The girl tried to bolt the moment they stepped foot out the house. Ellis was the one to stop her this time, tripping her to the dirt before hauling her back up. A small, vain part of him centered around his nose felt vindicated at the retribution… until Michael threw an arm around her shoulder.

  “Now now, Vanya. I know you're impolite but this is a bit much. Now, which way?” he said, grabbing her upper arm and using it to point her hand down the street, like she was a doll.

  If a woman could make herself disappear into nothinginess using disgust, Vanya would be the first to do so at . Her shoulders hunched, and she snatched her arm away from his grip only once. She refused to point the way, just stood there with her nose in the air. She was almost buried under his armpit, and yet when he dragged his gaze from the road to the top of her head, she recoiled, as if he had slapped her.

  She pointed the way after that.

  And so, they walked. Ameena wore her one armed disguise, a girl this time. And surprising Ellis most of all, she hung back with him, not uttering a word as she took off her cloak, and put it around his shoulders.

  “Thanks,” he said as he put it on, like he hadn’t stolen it the other night.

  She nodded in response.

  Michael strutted around with Vanya under his arm like they were a love struck couple taking predawn stroll. He kept talking as they trotted down the street with all the other passerby's heads hung low. His words wandered like his footsteps, going from the city and how nice some of the tourists' strange way of dressing looked to what he ate for breakfast yesterday.

  Repeated jabs followed the lights flashing in his eye, and no matter how much he shook his head, every repeated word out of Michael’s mouth sent another one off. Except sometimes he would mention a specific part of her appearance. How lovely her hair looked in the moonlight, or how her every gesture caught his eye.

  Ellis tried not to shudder when he said that. He wanted to slap Michael upside the head, because Vanya looked more disturbed after his every compliment. But she would point the way, and it looked like it was just so he would not grab her arm again.

  They came to the silk road, and this made Ellis and Ameena pause. He was concerned about the multitude of guards marching up and down, most with heavy bags under their eyes like they'd been up the whole night. And yet despite the early morning and the amount of guards running around the place, there were still stalls up, a few customers chatting away with yawns and tired smiles to the merchants populating the silk road.

  Michael walked right through the affair like he hadn't a care in the world, following Vanya’s pointing like there was nothing to worry about. Ameena’s lip curled in anger, and she jogged up to Michael’s side. She started whispering threats to Vanya about behaving, but the girl ignored her, which seemed to make Ameena’s whispers even angrier.

  But no guard started shouting. No vendor or customer gave them a third look, although most of the women still cast a second glance Michael’s way. They passed through the roads right behind the silk road, and wandered far into the Crumbles. The houses became more decrepit with every step, the streets grew narrower and the alleyways lost any semblance of light, like black holes decorating the small street they walked down.

  Despite having been here a few days ago, it was a different place entirely since the last time Ellis had seen it.

  His last visit to an area like this had shown it to be dirty and decrepit. But there were still children in the streets. People still walked about. Now… thugs littered every street corner, all casting hateful glances at one another. There were red smears on every wall, and more than once Ellis heard the angry shouts of guards a few streets over. Graffiti accompanied the smears along the walls:

  "KEEP OUT! CASTOR’S TERRITORY!" used to decorate the wall, but it was crossed out and replaced with: "KONRAD’S TERRITORY, FUCK OFF WHORESONS!"

  A few men with knives stood on the corner ahead of them, giving Ellis and company death stares as they walked toward them. Michael waved at them as he walked, flashing a bright smile that grew wider when the men shouted at him about something Ellis couldn’t understand.

  Ellis stepped in between Michael and the men, who turned towards him with hate and contempt etched into each of their faces. He threw a bag of gold coins that thumped against the closest man’s chest before locking eyes with him, and shaking his head no. It was the only way Ellis could beg them to leave it alone.

  Their eyes went wide as the gold practically glowed in their faces when they opened the bag, and they stopped looking at them after that, like Ellis and his companions had ceased to exist.

  Michael tsked at that. But they kept walking.

  “Why’d you give 'em our money?” The big man asked with a pout.

  “We have plenty,” Ellis said, glancing at the travelpack on his back they had filled together. “And leaving a trail of bodies tends to bring the guards.”

  They slowed their step as they neared an innocuous home that seemed smaller than all its neighbours.

  “I thought you wanted to kill the guards?” he said, raising an eyebrow at him over Vanya’s head.

  Ellis suppressed the shiver running down his spine out of habit as he glanced over his shoulder to make sure the men didn't follow them. “I want to live through it, too. And we can kill them later.”

  “Ahhh so you're a little bitch. I see,” Michael said, nodding to himself.

  Vanya was glancing between the two of them as Ellis ignored the insult, before coming to a stop right next to the tiny house. She pointed down the alley next to it, filled to the brim with thrown away junk, boxes and old animal cages littering the floor.

  “There’s an old tunnel here… somewhere,” she said.

  “Fantastic!” Michael said with a grin, trying to press her forward, but she stayed rooted to the spot.

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  “I showed you the way, please let me go.” She said it firmly, like a command rather than a question.

  Michael gave a playful scowl. “What? No no no, we need you to scout for us!”

  “But you said—”

  His scowl grew a tad more serious. “And I am saying now, that you will lead the way for us all the way to the palace. Or somewhere close enough.”

  She swallowed deeply as she closed her eyes. “I guess I don’t have much of a choice. But please stop touching me! I won’t run, I promise!”

  Ellis gritted his teeth together to keep himself from voicing his agreement. Ameena raised her chin like a proud mother.

  But Michael… Michael stopped smiling. “Did I not mention what woul—”

  “Leave her be, Michael. She can’t run,” Ameena interrupted, her voice like ice.

