Wren Whitlock's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

The sealed relic sat on the desk between them, cold now, its grooves gone dark. Wren could feel the hunter through the floorboards the way she felt weather in her wrist. He was on the stair, or the roof, or the alley below. She did not know which. She only knew that if she carried the slab out her door, he would see it before her boot touched the second step. "He'll spot it," she said. "Wrapped, boxed, under a coat. Doesn't matter. He knows the shape." Cornelius rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. Eleven days without sleep had left him gray. "Then we don't use the door." "There isn't another door." "There's a floor." He tapped his boot on the boards. "Under this whole row of shops. Runs down to the river. My grandfather used it to move brandy he shouldn't have had." Wren stared at him. "A tunnel." "Smugglers' tunnel. Sealed at both ends now. The near end comes up through a coal hatch two buildings over. I can pick that lock in a minute." "And the hunter?" "Watches doors. Not cellars." She wanted to argue. She had no better plan. She wrapped the relic in oilcloth, then in a scribe's satchel meant for finished pages. It weighed like a paving stone. She tucked the folded scrap — I am afraid — deeper into her sleeve. They went down through the trapdoor slowly, one rung at a time. The shop below was dark and empty. Cornelius led her past the back stove to a low panel behind a flour barrel. He pried it up. Cold air came out, wet iron underneath it. Wren froze. "That smell." "Coal damp," he said. "Not him. I checked this morning." They crawled through. Two buildings over, he lifted a coal hatch from below and eased it aside. Wren climbed out into a soot-blackened cellar. A black cat sat on the stack of sacks, watching, its eyes catching lantern light. It did not move. It did not run. She thought, absurdly, that it belonged to no one. The tunnel mouth was set in the far wall — an old stone arch, stained, patched, older than the building above it. Cornelius worked the padlock with a bent pick. It gave. Wren looked back once at the ladder that led up to her loft. Her mentor would come tomorrow and find the door bolted from outside. He would think she was sulking again. She had no way to warn him without writing it. She stepped into the tunnel. The dark swallowed the lantern down to a coin of light. Behind them, the cat slipped through the arch and followed, silent as a held breath. Cornelius pulled the gate shut. The lock clicked. They were under the streets now, carrying a sealed thing a hunter wanted, and only one of them knew the way out.