Royal Blood : Chapter 22 (Patreon)

Chapter 22: Wetwork

The well was dark, other than the lone magelight hanging above.

After a while, I warmed up again. I had to wring out my shirt, and it still sucked pulling the damp fabric over my head, but as long as I kept moving I wouldn’t freeze.

It was pretty cold underground, go figure.

“So, where are we?” Nezza asked. She looked around, eyes glinting in the darkness.

“Some weird cistern thing.” I looked back towards the stone tube that led out into the bay. We were on a small ledge, and there was a staircase leading up to a slightly higher ledge with a door, for high tide, I assumed. I blinked at the sight of a worn rope hanging down the center of the well, a floater bobbing gently in the water. “Ah, it measures the tide.”

“What’cha mean?”

I pointed to the rope. “See that? It goes up and down with the water. Somewhere up above, it records the results, so you can see how high the water is at any given point.”

“Weird. Who cares how high the water is?” Nezza shrugged.

I laughed. The sound echoed weakly off the walls. “It tends to matter a lot for ships. Still, that’s not what we’re here for. Hand me the paint pot and let’s get rolling.” Nezza passed it over before flashing into dagger form. I caught her out of the air.

“Let’s not go back out this way, okay?”

I tilted my head. “Cause you can’t swim?”

“Yeah. I don’t want to wind up stuck at the bottom of the ocean like buried treasure.”

I shivered at that image. Even if her dagger form didn’t rust or decay—and we hadn’t tested that—being stuck in the depths, not knowing if you could even kick your way to the surface before you drowned? She was carrying a lot of our equipment too.

I didn’t even want to think about it.

“We’ll figure something out if we don’t make it through.” I came to the door at the top of the short flight of stairs. It was made of wood, and solid, but it had clearly started to rot from being exposed to the tides for so long. I imagined that it saw a lot of water, just judging by the metal sluice gate at the bottom of the door.

I slipped Nezza through the gaps in the bars. They were wide enough to fit my whole hand through after all, just set narrow enough that a person couldn’t fit through. Nezza popped up on the other side, opening the door with a click.

I let out a breath of relief. “Easy as pie.”

Nezza grinned. “I like this part.”

“Bet you do.” I snagged her out of the air again. “You little thief.”

“I’m bigger than you, Aly.”

I twirled the dagger between my fingers once before sheathing it. “Not like this you aren’t.”

Under the glow of the magelight, I examined the map one more time, counting the number of hallways until the first turn. I didn’t want to use the light more than I had to. Who knew who—or what—else was down here.

“Let me know if I miss a turn.” I’d be counting passages as well, but if I got turned around in the darkness, it would be better to have someone to fall back on.

“Got it!”

I knelt down, dabbing a bit of yellow paint on the ground near the door. It glowed softly, dim enough that you could almost miss it if you weren’t looking for it. With that, I wrapped the rest of the pot back up and set it in its own pouch.

Then I tucked the map away again, and started into the darkness.

I’d never been afraid of the dark, but there was something about being underground without a single source of light that didn’t sit right with me.

I kept waiting for my eyes to adjust, but there was literally no light down here. It made sense; magelights weren’t exactly expensive, but I also wouldn’t want to pay to light up the whole sewer system all the time.

Eventually, I let my eyes drift shut, letting my left hand guide me by the wall. If my eyes were closed, I could ignore the darkness. Instead, I just shuffled along, thanking whoever built this place that the flagstones that made up the floor were mostly level.

“Bit rough here. Like a half step up.”

I nodded at Nezza’s words, lifting my foot slightly higher than usual. It would be easier for her to go back to human form and guide me directly since she could see in the dark, but my plan called for some sections where the passages would be too small for her to fit and other stuff like that.

Best I get used to walking on my own.

It was much more difficult than I’d first anticipated.

“Here we are, that’s hallway number four, yeah?”

Nezza gave me a nudge in affirmative. It was weird, trying to name all these psychic sensations. I brushed that off, pausing to dab a bit more paint.

The phosphorescent green drew my eyes like a moth to a flame. I almost didn’t want to cover the pot back up. Unfortunately, I had a lot longer to go.

The second door opened without a key. Made sense, considering it was connected to the sewers. If you were going to send people down to check on the tide, you didn’t want to make it too difficult for them.

“Next is to the left…and three hallways this time.” I told Nezza.

Nothing to do but start walking.

As I walked, I could hear the sound of water running past me to my right, probably flowing to one of the downspouts I’d seen dotting the walls of the bay. Everything since the first Cistern had a slight upward slant that I quickly adjusted to. I stepped into water once, while crossing another ‘hallway’, but Nezza started pointing out where to step after that. This was the edge of the sewer system, so it was mostly smooth sailing beyond that.

After the next turn, though, I had to pull out the map again. My magelight lit up to reveal drab gray walls, covered with algae or lichen. There was a deeper portion in the middle, for the water and other detritus, with narrow walkways on either side. The ceiling was actually much lower than I thought. A grown man would have to hunch slightly to walk.

I didn’t imagine that was very fun.

