Nina let the tenseness in her nerves move her feet from the wall. The room that had once been one of many used to house guests was covered in huge chunks of brick and debris from the explosion. The doors to the balcony were gone. It was a giant gaping hole. The balcony itself was gone, along with much of the floor and some of the floor below it. One of the chunks had gone through the wall barely a hair from where she had crouched, literally.

  She tried not to think about what would have happened if it had been just slightly to the right. She dropped her cloak on the floor and moved to the door that, somehow, was still intact.

  A single glance back toward the Cathedral and Nina saw that the gate had become a pile of rubble and debris, sprinkled with blue and white checkered tabards, some blue and red. A flood of red crosses moved over it into a sea of dazed checkered tabards, filling the air with roars that were nearly as deafening as the ringing in her ears. Their battle was far from finished.

  Hers was only beginning. She opened the door and stepped through, now in her servant’s dress.

  Inside, the Palais was swarming with even more of the Baron’s Men. They were rushing from their posts on the upper levels, down the stairs, to barricade the doors. Others were tipping shelves and clearing tables of what few adornments remained on them to add to the barricades. There were some of the staff that remained—some of the young boys here, some of the men there, one or two of the maids who were too manhandled to find other work—giving them a hand.

  Nina kept her shoulder to the wall. With her hair up, anyone who really looked at her would know she didn’t belong. Anyone who knew her would know she didn’t belong. But her dress made her invisible to the passing guards and sprinting men-at-arms as she made her way to the first level.

  While they were carrying the long tables through the main hall, she turned opposite them into the cramped Head Staffer’s Office. Thankfully, even Vera was trapped by habit. The master keys were right where they always were, the top right drawer under the ledger.

  Nina rushed out of the office, dodged around guards carrying chairs and arms full of what must have been ripped from the sofas, and made her way to the library. There were already a group of men there. Without missing a step, Nina followed the wall to one of the large portraits that marked an entrance into the passageways.

  “Louis the Sixteenth?” She eyed the portrait as she twisted the sconce that made the entrance slant open. “Fitting.” She slid in and shut it behind her. With the master key, she locked it.

  Now within the dark passageway between the walls, searched around her to gain her bearings. This way to the dungeons. But this way…an idea struck her.

  She tore the dress off, now in her leather and hide outfit meant for fighting, without slowing her sprint for where those men were gathered. If she had to make a bet, it was that the Baron planned on escaping exactly the way she planned on getting Alice out of there—through the canals. Only, he’ll be going to across the Rhine and out of the Prince’s reach. That’s not happening on her watch.

  She came to the hidden door they would go through, the one the master key would have been needed for and stuck the key in with a twist. The bolt was already in place. Now they can’t pick it. That should slow them long enough for the Prince to stop them. She turned back to her mission and sprinted down the narrow passage.

  Cleric Marion and his two knights could barely see the yellow paint on the brick beside the opening into the sewer from where they set the boat. He tethered the boat before taking the torch from the knight holding it. In his other hand, he had a Paladin’s spear, just as she said. He hoped she was right about this.

  They could hear the fighting. They heard the boom. It was worse than they expected. More than anything, he regretted not being up there with his brothers and sisters and he could see it on his men’s faces that they felt the same.

  “This one is it,” he said to them. “I’m sure of it. Come on.”

  They ducked into the dank sewers behind him, sledgehammers in hand. He had chosen them for their size. She said to pick the biggest. Not fastest, not the most skilled. Biggest.

  Marion was shaking his head with each echoing step into the black of the sewer, counting as they passed each side tunnel.

  A plop behind him made him turn toward the boat, the knights doing the same. Right before their eyes, checkered tabards were tossed into the canal as four men in chainmail rowed their boat out from their tethers. One of the knights started, but Marion stopped him with a light reach of the spear.

  “Let them go. That’s four less our brothers and sisters have to fight,” He turned back toward the black beyond the glow of the torch. “Come on, now.” After a few steps further. “This one,” and he ducked into the fourth tunnel on the left.

