Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 37i

Tahlia peered around the bottom turn of the stairs again. The two guards had gone, presumably to patrol further down the corridor.

As she crouched there, panting to regain her breath, she tried to piece together the fractured conversation she'd heard in the tent the previous day, but the details kept slipping away. One memory, though, remained clear.

'..why don't you send word to him? Ask him what to do with her.'

Who could she trust?

She suddenly heard footsteps on the stairs above her, maybe only a few turns up. The soldier who had pursued her from the ladies' quarters was still on her tail, and getting closer. She jumped to her feet and ran to the cross-junction where sh'd seen the guards pass. She peered around the corner, and sighed with relief. She had found just the place she had been looking for.

"Hey, girl!" came a stern shout from the stair behind her.

She leapt around the corner and ran. It seemed to take her an age to reach the double doors at the corridor's far end, so much so that she had time to study each bash and dent in their lower panels, made by the passage of the laundry carts. She did not slow down when she reached the doors, but ran straight on, sending them swinging back as she flew into the room beyond, which was large and had an identical set of doors on each high white wall.

Four wide metal tubes stood in the centre of the room, connecting ceiling to floor. Tahlia ran to the nearest double door and shoved it open before turning, and with a fluid movement and no pause for thought, caught the two edges of a hatchway set in the nearest tube, swung her feet up, and jumped inside.

Her head had barely disappeared before the doors she had entered through were flung open and a soldier ran into the room. He took one look at the other set of doors, which were still swinging back and forth, and never having been engaged in a pursuit with Tahlia before, pushed his way through them. He found a corridorbeyond, which was full of waiting laundry carts, but quite empty of CommanderKralaford's daughter. 

* * *

The first time Tahlia had jumped into one of the laundry chutes, she had screamed all the way down. Not out of fear of course, but out of the sheer exhilaration of it. She had learnt since then about the benefits of not screaming like a jigger while attempting to avoid apprehension, so held her breath for the first steep plummet. Even in the midsts of her mind's turmoil, she could feel the giggles close in her chest as the tube levelled to a shallower drop, before turning suddenly and twisting her left and right, before turning straight down once more. She continued hurtling downwards in total darkness, and after more stomach flipping turns and one final steep plummet, the tube levelled out. She flew down it at a steady angle for several metres before the top curve of it disappeared, so that she was left sliding down an open chute in the high roofed cavern of the upper washing room.

She brought up her knees and pushed her heels tight against the curved metal of the chute, and was thankful that her feet were bare, because they slowed her all the quicker. She muttered a prayer of thanks for that fact as she came to a squeaking halt three meters above the floor of the laundry bin. Although the air was damply warm, and still filled with the sharp scent of wash salt, the night's washing had been done, and the bin below was empty, devoid of its usual comfortable landing.

Tahlia looked cautiously around the upper washing room, which seemed strange and unfamiliar for its emptiness. The pipe she had entered down was one of dozens that curved from the room's high ceiling, to be supported to the ground on high gantries. Walkways wound back and fourth among the gantries, passing beneath the lips of each chute, and beside the pipe's open ends were racks where long handled hauling hooks and pummelling sticks were stored.