They left the brothel's warmth for the bowels of the city.
Oswell led with a shuttered lantern, its slit throwing a knife of light across damp stone. Lyanna followed behind him, whispering directions at each intersection. The men sworn to Oswell padded after, quiet compared to most sellswords. Jonothor took up the rear, one palm marking turns on the wall out of habit.
Chataya's cellar gave way to a crawlspace of old brick that smelled of salt and mold. The ceiling dropped. Men stooped. The lantern scraped a beam and showered dust. They passed a rat that sat bold as a landlord as it watched them go.
"Two more turns," Lyanna whispered. "Listen for horses."
They climbed a ramshackle staircase build by untrained hands until they reached a dead end. Oswell pressed his ear to the wall, then shouldered once. The wood gave with a wet sigh. Cold air hit them, bright with straw and dung and the oiled tang of tack. The royal stables.
Lyanna smelled panic before she heard it. Men were shouting. Hooves struck boards. A cowbell clanged fast, its notes tripping over one another.
"Make ready! Make ready!"
A groom ran past the disused stall where they hid. Another stumbled, swearing, with a saddle on his back. Someone outside the stable wall yelled that the lions were at the gate. The name "Lannister" rippled through the rafters like wind.
Lyanna lifted a palm. "Wait until the reservoir drains." She whispered to Oswell.
A knot of guards rushed the aisle in pyromancer green, firepots slung at their hips. After a delay, Ser Oswell stepped into the open as if he owned the floor.
"Make way!" he barked. "We have business with Hand Rossart."
The lie fit the panic like a hand in a glove. The guards broke around them with scowls and curses and no courage for an argument. Lyanna kept her head down and her cloak forward. Jonothor stared holes through anyone who looked twice.
They made out the door and crossed the yard into a tall crenelated tower on the opposite side. Inside, the Hand's antechamber was empty save for a pair of Rossart's men warming their hands over a brazier. They had the look of men who had traded glassware for steel, green surcoats over scrawny frames. One opened his mouth in a challenge.
Knowing that the ruse was up, the two Kingsguard lunged forward with blades in hand. Oswell cut left, Jonothor right, and the two alchemists fell before either remembered he had a voice. An ember skittered across the tiles and burned out.
"Move," Jonothor said through his teeth.
All 15 of them squeezed into the Hand's bedroom and locked the door behind them. The hearth on the wall was wide enough to roast an ox. Lyanna went to one knee and worked fingers into a seam behind the soot. A few seconds later, a stone wall swung away on hidden pegs with a whisper.
Cold air spilled from a black chute. A ladder waited, dry and old and endless.
Oswell shoved the lantern into Lyanna's hand. "I go first," he said.
She shook her head and put the light between her teeth. "Nobody else is down there. And I know the way."
Lyanna stepped down the chute. One rung. Then another. The ancient ladder groaned but held. She counted fifty, then a hundred, arms burning. The light picked out brick seams and the glitter of mica. Far above, the hearth mouth shut with a thud as someone swung the stone back into place and made them ghosts again.
They came out into a room that would have been grand if men had been able to see it. Off to the side was an ornate iron brazier in the shape of a dragon's head. Lyanna used the lantern to ignite it, and the room filled with heat and light.
Someone behind her let out a gasp. The brazier's light shimmered over a mosaic of black and red tile laid in the shape of a three headed dragon. The beast's eyes were set with rubies. The walls were smooth. It felt like she was in the throat of something that had swallowed kings.
Jonothor touched the tip of his sword to the ruby as if it were a shrine. "What now," he asked, voice low.
Lyanna crossed to a locked corner grate of black iron mortared into the wall. Rust ate the edges, but the middle still had the stubbornness of good work. "Now we make a door."
Ropes came free from packs. Men looped them through the bars and took positions with the easy choreography of those who had done hard things together. Oswell braced, back flat, feet square.
"Pull," he grunted. The grate didn't move.
They heaved again. Stone dust pelted Lyanna's cheeks. The iron cried like an animal remembering pain.
On the third pull the bottom edge tore away with a scream. One more heave and it came loose enough to shove wide.
Oswell Whent took point again, and Lyanna let him as they crawled into the opening. The tunnel narrowed, then kinked. Cold kissed their hands. An ocean breeze wafted in, a faint whiff of salt.
Lyanna knew they were close now. She counted breaths to time their journey. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. At last her palm found wood where stone should be.
"Stop," she whispered.
Ser Oswell tilted his head, listening with her. A man laughed on the other side of the boards. Another voice answered, bored and nasal. Boots scuffed. The floorboard near Lyanna's ear creaked once, then twice, then faded as someone walked away.
She worked slim fingers into the seam and shoved. A hatch popped up, and salty air flowed into the tunnel. Lyanna's eyes blinked rapidly, trying to adjust after so long in the dark.
Lyanna slid through, then turned and helped the next man. Soon fifteen bodies had emerged into a corridor washed in torchlight.
At the end of the hall lay the single bridge to Maegor's Holdfast, a narrow pathway over a moat of iron spikes. Only a few dozen meters remained to reach the Dornish hostages.
They reached the bridge only to find one last obstacle, greater than any so far.
Over two dozen men waited for them in mail and bright capes, sea-green and trimmed with white.
Their captain leaned on a longsword as if it were a cane he intended to use on someone's shins. His hair was pale as driftwood. He had the clean, faintly disdainful face of a man used to authority and telling other men what to do with it.
"Lord Lucerys Velaryon," Oswell grimaced. "Our king's noble lackey."