  Nina felt her way through the narrow passages, following her memory as she snaked through the dark of the dungeons beneath Palais that weren’t being used by the reinforcements coming from the prison.

  She could hear them. And there were a lot of them. Their movements were sending lines of rats scurrying across her passageways that she refused to pay heed to or slow for. She just ran until she saw the torchlight of where the connection was made, where the prison passages began.

  A guard was sitting at a table, as she expected. She quickened her stride. Her thighs were beginning to burn. Her side ached, but she couldn’t hold back, she couldn’t slow down, she couldn’t stop. He was in a chain-mail shirt, red and blue tabard, his helmet on the table over some papers and a half-eaten sandwich. His was the only lit sconce in the passageway ahead of her.

  He must have heard her running toward him because he stood from his chair and twisted around to look.

  Nina dropped into a slide with her boots leading her across the damp stones. She missed his feet but caught the leg of his chair. It did what she wanted it to, regardless.

  He flew backwards, his head flying back as the chair dragged him into a sitting position. Nina’s slide brought her under the table until her boot connected with the wall. That, she used to launch herself over top of the table before it, too, slammed into the wall from the momentum.

  The guard was fast on his feet, drawing an iron rod.

  “Help!” he called as Nina grabbed his helmet and leapt for him with both legs over his shoulders, hooking her thigh over his windpipe. He twisted and slammed her, but she muffled his air flow with her thighs.

  She slammed his temple again and again with the iron rim of his helm. He threw her into the wall. She felt her ribs shift. She hit him with the helm harder and harder, over and over.

  He collapsed on the ground. She let herself fall back on the cold stone for a moment to catch her breath.

  That, she shook at herself and kicked him off her leg, could have gone a little better. She stiffly got on her feet and pulled the ring of keys from the guard’s belt.

  The dungeon was pitch from here. They didn’t even light torches for them, Nina gritted her teeth when she saw. There were voices carrying from the other passageways. Someone had heard the guard.

  Nina wanted to spit. She rushed, carrying the keys in one hand while pulling at the laces to the shoes she had tied to her belt with the other. She searched each cell she passed.

  Empty.

  Empty.

  Empty.

  She stopped a moment. Her eyes narrowed to adjust to the dark at the heap. With a sigh at the rats that scurried from within a bare ribcage, dead.

  Finally, Nina stopped pulling at the string and began looking through the keys. One after another, she tried them. Alicia wasn’t moving. She was curled like a little girl in a bed of hay, but her dress, her hair, those feet that didn’t match the size of woman who walked on them were too familiar not to be her.

  “Alice,” Nina whispered. She tried another key. “Alice.” The voices were getting louder. Their echoes were beginning to form words. “Alice! For God’s sake! Wake up.”

  Alicia rolled her head and looked up to her without moving any other part of her body. “I already told them that the Baroness’s June cloths were in the southern…”

  Nina felt a key finally turn, “To HELL with the Baroness! I’m here to get you out of here,” she leapt in and lifted Alicia to sit up and look at her. “Look at me. Put these on, now, or forever hold your peace. We’re out of time.”

  “Nina? What are you?”

  Down the passage, she heard a man’s voice echo, “We should take the boat and leave him here. Who says he’s going to take us with him anyhow?”

  Thankfully, Alicia had the shoes on her feet. Nina tugged her onto her feet and peeked out of the cell. She had to get to the passage that bridged right where she knocked out—possibly killed, but she didn’t want to think about that either—the guard and into where those voices were coming from. Right into…them. That was their only escape. Nina cursed at herself.

  She turned to Alicia. “Listen to me,” Nina whispered, “Don’t scream. No matter what happens, you stay behind me and you keep up. Not a sound. Understand? Not a sound.”

  Alicia blinked at her. “You’re not Nina.”

  “Just keep up,” Nina peeked again, this time, drawing the short sword from her thigh. Silently, she was already praying for forgiveness for what she was about to do. But also, for help not to have to do anything but run.

