Dara's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

The lock gave under the pick with a soft click. Dara pulled the grate open and slipped through. Beyond it, the tunnel opened into a low room of gray stone. Cold air pressed against her mask. She had crossed under the wall. She stood inside the camp now. But the camp was a maze of cells and corridors, and she did not know which held Kael. She could not search every door. One wrong turn would drop her in front of a patrol. She crouched in the shadow and listened. Boots. Not marching. Light steps, steady, the sound of someone who belonged here. Then a woman came around the corner with a clipboard in one hand. She wore a stained kitchen apron. She stopped when she saw Dara, and her mouth opened, but no cry came out. "You're not a guard," the woman said. Her voice stayed low and flat. "Guards don't hide." Dara did not move. "I'm looking for the musician. Kael Prent." The clipboard dropped an inch in the woman's hand. Something changed in her face. "Why." "To get him out." The woman crossed to Dara fast and gripped her sleeve. "Elara," she said. "I bring him food. I've been trying to find a way out for a month." She glanced back down the corridor. "He's below. In the cellar. Not this floor." Dara's chest tightened. She had crawled all this way and Kael was one floor down, behind a locked steel door she had not seen yet. "Take me to him." Elara shook her head. "Not now. Shift change is coming. Two guards walk this hall in minutes." She named it plainly, without fear in her voice, though her hand shook against Dara's arm. "You go back through your hole. Wait." "I can't wait. I'm this close." "You're this close to a cell of your own." Elara pressed the clipboard flat against her own chest, the way a person steadies a thing that won't stay still. "I feed him at dawn. No one questions me in the cellar. I check the root vegetables." A thin smile. "Come at dawn. I'll leave the cellar door unbolted. You'll walk right to him." Dara heard the boots then, far off, growing. Two sets. The shift Elara had warned of. She backed toward the grate. "Dawn," Elara said. "The door on the low level, black steel, red light above it. I'll kill the bolt." She turned and walked toward the boots, clipboard raised, already the trusted woman with a task. Dara pulled the grate shut behind her and pressed low in the tunnel. She knew where Kael was now. She had a way in. But the way in belonged to someone else's hands, and the guards would change again by dawn. She had traded blind wandering for a locked steel door and a promise she could not test until morning.