The Scourge - Page 66

Luckily, the knife was jammed in more tightly. I pulled it out and then cut away at my skirt, hoping it wasn't a part of the dress I would need once I was free.

If I was free. I'd heard the lock click, but was that just the tumbler moving aside, only to fall back in place now that the needle was gone?

With my knife back between my teeth, I rose up again, higher this time, and felt above the cage bars for the lock. It snapped open and fell into the water below. This did land on a snake. I heard the clonk.

Good. They were giving me a nasty headache; it was about time one of them got a headache too.

Holding tightly to the bars, I withdrew my feet and pressed them against the side of the pit wall, near the cage door. Once I straightened my body, I hoped it'd force the door upward. It moved a little but my feet slipped. I heard the snap of a snake's jaw and wondered how close it had come to my foot.

I straightened myself again, refusing to make any more mistakes, at least until I was out of the pit. The cage door lifted, and I got one foot onto the floor, then the other. Then I rolled from there onto the floor, slamming the crate door down again.

That was good news, but my problems were far from over. Once the water was high enough, the snakes would be free of the pit. I got to my feet and ran over to the fireplace. How odd it was, to see the fire still roaring in its place, while everything around me was soaked.

Using my skirts to protect my hands, I pulled the pot of boiling spindlewill off the fireplace and walked it back to the pit and dumped it in. Poison, meet venom. I wondered which would win.

Then I quickly scoured the room for any jar marked as alcohol or with any label that might include flammable contents. As I did, I noticed one row of glass jars that had escaped my attention before. The jars were filled with dry thrushweed leaves, enough to heal every Colonist here. If they had collected these leaves, then they must know its effect on the spindlewill. Was this thrushweed the reason some of the people here in the infirmary were saying they felt better?

I stared at the jars until hissing sounds overwhelmed the roll of thunder overhead. I had to destroy this room, now. It meant I'd also destroy this thrushweed, which the Colonists on the outside so desperately needed. But what they didn't need was to suddenly find the island crawling with Dulanian vipers.

I finally decided to open every jar of liquid and dump all their contents into the pit. Something in one of those bottles had to burn.

Then I returned to the fireplace. One of the logs must've been recently brought in from the storm, because half of it was still wet and fire had yet to take hold there. I grabbed it and dropped the log into the pit.

Yes, something in there was highly flammable. A funnel of fire exploded from the pit, singeing the hairs on my arm and catching a piece of my hem on fire. My skirt was thoroughly ruined now. I patted out the fire from the fabric, grabbed my knife from where I'd laid it on the floor, and then ran from the burning room.

Plenty of cries could still be heard on the west side of the infirmary, so I guessed all the wardens had gathered there. I went to the quieter half instead.

I tested the first door, one with a small barred window for communication. The woman inside pressed her nose to the bars. "Hurry! Something smells terrible. Is it fire?"

"Burning snakes," I mumbled, as if that was the sort of thing everyone was used to smelling.

I tugged on her door, but it was locked. I still had my knife, but that wasn't enough. The needles probably wouldn't have worked either. These were bigger medieval locks, half rusted over. With his thin needles, even Weevil couldn't have picked these.

The second and third doors were the same way. I didn't know why I kept trying them. Of course they'd all be locked.

The fourth door was Jonas's.

"So," he casually said, "which catastrophe was you? Did you start the fire or destroy the entire west half of the infirmary?"

I grinned. "Well, I won't take credit for the west half. I can't break the lock, but you need this."

He held out his tied hands. I gave him my knife to cut the ropes and told him to pocket the larger pieces, just in case we needed it.

"The rope is useless if you can't get me out of here," he said.

"I'm working on that."

"Stop right there!" Warden Gossel sh

outed from behind me. Inwardly, I groaned. Gossel was the last person I ever wanted to see, but especially not now.

Jonas had my knife, and in his hurry to get it back to me, I heard it drop inside the cell. Meanwhile, Gossel pulled out a pistol, aimed directly at me. I stared down its long barrel, frozen with fear. Even if I had my knife, it wouldn't do any good.

Then someone yelled out from behind him, and suddenly, I saw Weevil. His hair was sticking out more than usual and looked a little burnt, his clothes were torn, and someone had wrapped part of his arm in a makeshift bandage, tying it off with a silk ribbon. He looked terrible, but at least he was alive.

Also, Weevil might've gone fully insane. He came flying down the hall at Gossel like a hawk swooping for its kill and with a screech just as loud. Gossel was knocked off balance at first, but then recovered and threw Weevil down the opposite hallway. I ran toward them, happy to join the fight if the wardens really wanted to see what River People could do.

But before I could get to him, a laundry bin barreled down the hallway and ran straight into Gossel. He tumbled inside it, banging his head on a low-hanging beam in the process. Still gripping the bin's handle, Della looked sideways at me and smiled.

Tags: Jennifer A. Nielsen Fantasy
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