The Ship Beyond Time (The Girl from Everywhere #2)(37)

I clambered to my feet; as I did, my hip twanged. I winced, putting my hand against my side. There was a hard lump there—the gun. Ugh. What a bruise that would make.

Brushing dirt from my clothes, I found something wet had wicked through the wool of my cloak. The sandy ground was quite damp here, so close to the harbor—and under the fish market. My torch had been snuffled out in the fall. Wrinkling my nose, I sniffed at the stain, but thankfully it was only saltwater, though it had wet my book of matches.

“Give me a moment.” Blake’s head was silhouetted against the light, perhaps ten feet overhead. “I’ll be back with another torch.”

He disappeared, taking the light with him, and the darkness wrapped around me like a shroud. I swallowed. Stretching out my arms, I could barely see as far as my fingertips. It seemed to take a very long time for him to return.

“Stand aside!”

I retreated to the edge of the circle of light. The shadows leaped back as Blake dropped a makeshift flambeau, a sailcloth wrapped around a scrap of board. I snatched it up from the silty floor and brandished it against the cowering dark.

The tunnel was tubelike, with a barrel ceiling and a ledge running along the wall at about the height of my shoulders. High above, drains were dark pockets in the brick. It must have been a sewer, after all, although now the waterways were fairly dry. The stones here were rough, and sections of the wall were made of crumbling mortar. I peered upward—the ribs of the vault had weakened under the hole. More bricks were scattered on the floor around me; I was lucky I hadn’t hit my head. “Well,” I said, picking up the torch I’d dropped and lighting it from the flame dying on the canvas. “I’ve found the secret passage.”

“Do you see a way up?” Blake’s voice echoed down through the tunnel. I turned in a slow circle, looking for a door, a stair, anything.

“Not yet,” I called up. But the ledge was clearly a walkway, made so workers could travel above the waterline; there must have been a way to reach it that didn’t involve falling through a broken floor.

“There was a rope in the corner,” Blake shouted. “I’ll be right back.”

Bits of rubble fell from the ceiling as he left. I stayed beneath the hole, in case anything else was going to come down. Then I frowned, lifting the torch; far down the tunnel, was that another path, branching off on the right? In spite of myself, the shadows called to me; I hadn’t lied to Blake when I’d told him I was tempted by mystery.

It wasn’t long before a rope slithered down from the room above. Blake called down after it. “Can you climb, or shall I lift you?”

“What?” I tilted my head back to look at him—gingerly; I was still a bit dizzy. “Neither!”

He stared down at me. In the flickering light, his concern made sharp angles of his cheeks. “Are you well enough to go on?”

“Just come down!”

After a moment, he dropped his own torch at my feet. The dark pulled back farther as he slid down the rope. But when he reached the bottom, he picked up the torch and tipped his hat back on the crown of his head. Then he took my chin gently, peering closely into my eyes, first one, then the other. “What are you doing, Blake?”

“I’m making sure you’re all right,” he murmured softly; his breath stirred in my hair. I watched his lips curve into a half smile. “You don’t look concussed. Most likely you’ll live.” I laughed, but in the dark it sounded nervous. Just as I was about to pull away, he released my chin and turned to stare into the dark. The glow from the fire made his eyes gleam. “This reminds me of the lava tunnels. Back in Hawaii. You can get lost down there without a map.”

“Good thing we have a cartographer,” I said brusquely. “Which way toward the castle?”

Opening his sketchbook, he frowned at the scrap of paper, and then up toward the ceiling. After a moment spent consulting an internal compass, he pointed down the passage. “Down here.”

Firelight played across the brick as we walked, flitting around corners, scampering along the ledge, and lunging into branching tunnels from the main. I paused to inspect one. “There’s an archway along the edge. Are those stairs leading up?”

“I see them. But . . .” Blake looked back in the direction we’d come, though I’d lost sight of the rope in the darkness. Still, he shook his head, making a mark on the page. “We’re only at three hundred paces.”

Down here the air was still, though there was a rhythmic sound, a hollow metal drumming like the washing of the waves against a steel hull. It grew steadily louder as we traveled along the damp sand in the canal, walking slowly enough that he could add detail to his map. His shoulder brushed mine; was it an accident? Blake seemed completely focused on the sketchbook. But there was only one way to know. I licked my lips and summoned my courage. “Do you wish things had gone differently?” I said softly. “In Hawaii?”

“Of course I do.” His answer was vague—as my question had been. I tried again.

“Between us, I mean?”

He lifted his head from his book. “Do you?”

I hesitated—for all my regrets, what would I have changed? “I wish I hadn’t hurt you.”

“That’s a kindness.” He looked back down to make another mark on the map. “But how, exactly?”