HUNTER STEPPED through the opening into the small room lit by a single lantern on a round table. Three low cots covered in brown blankets lined the walls, looking like freshly dug gravesites.
“Nothing with a door?” he asked. “Preferably one with a lock.”
“Those are few,” Dax replied from the corridor. “These are not residences, but merely temporary accommodations. A place to disappear, or sleep when needed.”
“Appears I’m the first permanent resident, then.” A familiar loose-weave sack was in the center of one of the beds closest to the door. Hunter reached in and pulled out his jeans. Someone had already claimed the cot for him. “And you had someone deliver my luggage. Let me know where I should leave the tip.”
“This will not be permanent,” Dax said.
No. Only until someone slits my throat, Hunter thought. He was a heavy sleeper—he was going to have to learn how to sleep with one eye open.
“This area was selected because it is more isolated than the others,” Dax continued. “You are less likely to have to share it with anyone.”
Hunter nodded, not wanting to appear grateful. Although the prospect of a little privacy right now, especially when everyone seemed hell-bent on seeing him dead, was welcome.
“How does anyone know what time it is down here?”
“You’ll hear chimes. From dusk to dawn is one sound. Dawn to dusk another. There is more to show you.”
“Sure. I’m sure I’ll have time to unpack later.”
Dax took Hunter through more corridors. The place was a labyrinth. He pointed out strange symbols carved in the walls. They looked like they might be some form of alphabet, but Hunter wasn’t sure.
“These will help you navigate the tunnels,” Dax told him. “Do not wander too far until you’ve learned them, lest you lose your way.”
“Don’t suppose you have a map. Or a key.”
Dax pointed out the basic necessities. The toilets, first of all—which Hunter could certainly have found on his own. Blindfolded. Scrunching his nose, he peeked his head into the dark little room that had a long bench along a wall with three ovoid holes cut into it. Mercifully, the room had a door, but he would need to remember to bring a lantern along. Dax showed him a storage closet, though Hunter had no idea what supplies he would need from it, and a room that had a trough in the middle. Water trickled down the rough back wall and collected in barrels. A place to clean up, obviously, but with the city directly above them, Hunter couldn’t help but wonder about the water source.
Warm air carrying the sweet smell of cooked meat wafted past him. They were nearing a kitchen, and his stomach responded with a groan. He hadn’t eaten anything since the morning.
The kitchen occupied a wide cavern and felt more like a hellish forge. The floor was wood, but the walls and ceiling remained natural rock. In the center, a round cookfire blazed red and fierce like something demonic. Pots hung from chains over the flames on one side, and a whole pig was skewered on a spit over the other, fat dripping down to hiss on the coals. A soot-covered iron hood caught the rising black smoke and led it away.
The air was sultry and hot, but the smell of cooked meat was intoxicating. Hunter’s stomach felt suddenly vacant.
“I must return,” Dax said. “Eat. Return to the bedchamber. I trust you are able to find your way back.”
Hunter glanced up at the symbol etched into the wall. “I’ll figure it out.”
Dax nodded. “Once we are concluded, I will look for you there.”
Sitting in a dark empty room. “And what am I to do in the meantime?”
“Stay out of the way,” he said as he departed back down the corridor.
“Hey! Dax?” Hunter called after him.
Dax slowed and looked over his shoulder.
“Thanks for sticking your neck out for me,” Hunter said. “I guess you didn’t have to do that.” The truth of it was, if hadn’t been for Dax these last few days, Hunter would have met a horrible death several times over already. The least he could do was acknowledge that.
In the dim light of the corridor, Hunter couldn’t quite make out the shift in Dax’s expression, but something had changed. Something subtle. Dax nodded and continued on his way.
Surrounding the central firepit were a number of wooden sawhorse tables and benches. Hunter approached tentatively, not knowing the protocol, and took a seat on a bench.
A hard thump drew Hunter’s attention across the room. The cavern was not unoccupied as he first thought. A man stood at a higher table against the wall. He slammed a cleaver down on a hunk of meat and scraped the pieces aside. At his side, a dog sat very still with its muzzle pointed up. The man flicked a chunk of meat off the table, and the dog snatched it out of the air and swallowed it without chewing. The man glanced over his shoulder and took notice of Hunter.
“You waitin’ on something?” the man asked. He was older and looked haggard and frail, like he hadn’t left the kitchen in days. His white beard had dark bits hanging from it.
“Was told to come here to eat,” Hunter replied.
The man scowled. “My food’s for the fighters. Not strays.”
“Dax sent me here.”
His lip curled in a snarl as he turned away. “Ain’t no tavern, and I ain’t no serving wench. You want supper, get your ass up and get it. Plates and such over there.”
As Hunter pushed himself up, the man was already turning back to his butchering.
