Red Seas Under Red Skies: The Gentleman Bastard Sequence, Book Two (Gentleman Bastards 2)
5
True to Stragos’s warning, there was an additional guard to be disarmed in the first cell level beneath the entrance hall, at the foot of a wide spiral staircase of black iron. The stone tower above was for guards and alchemical lights; the Windward Rock’s true purpose was served by three ancient stone vaults that went down far beneath the sea, into the roots of the island.
The man saw them coming and took immediate alarm; no doubt Locke and Jean descending alone was a breach of procedure. Jean relieved him of his sword as he charged up the steps, kicked him in the face and pinned him, squirming, on his stomach. Jean’s month of exercise at Caldris’s whim seemed to have left his strength more bullish than ever, and Locke almost pitied the poor fellow struggling beneath him. Locke reached over, gave the guard a touch of Witfrost and whistled jauntily.
That was it for the night shift, a skeleton force with no cooks or other attendants. One guard at the docks, two in the entrance hall, one on the first cell level. The two on the roof, by Stragos’s direct order, would have sipped drugged tea and fallen asleep with the pot between them. They’d be found by their morning relief with a plausible excuse for their incapacity - and another lovely layer of confusion would be thrown over the whole affair.
There were no boats kept at Windward Rock itself, so even if prisoners could conceivably escape from iron-barred cells set into the weeping walls of the old vaults and win free through the barred entrance hall and lone reinforced door, they’d face a swim across a mile of open water (at least), watched with interest by many things in the depths eager for a meal.
Locke and Jean ignored the iron door leading to the cells of the first level, continuing down the spiralling staircase. The air was dank, smelling of salt and unwashed bodies. Past the iron door on the second level, they found themselves in a vault divided into four vast cells, long and low-ceilinged, two on each side with a fifteen-foot corridor down the middle.
Only one of these cells was actually occupied; several dozen men lay sleeping in the pale-green light of barred alchemical globes set high on the walls. The air in there was positively rank, dense with the odours of unclean bedding, urine and stale food. Faint tendrils of mist curled around the prisoners. A few wary pairs of eyes tracked Locke and Jean as they stepped up to the cell door.
Locke nodded to Jean, and the bigger man began to pound his fist against the bars of the door. The clamour was sharp, echoing intolerably from the dripping walls of the vault. Disturbed prisoners rose from their dirty pallets, swearing and hollering.
‘Are you men comfortable in there?’ Locke shouted to be heard above the din. Jean ceased his pounding.
‘We’d be lots more comfortable with a nice sweet Verrari captain in here for us to fuck sideways,’ said a prisoner near the door.
‘I have no patience to speak of,’ said Locke, pointing at the door he and Jean had come through. ‘If I walk out through that door, I won’t be coming back.’
‘Piss off, then, and let us sleep,’ said a scarecrow of a man in a far corner of the cell.
‘And if I won’t be coming back,’ said Locke, ‘then none of you poor bastards will ever find out why vaults one and three have prisoners in every cell . . . while this one is completely empty save for yourselves.’
That got their attention. Locke smiled.
‘That’s better. My name is Orrin Ravelle. Until a few minutes ago, I was a captain in the navy of Tal Verrar. And the reason you’re here is because I selected you. Every last one of you. I selected you, and then I forged the orders that got you assigned to an empty cell vault.’