The Betrayed Read online

  Thimeon and Siyen were silent for a time before Thimeon spoke. “The prince has been put in the dungeon.”

  Siyen looked up in surprise. Whether real or feigned, Thimeon could not tell. “When? How?”

  “I thought you might know.”

  Siyen stopped in the street. “You don’t trust me,” she accused. Even in the pale light of a distant street lantern, the red of her face was visible.

  “Are you surprised?” Thimeon asked. “I don’t know how or why you abandoned our company. Some of our companions worried that you were captured. Others wondered if you had betrayed us.”

  “And since you now know that I wasn’t captured—?”

  “The thought crossed my mind,” Thimeon admitted. “Of course, I wouldn’t be here with you if I thought you had betrayed us to our enemy rather than simply abandoned us.” Then he smiled. “Or maybe I would. Who knows? I’m desperate enough. I have to take some chances.” He looked at her more closely. “I also need to give some chances.”

  Siyen turned away. “I’m not looking for more chances,” she replied coldly. Then she sighed. “In any case, I didn’t betray the prince. If you want to know the truth, I was just scared. I never should have joined the company in the first place. It was too much. When everybody left me alone in that room, I couldn’t bring myself to follow you. I just turned and hid.”

  “You hid? Where? We went back to search for you.”

  “Where do you think?” she asked with a half-mocking and half-angry glare. “It was the easiest and most obvious thing in the world. I went back into the passageways.” She hurried on with her story before Thimeon could say anything. “I stayed there for a day, alone in the dark and without food, feeling sorry for myself. But after a while I got hungry and bored. Nobody came looking for me. So—knowing I’d eventually have to find my way out—I began exploring. I ventured out a few times to get food and water, and by listening through the walls I discovered that the guards were no longer searching for us. I guessed by then you had made it out of the city. So I found my way into a guest room and permanently borrowed some clothing—something less conspicuous than the stuff I had been wearing for several days in captivity. Then I washed my face and hands and walked out the front gate like a departing guest. Nobody said a thing to me.”

  Thimeon laughed. “So that was the riddle. None of us even thought you might go back into the passageways. Quite resourceful.”

  “None of you gave me much credit. You thought I left just for greed.”

  “Do you blame me?” Thimeon asked. “I saw you in the treasure chamber. First you pocketed enough treasure to make yourself wealthy. Then, the next chance you got, you disappeared.”

  Siyen turned her back on Thimeon and started walking. He caught up with her and put his hand on her shoulder. “What would you have thought?” When she didn’t answer, he went on. “Then I heard about the prince, that he was arrested—probably for aiding our escape.”

  “And I’m the only one who knew, right?” Siyen replied sharply. “I tell you again that I didn’t betray him. I told nobody. Nobody but Lyn. I wouldn’t have told even him, except I needed somebody’s help, and so I had to explain our whole story in order to convince him that I knew where the treasure was. But don’t worry about him. He’s as greedy as you think I am.”

  “Where did you meet Lyn?”

  “Same place you did, a few days earlier. Same table, in fact. Quite by accident, of course. But he was very helpful to me when I needed it.”

  After that Thimeon was silent. They walked together for a while, making their way through the dusty city. When they neared the high fortified palace wall, they veered right and skirted around the east side of the hill through a row of expensive shops and past several mansions with large private gardens and marble fountains. Most of the mansions ended against the walls of the palace. Candles illuminated a few of the windows, but the houses were silent.

  Then they came to a section of Citadel with smaller houses where the poorer workers of the city lived. Many of these houses were empty, though others looked overcrowded. They were north of the palace now, where its walls rose the highest. To the south two tall towers blotted out whole swath of stars. Eventually Siyen pointed out an alley and a place along the wall that Kayam had described to her. They took a final look around to make sure nobody was watching, then disappeared down the alley.

  At the end stood a run-down two-story house. Siyen knocked on the door. When nobody answered, she checked the heavy latch. It opened as easily as Kayam told her it would. They cast a quick glance at each other, then entered. Once inside Thimeon lit his lantern. The light cast a flickering glow upon a vacant dusty house.

  “Spooky,” Siyen whispered. Thimeon thought the same but didn’t say anything. They found the stairs and climbed to the second floor, then wandered around until they found the hatch in the ceiling. They set down the lantern, and Thimeon lifted Siyen, who pushed the hatch back and climbed through. Then he leapt up, caught a hold of the edge, and pulled himself through after her. They stood atop a flat roof in the starlight looking upward at the high stone walls that guarded the king. The wall was just out of reach past the edge of the house and towered over them seventy feet or more.

  “Right on time,” Thimeon said, looking up at the moon.

  “The wall is high,” Siyen whispered in awe. The confidence and even haughtiness she had displayed while they sat in the tavern was gone from her voice. “We’re supposed to climb that?”

  Thimeon didn’t answer. He stood on the rooftop with Siyen for several minutes waiting nervously for Kayam to appear. Finally a flicker of a candle illuminated a window high above them. An instant later a man stuck his head out, then looked down at the rooftops below and along the wall in both directions. The face disappeared. A moment later a long rope came falling out.

