“Think it knows we’re down here?” Dajouth whispered.
Ōbhin had no idea. Every step prickled his skin. Avena was out there. If she ran into one of those things . . . He had to believe she was safe. That the thing posing as Fingers wouldn’t harm her. It would need her to find Dualayn at the Hall of Communication. She wouldn’t retreat from the ruins. She would keep looking for them.
He would keep looking for her.
When the crystalman had passed, they continued on. The tunnel soon ended at a set of concrete stairs. The strange materials used—metal pipes and railings, stone poured to make bricks and floors—no longer astounded him. They had become his mundane existence so fast. They swept through the spiderwebs, finer than the ones created by the crystal spiders, and headed up the stairs.
It was another tenement building. They were common. They had to break through the door. They found it blocked by a pile of bones. They clinked and clattered as they pushed them apart. Devastation abounded. Parts of the walls had been battered down. Some showed signs of ancient fires. The bodies of three demons, their scales rotted black, lay scattered amid the remains of the humans. The heat bleeding from their bones suffused the air in suffocating currents.
How can they still be warm after all these years?
They crept through the room. Dajouth neared one of the dead demons. He prodded it with his binder.
“Black piss!” he yelped and jumped back.
Something hissed. Then a large, red-black snake crawled out of the body. It had an angular head marking it as a viper. Venomous. Dualayn recoiled back, bumping into Miguil. The pudgy man’s lantern swung before him, sending shadows dancing.
Following the snake boiled out smaller ones. Little worms that scurried after the larger. Dajouth backed up more, his face pale. Ōbhin’s muscles tensed as the larger snake slithered towards a pile of debris. Its snakelets followed and they all vanished into a hole in the wall.
“The heat,” wheezed Dualayn. “They would enjoy the heat.”
Dajouth shuddered, his arms shaking with violence like a dog trying to rid fur of water. “I hate snakes. Worse part ‘bout goin’ in caves.”
Ōbhin eyed the demon corpse by him. Did its scales just move? Was another viper lurking inside? He gave it a wide berth as they crossed the room.
Hidden by a staircase, they found a crystalman had melted before cooling and solidifying. The concrete floor beneath it had cracked and warped, sagging in places. Another demon lay dead by the jewel slag. The outer layers of amethyst had melted enough for some of the emerald jewelchines inside to also run like wax across the purple gemstone. It formed strange patterns.
“Another way to fell them,” Dualayn said.
“Just need a lizard demon,” muttered Miguil. “‘Course, you’ll probably die yourself. Look at this room.”
The walls were blackened with soot. The ceiling above was gone, the second floor burnt as the first. Charred bones, bits of femurs or cracked ribs, lurked in the piles of ash. Ōbhin hoped the owners had been already dead before being cooked to such temperatures.
They passed through the apartment building into another store. This one appeared to have sold clothes. Half-rotted scraps of silk or linen hung off corroded hangers. There were strange statues that had no features, only the suggestion of them. Decayed cloth draped them, appearing to display the wares. Through the center was a wide path cleared of any debris that led to a large hole battered through the wall. It opened onto a large space.
They stepped out onto a street. There appeared to be a glass roof over it. Surprisingly, it held up the weight of the earth and rubble that had buried Koilon. It spread far, supported by slender columns of rusting iron.
“Remarkable,” said Dualayn. “It goes far. Hear the way our voices echo. This is bigger than the carriage house.”
“What is it?” Ōbhin asked.
“Perhaps a plaza.” Dualayn looked out into the darkness. “I think we are close. If I am correct, the Crystal Sheriff Hall lies in that direction.” He pointed out into the murk. Their light didn’t fall on anything.
“Look at the ground,” muttered Dajouth. “I think he’s right.”
Ōbhin did, too. There was a path worn into the black, tar-like stone of the plaza, a smooth depression like a rut in a road. Something polished into the hard, rough surface by eons of travel. The width reminded Ōbhin of a crystalman’s width. He took off his glove and bent down. He touched the surface.
He felt the distant thuds of heavy steps.
“At least one patrols here,” said Ōbhin. “Three thousand years walking the same path.”
“It’s not the only one,” Dajouth said. “Look at that path leading to that hole in the building. They must have battered their way through the city, making their own streets to keep it safe.”
Miguil groaned. “I can hear one. It’s coming closer.”
The thudding steps grew louder and louder.
*
It was quiet when Avena and Fingers broke their fast the next morning. They cut off slices of dark rye bread and ate it with the smoked chicken they’d packed. She washed it down with water from her aquifer.
Fingers wouldn’t look at her. He had a tense wariness in his face, the look of an animal cornered in a trap and terrified there was no escape. She wanted to press him for knowledge about her mother and why he’d abandoned her. She feared to clutch too tight. Fingers’s normal tough facade had been stripped away to reveal a fragile core, as delicate as a robin’s egg.
Grasp it too tight . . .
Avena would be
