The Emperor's Edge 3: Deadly Games

The Emperor's Edge 3: Chapter 9 Part 2

The lantern light revealed a chamber filled with cobwebs and layers of dust that made her long for the giant steam-powered cleaning machines she had described to the thieves in the tenement building. Rows of niches on the walls had long since been emptied of their contents, though cobwebs cloaked them like cocoons, and one could almost imagine this place still held ancient treasures.

“Not very likely when we’re in the middle of a city with a population of a million,” Amaranthe told herself.

“That’s why I came down,” Maldynado said.

“To treasure hunt?”

“No, to keep you from talking to yourself. That’s a sign of a lonely, disturbed mind.” He drew his rapier and swiped at a cobweb curtain dangling above a narrow, low-ceilinged stairwell leading down. “This way, you can pretend you’re talking to me.”

“Oh, good.” She turned her head toward the trapdoor again. “Books, are you coming? We need your insight.”

“Since I so rarely hear those words, I’d best join you.”

“We’d crave your insight more if you gave us less of it,” Maldynado told him. “They say scarcity creates desire.”

“I’m heading down,” Amaranthe said. The men could snipe at each other all night if she let them.

She drew her short sword, but waited for Books to shimmy over the side of the hole, dangle from the lip for a moment, then drop down. He landed in an easy crouch. She smiled. He might not realize it, but Sicarius’s training had brought Books a long way in the last six months. Whether one had natural aptitude or not, constant repetition and an unrelenting taskmaster did tend to encourage improvement.

A couple of steps down the stairs convinced Amaranthe to return her sword to its sheath. The narrowness and steepness made her want to brace herself on the wall as she descended, and the lantern seemed the more important thing to hold aloft. Blackness swallowed the bottom of the stairs, but she imagined the fall could be long and far should she lose her balance.

“What kind of tiny-footed people built this place?” Maldynado asked after a bout of cursing when one of his boots slipped.

“Actually,” Books said, “it’s quite fascinating. The Pey’uhara, the first lake dwellers, were—”

“No, no, never mind,” Maldynado blurted. “I didn’t mean it. I don’t want to know.”

“It’s a shame you prefer to wallow in a mire of ignorance when knowledge floats by within reach,” Books said.

“Isn’t it?”

“Let’s practice our stealth mode,” Amaranthe said. “In case there are kidnappers or trap-setters about.”

The men mumbled sheepish apologies and fell quiet.

Silence surrounded them, stirred only by the soft padding of their feet and their own breaths. One could forget a modern city lay less than a block away.

The soft flame of the lantern revealed a short landing below with three options. To the right and the left, more stairs descended. If they continued straight ahead, they would enter a narrow corridor. A low stone ceiling promised much ducking for Maldynado and Books should she choose that route.

Amaranthe stopped on the landing. “Have we gone far enough to be at ground level?”

“I don’t think so,” Books said.

He touched cryptic hieroglyphs carved into the wall. One looked like a dog mounting another dog, but she supposed that was her imagination. Nothing so crude would be represented in two-thousand-year-old glyphs.