  Siyen took a nervous breath. “You don’t have to come up,” Thimeon said. “It will be a long climb.”

  “I’m not going to be left out,” Siyen replied. “This was my idea. Besides,” she added with a forced smile. “I want my share, and I don’t trust Lyn or Kayam.”

  “There are some things treasure cannot buy,” Thimeon said cryptically.

  Then he turned away from her. The rope hung against the castle wall, almost out of reach. He removed his sword from his waist and slung it over his shoulder. Then, with Siyen anchoring him, he reached out and grabbed the rope. He gave one last glance around before starting up.

  The climb was long but not difficult. The rope was stout and easy to grip, and the old stone provided good footing. Fortunately, the palace inhabitants feared no invasion and the wall was not closely guarded.

  Thimeon rested briefly on a ledge about two thirds of the way and was at the window in four minutes. Grabbing the ledge, he pulled himself through into an empty room. A pair of candles in the far wall by the door lit the room. Once his feet were safely on the floor, he turned and looked back down. Siyen had already started her climb. He checked once more to ensure that the rope was secure, then turned to watch. Just a dozen feet up, Siyen’s footing slipped. She twisted around, dangling by her arms, looking as though she was going to fall. But she regained her balance almost at once, and didn’t slip again after that.

  When she arrived at the top, sweaty and out of breath, Thimeon pulled her through the window. While she caught her breath, he pulled in the rope, coiled it, and dropped it in his pack.

  “Where is Kayam?” Siyen finally asked.

  “I don’t know. The room was empty when I got here. Could it be a trap?”

  “I don’t know Kayam,” Siyen admitted. “Lyn brought him into this.”

  “And how well do you know Lyn?” Thimeon asked. Siyen didn’t answer. “You said you didn’t trust either of them, but you must have some reason to trust them, or you wouldn’t be doing this.”

  Still, Siyen did not speak.
/>   Thimeon shrugged. He didn’t like the fact that she had no answer. But he could do nothing now. He was committed to the plan.

  He girded his sword, and they went to the door. He was relieved to find it unlocked. He looked outside. A uniformed soldier stood guard at the end of the corridor with his back to them. At the sound of the door opening, the man looked back. It had been too dark to see the figure in the window earlier, but this was the face he had seen in the Dagger’s Water the evening before. The one he assumed was Kayam. The man signaled with his hand that all was okay, then turned around again.

  “Which way?” Siyen asked Thimeon as they stepped out into the hall.

  “You don’t know?” Thimeon asked, his fear rising up again. “I thought you planned this all. You spent more time—”

  Siyen put her hand over his mouth and cupped it there angrily. “Nobody forced you to join us. This is the best place Kayam could bring us. Are you going to help or complain?” She pulled her hand away. “We’re going to have to make some guesses. That’s all. Unlike last time, nobody should be looking for us. And Kayam said this part of the palace is nearly empty. If you have any ideas, let me know. Otherwise we explore.”

  Thimeon nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay. We’ve come around to the northwest side of the castle. The dungeons—at least the ones in which we were held prisoner—are on the south against the hill. The treasure chamber is near them. The first question, I suppose, is how to get into the passageways. And we need to make sure we get to the system connected to the dungeon and not to the tunnel leading out to the cliffs.”

  “That was our plan,” Siyen said. “We might as well start somewhere. If we don’t see something we recognize from before, we can go room to room if we have to.”

  “What if we enter one that’s occupied?” Thimeon wondered aloud.

  “We’ll have to take the risk. Anyway, as I discovered earlier. Koranth prefers prisoners to guests.” She stepped across the hall to the nearest door. Just as her hand touched the latch, they heard approaching footsteps. Thimeon looked up the hall. Kayam had disappeared from his post. The footsteps grew louder, and with the sound of the steps came several voices.

  “Move quickly,” Thimeon warned in a whisper.

  “It’s bolted!” Siyen replied. Her panicked eyes met his just as four guards in uniform came marching around the corner. Without explanation, Thimeon pushed Siyen against the door and held her there with his body.

  “Wha—?” she started. Thimeon silenced her by pressing his lips against hers. She stopped struggling, slipped her arms around his back, and returned the kiss even more enthusiastically. The footsteps came closer. The voices slowed. There were a few low whistles and laughs as the soldiers marched past.

  When the footsteps disappeared down the far end of the hall, Thimeon released Siyen. “I’m sorry,” he said. Siyen didn’t say a thing. She turned away from the door beside her and took a few steps down the hall to the next one. It opened easily. They searched the room for hidden panels, trying various lantern holders and knobs. They found nothing.

  When they stepped out of the room, Kayam was waiting for them. Thimeon got his first close look at the old soldier since seeing him in the smoke of the Dagger’s Water. He was a short man but tough and muscular with a scruffy gray beard and thinning black and gray hair. He had an old scar across the left side of his neck that dropped down to his shoulder and disappeared behind his tunic. “That was close,” he muttered. “I know two of those guys. If they had seen me here, there would have been some dung.”

  “I thought you were supposed to be on guard,” Siyen said with a concerned frown. “We based our plan on that.”

