Curse the Dawn
Page 23

When I looked again, Pritkin was regarding the exploded block with a scowl. “We don’t have much time,” I told him, getting back to my feet. “Marlowe said it’s a twenty-minute hike to the surface from here.”
“I know. Raphael showed us the schematics. Caleb is working on a faster alternative.” But he continued to kneel there, scowling fiercely.
“Pritkin! Come on! What are you waiting for?”
“Inspiration,” he said, gesturing at the cells. “It’s worse than I thought. If the outer wards had held, the walls would be stable. But they’re buckling under the weight from above. That means that the only thing keeping this place intact are the inner wards.”
“The inner wards?”
“The ones on the cells.”
I looked at the row of prisoners and my jaw dropped. “But . . . how are we going to get everyone out? If we disable the wards—”
“Then the weight from above will crush us all,” he finished grimly. “And once they go down, they aren’t going back up again. Not with this kind of damage.”
“Crap.”
“Exactly.” He stared at a cell for a few seconds. “If we can preserve the wards on at least half the cells, it should buy us enough time to get away.”
“Get away how? Because I can’t shift out this many!”
He glanced at me as if surprised that I’d be worried by a little thing like that. “I can get them out as long as enough wards remain to keep the roof up.”
His tone made it sound like getting through thirty-five yards of rockfall in roughly that many minutes was no big deal. I opened my mouth to ask for specifics and then realized we didn’t have time. Besides, if Pritkin said he had a plan, then he did, and it would probably work. But that didn’t mean I had to like it. “You’re talking about leaving half these people to die.”
“Not necessarily.” His gaze turned considering. “You could shift in.”
It took me a second to get it. “I could bypass the wards, and bring the people out with me!”
“If you can shift that precisely. There’s not much room for error.”
I glanced at the nearest cell, which held a large, hairy, tattooed man in a tank top. There was very little extra space that I could see around him. But in the next cell was a slim woman, and between her and the ward there was maybe two feet. “I can try,” I agreed.
I shifted past the ward and inside the woman’s cell. It was a tight fit, and there was some sort of energy field that wrapped around my limbs like a blanket, trying to paralyze me. I didn’t give it time, just grabbed her wrist and shifted out again.
“How much energy did that cost you?” Pritkin asked, catching her before she could collapse.
“Not much. But I won’t fit in all the cells.”
“Do the best you can,” he told me, glancing up at the swaying light fixtures. The place was becoming rapidly more unstable. Every moment we stayed upped the chances of our getting killed by falling debris before the place could crush us to death. “And make sure you keep back enough energy to get yourself out of here, if this goes wrong.”
“Sure, because it’s not like any of this was my fault,” I said sarcastically.
He grabbed my arm hard enough to hurt. “I mean it.”
I blinked at him, taking in the tense set of his jaw, the tight press of his mouth and the more-than-slightly-maniacal gleam in his eyes. I’d never tell Pritkin this, but there were times when he really reminded me of a vamp. He had the same way of flipping into the scariest person in history, and then flipping right back out and never noticing the difference.
“Okay,” I said meekly.
He nodded curtly and moved to the cell with the tattooed man. He started on the wards and I went to work avoiding them. The tiny hops, only a few feet at a time, didn’t take much energy, but there were a lot of cells. And no matter what I’d promised Pritkin, I couldn’t look into people’s faces and tell them, Hey, sorry you have to die, but I’m getting really tired.
By the time I reached the end of the row, I was soaked in perspiration, my skin was a sickly white and my hands were shaking violently. I leaned against the wall and watched Pritkin release another person the old-fashioned way. Together, we’d freed about thirty people, most of whom were lolling drunkenly against walls or sprawled unconscious on the floor.
Pritkin glanced at me and frowned. “Take a break,” he said curtly.
“How? We aren’t even halfway yet.” And I hadn’t seen what was on the next corridor.
Pritkin’s eyes moved from me to the cells to the half-unconscious young man who had just fallen into his arms. He had wavy black hair pulled into a short ponytail, pale skin and an athlete’s body. He looked to be around thirty. Pritkin propped him against the wall and shook him. The young man stirred, blinked his eyes open and looked up groggily. Just in time to get slapped hard across the face.
