Queen of Hearts Complete Collection: Queen of Hearts; Blood of Wonderland; War of the Cards. Colleen Oakes

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       Nine

      Dinah’s knees ached when she rose again. Crawling up a steep slope had been much harder than she’d anticipated. Up ahead, light appeared from a narrow hole at the end of the tunnel. Dinah poked her head out and gave a sigh of relief. The smallest flicker of sunlight leaked in from a single rusted window that seemed to be miles above her. They had come to some sort of stone cylinder, and the tunnel went no farther. She looked down. The almost-vertical shaft ended abruptly with a steep drop into a large pool of ice. Wardley pushed up from behind.

      “Stop, stop, we could fall!” whispered Dinah frantically. She glanced at her surroundings and found what she was looking for. Jagged stairs led up and away from the drop: mangled teeth that spiraled up the wall of the concave ring.

      Wardley wiped his face. “It’s warmer in here.”

      Dinah looked at the ice. “Not warm enough.”

      “We must be in a hollowed-out grain silo. There are a number of them around the Towers.”

      Wardley went first, climbing over Dinah and pulling himself up against the wall. “Stay close to the wall. Inch by inch. I see a door up there.” He gestured his chin upward. Dinah swallowed. A fall would not kill them, but it would surely break them.

      “Don’t look down,” he instructed Dinah. She did, her eyes following a crooked crack in the ice. Buried up to its waist, frozen forever, was a skeleton. Its bony fingers dug into the ice, the claw marks inches deep. The scream on its face was etched there for eternity, the jawbone hanging grotesquely from its hinge.

      Dinah gave a shudder. “Was that …?”

      Wardley pressed his body against the wall. “Done on purpose? Yes. I told you the Black Towers was a brutal place. Club Cards find many ways of extracting information, mostly by torture.”

      “So that man …”

      “So that man was probably put down there in the water before the snow arrived and forced to watch as it froze around him. I would guess he’s chained to the bottom, at the ankles.”

      Dinah stared, letting the revulsion wash over her. She shivered. “How is it both humid and cold in here?”

      “It’s the Black Towers.”

      Dinah fixed her eyes on the skeleton. Wardley, ever so carefully, reached his fingers under Dinah’s chin and turned her head. “Look away.”

      The thrill of finding their way through the tunnels diminished with each pensive step toward the door, ever mindful of the frozen ground. Dinah heard the cry of enormous Wonderland bats, sometimes known to attack horses. Don’t look up, she told herself, pressing tighter to the wall. Don’t look up and don’t look down, just stay steady. They climbed silently until they reached a dilapidated wooden door, eaten away by mold and bat droppings.

      Wardley turned to Dinah, the flame casting a pink hue on her dark features. “This is it. We can turn back from here, but after we go through this door, we will have to finish what we have started.”

      Dinah looked at the door with a steely resolve, her stomach churning with fear. Regret was beginning to worm its way into her brain. But then she saw the note, unrolled from its tiny vial, and remembered the feeling that overcame her when she read it—that whatever conspiracy swirling through Wonderland Palace was coming for her eventually, whether she accepted it or not. She looked at Wardley, a brown lock of hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. “Faina Baker, the Black Towers. That’s where we are going.”

      His face fell as he understood that they would not be turning back. “As Your Highness commands. Stay behind me, and whatever you do, for the love of Wonderland gods, do not speak. You can disguise your face and dress, but you speak like a royal and that cannot be undone.”

      Wardley reached into his bag and clamped iron shackles over her wrists. They were heavier than Dinah had anticipated. “You look a mess,” he informed her. Dinah had been purposely careless as she walked and crawled through the tunnels. Her dress was caked with mud. She had soot from the flame smeared across her face and she had let her clean hair run against the tunnel wall. She looked like a commoner—more than a commoner, a criminal.

      Dinah gave a shudder in the cold, wet air. “I’m ready.”

      Wardley drew his eyes to her face, and Dinah saw a fear that matched her own. “We stay together, no matter what happens. You brought your crown?”

      Dinah nodded and patted her bag. “Just in case things go wrong.” She wrapped her freezing hand around his. The chains gave a slight jangle.

      “Here we go,” said Wardley. He gave a hard grunt, and the chain mail on his fist broke the aged lock on the door. It fell to the ground with a loud clang. Together they took a deep breath and stepped inside.

      The temperature change was immediate and severe. Whereas before they had been freezing, Dinah was soon covered in sweat. The air was thick, humid, and filthy. Pillars of black smoke rose up from below them. They appeared to be in a giant cocoon—a spiraling black tower, wider at the bottom and consistently narrowing toward the top. They were looking out across a wide chasm filled with heavy, dangling chains that twisted down from the cone’s point. On either side of them stretched endless cells embedded in the circumference of the tower, one after another, smaller and smaller the higher they went. The smell was inhuman and Dinah gave a loud retch, unable to control herself, followed by another and another. Urine, sweat, human waste, and blood, all mingled together in the thick air.

      Wardley bent over her. “Are you going to be all right?”

      “I’m your prisoner!” Dinah quietly reminded him in between heaves.

      Wardley stood up. “Right. C’mon then.” He gave a yank of her chain, and Dinah followed along behind him as they circled their way higher and higher into the tower. High-pitched screams of pain echoed up from below, and Dinah fought the urge to clap her hands over her ears. Wardley yanked her chains so she walked closer beside him.

      “I’ve heard rumors that they torture prisoners on the floor of the tower, but the smallest cells are at the top. The worst criminals are kept in the top cells, so that after their torture sessions, they have to crawl back up the spiral until they can rest.” He shook his head. “The crawl is its own form of torture. It’s sick.”

      Dinah’s eyes rested with pity upon an old man in a cell they passed, sitting on the floor in his own waste, licking the black, slimy wall. He turned as they walked by. Dinah gave him a sad smile from under her hood. Without warning, the man lunged at her from inside the cell, and managed to grab the edge of her cloak. He pulled her violently against the bars, shaking her back and forth as he reached out to grope her.

      “The hearts, the hearts, I love my hearts!”

      Dinah felt his rotten breath splash across her face, and she fought another rising wave of nausea. Wardley drew his sword and raised it above СКАЧАТЬ