The Last Warrior by Susan Grant

palace, where the air was so dense he imagined it could be sliced with a blade. There was barely enough light to see the pair with their black cloaks as they sprinted and then crawled through the ever-narrowing passageway. Here the scent of dampness was strong, and yet familiar. The odor brought him back to childhood, when danger was excitedly imagined, never imminent.
    Pipes, dead ahead.
    The boy unlatched a heavy iron grate, lowering it carefully. Torn spider webs draped the opening. Light from the lantern penetrated the tunnel only as deep as the length of a man. Tao helped the boy replace the grate after they slipped through the opening. Then they were on their way, the lantern flickering as it swung from the boy’s hand. The silence was as heavy as the air at this depth, the entire palace atop them, floorupon floor. The very thought threatened to turn him claustrophobic.
    Inside, their footsteps echoed unimaginably loudly after all their stealthy silence. “It’s slippery,” Elsabeth warned. “The muck is like ice.” She and the boy hesitated at a confluence of pipes, the boy holding the lantern high until Elsabeth found a marker they’d left and snatched it off the dank wall.
    â€œKeep to the right.” Tao knew the labyrinths of the drainage pipes as well as any formerly mischievous child raised in one of the noble families could. It had been years, but racing through the darkened passages, it came back as if it were yesterday. “I know the pipes well.”
    â€œThat’s what Markam said.”
    â€œSo, you’re in on his plan to free me. A Markam loyalist.”
    Her disdainful gaze sought him out in the gloom. “Markam is helping me —us. The Kurel. Any enemy of this king is an ally of ours. That’s why I’m helping you.” She looked him up and down, as if finding it difficult to absorb the very concept. “I also promised Markam.” She seemed no more pleased with that promise than she did helping him to hurt the king. “I’m going to hide you where no one will look,” she said. “The ghetto.”
    By the arks. K-Town. Markam had promised he’d disappear. The man had been telling the truth. “They’llcome looking for me. Not too thoroughly in your ghetto, true, but Xim won’t give up that easily.”
    â€œLet them come.” The tutor’s face looked paler in the shadows as they clambered in the wake of Navi’s lantern. “We’ll be ready.”
    He sensed her grit, and could believe her. Of all things, he’d just inherited a Kurel guardian, one who actually seemed credible in her willingness to wage a fight.
    His situation was becoming more bizarre by the minute.
    The boy threw glances over his shoulder at Tao, acting equal parts awestruck and nervous, but the tutor was cool, businesslike and in control, rather like he was when leading his men. If some Kurel could be this capable, why hadn’t any ever signed up to fight?
    Spongers, every last one.
    Elsabeth said, “In case we get separated, head to the loading docks. Down by the kitchens. Do you remember where?”
    How could he forget? They’d stowed away in the departing supply wagons as boys, never knowing what new places they’d see before being discovered by the drivers and shooed away. “Yes. I do.”
    â€œWe can’t dally. The kitchen staff returns at midnight.” She lurched into a run. “Follow, Tassagon.”
    The boy was ahead of them now, keeping a breakneck pace. Literally, Tao thought with increasingconcern. Several times the youth slid and almost fell, righting himself with a body that could bend and recover like a sapling. The lantern flickered with each crash, a bouncing ball of light. Tao could barely focus on the details racing past him. A wrong turn could put them out into the moat, where the pipes channeled the monsoon waters in season. Ahead was one such turn.
    â€œGo