole when she nudged it from underneath; back down again, unseat the slab, then get her head out of the way before the slab came crashing down and smashed her skull like an egg.
And then, of course, it was dark again. She crawled over the dead man’s face like a slug, then remembered the knife. She’d dropped it, she knew that, but where was it? She was guessing it was the presentation piece the garrison commander had given to Oida, and which he’d passed on to her; so of course it could be recognised and traced, and if they lifted the flagstone and shone a lantern down the shaft, there it would be. Turning round wasn’t possible, so she had to backtrack, crawling feet first, back over the dead man again. It took a long time to locate the knife by feel, not really knowing where to search, since the slab had been replaced and it was pitch dark. She found it more or less by accident; also her dress, which she’d completely forgotten about. Lucky, because the scarf on its own wasn’t really enough to protect her from the hot pipe.
When she passed from the pipe channel into the hypocaust it felt like coming home; just those extra few inches of space. There was, of course, the matter of the wedged-open hatch, jammed against the hypocaust wall. Nothing would shift it, and she felt the panic building up again; just in time before it swamped her, she thought of sticking the knife into the hatch frame as hard as she could, then looping the scarf round the handle and pulling on it. To her great surprise, that actually worked. She slithered through the hatch into the main hypocaust and burst out laughing.
Enough of that. She now had room enough to pull the dress back on – God only knew what state it was in, but at least the hot pipe had dried it out a bit, and it wasn’t like wearing algae. She tried to stand up, but the soles of her feet had got burned on the pipe – she hadn’t even noticed, at the time – and it took a substantial effort of will to put her weight on them, crushing the fat blisters and feeling the pus move as she bent her foot. But the keys were still looped round her finger, and she could walk again, instead of crawling. Onwards.
Forty careful paces, cross-referenced with the brick piles, and then she stopped. She couldn’t remember. Was it ninety-two yards or ninety-six? For a moment, she panicked and lost her nerve, until she realised it didn’t matter. Try both, and one of them will be right. And pull yourself together, for crying out loud.
Ninety-two, as it happened. She put the back of her head against the slab and heaved; it started to move, then disappeared; light, brighter even than the last time, and Oida’s voice, hissing, “Where the
hell
did you get to?”
“You’ve made it very difficult for us,” he said, lifting her foot. She was flat on her back. “Getting yourself in that state. Just look at you, for crying out loud. We’ve got that presentation tomorrow.”
She tried to tell him it hadn’t been on purpose but
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