Yes, he had. Open mouthed, she looked to Xander, who was shaking his head at John in exasperated amusement, she guessed, then back to John.
“What have you said to him already?” She swiped loose strands of hair from her face.
All three of them had eyes for each other and nothing else that might be happening.
Which rang alarm bells in Po’s mind. Dead bodies. Thulians. “Where is the Storyteller?”
“He has gone to the nearest port city to seek a ship.” Xander looked at the edge of the coffin and frowned. “Good point. We need to move. We don’t know when the Storyteller will return. Help me out of here, both of you. If you can find another dose to get me properly functioning?
“I apologize for John, my princess. Yes, he has told me much, but I am sure not everything.”
“Not everything, no.” John smirked.
A blazing-hot blush roared in.
Embarrassing, to imagine what he might tell Xander. Also, both of them were calling her my princess. And it was not the time to sort this out.
“We need to leave, now!” Shades ran in with Ruth behind him, though she stopped in the doorway, with her head outside, staring upward. “An airship is up there, and it’s anchoring. Now!”
A light flared and cruised across the ground outside, aimed from somewhere above. She’d seen lighthouses with similar lights but never anything this bright or mobile.
The tower vibrated and from above came the sound of something scraping across the outer brickwork of the tower. A door slammed up there. Boots clambered down the stairs, ringing on metal at first then muffled as they came to what was probably stone.
“Get me out,” Xander repeated.
She and John helped him climb and slide from the coffin, but his legs collapsed as he touched floor. At least he wore shoes. The horses were outside but reaching them would take far too long.
“Twenty stories up there, I estimate,” Ruth said, coming inside with Ruff beside her. His nose twitched suspiciously—not visibly but by now Po had the nuances of floof machine fur movement nailed. “We only have minutes. This Storyteller is dangerous if we even hear his voice?”
“Yes,” Xander said. “He can make you believe his lies if you hear him. I can resist but no-one else seems able to. You have horses? To beat an airship we’d—”
“That’s impossible. Even if we can reach the horses, an airship will catch us.” John put a hand to his pistol. “He is the one man I could not kill.”
“Then we must take my way. Below. It may be dangerous. There may be collapses, chasms, unsafe tunnels.” They each nodded to her questioning gaze. “Then follow me.” Ruth strode to the central stairwell. “To the Doors of Derayagungun.”
Such a long and complicated name. When Po named things, they would be short, sensible, and easily spelled.
In the stairwell, with the boots scraping, thudding, and sounding closer above, Ruth raised her hand in a fist. She spoke a word Po did not recognize, and she knew at least twenty languages. It sounded like someone grating rock.
“Was that dwarf?” Xander asked. “The word for door?”
“Yes. Dwarfs don’t do complicated passwords.” The floor made a grinding noise and light shot upward, slowly drawing a rectangle in the stone. A slab sank then slid aside. Above, Po heard shouting, but it was nothing intelligible.
If that were the Storyteller, understanding his words could spell their doom.
They must hurry.
Ruth picked up Xander as if he were a baby. “I will carry you, little one.”
“Only if you cease to insult me.”
Now she remembered part of what endeared the man to her—he had an awful sense of humor, he was smarter than John, and sometimes smarter than her.
With the door opened in the floor, steps leading downward were visible.
They fled down them with Ruff bouncing beside them. He’d seemed so devoted to chasing the Storyteller that she’d dreaded him racing upstairs instead. Though the stairs were stone, and this was underground, a soft glow brightened the cracks of the rocks, lighting their way and showing the stairs widening into something below that might take eight or ten people abreast. Past that section they wound downward out of sight.
They ran as fast as they could, tripping sometimes, cursing, then doing nothing more than striving to get enough air to breathe, to not exhaust their strength before they came to the end.
They heard shouting above, and once a rain of arrows flitted by them, heading straight down like a lethal shower of rain, ricocheting off the steps they hit, and spinning sideways into space. Ten or more seconds later they heard the clink and clatter of the spent arrows hitting the very bottom.
Shades took Xander from Ruth. He’d had to as she was staggering. They kept going, reduced to a small jog rather than a leaping sprint, but they kept going. The last few steps to reach the bottom floor found them exhausted. They simply had to pause, even though the enemy sounded closer.
What were these Thulians fueled by? Candlewax? Coal? At least golems were slower, Po thought, gasping. Her legs wobbled. All those who had run were panting and exhausted, even Shades and Ruth. Only Xander and Ruff were unaffected.
This area was vast and the shadows deep. Sounds took forever to echo. A wall showed, faintly, far ahead and past a long line of doors.
Hands on her knees, catching her breath, she glared at the floof machine. “If only I had a battalion of you.”
“He was the pet of the man who made the coffin,” Xander said, thoughtfully. “I recognize him. Persistent creature.”
“Ruth believes he seeks to kill the Storyteller.”
“Ahhh. Well he did tell the coffin maker to throw himself off a roof. I applaud you, little one.”
Po stood straight, inhaled, and decided she was