  With her other hand, she grabbed Alicia’s and tugged her out of the cell. Together, they moved along the wall back toward the glow of the sconce hanging over the wreckage of what she had done to the first guard, who was still on the ground in a pool of…Nina turned her eyes down the connecting corridor. Behind her were stairs going up into the prison. She didn’t hear anything from there. The battle had drawn them away already, she suspected.

  Alicia’s feet followed Nina, but her face remained fixed on the guard’s body. “Did you—?”

  “There was a fly,” Nina pulled her into the connecting corridor.

  Her eyes searched the dark along the walls between the glows of the two passageways it connected to. Thankfully, there were no torches lighting the corridor, just those of the main passageways. That meant that they had a chance. Maybe.

  The glow of their torches began to fill the passageway they were approaching. Nina adjusted the grip on her sword and slipped her hand from holding Alicia’s.

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  She motioned for Alicia to stay quiet and stay where she was before beginning to creep forward. With her freehand, she pulled one of her many knives out, blade held underhanded. If she had to, she will fight them with every last brea…the wall bows!

  Nina rushed back to Alicia and pulled her into the curve of the wall, engulfing them in shadow as the firelight filled all but where they were. She put her hand over Alicia’s mouth, just in case, listening as they passed.

  It was a whole group of them. At least ten, maybe more, but definitely not less, clinking and clanking with armor and arms.

  Marion held up the torch to the ceiling of the tunnel. “Well,” Marion chuckled. “She did say, ‘X marks the spot.’ Looks like she meant it.”

  He put the tip of the spear to the middle of the painted ‘X’ on the ceiling. She was right about that, too.

  The Paladin’s spear, being just shy of two meters was shorter than a normal spear, fit at an angle a few whacks with the sledgehammers would force it into place. And, because it was made out of steel instead of wood, it won’t bend or break when they do it. It’ll dig into the stones.

  Marion wedged the spear as tightly as he could. “Alright, hit it.”

  The knights began hammering the bottom to push it straight. Dust began pouring over them.

  “Again!” Both of them hammered the handle, slowly pushing it closer and closer to being straight, digging the tip deeper and deeper.

  Marion looked up at it. He couldn’t help but grin through the dust that was raining over them. The woman was almost precise. Where the spear’s tip became a wide cylinder, she had said, would be about where it would end up. Where the top set of spikes would push out when it was activated the way a paladin would when battling a demon.

  “Keep going.”

  Once she was certain they were far enough past, Nina pulled Alicia with her. Unfortunately, she had to follow them for a ways, but then, luckily, she would be turning while they would keep going straight.

  She kept hold of Alicia’s hands after putting the knife back. She kept them close to the wall as they moved quickly—not running—along the wall behind the soldiers, just outside the glow of their torches.

  “We just need to get the boat ready and wait, right?” One of them said and Nina narrowed her eyes, knowing that it was only a few paces down the tunnel across from where she stood to the spot they needed to be.

  She turned back to Alicia. “Do you trust me?”

  Alicia shook her head with a worried look.

  Nina shruggingly nodded at herself as she looked back to the soldiers slowly walking away from them. “I deserve that.”

  The stones in the tunnel shifted, right where she planned. She grinned at those and then to the soldiers.

  “Hey!” She shouted.

  “What are you doing?” Alicia shrieked.

  Nina stepped to the middle of the passageway, tugging Alicia with her. “Hey! Checkered bastards! Your mothers are getting plowed by the pigs tonight!”

  The soldiers whipped around. She flicked her teeth at them as Alicia squirmed behind her and laughed.

  They charged. She grabbed Alicia and ran into the tunnel for where the stones were shifting and stopped on top of them.

  The soldiers slid to make their turns to follow themand charged for them as Nina grabbed hold of Alicia, saying through gritted teeth, “Now, Cleric. Now, Cleric. Now, Cleric.”

  “PLOWING NOW! CLERIC!”

