Balanced on the Blades Edge #2 Deathmaker Read Online Free PDF Page B

he? For a moment, she thought she would have to go back the other way and hope she could avoid notice, but his voice finally drifted up from below.
    “Fifteen feet to a landing. Then there are stairs. Sort of.”
    Well, didn’t that sound promising?
    He didn’t sound farther down than his estimate, so Cas took his word. She ought to be able to land from that height without breaking anything. She stuck her feet through the hole and slithered over the edge. For a silly moment, she wondered what the view looked like from below. She might be an expert marksman, but nobody had ever accused her of amazing athleticism.
    She lowered herself down, probing with her feet, though logically, she knew she would never reach the floor without letting go. Also, her boots pressed against some squishy substance growing on the wall. Maybe it was better without the lantern.
    “You out of the way?” she asked before letting go.
    “Does that mean you don’t want me to catch you?”
    “It means I don’t want to kick your ear off as my legs flail around on the way down.”
    “Thoughtful.” His voice had shifted—he’d moved to the side.
    He hadn’t truly been thinking of catching her, had he? Having the Deathmaker’s hands wrapped around her waist sounded a lot more creepy than it did thoughtful or pleasant.
    A gong reverberated somewhere in the distance. Alarm. No more dawdling.
    Cas released her grip and fell into the darkness, her heart in her throat. Without any light, she couldn’t gauge the distance to the bottom, and could only guess when she needed to soften her knees for impact. The landing jarred her nonetheless, though a hand caught her arm, steadying her. Tolemek released her almost as soon as he touched her.
    “Thanks,” she said grudgingly.
    The air was warm and close, smelling of the jungle, of plants and decaying matter. The gong was barely audible from down in the well, but she heard it nonetheless.
    “You’re welcome,” Tolemek said. “The stairs are behind you. I’ll lead.”
    “Good, because I wasn’t going to volunteer.”
    He didn’t light a match. She supposed his stash would burn out quickly if he did. She found a wall with her palm, grimacing at the bumpy algae—or whatever it was—growing on the old stone. It was on the stairs too. Her boots squished with each step. At least they were going down. Down was good. There should be a way out to the beach or the jungle from below the main fortress.
    The stairs, beneath the inch of algae, felt old and worn. More than that, in several spots, the edge crumbled beneath her boot.
    “What is this place?” she whispered as they continued to descend. Their cell had been on the second story of the three-story fortress. Though there were no landings to help judge it, Cas already felt as if they had descended three or four floors.
    “Long ago, there was a dragon rider outpost in the base of this cliff,” Tolemek said. “ Real dragons, not little mechanical fliers designed to look vaguely like dragons.”
    “Should you be insulting my people’s aircraft when I’m walking behind you with a gun?” She said it lightly, though his tone had miffed her.
    She expected some dismissive comeback, but he descended a few more steps before responding with, “Probably not. Are you as deadly with a rifle as you are with a throwing star?”
    “I’ve had more practice with firearms.”
    “I thought you were too young to be what the commandant claimed, but I’m beginning to believe that Zirkander would have recruited you.”
    His tone didn’t drip malice when he said the colonel’s name, but the alarm gongs that went off in Cas’s head rang far more clearly than those in the fortress above. She didn’t want to discuss Zirkander with him, or her work at all. The last thing she wanted was to slip up and give away some useful intelligence, especially to someone who could make explosive goop and only the gods knew what else.
    “Were you with the squadron last