CLOAK AND DAGGER

Piper waved goodbye and closed the door silently behind us. For a moment, Rain just stood in the red-lit tunnel, listening. Then we were striding forward at an almost alarming pace, so smoothly that it felt more as if Rain flew than ran. Our gliding dash through dim-lit corridors was exhilarating until my legs and back began to cramp. Banking corners and veering past obstacles at such speed made it necessary to hold onto him very tightly. I tried to shift my weight a bit, to ease the aching in my clenched arms and thighs, but the small relief this gained me was short-lived.

Ten or fifteen uneventful minutes later, as we dodged down a particularly narrow and cluttered passage, I began to wonder if I’d have enough strength to hold on all the way to wherever we were going. I couldn’t understand how Rain maintained such a pace while bearing me, and longed to stop for just a moment, sure that he must need relief far worse than I did. I was wondering how to communicate this request without speaking when we turned into a dimly lit, but wider, higher tunnel, and Rain slowed almost to a stop. Thinking he had also decided a rest was called for, I loosened my grip, preparing to slide down, but he clamped my legs in place almost convulsively, and shook his head. A second later, at the tunnel’s farther end, I saw a darker scrap of shadow move, then made out three figures coming stealthily in our direction.

I froze and held my breath as Rain moved toward them with what seemed glacial care after our previous pace. I became conscious for the first time of the sweaty dampness between his back and my belly, his shoulders and my arms, and of the rapid expansion and contraction of his labored breathing, though it made no sound at all that I could hear. In fact, the silence seemed unnaturally dense, an almost physical pressure against my ears.

As we drew closer, I began to make out their features. The two in front seemed unnervingly similar in appearance to the one we’d seen before: dark-haired, good-looking in a chiseled, feral way with strangely deep-set eyes, edgy denim and leather clothing, and dark, steel-toed boots. The third figure was much older, larger, and—very oddly—dressed in drab winter business attire: polished dress shoes, neatly creased slacks, the collar of a dress shirt peeking from his long, expensive-looking overcoat—as if he’d been pulled right off a subway platform on his way back from some fancy lunch appointment. His wide, heavily jowled face and flat, almost wall-eyed stare were somehow even more disturbing to me than the hungrily aggressive gazes of his more youthful associates.

They carried no weapons that I could see, but clearly anticipated trouble. The two apparent youths crept toward us slightly crouched, their arms half raised, as if ready to uncoil into a punch or kick. As we drew even closer, however, I saw that they were gazing not at but past us, into the darkness we had come from, for some reason. I tried to still the very molecules inside me as we slid between the first two figures, then veered smoothly left around the larger man, within mere feet of him, as if engaged in some slow-motion dance. Four moving people, not counting myself, in a narrow cement and metal conduit, and not a single footfall to be heard; no rustle of fabric or whisper of breath. Even I felt somehow disembodied.

Then we were past them, still inching slowly forward. My back prickled with an urge to twist around and make certain they hadn’t turned to spring at us, but I dared not breathe yet, much less move. It seemed to take forever to reach the corner hardly fifteen feet ahead, but when we finally got around it, Rain began to run again, even faster than before, though no less silently.

With increasing frequency, he stopped to cock his head and listen, peer around a corner, or bend down and press his hands against the floor. Sometimes we turned and swiftly backtracked to some other route. Whenever we stopped, now, I felt the heaving of his sodden chest and shoulders as he gasped soundlessly for breath in an obviously manufactured silence. I felt ashamed to let him go on carrying me this way, though there was clearly no alternative.

We finally halted before another metal door which he reached out from under my leg to open. We passed through it onto a narrow ledge that hugged the wall of a very large, curving corridor with a set of tracks running down its center: a commuter train tunnel. Two dim, caged yellow bulbs at either end of the visible passage provided the only light. He turned to shut the door behind us, then murmured, “Not long now,” as if I were the one breathing hard. For a moment, he stood listening again. Then, to my dismay, he leapt down onto the tracks and started running up the tunnel.

“What if there’s a train?” I hissed into his ear.

“Silence!” he hissed back.

I held on tightly, straining to detect the hint of gusting air or the sibilant, electric whisper that would precede an oncoming train. The ledge we had come down from seemed quite high to me now. Would Rain be able to jump back up there with me on his back, should we need to in a hurry?

The question was answered only seconds later.

I heard Rain grunt what sounded like an oath, and suddenly we were in the air. He came down on the ledge with our backs to the wall, but at too much speed to keep from slamming me between it and himself. I gave a muffled yelp, fearing he had cracked some of my ribs. He immediately leaned forward to relieve the crush, and I grimaced in silence as he craned his head around to whisper, “Wrap your legs around my waist, I will not be able to support them for a while. I am going to make myself visible and speak to someone. You must remain still and silent, no matter what occurs.”

