Yurik reappeared from the crowd and stepped up beside the troll woman, his hands shoved into the pockets of his olive-green corduroys. “Nobody knows how long it’s gonna take you to do anything. Who’s the fishface?”
“Fuck if I know.” Bhandi stumbled into him and slapped his hands away when he tried to push her off his shoulder.
“Did Ogsa ask about me?”
“What, you in love with her or something?” Bhandi scoffed and cut a zigzagging pattern across the stone floor. “Shit, man. I knew you had bad taste, but that’s taking it to a whole different level.”
Yurik gave Cheyenne an exasperated glance and gestured at his fellow agent, who was staggering after Tate and Ember. “This is why the fellwine isn’t a regular thing.”
Cheyenne snorted. “I thought she could handle herself?”
“Depends on your definition of handle. Can she drink three ogres under the table one right after the other, bash their heads in with drunken kung-fu, and wake up the next morning with a raging headache and a clear memory of the whole thing? Sure.”
“Sounds like that’s a regular thing.”
“Uh-huh. But she can’t handle herself. I’m surprised she didn’t try to fight me for more grog.”
Cheyenne shook her head, then her drow hearing picked up an odd, muted rumble. She frowned and paused in the center of the avenue. What is that?
Oblivious, Yurik kept walking. “Honestly, Cheyenne, before we brought you here the first time, I was sure no one else could make as much trouble down here as Bhandi does. She was pretty sure of that too, come to think of it.”
Cheyenne stared at the ceiling, searching for the cause of that sound.
“You had one drink.” Laughing, the beefy goblin doubled back to join her. “I already know you’re not a lightweight. Don’t tell me you’re seeing faces in the walls.”
“No faces.” Slowly, Cheyenne lowered her head to meet Yurik’s yellow gaze. “Does this place have earthquakes?”
He scoffed. “How should I know? I’m not the maintenance guy.” His crooked smile disappeared, and he shot a quick glance at the ceiling too. “Why do you ask?”
“I hear something.”
“Super drow ears. I get it.” Yurik fell in step beside her as she started walking through the crowd again. “But after everything we were just talking about, you can’t blame me for asking why your mind went immediately to an earthquake.”
“It sounds like something’s moving up there.” When she saw the near-panic in his wide eyes, Cheyenne shook her head. “Don’t freak out, all right? Could be an earthquake. Could be something shifting around. If we see a bunch of flashing lights and this whole place splits apart with giant black stones shooting up like twelve-foot knives, then I’ll tell you it’s a new portal.”
“Shit, is that all?” Yurik tried to joke, but it wasn’t as easy as he wanted. “What if it is?”
“Then we deal with it. But I really hope it’s not.”
Chapter Eighteen
Cheyenne peered through the crowd and easily spotted Bhandi’s weaving figure and her scarlet braids swinging left and right as she stumbled around. In front of the troll woman, Tate walked beside Ember, who didn’t seem to have a problem navigating the bumps in the stone floor with her newfound fae magic.
The unknown rumble grew louder for a split second before slowly fading. Sounds like it’s moving.
A pebble dropped in front of her, followed by a few chunks of stone and supportive concrete. Cheyenne stopped and looked up at the ceiling again, stepping aside to avoid the much slower rain of dust filtering down from above.
Yurik followed her gaze and grunted. “Haven’t seen that happen before.”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to do that.”
The rumble grew into a roar, drowning out the shouts of vendors and customers weaving around each other. Then the entire tunnel shuddered. Stacked goods rattled and spilled off of tables and shelves onto the floor. Magicals shouted in surprise, and one of the storefronts on Cheyenne’s left exploded away from the wall.
“Shit. Come on!” She took off toward the rest of their friends, who were approaching the other side of the tunnel.
“What the hell’s going on?” Yurik shouted behind her.
Cheyenne ignored him, her hearing focused on that moving rumble now coming from beyond the wall of the marketplace tunnel. Another shop crashed down on itself without warning, spraying wooden beams and glass and chunks of stone into the avenue. Everyone was shouting now as magicals scrambled to gather their scattered wares or tried to get a closer look at what was happening.
“Get away from the wall!” Cheyenne waved for everyone to clear a space, but only a few magicals heard her.
The rumble increased, picking up speed toward the end of the tunnel as whatever made the sound smashed against the small shops lining the wall. A spray of shattered glass and a stone gargoyle erupted from the roof of an O’gúleesh shoe store and hurtled toward the halfling. She raised a shimmering black shield above her head and left it there as she darted beneath it. The glass peppered her drow shield with a sound like hail coming down on the roof of a car, followed by the startling bong of the gargoyle before it fell to the stone floor in pieces.
Yurik ducked under her shield seconds before it dropped away, unable to take his eyes off the rippling wall of the tunnel now that whatever moved on the other side had made it past the rows of storefronts.
“Ember, stop!” The second she shouted it, Cheyenne knew her friend couldn’t hear her. Tate didn’t even turn around, and Bhandi kept stumbling forward, talking to herself and flinging her hands in the air. The halfling grunted and slipped into drow speed, darting around the frozen magicals in her way until she grabbed the handlebars of Ember’s wheelchair to make her stop.
As soon as she dropped back to normal speed, a collective shout of surprise and anger rose from the magicals pushed off their feet by the shockwave she’d left behind.
“What the
