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.The White betrayed me? Why?Chapter 34Page 124 It had been a long morning already.Gavin had woken painfully early to reach the coast by the dawn, andthen had skimmed as soon as he d been able to draft the sun s first rays.Then he d sculled to CannonIsland and made an unpleasant, claustrophobic trip through the escape tunnel, leaving him dirty, sweaty,sore, and deprived of sleep.But there was no other option than to push; not after what the color wighthad told him.The tunnel met the Chromeria at a disused storage room in the basement, three levels underground.There was a plain closet set in the back of one of the rooms, and a hidden door in the back of that closet.Gavin grabbed a lantern from a hook, twisted the flint, and was gratified to see it light instantly.Hereleased the luxin he d been holding into two puddles on the floor that quickly dissolved no need toterrify anyone he ran into and slipped into the closet.The hidden door closed smoothly behind him.He opened the closet door.A hand s breadth, then itstopped, blocked.With the light of the lantern only cutting through the little crack, he couldn t see whatthe problem was.He reached through the crack into the darkness.Polished wood greeted his fingertips,smooth and straight, then more, right on top of it.Chairs.Well, that was the problem of a super-secret door hidden in a disused storage room, wasn t it?Sometimes people saw a disused storage room and thought it should be used to store things.Sighing, Gavin set down the lamp and braced his shoulder against the door.He pushed, hard, harder.The door slid another hand s breadth or two as the stacked chairs shifted, then stuck fast.He glanced atthe lantern, drafted a green wand, and stuck a blob of red luxin to the end.He lit the red with sub-redand poked his narrow torch through the gap, holding it high.He poked his head through the gap after it.The entire room was packed with furniture, as if half a dozen lecture halls and dining areas had beencleared out and everything put in here.Dear Orholam.Gavin swore quietly.The only clearance wasdown at floor level.The only way out was to crawl between the legs of the chairs and tables.There was nothing for it.Unless Gavin wanted to start a fire, draft huge amounts, and obliterateeverything in the room so he could simply walk out not terribly discreet he was going to be moppingthe floor with his body.Great.He let the luxin torch disintegrate and started crawling.Ten minutes later, he stood.He didn t try to brush the dust from his clothing.There wasn t much point.He was muddy with dust, that s how much dust there was, along with damp floors and sweat and dust heknocked off of the chairs and tables above him.He listened at the door for a full minute, heard nothing.Stepping into the hall lightly, he closed the door behind himself.He extinguished his lantern with a puff;the halls were brightly lit.Even three floors below the sea, the cherry glims (the red-drafting second- tofourth-year students) were expected to keep the lamps fueled with red luxin.The storeroom, wisely, wasset almost at the end of one of the long hallways.Gavin ducked down to the lift at the end, mere pacesaway.The lifts had to serve the entire Chromeria, which meant they had to be serviceable by slaves or thedims, the newest students.So it was entirely mechanical.As anyone stepped into the lift, a scale wouldindicate how many counterweights were needed.If a drafter chose to use less counterweight, she wouldhave to pull herself up the rope, albeit only lifting a fraction of her own weight.If she used morecounterweight than her own weight, it could be difficult to stop at the correct floor.A central lift handledall the heavier loads and moved entire classes, while these side lifts took smaller loads.Additionally, eachlift bay had numerous slots and ropes so that ambassadors wouldn t have to wait while dozens of dimsPage 125 made their way to class.Gavin grabbed the second to the last rope.Secrecy meant he couldn t take the last one, though ifsomeone saw and recognized him, they would wonder why he wasn t taking the lift reserved for a man ofhis rank, so it was probably a wash as to which way was more discreet.He drafted a brake, threw thelever to double his own weight, and kicked the release.He flew upward at great speed.Though he started deep beneath the earth, the lifts were brightly lit.Atthe top of each chute were holes to the outside, and mounted there were highly polished mirrors fromAtash that sent natural light down the chutes for as long as the sun was visible to that chute each day.Adjusting the mirrors every few minutes was another fun job for the dims, and every evening they wouldhave to crank all the counterweights back into place.Gavin could remember doing that himself.Asmemories went, it wasn t a terribly pleasant one.The lift didn t go all the way to his chamber near the top of the Chromeria, of course.That would be fartoo convenient or, as the Blackguards preferred to say, insecure.No reason to give assassins a directpath to the Prism or anyone else important.Instead, after whizzing upward at high speed halfway up theChromeria, zipping past students and magisters and servants and slaves so fast that they had no chanceto see who was in such a hurry, Gavin threw the brake.He stopped at the top of the chute and stepped out in front of the guard station that protected this floor.There were four men here, guards, not Blackguards, all looking up from their dice guiltily.Apparentlythey hadn t noticed the whizzing rope until too late.Their mouths hung open at the sight of him, GavinGuile himself, sweaty, dirty, andhere
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