As I nodded compliance, he let go of my legs and a frenzied wind gusted silently around us—not from any approaching train, it seemed, but sprung up right where we stood, from all directions at once, like a miniature tornado. When it subsided seconds later, our sweat-drenched clothes were cool and nearly dry. Without any explanation, Rain turned and started walking down the ledge in the direction we’d been headed. A moment later, someone appeared around the tunnel’s curve, walking toward us on the same ledge. He was tall and lean, in a dark hoodie and track pants.

“Who’s there?” asked the man.

“Rain of Dwr Bywyd, Chancellor to The Lady, and about her business,” he said casually, coming to a stop. “Who demands the introduction?”

The other figure didn’t slow as he replied, “What need has The Lady’s chancellor to be traveling down here?”

Rain cocked his head, as if surprised. “The city’s tunnels are for your use only now? I felt your probe back there, and am trying not to take offense. I ask again, who takes such liberties?”

The other man sped up without replying, and, from well behind us, I heard the quickening of other feet. I felt Rain slump under my arms and release a weary sigh. “Lie down, quickly,” came his strangely muffled whisper, as if mouthed directly at my ear.

I froze, confused, but he just shook me off, and growled, “Lie flat! Now!”

Even as I pressed myself against the ground in alarm, I felt a pressure building in the air around me, almost but not quite a sound; something far larger than an approaching train, as if a mountainside or a looming tidal wave bore down on us. Then a tiny, high-pitched whine drove needles through my eardrums. I slammed my hands against my ears, and couldn’t stop myself from yelling as a virtually silent detonation of some kind raked the clothing on my back. There were angry exclamations from either side of us, then a scream and silence. Before I could raise my head to look, Rain yanked me off the ground and threw me once again over his shoulder, already sprinting down the ledge.

As I strained to keep my head from banging painfully against his back, I saw the prone and motionless body of our former challenger lying on the tracks below as we sped by. Seconds later, a wind began to build around us, and I heard the unmistakable sound of an approaching train. He’ll be killed, I thought about the man down on the tracks, but Rain just picked up speed.

As the glow of its headlights joined the train’s increasing sound from around the bend, we neared a second metal door which burst open, apparently of its own accord, to bang against the wall as we arrived. Rain dashed through it, and the door slammed shut again behind us seconds before I heard the train roar past outside. Rain still did not slow down. A moment later, I learned why.

We were not thirty feet down the service tunnel before the door we’d come through slammed open once again. Slung over Rain’s shoulder, I had a clear view of the two men who came running through it, first of whom was, without any doubt, the same one I’d seen lying on the tracks.

“You’ve murdered my cousin!” screamed the second man as they raced after us.

“I killed no one!” Rain shouted back without slowing.

“The train hit him!” yelled the first man.

“I am not the train, nor did I provoke this!” Rain protested, still not slowing. “You have no right of retaliation!”

Even as he spoke, I felt another pressure on the edge of sound begin to build in the air around us, and shoved my hands back against my ears. Rain whirled to face them, tossing me to the ground behind him as he turned and spread his arms wide. Whatever they sent at us met whatever Rain had countered with, and a muffled concussion passed through my body, like the blast of air a barrel bomb throws off at close quarters, followed by a terrific clap of thunder and a flash of arc-bright illumination that made me clamp my eyes shut and roll against the wall in abject terror.

“You are within shouting distance of The Lady’s seat!” Rain yelled above me. “End this madness, or bring her wrath upon yourselves and whoever sent you!”

“Do not speak to me of wrath, kera-bunuth!” snarled the second man.

“I am nothing of the kind, and it’s insane to think any arbiter would find me so!”

“No arbiter will need to!” the man shouted, twisting his arms together as he thrust them forward.

“Fool!” Rain rasped, more to himself than to them, it seemed. He threw out an arm to slam the passage wall, and, to my horror, a boiling curtain of fire belched from it, filling the tunnel between ourselves and them. I yelled, rolling frantically away and stumbling to my feet to flee as Rain scooped me off the ground yet again like something no heavier than a sack of rice. He held me cradled in his arms as we fled, shielding my body with his own from the heat behind us.

Ahead of us, half a dozen people swarmed angrily out of a door I hadn’t noticed before, shouting incomprehensibly and running toward us. I closed my eyes and shoved my face against Rain’s chest, sure that we were finished now, but, to my surprise, Rain just ran through them unopposed, shouting, “Seal the seat! Seal the seat!” Then we plunged through the door they had just come through into yet another service conduit where Rain managed only five or six more steps before pitching forward onto the floor, losing his grasp on me as he fell, so that I hit the ground and tumbled to a stop several feet in front of where he lay.

People came rushing to his aid from several directions, reaching underneath his arms to hoist him up and help him stumble further down the hallway, all staring down at me in seeming astonishment as they did so.

“Take him—to The Lady,” Rain gasped, breathing like a landed fish. “Seal—the seat—and inform her—that we are—attacked.”