The knocks came again.
Three of them. Evenly spaced. Not a fist against timber, but a tool striking iron below it.
Mara held the order close to her face. Wet ash. Bitter resin. Beneath both, a mineral tang like the inside of a spent cannon.
"Nobody moves," she said.
Ivo had already moved. He crossed the shed in two strides and put his boot against the dead man's shoulder, checking for a breath he knew would not be there. His knife came free with a short scrape.
"What is beneath the estate?" he asked Teren.
"A cellar. A wine room. The old powder vault, though it was sealed before I was born."
"That is not what she asked."
Teren stood near the door with one hand pressed to his bandaged side. His face had gone pale under the resin dust. He looked at Mara instead of his brother.
"I do not know," he said.
The answer was too clean. Mara folded the labor order once, along the crease she had made in crushing it.
A fourth sound came from beneath the floor. A drag. Something heavy being pulled across stone.
Nella Quist snatched the lantern from Caldus and held it low. Resin had hardened between the boards, black as old blood. The shed's floor had been laid over packed earth, but one plank near the dead man's hand showed a line of pale dust around its edges.
Nella crouched. She spat on her thumb and rubbed the dust. "Not earth. Lime. Old lime, by the taste. This floor has been patched twice and lied about both times."
"Can you open it?" Mara asked.
"I can open most things. Whether they open back is a separate bargain."
Mara knelt beside her. The board had no nail heads. She ran her fingers over the grain, finding a narrow seam. The resin camp had been abandoned after a fire, but whoever built this shed had known how to conceal a hatch. House Veylan carpenters used the same trick in the estate's servants' passages. Sabine had always called it economy of hinges.
Mara drew the smallest knife from her sleeve and slid it into the seam.
Teren caught her wrist.
His grip was firm, not painful. "Wait."
"For what? The floor to become more reassuring?"
He released her and took the lantern from Nella. His left hand shook once before he closed it around the handle. He placed the light beside Mara's knee, shielding the flame with his body so the glow would not show through the cracks in the walls.
"The riders outside may have heard it," he said. "If there is a way down, we need the light kept low."
It was an ordinary thing. Sensible. He had done it without asking whether she needed help, without telling her to stand aside. The lantern's brass handle warmed his fingers while the rest of him stayed rigid against the draft.
Mara looked at his hand longer than the action deserved.
Then she put the knife back into the seam.
The board lifted with a wet sucking sound. A square of black opened beneath it. Cold air moved up, carrying the smell of peat, iron, and something sweetly rotten. Steps descended into darkness.
Ivo raised his pistol.
"If this is a trap," Teren said, "it was built before any of us were born."
"That does not improve it," Ivo replied.
From the trees came a muffled shout. Another answered farther off.
Pell's people had found the camp.
Nella extinguished the lantern with her fingers over the wick. The shed became a box of breathing bodies. Mara heard the shallow rasp in Teren's chest, the shift of Ivo's coat, Caldus whispering a date to himself as if chronology could be used as a lockpick.
"Down," Mara said. "All of us."
"You first," said Ivo.
She felt his hand at the back of her collar and slapped it away. "Touch me again and lose the hand."
"You are welcome."
Mara lowered herself through the hatch. The first step was stone, slick with condensation. The second had crumbled at one corner. She kept one palm against the wall and descended sideways, weighing each surface before trusting it. Teren came after her. His boot struck the edge of the opening and dislodged a piece of lime that clicked down the stairwell for a long time.
The passage turned beneath the shed. The ceiling was low enough that Teren had to bend. Mara could hear him swallowing pain behind her.
"You are bleeding again," she said.
"I had noticed."
"Then stop noticing and bind it properly."
"Here?"
She stopped. The passage was only wide enough for one person to turn. Teren's face appeared above her shoulder, close in the dark. The smell of leather, rain, and blood replaced the ash.
"Here," she said.
He lifted his arm. Mara found the loose end of the bandage by touch, tore it free, and wound it twice around his ribs. The cloth was damp. His skin beneath it was hotter than it ought to have been.
He did not flinch when she pulled the knot tight.
"You make an excellent nurse," he murmured.
"I make an adequate tourniquet. Do not confuse the skills."
Behind them, the hatch gave a faint creak.
Mara pressed her hand over Teren's mouth. He went still beneath her palm. The sound came again, followed by the soft scrape of boots overhead.
A voice outside said, "Search the shed."
The men above crossed the floor. One boot stopped directly over the open hatch. Dust sifted onto Mara's hair.
Teren's hand closed around her forearm, not to remove it, but to keep her balanced on the narrow step. His pulse beat against her palm. She could feel the discipline in him, the effort required to make no sound while his wound opened under the fresh binding.
The boot moved.
Another voice said, "There is a body here."
"Then there are tracks. Find them."
Mara kept her hand over Teren's mouth until the men had gone. When she withdrew it, his lips were marked with the dark smear of resin from her glove.