The only option appeared to be a large black kettle with a bubbling stew. He ferreted out a ladle and scooped out a portion onto a wooden plate with a high lip. Wedges of dark bread were in a basket nearby, and he dropped a chuck of it on top. Off to the side, he found a keg with a twisting wooden spigot. He grabbed a mug and held it under the spigot, expecting water, but amber liquid poured into the mug and frothed on the top. Beer. Warm—but still beer. At least this place had something familiar, something reminiscent of home. A cold comfort. But enough of it and it might make this place mildly endurable. He carried his meal back to the table.
Voices echoing from a corridor announced the arrival of others. They erupted into the kitchen, laughing and shoving each other about like boys making their way back from the playground. They spotted Hunter as they broke the threshold, and the laughter cooled. They scooped up their food from the kettle and moved to occupy the table farthest from him.
Hunter ignore them while he ate, though he felt their disapproving stares the entire time, as if his presence was souring their meal. They spoke in low conspiratorial voices peppered with deep-throated grunts and snorts. Hunter didn’t need to understand what they were saying to know he was the topic of their conversation. Word of his arrival here had clearly spread, and the consensus was not in his favor.
He sopped up the remains of the stew with the bread and slid his empty plate aside. Warning tension knotted his shoulders and neck. He recognized the body language well enough to know what might come next. Should the group decide to wander over, he was ready.
Of course, he could push up from the table and return to that little cave of a room, sit in the dark and wait for Dax to fetch him. He could give these boys a bit of breathing room, a chance to get used to his presence. But after everything, he didn’t feel like being charitable. He didn’t ask to be here, and they were just going to have to deal with it. The last thing he wanted was to send a message that he was easily intimidated. Far tougher guys had tried, and he wasn’t about to be scared off by a sour look. So he leaned in on his elbows and locked eyes with anyone who looked his way.
From the corner of his eye, he caught someone else enter. The newcomer hugged the wall and entered cautiously, like a mouse scoping out the room for a cat. Hunter recognized the spiky, unkempt hair immediately. Uri. The kid who manned the entrance to the hideout. Here, in light that was better than in the corridor where he first saw him, Hunter got a better look at him. His skin was a pale blue, almost gray, and his ears were tapered upward to a rounded point.
Not Mazenti, like he’d seen outside the city walls. Or at least not entirely. The skin didn’t have the same vibrant blue color. The boy was mixed race, human and Mazenti.
He crossed over to the cookfire and ladled a plate of stew for himself. Bowl in hand, he scanned his seating options. His gaze touched on Hunter briefly before he veered away from him, choosing a table near the others. As soon as he lowered onto a bench, one of the men slammed the side of his fist on the tabletop. He looked up and sighed, as if irritated his meal had been interrupted.
“What do you think you’re doing, skeg?” he hissed.
“You know the rules,” said another. He shoveled a spoonful into his mouth and shook his head.
Uri slowly rose again. He stood there a moment, steaming bowl in hand, clearly unsure what to do. The only other table put him closer to Hunter. With no other option, he shuffled over and sat on the edge of the bench as far from Hunter as he could.
The men chuckled as they exchanged looks, titillated with the power they exerted. Their attention was no longer on Hunter but on the boy, and Hunter could see the gears turning as they continued to smirk in his direction. The group was looking for a reason to escalate this and cause Uri more grief, punish him for some imagined crime. They’d obviously decided Hunter wasn’t a worthwhile target and centered on the boy. Uri felt it too. He shoveled the food in his mouth as if someone might take it away from him. He couldn’t wait to be out of there.
Hunter leaned forward and stared at the four of them. One by one they noticed him, and Hunter made sure to lock eyes until they turned away. The wicked grins slipped from each face, the joy in their game quashed.
One of the men pushed his bowl away in disgust. “Lost my appetite.”
Hunter chuckled loud enough for them to hear. The plate was empty. The others nodded in agreement. They stood as a unit and left, plates abandoned in the center of the table.
Uri’s shoulders seemed to deflate once the men were gone. He grabbed the plate and started to lift from the bench, ready to retreat to a table farther away.
“What’s a skeg?” Hunter asked him.
Uri froze, not quite standing, not sitting. His fingers tightened around the edge of the plate. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“Why’s that?”
“People say you don’t belong here.”
Word sure traveled fast down here. “Can’t say I disagree with them,” Hunter said with a low grunt in the back of his throat. “But here I am.”
The reply seemed to confuse him a moment. His eyes flared with annoyance as he looked back down at the food waiting for him on the plate. “Doesn’t mean you’re welcome. Or trusted.”
The irony of that made him want to chuckle. “Seems you know something about that.”
Uri’s head snapped involuntarily toward the empty passageway where the others had withdrawn before he turned a hot gaze in Hunter’s direction. In the torchlight, his eyes glinted like a campfire ember. He was irked, and he only wanted to eat his dinner in peace. Hunter’s questions were as unwanted as the harassment he endured by the four other men. “They don’t mean anything by it.”
Hunter sighed. Uri didn’t believe that any more than he did. “My mistake.”
Uri started to move again, rising to his full height and lifting a leg over the bench.
“No,” Hunter told him as he stood. “Stay and finish your meal. I’m done.”
He set the plate in a wooden tub with others and left the kitchen.