Law of the Wolf Tower: The Claidi Journals Book 1 by Tanith Lee (black authors fiction txt) 📕

and then. I looked coy and half smiled at Jovis the shooter and would-be beheader.

‘I’d like to, respected Guard, but I have to get back to my lady. You know how it is.’

‘She won’t miss you yet.’

I fluttered sweetly, then said, ‘I’ll just go over and give the horrible prisoner these things she sent him. Then, well, maybe … just for a minute. I mean, I’ve always admired the Guards.’

‘Yes,’ said Jovis, ‘all you girls like us Guards.’ Pathetic really, he believed this.

But the wine was strong and they were still gargling it down. They were getting extra stupid, having had a head start anyway.

They waved me off to the Pavilion, Jovis promising me how nice it would be when I got back to him.

As I reached the Pavilion, a lion roared – right outside the wall it sounded like.

The Guards chortled. ‘Lions’re noisy t’night.’ And one of them slumped forward and rolled off the bench. The other four looked at him, and it was good old Jovis who declared, ‘Carn’old s’wine.’

I turned my back, more confident now, and called softly between the bars of Nemian’s cage. I used his name. The first time I had.

At first, no answer. And behind me the Guards still toasting one another, not yet out cold.

Then Nemian spoke to me from the centre of the dark.

‘Claidissa?’

My heart jumped. My heart has no sense, really.

I coughed, recovered myself, and said, ‘Princess Jizania sent me.’

‘Claidissa,’ said Nemian again.

So I said fiercely, ‘Call me Claidi, please.’ Because I couldn’t stand it. All this, and him, and this new name of mine.

There was a clatter and bumping sound. I glanced back. At last.

Nemian was suddenly right in front of me, up against the bars.

‘God,’ said Nemian (another new name – some exclamation they use in the Waste?), ‘she did it, she drugged them. It’s real then. You’re going to get me out. She told me you would. Clever Claidi.’

So I undid the lock, and the bars unfolded, and Nemian stepped out into the moonlit, lion-roaring night.

The Guards were in an unappealing heap. Jovis had his mouth wide open and was dribbling and snoring charmingly. Just what you’d expect of him.

‘There are lions outside.’

‘Oh, good,’ said Nemian.

‘They’re very tame,’ I hoped.

It wasn’t far, in any case. And we saw no more lions, only met a small lumbering badger.

(I have a sort of feeling the lions just trotted about for a while, messed the Garden up a bit, and then rambled back into the enclosure.)

I said before that under the Garden were systems of tunnels, where the heating mechanisms were located, tended by slaves. (I said too, the slaves have a rotten time, worse than I’d ever had.)

Jizania had told me how to get down into these tunnels, and how it was simple to go through, if you only took the right-hand turning every time. Travelling like that, from the entry we’d use, we would finally come out beyond the walls—!!

Thinking back again, I have to say I had no qualms about using these tunnels. Crazy. But it just seemed nothing could stop me – us.

Nemian didn’t question me either. She must have told him all the plan, before she put it to me. And he must have sat there in the Pavilion-cage, wondering and wondering if I’d have the courage to arrive.

The way in was at a carefully overgrown rocky hill, with trees leaning at the top. I found the door in the ivy, unlocked it (I suppose she must have copies of all these keys), and went in. Then I lit the first kitchen candle from my bread sack, and put the glass bulb over the top to keep it steady.

Nemian closed the door behind us.

‘It’s every right-hand turn,’ I said. ‘I know,’ he said. ‘And she said,’ (me) ‘if we pass any of the slaves, take no notice.’

‘Well would I,’ said Nemian, ‘of slaves.’

Somehow that was disturbing, that he said this. I should have expected it. It meant, presumably, that princely Nemian’s home-place also has slaves, servants, maids – and they don’t count for much. Jizania had been very definite in giving him my ‘proper’ name. ‘I’ve told him you are royal,’ she’d said.

But I couldn’t think about that, could I, at such a moment.

The tunnels were narrow, dark, and damp in spots, with water trickling down. Here and there they’d been shored up with planks. Here and there too, bricks had fallen out. Not organized picturesque decay, just age and neglect.

After a while we did pass a kind of room, where a vast black furnace stood like a nightmare beast. It wasn’t going, because the recent months have been warm.

Later there was another, and a few little holes in the tunnel-sides, and once two slaves were there, but they were fast asleep.

In another area, a fox had got in and made a den. I saw her eyes glow as she glared at us in the candle’s light. Bones, too.

After I’d lit the second candle, I began to feel exhausted. I was tired of being in the tunnels. And Nemian treading behind me, once or twice banging his golden head on low rafters or slabs of stone, and cursing, made me more edgy now than excited.

Then I heard the river. Jizania had said I would.

I looked down the passage for the last door the princess had given me a key to.

But when we reached it, the lock was rusty. When I tried to work the key, I couldn’t, couldn’t.

‘Let me do it,’ he said. His voice was impatient. This managed to make me feel unintelligent and weak and exasperated all together.

But he was flying for his life after all. He’d been offhand about slaves probably for the same reason?

I stood aside, and Nemian, instead of undoing the door as I’d tried to, threw himself against it.

I was quite shocked when it gave way.

It was an old door, rusty and rotted, and outside was the world.

He walked straight out. I … followed him.

‘But,’ I said stupidly. ‘The