Dad laid his hand on the smooth granite. "Has to be a bunker."

"Nukpana's?" I asked.

Piaras shook his head. "He's using it as a holding cell. They caught Talon before I could get to him. I followed them down here."

"Why didn't you go for help?"

"If I left, I'd never find it again. When the guards stepped away for a few moments, I tried using my dagger to mark the stone. It didn't even make a scratch." He looked at the flat stone in frustrated anger. "I couldn't leave him-and I had to do something before Sarad Nukpana came for him. I was trying to come up with a plan when I . . . uh, sneezed."

I winced. "That'll get you noticed real quick."

"I had to kill them." Piaras's words came out in a rush. "If I only knocked them out, they'd come to and go for help. I had to stop-"

"You did what you had to do," I calmly finished for him.

"And you did a clean job of it," Dad reassured him. "You did what a Guardian would have done. I know you don't think it's fine work, but it is."

"Would throwing up also be fine work?"

"Not right now," I told him. "See if you can't hold off until we're out of here, and I just might join you." Goblins could see like cats in the dark. But there the goblins lay, unliving proof that Piaras had gotten the drop on them and made it count. "How did you hide?"

"Negating spell and a full-body veil," Dad surmised without turning from his inspection of the stone wall.

Piaras blinked in surprise. "Yes, sir. How did you-"

"I've been a Guardian for a long time, Piaras. It's the first thing they teach cadets. Don't confront when you can hide."

"Was Talon conscious when they locked him in?" I asked.

"Yes, and mad as hell."

"How did the guards open the bunker?"

"I wasn't close enough to see. I'm sorry."

"Don't be. If you'd been any closer, you'd probably be in there with Talon." I quickly moved next to Dad. "See a way in?" The longer we stood here, the more likely we'd have company we didn't want.

"I don't sense a spell or ward, so it would have to be a talisman, keyed to this bunker."

"Piaras, help Dad search the bodies," I told him. "Since they're dead, they probably don't have anything the Saghred wants, but with all that blood, I can't risk touching them."

I hadn't even finished speaking before Dad was kneeling next to one of the dead goblins and doing a highly professional job of pilfering the body: going through pouches, pockets, then taking his dagger and cutting the ties off the goblin's leather armor to search through the layers.

Piaras searched the other one, doing what needed to be done, but trying not to think about what he was doing-stripping the body of a goblin he'd just killed. The first time Piaras had killed had been less than a month ago; it'd been self-defense. This had been the same thing. Almost. Piaras had kept himself concealed, plans running through his head because every option led to him doing exactly what he'd just done: kill two Khrynsani guards. He hadn't wanted to do it, but it wouldn't be the first time that an ill-timed sneeze had forced a man's hand.

Piaras stood, a palm-sized metal square gleaming dully in his hand. "Could this be it?"

Dad took it from him, studying one side, then the other. "It looks old enough." He shone his lightglobe slowly up the length of the wall.

"Wait," I told him.

Dad stopped the globe.

"A few inches to the left."

The globe moved and the shadowed dint in the stone revealed itself to be a shallow square, about a foot from the ceiling, easily reachable by a tall man. With the disk in his hand, Dad reached as high as he could go, then he stood on tiptoe.

"Dammit, my old body wasn't this short."

Piaras stepped forward. "Let me, sir." He slipped the disk into the hollow, no tiptoeing needed. There was a click and the stone panel slid back.

I expected one big room. By no stretch of the imagination could this room be large enough to house fifty mages. If Mid had been under attack, I'd have taken my chances out in the tunnels. There were two doors on either side of the room, probably for storage. Though the first one on the left was storing one goblin teenager. A big clue was a hole cut into the door and set with iron bars. But the red cloud of a ward drifting restlessly in front of the door was the clincher. I guess the mages who'd built these bunkers had made provisions should they catch one of their attackers.

Dad swore quietly but extensively.

"What?" I asked.

"Those wards are wicked bitches."

"Can you take them out?"

"Eventually."

"Eventually isn't now."

"I know," Dad all but growled.

I felt the wards, and under that a gag spell. Sarad Nukpana was being careful. He knew what Talon was capable of, especially after the kid's performance last night. But most important, Talon was his prized catch. He wasn't taking any chances.

The wards shifted and I saw it-a hinged door a little over a foot high and that much again wide. I'd seen similar in modern jail cells. Guards could pass food to a prisoner without the risk of unlocking the door. The wards shifted again, covering the hinged door. I counted all the way to ten before the wards moved away again. The little door stayed untouched by the ward for another count of ten. Nice and regular.

I grinned. This could work.

"No, Raine." Dad's voice said his word was final. He'd looked where I'd been looking. I wasn't the only one who could count to ten.

"It's the only chance we have," I told him. "You said it yourself-those wards are wicked bitches. So I'll go under them."

Dad scowled. "In ten seconds."

"So I'll go fast." I kept my eyes on the wards. Ten seconds on, ten seconds off. I loved predictability.

"No, I'll go fast," he told me.

"Your shoulders are too broad."

"I'll fit," Piaras said.

I looked at him and his shoulders. "No, you won't. Plus you're too tall; you'd never make it through before those wards touched you."

