Ward Against Death Read Free

until her fingers struck the coarse bumps and pocks of old metal. Just where she remembered it. She found the hinges, braced her feet on either side of the grate, and, with it groaning in protest, heaved it open.
    She didn’t feel dead at all.
    Which meant the necromancer had to be a player assigned to keep an eye on her.
    face="Adobe Caslon Pro" color="#000000"> His jaw dropped, and his eyes grew wide, as if he’d never seen someone force open a rusty sewer grate before.
    A very good player. As much as she disliked the idea, she’d have to dispose of him before they got too far.
    Straddling the hole, she placed her hands on either side of it, stretched her legs down, and felt with her feet for the ladder carved in the wall. Her toe caught something, and she shifted to get a better foothold. She put on her I’m-a-helpless-woman expression and looked at him. “Please. This is our only escape.”
    The necromancer swallowed and ran his hands down the front of his jacket. “In there?”
    More yells from the direction of the house. Closer. Her father’s men were likely scaling the garden wall at that very moment.
    “It’s this or them. Please.” She ducked into the sewer, remembering to breathe from the sides of her mouth so the stench wouldn’t overwhelm her. At the bottom, she bridged a thin stream of muck.
    She peered down the sewer, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light glowing from the witch-stone panels set into the obsidian walls. The cold, pungent air seeped through her clothes and into her skin. She should have dressed more warmly. No, she wouldn’t be in the sewers long. All she needed was to stop by the cavern, pick up her supplies, and slip away in the night.
    She could stow away on a ship bound for the White Strait and the Misty Isles, where neither the Gentilica nor the Assassins’ Guild could reach her—or, rather, where their reach was diminished. There wasn’t a place in the Union the Gentilica didn’t control, but there was no way she was going to end up like John Tanner, who had snitched to the Quayestri about her father’s protection racket in the city’s fifth ring. His eyeless and tongueless body had been found in a manure pile. At least the Guild was professional enough to forego torture and just kill the target.
    The necromancer scrambled down the ladder, missed the last rung, and landed in the stream of refuse, splashing it up the back of her legs. He coughed, his breath catching in his throat as if he was about to throw up. “What did I just step in?”
    Did he really have to ask? She glanced up to see if he had at least pulled the grate shut behind him. A perfect circle of starlight, without the crisscross t d crisscrungs of the grate, glowed above her.
    “You could have closed the grate.”
    “Oh.” His real hair, shorn to half an inch in length, stood in clumps at every angle. Not much of an improvement from the wig. He was the perfect image of a scarecrow, all arms and legs and not a thought in his head. Oh, he was good.
    She grabbed the rail to climb back up the access pipe. The bark and whine of the family dogs drew close.
    Damn.
    It didn’t matter if she closed it or not. The dogs would follow her scent right to it. She had to move now and put as much distance between her and the access pipe as possible. “We have to go.”
    She stepped into the sewage. A violent shiver wracked her body.
    Gasping, she reached for the slimy wall. Above, the yells and barks of her pursuers grew louder, coming closer, ready to discover her still standing in the circle of starlight.
    A weight landed on her shoulder and she forced her head to move the necessary fraction to see the necromancer’s long, delicate fingers.
    “Are you all right?” he asked.
    She shrugged off his hand and pushed away from the wall. “I’m fine.”
    A line formed between his brows.
    Another shiver raced through her, and she grabbed the front of his jacket to keep her balance. She couldn’t make her mind