  Michael’s glare turned to her. But Ameena did not even spare him a glance, grabbing Vanya by her arm and hauling her forward. They turned over a few boxes, and after shoving aside the tallest pile they revealed a large trapdoor.

  Ameena flung the trapdoor open with one hand, then climbed down, leaving Vanya trapped between the closed off alley and Michael, who was gritting his teeth so loud Ellis thought they would break.

  Ellis needed to distract him. So he started talking, while frantically indicating with his eyes to Vanya that she needed to start descending.

  “So are you excited to kill the Archduke? Test your metal against the palace guards?”

  Michael's usual grin was long gone. “I would be if the reason we were going there wasn’t acting like such a bitch.”

  “Well… we haven’t slept. So maybe she’s just a bit tired?” Ellis offered, not interested in defending Ameena and yet not able to stop himself from doing so.

  Michael went silent for a moment, and scratched his chin.

  His eyes went wide like he had realized the problem. “No, no! She’s not tired!” he snapped his fingers. “She's just jealous! Doesn’t like me touching another girl!”

  “Right…” Ellis said, his indication for Vanya to descend growing even more frantic. She gave him a skeptical frown mixed with disgust at the sight of his insistence, before she started climbing down.

  “And this new one…” he said, more to himself than to Ellis. “She must be shy! Ahhhh that makes way more sense. I didn't understand why she was so stiff with my arm around her.”

  We kidnapped her. You are deliberately trying to kill everyone she knows and calling that slaughter 'fun'. And then you played with her body like she was a toy. Ellis's thoughts sprung up his throat and begged to be let loose.

  His self restraint was the only thing that kept him alive.

  “We… sure. Let’s climb down. I can see the sun starting to rise,” Ellis said, following Vanya and Ameena back down into the dark.

  The smell hit him first as he climbed down the swaying rope ladder. This place must have been an old sewage system, like the one his mother had told him about when he was younger, but when his feet hit the cobbled floor there was no water. He could hardly see the hand in front of his face, so he assumed the rest would be blind while they walked.

  His ears heard tiny pin pricks of chewing, the soft ‘tut tut’ of rats as they ran away from Michael, who landed with a heavy thud as he jumped into the hole, not bothering with the ladder. A plume of dust mixed with salt exploded out from under his feet, scratching at Ellis’s nose like a loose hair.

  “Right then Vanya, lead the way.” he commanded.

  Ameena’s voice cut through right after.

  “Oh no. Ellis, you're going first. Vanya, grab the back of his shirt and point the way for him. I’ll be right behind you, so no funny business. Michael, some light please?” she said, bringing out a torch Ellis hadn’t seen in the dark.

  Michael lit the torch with an annoyed sigh, before handing it to Ellis. They got into the mini formation Ameena had ordered them into, and Vanya pointed towards an intersection that led gods knew where. Ellis obeyed, hoping she wouldn’t lead him into a trap as she pointed left at the T junction. The moment the thoughts of potential traps entered his head, he realized why Ameena had made him go first.

  It stung more than he liked to admit, that after everything they had been through, he was still just 'the canary' to her.

  Michael was humming to himself as they walked, filling the tunnel’s silence with an eerie echo as he stretched his arms out, placing his hands against either wall. It was wide enough for Ellis and Ameena to walk side by side comfortably, Michael’s hair grazing the ceiling above them. Every time Ellis glanced back, he hoped to see Michael hit his head against a lip in the ceiling, but he never did.

  He cursed that man’s high dexterity under his breath. But he kept walking.

  After an hour, they took a final turn, revealing a dim light at the end of a long corridor. Its long walls were lined with what looked like hundreds of small rooms, barely large enough for Ellis to lay down in. Ignoring those, he walked towards the light, not thinking for a moment that it was even close to the palace, but he didn’t complain. He was getting tired of the dark.

  At the exit was a trapdoor with a rope hanging down to the tunnel floor, similar to the one they had entered through. He pulled it open, an old lock that hadn’t been used giving some resistance before it let the door loose, and a large amount of hay fell through right onto Ellis's face, which he flinced at before spitting out the straw.

  “What’s that?” he asked, putting his hand in front of his eyes to block out the light streaming through the doorway above.

  “It’s hay,” Vanya said, like he was an idiot.

  He sighed, and jumped up since there was no rope ladder this time. He caught the rim of the trap door, and hauled himself over its edge…

  And came face to face with an animal with the largest snout he had ever seen. It sniffed at him, like he was an eyesore. He recognized the animal, it looked like the skinned carcass that butcher had paraded through the street when he first arrived in the city. An ‘antpisser’.

  Deciding Ellis was of no importance, the antpisser turned around and smacked him across the face with its tail before walking away. He looked around, to see he was in some type of barn. But then that animal peed in the corner, and the smell that came off it was worse than anything Ellis had ever thought possible. It reeked, permeating through every bit of his sinuses like he had eaten a hot pepper. He didn’t think it was possible for anything to smell worse than those corpses, but he had been very, very wrong.

  He turned back and helped Vanya up. Afterwards he tried to help Ameena, but Michael grabbed her by the waist and threw her up. She landed in a sprawl, growling and muttering under her breath as she crawled to her feet. But once her eyes saw the light and the hay, a concerned look crept onto her face, and her pupils started dancing around the entire wooden structure surrounding them.

  Michael jumped up after them, but Ameena paid no mind to the insult she would have definitely paid him under normal circumstances. She ran to the large barn doors, and threw them open. The sun poured in, revealing a large farm…

  And a treeline. Which meant they were outside the city.

  Ellis felt his eyes widen as Ameena turned back to the girl with hate in her eyes.

  “Where have you taken us?” She whispered.

  Vanya looked resigned, rather than smug. “Somewhere you can never hurt my people again.”

  And then she tilted her head back, and started screaming for help.