  The spear was straight. Marion pressed and twisted the handle, activating the spikes within the cylinder to spring out. The stones above them cracked and shattered apart, crumbling down on top of them. Along with two women.

  Marion caught Alicia on the side of their escape. One of his knights caught Nina. Neither hit the pile of stones or the spear they fell over. The second knight, however, swung his hammer to catch the feet of the only brave soldier who tried to follow them, sending him spiraling as he plummeted into the rubble.

  The knight with the hammer dropped it to catch Nina when she was tossed across the rubble into his arms. He set her down. The other leapt over the pile, waving at the gaping soldiers staring down at them through the hole in the floor.

  “About time!” Nina said when she caught up to Marion, who was looking Alicia over.

  “I went as fast as I could. Your directions were…”

  “Perfect?” Nina was already jogging ahead of them into the dark of the tunnel.

  “Not the word I’d use to describe it,” Marion said as he took Alicia’s hand.

  He could tell she was in shock. Her legs were moving and that was all they needed. The knights were behind him, drawing their swords as soldiers were dropping through the hole. “They took the boat.”

  “I have a better one,” Nina came to the end of the tunnel and whipped her head to look both ways before stepping into the sewers.

  “Lord help us,” Marion looked to the heavens as he followed. “How many are following?”

  “Two.”

  “Handle them!” Marion called over his shoulder, keeping hold of Alicia’s hand with another on the square of her back as he followed Nina.

  “We’re going to need them where we’re going,” Nina called back. Her pace was getting faster. He didn’t like that.

  “What do you mean by that?” He growled.

  “Where are we going?” Alicia’s voice was raspy, crackling with every syllable.

  “We’re getting you out of here,” Marion answered softly with a warm grin. “By the Prince’s orders.”

  “This was for me?” Alicia blinked at him.

  “Wait until you see the boat,” Nina winked at the end of the sewer tunnel before turning into it.

  Marion didn’t like the sound of that.

  Then, she came back to say, at the same time his knights reemerged behind him with bloody swords and tabards, “Might want to put them in front and move fast. Follow my lead.”

  He really didn’t like the sound of that! Marion motioned for the knights to move into her tunnel before he and Alicia. He let go of Alicia’s hand to pull his mace from his belt. He didn’t wait to find out what they were turning into, he pressed the extender on his mace that made the steel rivets extend.

  Nina sprinted when she saw the glow and shapes of the docks ahead. The canal access to the prison. Deep in the dungeons, deep under the city, hidden away so none would know who or when a prisoner was brought there. But there it was, the Baron’s boat, tethered and waiting. And the rest of those soldiers were funneling down the wooden stairs from the passageway.

  She doubled her pace, drawing her sword and knife again. The knights were behind her, but the gap was widening as she quickened. They cannot take that boat. They will not.

  Nina took a running leap for the top of a tethering pole. Like a spring, it launched her at an angle to the top of the wooden staircase where she stabbed her sword deep through the chest of the soldier about to go down the first step.

  Her momentum knocked him into the man behind him, driving her sword deep through his chain shirt. The three on the stairs looked up to her as the knights finally reached the bottom. One threw his hammer at the man she knocked her victim into. But it was too late. A spear point went through her. She yelped and arched uncontrollably.

  Marion carried Alicia as he leapt from the dock onto the boat. He meant to set her down gently. He dropped her on a folded sail. With a growl, he called, “Sword!”

  On the stairs, the knights were parrying blades and shields, inching their way to Nina. One drew the sword from his foe’s belt and used the cross guard like a hammer to strike the man’s nose.

  Above them, Nina kicked to keep the man she had stabbed as a barricade against the soldiers who were now crowding in from the stairs into the passageway. Her hand was on the spear stuck in her side. Her head was swimming. She could feel the warm liquid draining between her fingers. She kicked.

  One of the knights on the stairs tossed the sword after throwing the soldier over the side of the staircase to splash in the water. Thankfully, he was the closest. Marion caught it by the blade, wincing when it bit skin. He chopped at the ropes to free the boat.

