Page 117 of The Sun King's Noon

She stood no taller than Richard’s shoulder, lithe, and as she lowered her hood, the light caught a shaven scalp, stuck-out ears, and hazel eyes too large for her face. Richard’s first thought was that she resembled an older version of the pixies in his childhood storybooks.

His second thought was that he’d seen her face on every gatepost in Vexmara.

Nyx. Leader of the Broken Stag.

She tilted her head and appraised them with a twist of her lips.

“Right.” Her vowels bore the flat cadence of the Lowmarket gutters. “Move yer feet. Up this way. We’ve a walk.”

She started down the tunnel, and Richard followed, ignoring Kaelen’s half-whine of protest. The passage remained low-ceilinged, forcing him and Kaelen to dip their heads, and smelt of damp. Every so often, a grate above let down a square of daylight.

“Don’t speak,” Nyx said over her shoulder. “Sound travels up through them grates. Wait till we turn.”

The tunnel forked, and Nyx took the left branch without hesitation. It forked once more, and she took the right. After the seventh turn, when the daylight overhead had grown infrequent, she rounded on them.

“Now. Which one of you absolute fucking lackwits put an arrow in Pedron?”

Kaelen rubbed his nape. “I did.”

“Brilliant work, you donkey.” Nyx jabbed a finger up at Kaelen’s chest. “Old Pedron was going to die anyway. Every minute he went on cooking was another minute somebody else in that crowd decided they hated Marius enough to do something about it. And you put a fucking arrow through his ribs.”

“I will not ignore such cruelties.” Kaelen’s jaw set. “Had I stood by, I could not call myself my mother’s son.”

Nyx raised a brow at him, then at Richard, who shrugged. What did she expect him to do?

“He is always this way,” Richard offered.

“A soft-hearted little arse is what he is. Don’t know shit about how a rebellion eats.” Nyx shook her head, though a grin tugged the corners of her mouth. “Aye, well. The mercy of it weren’t lost on Pedron, I’ll give you that. Even if it means my band’s goingto have to hide deeper with all those soldiers out prowling.” She turned and began walking again. “Come on. Faster. We’ve another ten minutes.”

Richard hurried to follow. So this was how the rebels moved through the city. The underground movement was truly underground. “These tunnels. They are sewers?”

“Weresewers. Hundred years back, before they built the new system out the harbour side. These ones got sealed and forgotten. We been opening ‘em back up where we need ‘em. Useful, and that.”

“Extraordinary,” Richard murmured.

The tunnel widened, narrowed, then widened again and curved. Sounds reached Richard’s ears—low voices, clinking pottery and the boil of water—and the corridor opened into a spacious domed brick room, vaulted high.

The original purpose was clear. A junction, where four or five old drainage channels had once converged into a single great basin. But the channels themselves were now boarded shut, resulting in a round hall lit by a dozen oil lamps. Bedrolls lined the walls, a long table stood at the centre surrounded by benches, and a copper pot hung over a brazier whose smoke vanished up a black flue.

Seven people occupied the chamber. A red-bearded man at the table, peeling potatoes. Two women bent together over a map. A wiry teenage boy mending a shoe. A grey-haired woman sharpening a sword on a whetstone. And from the opposite alcove were two more indistinct shapes.

Every head in the room snapped up, and Richard found himself the target of several glares.

“Don’t you lot pull faces,” Nyx said. “The big one’s the clever clogs who put an arrow through Pedron, so the king’s hounds are sniffing hard up east-side, and I’d rather not feed ‘em. The otherone”—she jerked her thumb back without turning—“is with him, and they’re with us. For the afternoon at least.”

The red-bearded man pointed with his knife. “And who are they, Nyx? What if they be spies?”

Nyx dropped onto a bench. “Ask ‘em yerself. They’ve tongues.”

Richard tried a smile. “I am Richard. This is Kaelen, my companion. We travel with the Ardenian troupe billeted at the Cup and Crook. Circus folk. Performers. We are due to play in the castle tomorrow evening.” He inclined his head. “We are deeply in your debt, madam, for our lives. I assure you, there are few who despise King Marius more than I.”

From the shadowed alcove came a derisive laugh. It was—Richard realised, goosebumps prickling his skin—awfully familiar.

A man’s smooth, court-accented voice filled the dome.

“Circus folk. Oh, that is quite wonderful. Ladies, gentlemen, and assorted brigands of the realm”—the speaker pushed himself off the wall and ambled into the lamplight, a second bulkier figure trailing at his shoulder—“allow me to present to you His Majesty King Richard of Ardenia, and his ever-loyal hound, Sir Kaelen. A circus indeed.”

He dragged back his hood.