He’d clambered about like some strange four-limbed insect, scrabbling from stack to stack and shelf to shelf, exploring, learning, scavenging. One thing remained true wherever you were – you
And this was a helluva place to get one.
Being down here was enclosed, familiar. It felt safe – even Kale the not-werewolf wouldn’t find him in all of this. And anyhow, if these cellars didn’t wind up in some underground tunnel system, then he was a monkey’s uncle.
In the layers of shadow, no one could see him grin.
Craft tools –
Stick
He turned another corner, shelves and heaps and dust tails. There was a sliver of pale glitter over his head, moonlight on a tiny, cracked-mica pane. This was the most fun he’d had since he got here – with a little luck and a little chemistry, he’d have the Industrial Revolution in full fucking swing. Plus, there hadda be a giant-rat infestation down here
The Bard’s cellars, though, were rodent-free. Wines were stored in racks of ceramic and pottery – a multitude of shapes, colours and labels that looked like a collection of souvenirs. Wooden ale barrels were more familiar; spirits were stored in squat, dark bottles that might’ve been stitched leather. There was no glass, no metal and a distinct lack of dangerous chemical compounds.
He kept looking.
Somewhere over his head, it was deep night. The Banned were still singing – he could hear them, raucous and off key, stamping out the time. The goldie girl had vanished maybe an hour or so before. He still had her dice – six-sided but the corners blunted and the symbols unfamiliar – now added to his growing stash of goodies.
Ecko had made a den high in one of the racks. As he’d explored outwards, he’d found that the walls were brick, the mortar smooth. Under his feet, the flagstone floor was cold. Once, a flitting shape had made him start, but it was only the catlike thing he’d seen once before, lithe and warm to his heatseeker. It blinked at him and was gone.
Not a single secret passage had given itself up to his dextrous touch.
He’d passed through Kale’s pantry, eying the bunches of greenery, the dried and pickled vegetables, the shelves of unfamiliar produce. Some of it he knew by name, but he wasn’t convinced he trusted anything that didn’t come in shrink-wrapped plastic. Food that looked like animal still kinda freaked him out – never mind the fact he had no fucking clue what the animals were. Little fat fuckers, bug eyed and skinless, hung upside-down by threading one ankle though a hole in the other...
From somewhere, a clattering made him start, a burst of laughter and boisterous comments. The noise made him curl back against the shelving, though it was a good distance away.
There was no one down here.
Ghost silent, he crept deeper.
As he moved onwards, he found it was harder to navigate. Tall shelves and sharp turns completely defeated his telescopics. Narrow corridors wound tight between overladen racks hung with soft streamers of dust. The floor left odd, uneven steps waiting to catch his cloak hem and make him stumble. This was Malice in Wonderland, some fucking loony trip, confused and chaotic and mazelike and thrilling... Maybe, if he went far enough, he’d uncover the prison, or the magical portal to the Major Bad Guy’s front room. Maybe he’d find some skeleton from the Bard’s closet – or a forgotten Questing Hero who’d died from boredom and bad beer.
Slowly, the light paled and grew thinner. The shadows climbed higher and wound round the stacks like smoke. The shelves were packed even tighter, here. It was a warren of nameless stuff, layers of wooden boxes that hadn’t been moved in years. There were piles of junk in corners, lying in wait like creatures of the dark. Now, skitterings hinted at inhabiting critters – apparently the cat had a union. There were no cobwebs, but the dust was as thick as spider-silk armour and unfamiliar beetley things crawled over it.
Almost nothing had a label.
Chrissakes, did they even know what half this shit was? Karine must have a full database in her fucking head. Nothing had numbers – was this what she recorded with her endless tally marks?
A sudden, rhythmic stomping shook the shelves and made him grin blackly in the almost-dark...
...and then he wondered just how far away that sound had actually been.
Shit.
The Wanderer’s cellars were larger than the floor of the tavern, a helluva lot larger. Surely there
His grin grew, black and wicked in the half-light.
Where was the secret fucking door?
In fact – sod that – where was the thing that made the tavern work? The control room? The magical whosit? He’d give his carbon-black eyeteeth to know how to drive this thing.
Creeping in silence and wordless hope – there was so gonna be treasure down here somewhere.
What Ecko found, before he’d gone much further, was a wall.
Flat and cold and absolute, it cut his progress dead.
It wasn’t just bricks: the wall had been covered – painted? – with something and it was filthy, stained with browns and greens and streaks of rot. In places, it was cracked and crumbling. A hefty whack with a sledgehammer would knock the bricks loose like teeth.
He wondered what the hell was on the other side – which bit moved with the sunrise, which bit didn’t. What would happen if something was half in and half out?
Cursing the absence of heavy-duty steel – a crowbar’d be good about now – Ecko flicked his oculars to scan for an alternative.
And he noticed something weird.
He was crouched at the edge of a small, open area that seemed to face the wall itself as there was a slight downward dip in the floor. The only other thing down here was a single, monster barrel that he could’ve used to boat up the Thames.
Hell, what’d he been saying about dynamite? Or was the Bard just ageing one motherlode of killer whisky?
The barrel was unlabelled, and covered in crap.
Around him, the shadows fell in layers of grey, like phantoms. The air was chill and old and smelled only of rot. It was quiet, motionless, even the crawlies had packed their little crawly bags and fled. He shuddered, carefully scanning the tottering piles of shelving.
No crowbar.
No monster.
He crept out to the centre of the dip, the middle of the wall. The shelves rose round him like an