After the next few turns, things started to get tricky, but nothing we couldn’t handle. Nezza slipped through the sluice gates of a few more locked doors, and we made our way to the next cistern.

Now, maybe a bit of geography was in order.

Port Royal was built on a slope. Obviously, considering it went out towards the sea. That meant the city itself was raised above the port to make it more level. Additionally, Queen’s Row and the rest of the North Side was built on a taller hill than the rest of the city, to stay above the ‘dross’ no doubt.

Classic noble sensibilities.

Normally I wouldn’t even think about such things, but when I held up my magelight at the next cistern, I couldn’t see the top. Or the passage we needed to take.

“This is a bit taller than I thought.” I whispered. My voice was like a hiss, sliding sibilantly off the walls.

“Lemmie get a better look.” Nezz asked.

I nodded, slipping her out of my cloak. Her dagger form had a sphere of awareness, but eyes that could see in the dark were better for moments like this.

Nezza landed lightly on the walk in front of me before standing up. We were on another ring walkway. A meter or so below, I could see the water flicker darkly in the light of my mage stone. There were several outflows on the walls, about the size of two fists, cutting channels in the walls and the walkway to run down into the cistern. The notes had mentioned needing an accomplice to lower a ladder, but that wouldn’t matter unless we could find the maintenance walkway first.

“There it is.” Nezza pointed.

I followed her finger up into the gloom, shifting to try and angle my magelight better. No luck. “How high?”

“Uh…” She tilted her head. “Three and…a half of me?”

“That’s not exactly a unit of measurement.”

She crossed her arms. “It’s the best I got.”

I shrugged. “I’ll toss you straight up then. You can catch the ledge, yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nodded.

It took a second to get set up, with Nezza coaching me on the angle. I set the magelight down at my feet, just so I could keep an idea of where the wall was if nothing else.

Then I threw.

Nezza’s Bite whistled away into the blackness, and a half second later, I heard the smack of hands catching stone. I stepped back, picking up the magelight.

“You got it?” I called. Even though I kept my voice low, it echoed up the chamber walls.

There was a huff, then a sound of metal scraping over metal as Nezza lowered the ladder. I quickly scrambled up. “Here, let’s haul it back into place.”

She grunted and we quickly pulled the ladder back up, latching it again.

It was nearly a two-story drop. I shook my head, marking the next corridor to point back towards the cistern. Hopefully we wouldn’t have to come back out this way, but better safe than sorry.

Then it was back to the darkness.

I had to hide down one of the hallways as a maintenance crew came through at one point, but the real enemy was the sewer system itself. It would twist and turn in crazy ways as we got deeper into the city. There were more locked doors, and some of them didn’t have sluice gates.

Luckily, most of those could be picked. And the rest had grills at eye level that I could pry open and slip Nezza through.

She had to pick a couple of those open from the other side.

Like, it made me wonder how the actual Sewer workers got around. Like, did they all tie ropes to themselves and never stray more than that from their entrance point? Hell, if it wasn’t for my small size and Nezza’s shapeshift ability, this path wouldn’t even work for us in the first place.

The last hurdle was a smaller tunnel. It was barely big enough for me to fit my shoulders through, a narrow trickle of water flowing down it. I squeezed through it, doing my best to keep my breathing low and even.

Don’t mind the smell.

My map proved invaluable, and accurate enough that we never ran into a dead end, at least.

We wouldn’t know if we’d ended up in the right spot until after we popped out above ground.

There was nothing to do until then but keep trekking through the darkness.

Until finally. “There it is! Up ahead.”

I let out a massive breath of relief at Nezza’s remark. We were on the home stretch, and looking for access back up to the surface. Nezza spotted a ladder. There was another one up ahead as well, but no reason to waste time when I wasn’t even sure where we were.

“Let’s just hope this is the right block.”

With Nezz’s help, it was easy enough to climb up the ladder itself. I found my hand pressing against some form of stone cover. It didn’t seem like it was bolted shut or anything, since I could put my shoulder against it and make it budge some.

It also didn’t seem like it was supposed to open from this side.

“And this,” I muttered quietly, “is why we buy so many extra knives.”

I shifted on the ladder, letting Nezza shift back to human beside me. Between the two of us, grunting and swearing like it was our job, we managed to lever a dagger between the cover and the lip of the floor above it.

A minute and a bent dagger later we had it off.

I took a big breath of fresh air as I clambered out of the dungeon, because that’s what it felt like. “Okay. I didn’t plan for that last part.”

Nezza came up after me, and we slid the flagstone back into place. At least we weren’t on the street.

No, by the looks of it, after I pulled out my magelight again, we were in some kind of sub-basement looking place. There was a rusty door I quickly picked open, and we stepped out into the basement proper. It looked like a storage cellar. I wandered over to a nearby desk, seeing a few scraps of paper.

I flipped one over, reading what looked like a list of groceries. Then I grinned. “Hey, Nezz, look at this.” I held it out towards her. “For the household of Magistrate Anotonin Scionus Markeus.”

She smirked back. “Lucky.”

You have gained 1 point of luck!

+2048 EXP

Current Experience: 6 256/35 000

My grin grew wider. Twice? Now that seemed even more promising.