Sweet and Deadly


Natalie looked from the blond girl to the others, who were all staring open-mouthed. Even when there was another shuddering crash from the other side of the door, like someone had thrown something heavy against it, nobody looked away.

"Can someone please tell me what's going on?"

It was Jewels who finally explained, though she still looked completely shell shocked. "Natalie, meet Kira oldest daughter of the Sun King Helios, sovereign princess and heir to the throne of Brookland."

The blond girl, Kira, shuffled her feet. She looked sheepish. "I'd rather you didn't use all my titles, particularly not around here."

"Hence the name Sunshine. Very cute." Sam's voice was a low growl. "You've seriously been masquerading as a palace informer?"

"I'm not masquerading as anything." Kira looked indignant. "Who do you think is feeding information along this entire time? And I'll thank you not to look at me like that, I'm not a child."

"No, you're royalty, your highness. You shouldn't be anywhere near our group." He narrowed his eyes at her. "Does your father have any idea what you're doing?"

"Of course not." Kira' eyes flashed as she looked around at them defiantly. "And he's not going to hear about it either. If he did, he would lock me in the tallest tower and your source of information would dry up. He thinks I'm away at school in the mountains. I've got sources reporting to me in the palace, in her palace." She waved a hand at them. "Still not the time though, seriously. We have to find a way out of here."

"Right." Sam's face was grim, and he turned back toward the door again. The noise level from outside had gone down slightly, though there was still a great deal of crashing, and the sound of soldiers calling to one another. "They're searching the place. Shit. Is there a back way?"

"I don't know, I haven't come in that way."

Gwen was already stalking toward the back of the room. "There might be barrel passages back here somewhere. Help me look."

The others spread out, and Natalie followed Gwen toward the back where the barrels were stored on racks that took up the entire back wall. "What's a barrel passage?"

"Passages from one pub to another," Gwen said, she tugged at the heavy rack experimentally, shaking her head. "Certain substances were banned under King Helios, so they pubs arranged a way to get a hold of them anyways. There'd usually be one dealer who sold the illegal stuff, but if everyone came to him for barrels it would be too obvious. So he'd distribute them between a few pubs and have them sell them instead. Hence the barrel passages, to avoid anyone seeing what they were doing."

"Well that's smart."

"They're mostly abandoned now," Gwen grunted, leaning down to stare at the other end of the rack. "No one is monitoring what anyone drinks anymore. The king is far too busy trying to figure out how to stop Casius from destroying the entire country."

There was a shout from the other side of the room, and they all hurried over to where Jewels had pulled back a ragged velvet curtain beside a shelf of dusty glass mugs. "Found it!"

Beyond the curtain was an ominous looking hole in the wall. They weren't kidding when they'd called it a "barrel tunnel". It was almost shaped like a barrel, only a little larger. Natalie bit her lip uneasily. Just looking at the empty blackness sent a stab of panic through her.

"It's pitch black," Sam said. "Jewels, say you've got something to help us out here."

"Do you even have to ask?" Jewels' smile was smug as she fished into her cloak and brought out a pendant on a long chain, one Natalie hadn't seen on her before. She unlooped it from her belt and held it aloft, mumbling something under her breath that Natalie couldn't quite make out.

The jewel on the end of the pendant flared to life, casting a sphere of yellow-white light around it. It wasn't much, but it at least penetrated the darkness a foot or two ahead of them. The idea of going down the passage, which the light revealed, sloped sharply down into the darkness, was not in the least appealing still, but at least they wouldn't be plunging in blind now.

Another crash from the door, and they all jumped as someone's muffled voice drifted through, "There's a door back here, lads."

"Go now," Sam said urgently. "You first, Jewels."

Jewels plunged into the darkness without hesitating, and Gwen followed quickly after her. Sam practically pushed Kira in after, and the princes stumbled forward with a muttered oath.

"Grab one another's hands," Sam barked. "We can't lose anyone. Natalie, you next."

Natalie took a deep breath and plunged in, feeling a little like she was diving headfirst into icy water. It wasn't that far off either, since the passage was freezing, and the hairs on her arms and neck went up the minutes she stepped into the darkness. It was cold.

Behind her she could hear Sam shuffling forward, and then the light was cut off as the curtain dropped over the entrance to the tunnel. There was only a very sparse white light of the pendant from above. She jumped when Sam said in a low voice near her ear, "I'm taking your hand now, hold on."

It was a good thing he'd warned her, because it was very strange to have something come out of nowhere and grip her hand, but then Sam laced his fingers firmly through hers, and she could feel his large, calloused palm against hers and the pads of his fingers on the back of her hand. Her skin felt strangely hot where he touched it, and goosebumps zipped up the length of her arm.

Ahead of her, Kira must have reached back, because Natalie jumped as something brushed her arm, and then she stretched her hand out and found the other girl's hand, locking fingers with her as well. And it was this way that they hurried forward into the dimly light tunnel.

Natalie looked back once, and saw Sam's eyes shining in the darkness like a cat. She forced her eyes forward again, knowing that if she kept looking she would get distracted and end up tripping over her own feet, or perhaps some bump or rut in the tunnel floor. So far she had kept her footing though the path was a little uneven.