  “I am,” he grumbled back at her. “But this ain’t my usual beat. There are more rooms in this place than fires in Entain, and they look about the same to me as two logs in a burning pile. I’ve been here for years, and I still get lost.” He paused and for the first time looked Thimeon up and down with a scowl. Then he turned back to Siyen. “I was just trying to guess where in the castle you had been from your description—which wasn’t all that good, if you remember. This window was close, but it didn’t matter as there ain’t many other ways I could have gotten you in anyway. Not safely. Let’s hope we figured it out right, or we could be wading through a lot of dung looking for those passageways of yours.”

  “Well, try to warn us next time someone’s coming,” Siyen grumbled.

  As they walked toward the next door, she introduced Kayam to Thimeon by name. Kayam grunted a greeting but said little. He returned to the end of the hall to take up his position. Thimeon and Siyen entered the next room, but another five-minute search revealed nothing. They moved on to the next room and the next after that. In each room, they tried the same trick they’d seen the prince use many days earlier to reveal the hidden panel. But they were either in the wrong rooms or just using the wrong approach. How many rooms did the palace have? Thimeon wondered again. Probably hundreds. And how many connected to the secret passages? At least two. They really were trying to find a snowflake in a snowball, as his father used to say. His hopes faltered.

  The fifth room, which was the last in the hall, was bolted from the inside. They moved past it and around the corner into the next hall. “We need to split up,” Thimeon said. “We have to move faster.”

  Siyen nodded. He went down the right side of the hall while she tried the left. Kayam remained on guard behind them. After visiting four more rooms on each side and finding nothing, Thimeon was even more nervous. He could see that Siyen was just as tense. “Let’s try another hall,” he suggested.

  “One more room first,” Siyen replied. Thimeon nodded and went in the next door on the right. When he came out, Siyen stood in the doorway across the hall beckoning him with an eager expression on her face. “I found it,” she announced. “Go get Kayam.”

  15

  KAYAM’S CHOICE

  Though he knew they were still far from their goal, Thimeon breathed a sigh of relief. Soon he and his new partners stood in the room with the door bolted behind them. Siyen had already found the lever opening up a low door in a wooden panel against the back wall. It was just like the panel in the room they were in several days earlier. It could have been the same room; they all looked alike. Still, it was so well hidden that if she hadn’t seen the other one work, she never would have found it.

  Now they looked inside the passage. The tunnel was dark, and neither of his new companions appeared eager to enter. Thimeon pulled a lantern off the wall, lit it with his candle, and crawled through the doorway first. Siyen and Kayam followed.

  Once more, Thimeon wandered in the secret passageways of the palace at Citadel. They were in the upper levels where the walls were of unfinished wood. As he remembered, it was narrow. Just wide enough for a man to walk straight with his shoulders brushing both walls.

  “All these years, and I had no idea,” Kayam mumbled as he looked around. He looked over his shoulder at Siyen. “I guess you didn’t do so badly remembering which part of the castle you were in after all.”

  Siyen ignored him. “We’ve got to go down,” she said to Thimeon.

  Thimeon nodded. Although having heard Siyen’s story, he guessed she knew the passageways better than he did. At present he could go only one direction, and it would have been difficult for her to get past the two men and into the lead. So he turned and made his way along the passage as quickly as he could without making too much noise. For he didn’t know which rooms were occupied or how well sound would travel through the walls.

  He followed the passage for several dozen yards. It rounded a sharp corner, cut low under an arch connecting two brick fireplace chimneys, and then went straight for several more yards. They went past many low doors in the walls on both sides, suggesting that a fair number of rooms had secret panels, and came to a dead end at the bottom of a narrow winding staircase leading upward. At a little lan
ding, the three of them gathered. “No reason to go up, right?” he asked Siyen.

  She shook her head. “Not if you want to reach the dungeons or treasure chamber.”

  Thimeon thought back on their escape several days earlier. Not all the passageways connected. They had had to go up several flights in order to reach a point where they could get from one passage to another. What if this was a similar situation? There was no way to know. He would have to trust Siyen. “Lead the way back, then,” he said.

  Kayam mumbled a few curses, but Siyen turned and led the way, backtracking along the same corridor to their starting point. Several minutes gone, Thimeon thought, but he could do nothing about it.

  They marched off in the other direction. The passage went ten yards past where they had entered it before bending around a corner and reaching a branch. One way continued straight while another led through a brick arch to the left. They followed the straight path, and the choice paid off. Around the next corner they came to a narrow staircase going down. They descended and found themselves on a landing similar to the place where they had earlier turned around.

  Another doubt arose in Thimeon’s thoughts. “I suppose we can find our way back,” he said.

  “If we don’t face more turns than this, we can,” Siyen replied. “We just need to count flights of steps. In any case, with the rope we should be able to get out anywhere. Getting in is the tough part, right? We can probably just march out the front gate. It worked before.”

  “Won’t be easy,” Kayam said. “Since the prince was arrested a few days ago, this is more like a tomb than a castle. If the guards at the gate don’t know you, or if they smell dung on your shoes, as my mom would say, they won’t let you out or in.”

  “They know you,” Siyen pointed out. “You’ve got a uniform on.”