Champion Kevintor Neverloss's Arc

Chapter 2 of 42

The hatch closed over Kevintor's head and the daylight went with it. Lina led him down a ladder cut into raw stone. He counted forty rungs before his boots hit packed dirt. The owl hood blinded him on the sides. He pushed it back enough to see her shoulders moving ahead in the lantern light. She had not looked back once since the panel sealed. He kept one hand near his belt and watched the way her swords rode her hips. A woman who had found him in three years could lose him to the guards in three minutes. The passage forked. Lina turned left without slowing. Kevintor stopped. "Why this way." "Guards sit above the right fork," she said. "They watch the steps through a slit in the stone wall outside. The wall has a blind corner. We pass under it." She did not turn around. "You can stand there and ask, or you can walk." He walked. A few paces on, she pulled a charm from inside her collar and let it hang. A small bronze disc, a knot stamped into its face. "I keep what I'm owed," she said. "Both ways. You walk out, you owe me a night. I walk you into a cell, I get nothing. Think it through." They came to a low wooden frame set into the rock, dark panels stacked at its sides. Lina put a hand flat on the left panel and slid it. The gap was narrow. She stepped through and waited. Kevintor stopped at the threshold. Past her shoulder he saw a second lantern, unlit, and beyond that a bend he could not see around. If men waited at that bend, he would die in the hood of a messenger. He thought of the old man's warning. He thought of every fight he had walked into knowing less. He pulled the hood off his head and dropped it at his feet. "If you sold me," he said, "I want them to see my face when they try." Lina looked at the hood on the ground. Then at him. The corner of her mouth moved. "Good," she said. "I don't like hoods either." She lit the second lantern off her own and held it out to him. He took it. Their hands did not touch. She turned and walked. He followed her around the bend. The passage opened into a small chamber. No guards. A single iron door stood in the far wall, banded and old, a square slot at eye height. Lina stepped aside. "Past this is yours," she said. "I don't go in. I wait here. You come out, we leave together. You don't come out, I keep the charm and go home." Kevintor set his hand on the door. It was warm. Something on the other side was breathing.