The room without echo

The patrol reached the cistern without meeting anyone. Too easily.

Vhaelyn had two guards placed at each entrance. Nym was led near the wall, under the supervision of a crossbowman. Zaelyra put the map on a box and compared the chalk marks to the measurements taken the day before.

"The boat has disappeared," she says.

"They know we're coming," Vhaelyn replied.

A noise sounds above them. Then a second, closer. The guards raised their weapons. The water from the cistern shivered, but nothing came out of it.

Nym leaned on the floor. "It's not above. It's behind the wall."

A rattling answered behind the wall. A joint, invisible until then in the rock, was drawn; a panel pivoted inward, revealing a low room. The mechanism should have returned its noise against the walls; the sound went out as soon as the threshold was crossed. Three people were crouched there: an old drow, a teenager and a girl with pale hair. The girl held a wooden box against her. The old woman had a wound to her side.

The crossbowmen aimed at them.

"Lower your weapons," Zaelyra ordered.

"They entered the territory of the House," says Vhaelyn.

"They are unarmed."

"They can be baits."

The old woman raised her hands. "We are looking for the relay. We were told that the guide would come back."

Vhaelyn signaled to the guards not to move forward. The two closest ones retreated to the first corner, without lowering their weapons. "Do you know his name?"

"No."

"You received the plate of an open circle."

The old woman glanced towards the corridor. "I received a mark. Not a plate."

"How long have you been waiting? Zaelyra asked.

"Two days."

"Why didn't we leave?"

"The boy couldn't walk anymore. The old woman pointed to Pell. "And the guards had closed the way behind us. My name is Sszindi."

The soldiers exchanged a look. Vhaelyn noticed it.

"Did you see any house guards?"

"We saw their lamps. We didn't wait to see their faces."

Zaelyra knelt near the wound. The blood had dried on the bandage, but the wound continued to ooze. She asked for water and a clean band.

"If you take care of her, she will talk," says one of the guards.

"If I don't treat her, she will die before she can do it."

Vhaelyn let a silence pass, then stretched a strip of fabric herself. The guard who had spoken looked away.

"I transported goods for Houses that did not greet each other," says Sszindi. "My husband refused a shipment whose contents no one wanted to know. We declared him a thief and we seized our house. I fled with a group of travelers; the flooded gallery separated us."

"Are there others? Zaelyra asked.

Sszindi clenched his teeth while the band tightened around his side. "Maybe. I don't know who managed to get through."

"You don't tell us everything," says Vhaelyn.

"I don't know everything. It's different."

Vhaelyn displeased the answer, but she did not dispute it.

Zaelyra felt the weight of her sister's gaze. "Who told you that?"

"A man with an open circle plate. He said the road was safe."

Rhylor? She held back from looking at the entrance.

Vhaelyn approached the injured woman, without lowering her guard. "How many are you?"

"The ones you see."

"This is not an answer."

"It is the only one that will not put other lives in danger."

Zaelyra saw that the old woman had kept her right hand under her coat. Not near a weapon: near the inner seam. She could hide another sheet, a name, or nothing at all.

"Do you have another map? She asked.

Sszindi looked at Vhaelyn before answering. "I have a piece. It indicates a dry well, but I don't know if we can go down there."

"Why didn't you show it to us?"

"Because you asked me how many we were, not where we were going."

Zaelyra nodded. She could have insisted. Instead, she waited.

After a long time, Sszindi took out a folded leather square. The layout had been scraped in several places, then completed in a more recent ink. Three different hands had left marks on it.

"I didn't draw that," says the old woman. "The one who gave it to me said that he himself had received the piece from another."

"Do you know his name? Zaelyra asked.

"He didn't give me his name. He asked for mine."

Zaelyra examined the edge of the leather. The first route stopped at a crack; the second bypassed it, but without measuring the slope. She understood why Sszindi did not want to deliver the names. This map was perhaps the only proof that a road existed, and the only thing that could lead those who knew it to them.

"We can copy it without writing your name," says Zaelyra.

"What if the copy falls into the hands of the guards?"

"Then she will show them a well that we don't know if it's practicable."

Vhaelyn frowned. "This is not a guarantee."

"No. This is the limit of what we know."

Zaelyra returned the leather to Sszindi. The old woman didn't take it back right away. Then she slipped it under her bandage, where no register would look for it.

The girl opened her box. It contained tiny maps, folded into an accordion. Zaelyra recognized the writing of the open circle and a note on the back, written in an older hand:

Do’Urden. Didn't hit.

The name was no longer just a rumor of Bazaar. He reappeared, on the back of these maps, among the marks of those who had taken the passages.

A guard snatched one of the small unfolded maps from the girl. Vhaelyn grabs his wrist.

"Not like that," she says.

The order was not for Zaelyra. He was for everyone.

The moment was short-lived. A whistle split the air from the corridor. An arrow was planted in the box, near the map. A second struck the stone and detached a splinter that was planted in the thigh of a guard. The young soldier who ran to shoot him under cover hit the edge of the box; a cut drew a red line on his cheek.

The lights flickered; in the outer passage, silhouettes were running.

"Reply!" shouted Vhaelyn.

The guards dispersed to hold the angles. Zaelyra threw herself at the teenager, who had frozen. Nym guided the old woman to the cornice. Vhaelyn covered the girl, then turned to her sister.

"The low exit!"

So she knew. Or she had understood at the same moment.

Zaelyra picked up one of the maps on the cash register. The girl tightened her fingers around the box. They didn't shoot at each other.

"Can you take us to the relay? Zaelyra asked.

"If you don't deliver us."

The steps of the pursuers were approaching. Vhaelyn met Zaelyra's gaze. "Decide."

For the first time, his sister did not give him an order.

Zaelyra reached out to the girl.

The girl didn't take it right away. She inspected Zaelyra's fingers, the dagger on her belt, then the guards behind her. It wasn't fear without thought. She measured the distances and the exits.

Zaelyra put her dagger on the ground and slid it towards Vhaelyn.

"She won't follow me because I ask," she says. "She must be able to choose."

Vhaelyn took the weapon, then took a step back. "The low exit remains open until the next change of guard. After that, I will not be able to guarantee that she will still be."

"If we take it, Nym will not be at the temple before the ignition," says Zaelyra.

"No."

"You can still stop us."

"Yes."

"You let us go? Zaelyra asked.

"I leave a road open."

"Is it a difference?"

"This is the difference between saving you and helping you. I won't make one for you."

The girl then took her outstretched hand. She kept the other one on her box.