Duke of Midnight (Maiden Lane #6)(46)

To the left were tall, barred windows overlooking the courtyard. To the right, a row of doors led away into the darkness. A square window was cut into the upper part of each door and inset with crossed bars. Faint sounds came from the inhabitants of this place: rustling and sighs, moans, and an odd, eerie humming. Somewhere a voice was raised in argument, but no other voice answered back. The air was thick with a miasma of smells: urine and cooked cabbage, lye and tallow, wet stone and feces. Something about the corridor and the place gave Maximus a sense of déjà vu, but he could not remember why.

They were almost halfway down the corridor when footsteps echoed behind them. “Sully? Is that you?”

The attendant—apparently, Sully—stopped and turned, his eyes widening in alarm. Maximus ducked his face into his shoulder so the nose of his mask couldn’t be seen in profile and peered behind.

A figure was at the other end of the corridor, but surely he couldn’t tell at this distance who they were.

Maximus poked Sully with his sword under cover of his cloak. “Remember what I told you.”

“J… just me, Ridley,” Sully stuttered.

“Oo’s that you got with you?” Ridley asked suspiciously.

“My brother, George, come to have a bit of tipple with me,” Sully said nervously. “He’ll be no bother.”

“Keep walking,” Maximus whispered.

Ridley started down the corridor.

“I… I’ll just show George to my rooms,” Sully called in a high voice, and then they were around the corner and running up a central flight of stairs.

“Will he follow us?” Maximus demanded.

“I don’t know.” Sully sent him a nervous glance. “ ’E’s a suspicious one is that Ridley.”

Maximus glanced back when they reached the upper floor, but he couldn’t make out if anyone was trailing them in the darkness. He turned back to Sully. “Show me Kilbourne.”

“This way.”

To the left was a door. Beside it stood a stool and a key hanging on a hook.

“Leech’s turn for the night guard,” Sully muttered as he took the key and fit it into the lock on the door. “ ’E’s probably drunk in ’is bed, though.”

As Sully held high his lantern to open the door, Maximus could see the sign that hung over the lintel: Incurable.

Beyond lay a long corridor like the one below, save that here the cells opened on both sides. The rooms had no doors to either shield the occupants or protect the visitor. The inmates within lay upon straw like stabled animals, and the stink of their manure was enough to make Maximus’s eyes water. Here was a white-haired, bearded venerable, his nearly colorless eyes staring sightlessly into the light as they passed. There, a young woman, pretty, save for the savage lunge she made at them when they crossed her doorway. A chain rattled and she fell back, exactly like a bitch choked by a collar. The youth in the next stall laughed, high and hysterical, scrabbling at his own face as he did so.

Sully crossed himself and hurried to the last stall. He stopped and held his lantern high, illuminating a massive male body lying in the straw.

Maximus frowned, stepping closer. “Is he alive?”

Sully shrugged. “Was when we brought dinner ’round to the others. ’Course ’e didn’t eat it seein’ as ’ow ’e’s been asleep.”

Not so much asleep as insensible, Maximus thought grimly. He went to one knee beside the man in the filthy straw. Viscount Kilbourne looked nothing like his sister. Where she was slim he was huge—wide shoulders, massive hands, legs that sprawled across the cell. Whether he was a handsome man or not was impossible to tell: his face was swollen and caked with dried blood, both eyes blackened, his bottom lip split and grown to the size and color of a small plum. This close Maximus could hear an odd, whistling wheeze as the big man’s chest struggled to draw air into his lungs.

Kilbourne appeared near death. Would he even survive the move out of this place? He also looked as if he’d received no doctoring at all—even the blackened blood on his face hadn’t been wiped away.

Maximus’s lips thinned grimly. “Do you have the key to his manacle?”

“It’ll be hanging by the door.” Sully made to turn, but Maximus grabbed him.

The guard quailed.

“You come back within the minute or I find you. Understand?”

Sully nodded frantically.

Maximus let him go.

Sully was back in less than a minute with an iron ring of keys. “Should be one o’ these—”

“What’re you doing in here?”

Maximus rose and whirled at the voice, both swords out.

Sully squeaked and froze, his hands clutching the keys before him like a shield.

The man who stood in the doorway to the cell paused with Maximus’s sword at his throat, his eyes wide. Maximus recognized the voice now as Ridley’s. He was a big man—nearly as big as the one sprawled at their feet—and he had the look of a bully.

“Sully, take off the manacles,” Maximus ordered, careful to keep his eyes on Ridley.

He heard the clank of the manacle falling to the floor.

“You”—Maximus gestured to Ridley with his sword—“pick up his feet.”

“What d’you want with ’im?” Ridley sounded sullen, but he bent to grab Kilbourne’s feet. “ ’E’s near enough dead as ’tis.”