Page 40 of Her Dark Reflection

‘Evacuation tunnel. There are several of them leftover from the Great War.’

The stairs ended in a level floor of compounded dirt. The air was damp and thick, and the tunnel slithered away into the dark beyond the circle of light cast by Draven’s flame. It felt like we were in the belly of some ancient, sleeping serpent.

Without warning, the light cut out and the darkness crashed down onto me. I shrieked.

‘Calm down, you don’t need to see. Here, keep your hand on the wall and follow it.’ I felt him take my fingers and place them on the damp wall.

‘Why can’t we have the light?’ The last word came out a squeak. I wasn’t afraid of the dark, but the sense of the earth all around me made me feel like I was being buried alive.

‘Because we can’t. Walk behind me. I’ll let you know if there’s anything you’ll trip over.’

Keeping one hand on the wall, I waved my other hand blindly before me until I touched fabric. I sensed him stiffen as my fingers pressed against his back, but he didn’t say anything, and I didn’t remove my hand.

‘Come on.’

He started moving, and I hurried to keep up, one hand pressed to him and one trailing against the dirt. It felt strangely intimate, walking through the dark with my hand on him, resisting the urge to explore this new territory with my fingers. And with no sight to distract me, my mind darted about, imagining things I shouldn’t, like what his skin was like beneath his shirt. Was he smooth? Hairy? He felt firm. I imagined him before me, shirtless, his back a broad expanse of smooth skin, muscles rising and falling like sand dunes. Then I shoved the image away, reminding myself that he was a scoundrel, and I didn’t care what he looked like under his clothes.

‘How long is this tunnel?’ I asked.

‘It emerges in the hedge maze.’

‘But that’s miles away!’ Did he really expect me to—I collided with him and cursed loudly in surprise.

‘Do you have a better idea?’ he demanded.

I muttered under my breath about the dark and the cold and pigheaded men as we started moving again, and he ignored me. The ground occasionally squelched underfoot, and I was reminded of the thick, sticky blood on my shoes. ‘Why did that guard captain help you?’ I asked to keep my mind away from such unpleasant thoughts.

‘Just be glad that he did.’

‘I remember him. He was at the Winking Nymph the night I first met you. How do you know each other?’

Silence.

‘Fine,’ I continued after it became clear he wasn’t going to answer. ‘Don’t tell me.’ Still nothing. ‘What were you doing at the Burnings, anyway?’

‘Are you going to spend the whole walk picking me over? You should—’

‘—just be glad you were?’ I finished for him, rolling my eyes.

‘Yes.’ The edges of the word were softened, as if he was smiling. I curled my fingers slightly in his shirt.

We continued walking in silence for a time, which was strange in and of itself. I had no sense of how far we’d gone, of how deep beneath the ground we were, and there was no difference between the darkness of my closed and open eyes. It should have been terrifying, but the further we went, the calmer I felt. The rhythm of our footsteps, the feel of the shirt beneath my hand, and the light drag of my fingertips against the wall all left me feeling strangely peaceful, like I was out of place and time.

‘What happened back there? I’ve never seen the city like that before,’ I asked after a while, my voice hushed so as not to disturb the calm.

‘Taxes. Rising wheat prices. Crop failure. Job scarcity. What else makes people unhappy with their monarch?’

I frowned. ‘That seems a lot of motives. It wouldn’t be easy to incite a riot without a common reason.’

‘You’re a politician now, aren’t you, little Vixen?’

‘I grew up on the streets of Lee Helse. I know this city,’ I insisted, my mind ticking. ‘Taxes have always been high, and people have always been poor. The blights on the farmlands around the Yawn have always pushed up food prices, and there has never been anything anyone can do about it. What’s different now?’

‘It doesn’t take much for simmering resentment to boil over.’

I chewed on his response in silence. I didn’t buy it. A few centuries of peace had made the people of Brimordia conflict-averse, and the possession of weapons was strictly outlawed. I couldn’t see the riot being something the city’s poor decided on beforehand, not with both the gendarmerie and the palace soldiers keeping the peace at the Burnings. The odds were too far out of favour. But I had seen the crowd, had seen how angry and unsettled people were before the rioting had broken out. There had to have been some sort of forethought. Unless the Burnings had provoked the crowd response, but it was such a regular, commonplace event. The pyres were lit every month without fail.

‘What are you mulling over back there?’

---