“Ask at the Butchered Hart inn, near the market. Any of the servers can get me a message.” Faressa hesitated. “I hope you’re right about Jaedia. That she … wasn’t herself. I didn’t know her well, but she always seemed … kind.”
“We’ll find her,” Maya promised. “Along with whoever was really behind this attack.”
“Good luck.” The scout handed Maya the glowstone and stepped aside.
It wasn’t a long descent, just a few meters under the earth. The tunnel was narrow and claustrophobic, nothing like the broad, smooth ghoul passages Maya had seen in Deepfire. She hung her haken from her hip, for easy access, and brushed her hand against the Thing. Tanax climbed down behind her, and Beq followed, still peering at the map.
“This takes us directly under the skyfortress,” Beq said excitedly.
“Wonderful.” Tanax cast a wary eye upward. “It’s not going to come crashing down on our heads, you don’t think?”
“It’s been there for four hundred years; I think it’ll stand for another day,” Maya said. “Beq, stay behind me and navigate. Tanax, keep your eyes open.”
It was the kind of command Maya would have given Marn, but Tanax fell in without a murmur of protest. It was a stark contrast to the arrogance of his behavior in Deepfire. What Nicomidi did must have really shaken him.
Maya held the glowstone high as they advanced, illuminating a long stretch of passage, with side corridors like black holes in the walls. Beq kept her eyes on the map, counting turns under her breath. As they moved forward, the buzz of city noise filtering down from overhead grew quieter, until they walked in total silence.
“I think …” Beq stopped, grinning, and pointed to a dark shape sticking out of the wall. “Yes! Here, look.” She tapped the protrusion, scraping off a dark patina to reveal the iridescent white gleam of unmetal. “This is the outer hull! We’re going inside the skyfortress.”
Tanax examined the jagged edge of the hull fragment. “It doesn’t look like it’s in great shape.”
“Presumably the forward sections took the brunt of the damage when it hit the ground,” Beq said, looking back at the map. “And of course it’s been four hundred years.”
“We’re here to find Jaedia, not go scavenging,” Maya reminded them. “Stay alert.”
They moved on. The tunnel grew taller and wider, expanding periodically into large, irregular rooms with more tunnels leading out of them. At times they saw parts of the skyfortress, floors canted at a forty-five-degree angle. Everything beyond the bare walls had been stripped by hopeful scavengers long ago.
“Some of these tunnels lead up,” Beq said. “Into the heart of the skyfortress. Supposedly it’s all been sealed off by the Order expeditions, but the scavengers must still be trying to find a way in.”
“Is that where we’re going?” Maya said.
Beq shook her head. “The place Faressa marked is just ahead. Looks like a big chamber, with … pillars, maybe? She’s not much of an artist.”
Up ahead, a hatchway from Grace in Execution had once been intact, dogged with an unmetal hatch. The barrier now lay in blackened pieces on the ground, showing the characteristic burns of blaster fire. Repeated blaster bolts were a slow and expensive way of breaking through unmetal, but about the only method available if you weren’t a centarch. Maya picked her way across the fragments and clambered through the ragged gap into a much larger room, the ceiling rising several meters over her head. Long, dark shapes hung down in a regular pattern, some reaching the floor, others ending a meter or so above it.
Not pillars. Cables. The things were massive, thicker than Maya’s arm, and there were dozens of them, with cut lengths strewn across the ground. Where they were severed, they ended in a spray of fine silver wire. Maya tried to picture what the place had looked like when the skyfortress was aloft, and what purpose it had served.
“Wow,” Beq breathed, turning in a slow circle. “This is … wow.”
“I don’t like it,” Tanax said. “Too much cover.”
Maya had to admit he had a point. The forest of hanging cables made it hard to see the limits of the room. She stepped forward cautiously, then stopped as something moved in her peripheral vision. A cable was swaying slightly, several rows away.
“What do we look for, now that we’re here?” Beq said.
“Anything useful. This was the base of the smugglers Jaedia was investigating.”
“Given the lack of guards, I’d say they’ve moved on by now,” Tanax said.
“They’ll have left some kind of evidence,” Maya said. “We’ll search the whole place if we have to.”
She held up the glowstone, and the shadows of the cables twisted wildly against the walls. Then, distantly, she heard a moan.
“Someone’s here,” she hissed, putting her hand over the stone and plunging them into darkness.
“Not much point in hiding now,” Tanax said. “We’ve already announced ourselves.”
Maya scowled at him while he couldn’t see, then brought out the glowstone again. There were dark shapes ahead and she started pushing forward, one hand on her haken. The heavy cables she bumped swung like metronomes in her wake. The moan repeated, louder now.
“Maya,” Beq hissed. “Something’s behind us.”
“Where?” Tanax said.
Beq turned, lenses flipping wildly on her spectacles. “Don’t know—I can’t see—”
Maya pushed the last of the cables aside and broke into a clear space. At the same time, the smell of filth and rotting meat assaulted her, and she nearly gagged.
Ahead of her was a shallow pit, half-full of a mass of garbage—fragments of bones, chunks of meat, entrails and organs, all stirred together and rotting into black sludge. On the other side of the pit, a stretch of much-trodden dirt was strewn with chains, empty manacles, and small piles of torn rags. A single figure lay on its side, hands fastened behind its back, moaning faintly.
What in the name of the Chosen—Whatever it was, it was nothing good, and Maya’s haken was already in her hand. She summoned the blade, fire igniting with a whoomph and the pinprick warmth of deiat spreading through her body. Her panoply bloomed—this time, she and Beq had tested the belt themselves—and surrounded her with its faint blue tinge.
“… Maya?” The figure raised its head, trying to look at her through the light of the flaming sword. “Maya!”
He was unrecognizable, but Maya knew the voice. “Marn?!”
“Maya, run!” He sat up, chains clanking. “It’s a trap—”
Blasters cracked and spat fire.
*
Tanax had drawn his haken at the same time as Maya and taken up a position on the other side of Beq. A dozen bolts of raw deiat flashed across the room, but the blades of the two centarchs were a blur. Maya could feel the energy coming, drawing her weapon into position like one magnet pulling another, and she surrendered to the motion, letting the blasts vanish harmlessly against the greater flame of her blade.
By the light of her weapon, Maya could see shapes moving through the forest of cables. Some were humanoid, but others were not, loping awkwardly on asymmetrical legs. Plaguespawn.