The Blood Knight - J. Gregory Keyes [115]
She needed that knife to cut a strip of cloth. She couldn’t wait much longer, either, or she would lose so much blood that she wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.
Cursing under her breath, she rose unsteadily and minced back toward the light.
He was lying facedown, and something about his position suggested to her that he wasn’t faking. The lamp had fallen but hadn’t shattered; it lay on its side guttering, nearly out. She propped it up. He’d dropped his knife, too, and hers was still poking out from between his ribs.
Trying not to faint, Alis took his knife and carefully drove it into his spine, as she had intended to do earlier.
That drew a gasp from beside the stairs. Then a whimper.
The girl. She had forgotten the girl.
“Stay there,” Alis said tersely. “Stay just where you are or I’ll kill you like I killed him.”
The girl didn’t answer; she just continued whimpering.
Alis righted the lantern, cut a piece of her breeches, tied a tourniquet, then sat down to catch her breath and listen. Had anyone heard the Nightstrider scream? If they had, would they be able to determine where it came from?
Eventually, yes. That meant she needed to get back into the tunnels, the ones men couldn’t remember. They would have a hard time following her there.
“Girl, listen to me,” she said.
A face peered up from the bundle of gray cloth.
“I don’t want to die,” she said softly.
“Do what I ask, and I promise you that you will live,” Alis told her.
“But you killed him.”
“Yes, I did. Will you listen to me?”
A small pause.
“Yes.”
“Good. Do you have food? Water? Wine?”
“Reck has some food, I think. He had some bread earlier. And wine, I think.”
“Then get it for me. And anything else he has on him. But don’t try to run. You’ve heard how knives can be thrown?”
“I saw a man on the street do it once. He split an apple.”
“I can do better than that. If you try to run, I’ll put this right in your back. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“What’s your name?”
“Ellen.”
“Ellen, do what I asked you. Get his things and bring them here.”
She watched the girl approach the body. When she touched him, she began to cry.
“Did you like him?” Alis asked.
“No. He was mean. But I’ve never seen someone dead.”
And I’ve never killed anyone before, Alis thought. Despite her training, it still didn’t seem real.
“Ellen,” Alis asked, “do all the guards have girls with them?”
“No, lady. Only the Nightstriders.”
“And what are you doing with them, exactly?”
The girl hesitated.
“Ellen?”
“The king says there are secret tunnels down here, tunnels that only girls can see. We’re supposed to find them for him. The men are to protect us.”
“Protect you from me?” Alis asked, feigning a little smile.
Ellen’s eyes gleamed with terror. “N-no,” she stuttered. “The king said a murderer was loose in the dungeons. A man. A big man.”
Ellen had worked as she spoke and had assembled a little pile of things. She picked them up but seemed more reluctant to approach Alis than she had the dead man, which made good sense.
“There,” Alis said. “Good girl.”
“Please,” Ellen whispered. “I won’t tell.”
Alis hardened her heart. The only advantage she had was Robert’s belief that she was dead. If the girl described her—or, worse, knew who she was—that advantage would be lost. She tightened her grip on the knife.
“Just come here,” Alis told her.
Blinking away tears, the girl approached.
“Do it quick, please,” Ellen said, so low that Alis almost couldn’t hear.
Alis looked into the young woman’s eyes, imagined the life going out of them, and sighed. She gripped her shoulder and felt it trembling.
“Keep your word, Ellen,” she said. “Don’t tell anyone you saw me. Just say he excused himself to answer nature’s demands, and then you found him dead. I swear by all the saints it is the right thing to do.”
Ellen’s face shone with wary hope.
“You won’t throw the knife at me?”
“No. Just tell me how you came into the dungeons.”
“Through the Arn Tower stair.”
“Right,” Alis muttered. “Is it still guarded?”
“By ten men,” Ellen confirmed.
“Is