"Can't you see in the dark?" she whispered to him. "Your eyes are glowing."

"We can see," Sam said. "But only a little better than you can. Our eyes still aren't great if there's no light at all. Luckily Jewels has the light pendant or none of us would be able to get through here very fast." He added, "I'm hoping that's what happens with the soldiers."

It took several more moments of stumbling through the half-darkness, and then they began to see a thin pinprick of light in the tunnel ahead of them.

"What direction are we going in?" Gwen's voice was a whisper, but it still echoed eerily around the tunnel and Natalie shivered.

"I think we're heading out of the barracks." It was Kira's voice, just ahead of Natalie. "If I'm not mistaken we're moving toward the edge of the city."

"Makes sense," Gwen said softly. "They probably bought the barrels from someone on the outside."

"Hush," Jewels said. "We're nearly there, stay silent until we know what we're walking into."

They fell silent, and Natalie felt her stomach flutter with anxiety. What if they were going straight from the pub full of soldiers into another crowd of them? What if they had simply walked themselves into a trap?

She kept glancing over her shoulder, but thankfully the tunnel they had just passed through stayed dark, which probably meant the soldiers either hadn't found the tunnel yet, or were so far behind they wouldn't catch up on time.

The light kept growing larger as they drew closer, until at last it revealed itself to be vaguely doorway shaped. There was a red quality to the light, which made her think that it was probably filtering through another curtain, like the one they had passed through on the other side.

They crept closer, and then Natalie stopped as Sam tugged on her hand, pulling her up short. He moved past her then, brushing past in the narrow tunnel. There was a quiet shuffle as the others moved around, and then Sam's broad form was illuminated by the faint red glow. He bent forward, his face close to the red curtain. Whatever he heard, it mustn't have concerned him that much, because he simply shrugged and hooked one finger around the edge of the curtain, pulling it aside a crack to peer through. Natalie stood on her tiptoes, trying to see past Jewels and Gwen.

Sam pulled back, and shook his head. "Unbelievable."

They only stared at him, until he drew back the curtain, so suddenly it flooded the tunnel with light, and Natalie blinked, trying to clear the spots in front of her eyes.

After a moment or two her surroundings came into view, and she gaped around in surprise. Directly in front of them a cabinet sat against the wall, filled from top to bottom with circular glass jars. These were filled with what she initially took for colorful beads, but realized, as she stepped into the room after Sam, were hard candies.

The entire room, a basement of some kind it seemed, was filled with boxes and barrels and crates of candy. Not just regular sweets either, these were like nothing Natalie had ever seen. There were hard candies that glittered like jewels in the dim light, and lolly pops on long sticks whose white and red swirling patterns seemed to attract the eye with a kind of magnetic draw. They passed glass cases of sugar-spun butterflies and hard-shelled beetles, and Natalie stared in astonishment. This was a candy shop, but it was at a different level than anything in the human world. The candy was not simply food, it was art.

"The barrel tunnel comes out in Neddih's Emporium." Sam sounded exasperated. "How come I'm not surprised."

Gwen snorted. "Half of her candy is contraband, it only makes sense she would have something else going on on the side."

They had reached a set of narrow stairs, and there was an arched door at the top. Sam held one hand out, stopping the others. "She might be out, but we should proceed carefully."

"No, hold on," Kira pushed her way past Natalie and Gwen, grabbing Sam's arm. The hunter glared at her. "Listen for a moment. I know Neddih, at least. I know her reputation, and I think she'll help us."

Sam shook his head. "Only if she thinks she'll get something out of it."

Kira raised a brow at him. "Hello, king's daughter here. I can promise her whatever she wants as long as she'll hide us for a few hours until the soldiers clear out."

"What are they even doing here?" Gwen growled.

"I don't know." Kira glanced up at the door, her movement jerky and nervous. "But let's get Neddih to hide us quick, before they turn up here. We've got a few minutes before they get to this side of town."

They moved up the stairs one at a time, with Sam in the lead, and Natalie just behind him. Now that some of the immediate urgency had worn off, she smoothed one hand over her left pocket, feeling reassured when her fingers trailed over the outline of the necklace still safely inside. She glanced back at Kira briefly. She was one step closer to finding her mother. This was someone who had met her mother, or at least seen her.

Sam paused at the top of the stairs and pushed the door open a crack, then motioned for them to follow him through. They filed out one by one, and the shop they entered was even more impressive than the basement had been.

Everything was displayed in shining glass cases. There were thick tubes running along the back wall, where the hard candies glittered in a colorful rainbow. The fragile butterflies and beetles had somehow been suspended on many layered strings, to look as though they were flying in a sugary cloud just below the ceiling. In the center of the shop was a low glass table on which a glass globe full of black and red licorice pieces sat slowly spinning, and what looked like powdered yellow and red sugar passed through the thin neck of an elaborate silver hourglass.

Natalie was so busy staring around in awe that she jumped when a voice from nearby said, "Where the hell did you lot come from?"

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