“What are you doing?!”
“Bringing him around. Some of the prisoners are war mages—or used to be. They can help open the cells.”
“What are war mages doing in here?”
“The current administration has a habit of locking away those who get too vocal against its policies,” he said shortly.
Two more blocks burst from the wall before I could comment. The once orderly pattern was starting to look like a toddler with missing teeth. “There’s another cell block beyond this one,” Pritkin said. “Although with any luck, it isn’t fully occupied. Can you finish here?”
I nodded and he slipped around the corner. I stumbled down the corridor and knelt beside the mage. “Wake up! We need your help!”
He looked up at me with bleary eyes. They were a weird color, almost no-color, like rocks viewed through river water. I took another look at the number of cells remaining and then pulled my arm back and slapped him as hard as I could.
“I’m awake!” he said heatedly, his eyes sharpening up fast. “What’s happening?”
“A ley line ruptured, destroying most of MAGIC. We’re trying to get everyone out, but a cave-in cut off the passageway from the prison wing. We need you to help release the rest of the prisoners while we look for a way out!”
“There isn’t one,” he said, sitting up with his hands on his head, like a hangover victim. “It’s a prison. It’s supposed to keep people in.”
“If you want to live, you’ll help us think of one,” I said grimly.
“The Circle will rescue us.”
“The Circle evacuated an hour ago!”
“I don’t think so,” he told me nastily. “We’re war mages. We don’t simply abandon our colleagues.”
“Then what are you doing in here?’
He glared at me. “That’s none of your concern! The point is that you’re wrong.”
“You’ll figure out otherwise in about twenty-five minutes,” I said. “But it’ll be a little late.”
“Fuck that.” The red-haired woman I’d noticed earlier had come around. She crossed to the other side of the corridor and started working on the ward imprisoning a tall Asian woman. “I’m not dying today.”
The corridor shook again, and the war mage gave a start. He noticed the missing blocks, and for some reason, they seemed to shake him. “The external wards are down. Why?”
“Because they’re being crushed from above by a few thousand tons of rock!”
The older balding man had slipped to one side and was trying to pull himself up on shaky arms, but they kept collapsing. “Are you okay?” I asked.
“I’ll be all righ’,” he slurred. “’N a minute.”
“The longer you’re in stasis, the worse it gets,” the redhead told me as her friend collapsed into her arms. “What’s the date?”
I told her and she nodded with no visible reaction, but the war mage gripped my arm. “You’re lying!”
“Yeah, because that’s what I feel like doing when a mountain is about to drop on my head!” I told him, exasperated. “Lie about trivialities!”
“It isn’t trivial. If you’re telling the truth, I’ve been in here for over six months!”
“And you’re going to die in here if you don’t move your war mage ass,” the redhead told him. The corridor was shaking pretty much continually now, the situation deteriorating every second. It seemed to do more than her words to convince him, and he staggered to his feet.
The balding man was also up, although he looked like death—gray faced and slack-jawed. But he stumbled over to a cell and started working on it.And the Asian woman was already on her feet and working furiously beside the redhead.
“If the way is blocked, how did you get in?” the war mage demanded, starting on a nearby cell.
“I’m Pythia.”
He blinked, taking in my damp, ragged outfit—now liberally smeared with dust—and my frazzled hair. “What happened to Lady Phemonoe?”
“The same thing that’s about to happen to us! Minus the crushing thing. Does it matter?”
“No, no.” He looked confused. “I apologize, Lady. I didn’t realize who you were. Peter Tremaine, at your service.” And he actually bowed.
I stared at him. A courteous war mage. The world really was coming to an end.
And then Pritkin ran back around the corner followed by half a dozen groggy people. He glanced at the cells that still had to be emptied. “You aren’t done yet?” he demanded.
The world righted itself.
“Commander!” Tremaine came to a pretty good approximation of attention, considering that he was still swaying on his feet. “We are proceeding apace with the extrication, sir!”
I blinked at him and then looked at Pritkin. “Commander?”
“Later. Get the rest of them out!”
“We’ll be done in a minute,” I told him. Half of the freed prisoners were now lucid and working on the cells.