Chapter 10 Escaping the City
The city wall rose from the mud like a dare. Thirty feet high, studded with iron plates and topped with shards of blue-glass warding rods that hummed with quiet menace. Daisy watched from the lee of a fishmonger’s shack, counting the guards in their mirrored breastplates, each with a baton or wand that glimmered in the sun. Getting out was supposed to be easier than getting in, but the Lord’s men had closed every loophole since the riots in spring. Now, every exit was a checkpoint, every gate a promise of pain.
Daisy skirted the line of waiting carts, staying in the shadows. Two guards argued with a merchant about a wagon full of rotted beets, refusing his papers and shoving him backward. Farther up, a woman in velvet flounced through the checkpoint without a glance: one flash of her ring and they bowed her through, not even bothering with the detection crystal. Daisy spat. She watched the crystal, saw how it flared at magic and barely flickered for anyone from the alleys.
She waited, poised, then slid between a coal cart and a pile of dried reeds. The coalman glared but said nothing, eyes fixed on the bribe he’d be owed if she made it through. Daisy crawled under the axle, pressed herself flat, and waited for the patrol to pass. When they did, she ghosted along the wall, fingertips trailing the mortar, searching for the crack in the wards that Oliver had described.
There wasn’t one. Not here.
She doubled back, ducked into a side alley, and breathed through her mouth as she scouted the perimeter. Guards at every gate, and on the parapets, bored men with crossbows and the blank faces of those paid not to think. Daisy circled until she reached the tannery district, the air thick with the reek of piss and boiling skins. Here, the wall was slick with black runoff; even the guards avoided it, their patrol a wide berth around the waste pit.
Daisy let herself smile. She followed the stench to a heap of discarded hides. Underneath, half-buried in mud and gristle, was the rusted grate she’d been looking for.
It took her five minutes to pry it loose, every muscle in her arms shaking with the effort. The grate clanged to the side. Daisy crawled into the darkness, boots scraping on damp stone. At first, the passage was tall enough to crouch. Then it narrowed, forced her onto her hands and knees, and then onto her belly. The smell was unspeakable: old blood, rot, chemicals sharp enough to peel your lungs. The only light was the light that leaked through the cracks in the stones above.
Rats appeared immediately. At first, they kept their distance, flashing in and out of view like nervous shadows. But as she inched forward, they grew bolder, darting around her hands and feet, some even pausing to sniff her boots. Daisy gritted her teeth and kept going. She’d lived among them long enough to know their ways. As long as she didn’t panic, they’d ignore her.
The tunnel narrowed further, pinning her shoulders. Daisy pulled herself with her elbows, the skin on her arms slick with something she didn’t want to name. She tried to focus on the rhythm of movement, dig, slide, breathe, counting the feet to the wall’s far side.
A rat ran across her back. Another brushed her cheek with its whiskers. She choked down a scream. The tunnel sloped downward, then flattened. The air was colder now, less sour. Daisy pushed ahead, feeling her way by touch.
The ceiling dropped again, so low she had to turn her face sideways to breathe. Her pulse pounded in her ears. A panic rose. What if she’d picked the wrong tunnel? What if there was no exit? What if this was just another trap for the desperate? Daisy shut her eyes and kept going.
Finally, the tunnel widened. The smell changed, less death, more earth. Ahead, a sliver of light shimmered, blue at first, then pale and real as she squinted. Daisy crawled faster, rats now everywhere, running shoulder to shoulder with her, racing for the exit.
She broke through a tangle of roots and spilled onto the grass, gasping.
Outside the wall, the world was shockingly quiet. Distant trees swayed in the breeze. The city behind her was just a mound of stone and smoke, the wall now a line she’d crossed and could never uncross.
Daisy lay on her back, sucking air. A red-eyed rat stood on her chest, sniffed her face, then vanished into the weeds.
She laughed, one short bark, then pulled herself upright.
She was out.
She was free.