Naja wrapped her arms around his neck to help hold on as he bent low to pass through the slightly larger outer doorway and follow Magda into the narrow tunnel. Merritt was easily able to carry the woman, but in places it was so narrow that he had to turn sideways and even then it was a tight squeeze.

“How are we going to get her past the guards?” Merritt asked as he followed behind Magda.

Magda looked back over her shoulder without slowing. “I guess we bluff our way out the same way we bluffed our way in.”

Merritt looked more than a little skeptical. “You really think they’ll go for that with us trying to leave with her?”

“I’ll tell them that we have to take her to my soon-to-be new husband because he personally wants to question her.”

Merritt let out a sigh as if to say how unhappy he was with such a sketchy plan, and that he didn’t think for a minute that it was going to work.

“Unless you have a better idea,” she said.

“We can try it. You know my backup plan.”

Magda hadn’t liked his backup plan of killing the guards, but now that she’d seen the condition Naja was in, Merritt’s suggestion that they might have to kill the guards was not sounding like nearly such a bad idea. She still didn’t know, though, if the two guards actually had anything to do with what had happened to Naja. They might be nothing more than they seemed: guards who didn’t know what was really going on.

Before they reached the outer doorway to the dungeon entrance, where the two guards would be waiting, Merritt came to a halt.

“Do you think you can walk?” he asked Naja in a quiet voice. “Just until we get past the two guards? I may need to get at my sword.”

She nodded. “I’m getting some of my strength back. Put me down.”

He set her on her bare feet. For a moment Magda wondered if the woman was going to be able to stand, but she steadied herself and with an effort straightened her back.

“I’ll go first and do the talking,” Magda whispered. “Naja, stay close behind me. We’re going to try to walk you right out of here before they have a chance to argue.”

The three of them made their way silently the remaining distance down the stone tunnel toward the light coming from the outer door. The lamplight from the doorway was a relief, because that meant the heavy iron door was still standing open. Magda hiked up her skirts and boldly stepped over the raised threshold out to the area where the guards waited.

Naja’s hand lightly touched Magda’s back for guidance as she stayed close behind.