"What would happen?"

Dad's eyes had gone back to tracking the wards. "Well, you'd be a lot shorter for one thing."

I realized something distinctly unpleasant. "Dad, if Talon has any wounds, I can't touch him."

Dad handed me his gloves. I didn't know if they'd work, but I tried them on. They were a little large, but manageable. "I'll just try not to touch the kid." I slid out of my sword harness and started stripping off my doublet.

Dad stared at me. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Making myself as narrow as possible." I would fit, but most of my clothes wouldn't. After I'd stripped off everything extraneous, I was left wearing high boots, trousers, a small pouch with some necessities, and an awfully thin shirt. I suddenly noticed it was really, really cold down here. Dad noticed the parts of me that didn't like the cold and quickly looked away. Piaras noticed and then tried not to notice.

I shoved a dagger into my belt at the small of my back and pulled the gloves back on.

Piaras nervously glanced back at the bunker opening. "If there's nothing I can do in here, I'll stand watch outside."

Dad nodded once. "Thank you, Piaras."

The kid looked at me, his dark eyes solemn and afraid-for me. "Be careful, Raine."

"Whenever I can."

I started to kneel, and Dad laid a firm hand on my arm.

"If for some reason you can't get out the way you went in, I'm taking that door off its hinges. Wards or not."

I smiled. "That's what I'm counting on."

I knelt and waited for the ward to move. I opened the flap and quickly looked inside. It wouldn't do me any good to risk life and limb wiggling through that flap if Talon wasn't in there.

Or if a goblin guard was. It'd suck to avoid having my legs cut off by a ward only to have my head lopped off by an ax. I looked. Talon was in there and he was alone. He seemed to be asleep-or unconscious. I was hoping for asleep.

"Dad, the room's big enough. When I start through, get your hands on the bottom of my boots and shove me through."

He knelt beside me. "You got it."

I waited for the next ward cycle to start, dropped to my stomach, started squirming through, and Dad gave me a shove that damned near drove my head into the far wall of the cell. It felt like I left parts of me around the edges of that door.

I scrambled to my feet. Talon was awake and giving me a lascivious look that I'd gotten on numerous occasions from his father. The similarities made me uncomfortable in ways I'd never imagined.

Talon was chained to the wall. There were enough links to allow limited movement, but that was about it. I thought it was a little overdone. No doubt the kid was nimble, and he was a knockout spellsinger, but wards, a gag spell, and chained to the wall? Apparently I could add paranoid to my list of Sarad Nukpana descriptors.

Talon rattled his chains and grinned, slow and wicked. "I've had this dream before."

Yep, like father, like son.

I just looked at him. "Kid, I can go right back out the way I came in-without you."

"I'll shut up."

"Smart choice."

His grin turned sheepish. "It appears I didn't make the smartest choice last night."

"Let's see . . . you froze a courtyard full of Guardians, ran away, got yourself snatched and brought here when Mychael and your dad told you to go to the citadel and stay there-so I can see where you might think that."

"Would 'sorry' cover it?"

"Doesn't even come close."

"How did you find me?" Talon asked, nimbly changing the subject.

"Piaras led us to you."

"Piaras?"

"He followed you from the citadel, saw Nukpana grab you, and risked his own life to follow you down here-then he had to kill two Khrynsani to try to save you."

Talon gave a low whistle. "He's so going to kick my ass for that."

"Safe assumption."

I wasn't just making small talk. I was trying to figure out the best way to get those shackles off Talon. Naturally, they couldn't be just any shackles. They were the magic-sapping kind. And I'd have to touch them to get them off. Another nasty surprise was that if the magic user shackled with them tried to use magic, the jolt they'd get would make them think twice about ever trying again.

I noticed burns on Talon's wrists. Looked like he'd tried, more than once. I didn't see any blood, but burns definitely qualified as a wound. I didn't know where the Saghred drew the line as far as what wounds qualified as a sacrifice, and I wasn't about to use Talon to find out.

I nodded down at the manacles. "Tried to sing your way out of those?"

"It didn't go well."

"I imagine not. I think I'll go with the old-fashioned way."

Among the tools of the trade that I'd brought with me was my favorite set of picklocks. A good seeker never went anywhere without them. I pulled them out of the pouch at my back, knelt, and examined the lock on one of the ankle shackles, careful not to touch it. The construction looked simple enough, but I knew better. I'd start with his ankles. As long as I was within groping distance, I wanted Talon's hands secured.

I leaned over the left ankle shackle.

"I think I'm in love," Talon told me.

I looked where Talon was looking-right down the front of my shirt. I sat back on my heels.

"Kid, do you think you can control yourself long enough for me to free you from this hellhole, or would you like to stay here and wait for Sarad Nukpana to come back?"

"I'll be good."

"I'll believe it when I see it. By the way, once I start working on these, you might need all the breath you can get. You might want to take a few good ones now."

"You're not using magic, so there shouldn't be any pain. Right?"

"Possibly, but probably not. I've got the Saghred partially powered up to find Nukpana, and I'm going to have to touch these shackles to pick the locks. I'll work fast, but you might get the same jolt you did when you tried to get out of them."