  “Stay here,” Marion said to Alicia. To the closest knight, as he leapt from the boat back onto the dock, “Get her out of here!”

  With sword in one hand and mace in the other, Marion took his place going up the stairs behind the second knight, who was dodging and parrying two soldiers between him and Nina. Nina, who had her back against a wall with a spear stuck in her, kicking and locking her knees to keep a corpse on his feet. Behind that corpse, Marion saw as he came up behind the knight, were many more soldiers.

  “Go!” Nina called, almost drunkenly. Even in the dark, Marion could see her eyes beginning to loll. “I’ll hold them back!”

  Marion reached the knight’s back. He tapped his shoulder. The knight shifted that way.

  Marion stepped with a thrust of his sword and a hammering with his mace at the soldier in his way. The soldier crumpled from the hard strike of the mace after parrying the blade, as expected. Marion shoved past him.

  “At least I got a kiss,” Nina said to herself as Marion finally reached her.

  “You’re not dead yet,” he hooked his mace to his belt.

  Behind him, the boat was pushed off by the knight with Alicia. The knight on the stairs had his last foe in a headlock, using one of the stair posts as a hammer to his face until he stopped struggling. To that one, Marion tossed the sword, handle first, “Catch!”

  The knight caught it with practiced skill and squared himself with the group of soldiers that were desperately trying to push through the corpse she was holding up with her legs.

  She was gritting her teeth. The corpse was starting to lean from blocking the way. A soldier got through. The knight caught him with a lightning fast slash that silenced him before he hit the water.

  “Ready?” Marion put his hands under her.

  “Don’t get too friendly down there, Cleric, I know who you work for,” Nina tried to grin but her pale face was too numb to move her lips to form the words correctly.

  Marion smiled. “Lock your knees.”

  She screamed, arching her head and back, but she did it. It forced the corpse back again, plugging more soldiers from getting through for a moment longer.

  Marion lifted her up into his arms. He didn’t run down the steps past the knight, he jumped down them. The knight followed.

  The corpse fell from the passage opening. Soldiers poured onto the stairs.

  Marion tossed Nina to the arms of the knight in the boat. As the soldiers rushed down the stairs for them, they took a few paces back and sprinted. Both leapt and landed in the boat, rocking it with splashes of water over the sides, leaving the soldiers on the dock in bewilderment.

  Marion first climbed over the rows of seats to Alicia as the knights began rowing. “You okay?”

  She only blinked in answer.

  He grinned, “Good. We’re almost there. You’re safe now.”

  Nina lay on her back, concentrating on keeping her eyes open. The pain was constant. Numbing in a way that felt like her fingertips were on fire, like her legs were being twisted and mauled, like her back was being pulled through her stomach.

  She watched the passing arch of bricks and stones above her, as if the spear handle rising from her side were pointing out the different shapes and sizes for her. That one is almost a circle. That one is kind of white. That one is the same shade of gray as the Prince’s chin scruff. That one is…Marion.

  She gritted her teeth and winced at him. “Plowing cleric, I was having a moment.”

  “You’ll have plenty more. Let me look,” Marion pulled her hand away from the spear.

  Nina couldn’t quite breathe, but couldn’t quite stop either. She was ready. She had saved her. That was all she wanted to do. To save someone who deserved it. To help someone who deserved it for once. That was her job, wasn’t it? This was as good as any time to finish. As good as any time to let go. And, she put her bloody hand to her lips while ignoring Marion's tightening grip around the spear, she got to taste him.

  Marion tugged the spear from her side. Her scream echoed through the dark tunnel.

  She slapped him.

  He laughed as he tossed the spear into the water.

  “Why?” Nina huffed at him. Then she saw him raise his hands up to the sky in prayer and let herself sink back down, blinking. “Oh, right.” She looked through those stones and bricks, past their shapes and colors, as Marion put his glowing hands to her wound. “I always forget to say thank you. I’m not going to forget this time.”

  Her bleeding stopped.