He wiped it away with his thumb and looked at the stain.
"You could have warned me," he whispered.
"You were about to breathe."
"A grave error."
She turned before he could see that she had nearly smiled.
The passage ended at a brick wall. Nella came up behind them, feeling along the masonry. Her fingers found a metal ring set into the lowest course.
"This is not a passage," she said. "It is a throat."
"That is not a useful architectural term," Caldus whispered.
"It is when the throat is closed."
Nella pulled. A section of brick swung inward, revealing a low chamber and a black channel running through its center. Water moved beneath a crust of resin. On the far side stood a stone plate the size of a writing desk. A brass disc had been set into it, green with age.
Mara climbed through first.
The chamber smelled of old chemicals. Along the wall, iron pipes disappeared into the earth at three angles. Each pipe bore a stamped mark: a crown above a pair of crossed lines. Beneath the crown was the Veylan household cipher, worn but unmistakable.
Her mouth dried.
Caldus crawled in after her and saw the stamps. He made a small, delighted sound.
"Do not," Mara said.
"I have not said anything."
"You are glowing."
He brushed mud from his sleeve. "This is a Crown assay conduit. An authenticated transfer installation. The date style is early reign, perhaps—"
"Caldus."
He stopped.
The stone plate had a shallow recess in its center. It was shaped like a folded document. Mara took out the labor order. The paper fit exactly.
The brass disc clicked.
Everyone in the chamber went silent.
"Do not put it there," Teren said.
Mara looked at the cipher printed on the order. The mark was not merely Veylan. It was the household seal used on keys, debt ledgers, and instructions that required a servant to act without further approval. Sabine kept the seal in a locked drawer beneath her account books.
"It already belongs there," Mara said.
She set the order into the recess.
The chamber shuddered. A valve opened somewhere below. Water rushed through the channel, carrying black flakes that struck the stone with the sharp ticking of hail. The brass disc turned beneath the paper.
On the wall opposite, a seam appeared.
Ivo swore and raised his pistol.
The seam widened into a door no taller than Mara's shoulder. Beyond it lay a second tunnel lined with timber. Hooks had been fixed along the walls. Empty ones. At the far end, a shaft climbed toward a pale square of night.
"A route to the estate," Teren said.
Mara held up the labor order. The paper had not been damaged. Its lower edge now bore a dark impression from the brass disc: the Crown mark, pressed over the Veylan cipher.
Caldus reached for it.
She pulled it away.
"You will want to preserve that," he said.
"I want to know what it does."
"It proves the installation was legal."
"It proves someone made the law fit a door."
Above them, the searchers shouted. Wood cracked. The shed's floor groaned under the weight of men.
Teren looked toward the tunnel. "We cannot stay."
"We cannot take the order through a passage that may be watched."
"Then leave it."
Mara stared at him.
He met her gaze. "I am not asking you to trust me. I am asking you to choose the thing you can carry."
The sentence landed badly because it was reasonable. She folded the order and tucked it inside her bodice.
"We go through," she said.
Nella shook her head. "That timber smells of fresh tar. Somebody has used the route recently."
Ivo smiled without humor. "Then we may finally meet the people who have been using it."
A shot sounded above. The chamber ceiling shed grit.
Teren drew his sword. His hand was steady now, though the bandage at his side had begun to darken again.
Mara noticed. She noticed the way he turned his body so the others would not. She noticed the lantern, still unlit, held ready in his injured hand because he had chosen to protect the flame before protecting himself. The details arranged themselves in her mind with the irritating precision of a chemical equation.
She took the lantern from him.
"You need both hands," she said.
"For the sword?"
"For falling."
He gave her a look that would have been a question from a less guarded man.
They entered the timbered tunnel.
The floor sloped upward. Water ran beneath the boards. Every few yards, a narrow recess opened in the wall, each one large enough for a person to stand inside. The wood was scarred by fingernails.
Caldus saw them and stopped.
"Those are not storage niches," he said.
"Keep moving," Mara told him.
The tunnel narrowed. Ivo went first with his pistol raised. Nella followed, touching the beams as she passed. Teren came behind Mara, close enough that his coat brushed the hanging hooks.
At the top of the slope, they found a grated door. Beyond it, moonlight lay across a room filled with stacked crates.
Mara lifted the lantern's shutter by a fraction.
The crates were marked with the Veylan cipher.
Not old ones. The ink was fresh, the corners unscuffed. One had been split open. Inside lay folded gray coats, iron shackles, and small glass ampoules packed in straw.
Mara knew the ampoules by their shape. Sleep-smoke, refined and concentrated. Her own formula, or a close imitation.
She reached for the latch.
Teren's hand closed over hers.
Outside the grated door, someone turned a key.
A man's voice said, "The estate gate has opened. Bring the next thirty-seven before dawn."