Chapter Thirty-Nine
THIRTY-NINE
ASPETH
The dead man is a guild man, evident by the uniform he’s wearing that matches ours. He’s also recently dead, evident from the spreading stain of blood under his clothing. He’s face down, and no one wants to turn him over.
“I thought your aunt said no one in the guild was going to be hurt by the cave-in,” Gwenna says to Lark, panicked.
“I thought so, too!” Lark looks just as worried. “Do you think our plan got him killed?”
The thought makes me queasy. Even so, something’s not adding up. “Unless they knifed him first, he wouldn’t be bleeding like that from a cave-in. Plus there’s no fallen rocks around here.” I gesture at the dead guy. “We should turn him over and see how he died. Just in case.”
“I’m not doing it!” Lark backs away a step.
Mereden rolls her eyes. “I’m the healer. I’ll do it. Maybe he needs healing. Or something.” She rolls her shoulders and then takes a deep breath.
Then she moves forward and squats next to the dead man, the reddish light casting lurid shadows over everything.
“He’s not breathing.” She looks up. “I’m going to turn him over. If you’re squeamish, look away.”
To our credit, no one looks away. Mereden grabs him by the shoulder and hefts his weight over to the side, rolling him onto his back.
I suck in a breath as his face is revealed. Not because I know him, but because it looks like he’s been chewed on. His nose is almost gone, and the rest of him looks equally unpleasant. His uniform is torn and there’s blood on everything.
Mereden sits back on her heels, eyeing the dead man. “This wasn’t a cave-in.”
“Not unless the rocks got hungry,” Lark agrees. Kipp just shakes his head sadly.
“Ratlings, then,” I tell them. They’re the reason everyone carries weapons when excavating, but somehow it’s never occurred to me until now that we might run into them. Everything has been so quiet in the tunnels themselves, and we haven’t seen anything larger than a spider.
To be fair, the spiders were rather large.
But now the shadows take on a more ominous look. “What do you think he was doing down here alone?” I ask, clutching my staff a little closer to me. “Where’s his Five?”
Mereden gets to her feet, dusting off her clothes. “You heard what Magpie said. They were going to close down this particular drop until the guild decided what to do with it. Maybe the guild sent him down to guard things.”
“Alone?” Gwenna asks, skeptical.
“Almost all of the Taurians are out of the city,” I point out. “They must have sent a repeater here to keep an eye on the drop, assuming there was no danger.”
Mereden shakes her head. “Horrible.” She leans over the dead man and crosses his arms over his chest in dedication to Asteria, so the goddess will look out for him in Romus’s hells. Then she pauses. “Artifact?”
“What?” I blink at her, not following.
“He’s supposed to have an artifact, right?” Mereden turns to Gwenna. “That’s what we were dowsing for, yes? Should we check his pockets? It feels wrong.”
“What, because he’s dead?” Lark counters. “What do you think we’re doing down here? We’re robbing the dead constantly. That’s what the guild does .”
She’s right, I finally admit to myself. We are tomb robbing in a sense, because those who died when the city fell are still here. Even so, it’s different when someone’s centuries dead versus a death from a few hours ago…isn’t it? We must all be thinking the same because no one moves forward to check him.
With a huff, Kipp moves to the dead man and runs his small hands over the body, feeling his pockets and checking under his clothing. After a thorough investigation, he looks at us and shakes his head. Nothing.
“Maybe I’m dowsing wrong,” Gwenna frets. “It’s not as if we were educated on the proper way it works.”
“I don’t think it’s supposed to work,” I point out. “I think she gave us that to waste our time.”
“Well, it’s wasting our time if he’s got no artifacts,” Gwenna says. “All he’s doing is giving us more things to worry over.”
I move forward and check the body again, trying not to cringe at how strange the dead man feels under my grasp. It’s a bit like clay—room-temperature clay—and if I think about it too hard, I’m going to be sick. But I check his pockets and under his guild uniform again, looking for trinkets or jewelry. His boots are plain, and there’s nothing hidden in the soles. After I run my fingers along the curve of his ear looking for an earring, I sit back on my haunches. “Well, unless he swallowed the artifact, he doesn’t have one. Is it possible that the dowsing rod is picking up the dead instead?”
“Who would possibly want to dowse for a dead man?” Gwenna makes a face.
“Someone who misplaced a body?” I get to my feet, brushing at my skirts. “I don’t think we should stay here. If it’s ratlings that chewed off his face—”
“What else would it be?” Lark interrupts.
I ignore that, because I don’t know. “—then this area isn’t safe. They could be here even now, watching us and waiting for us to let down our guard. Gwenna, your dowsing is leading us somewhere, at least. I propose we keep dowsing and see what we find.”
She doesn’t like that idea. “What if it keeps leading us to more dead guys?”
“Then we’ve got bigger problems.” I move to pick up my staff again. “Let’s get into formation once more, just like we’ve been taught. Sword and shield at the front, navigator in the center. Mereden and I will make up the back.”
I wait for someone to argue, to point out that I’m not a leader. That I’m married to a teacher but not in charge myself. No one does, though. They just nod and we position ourselves.
When we’re in place, with Kipp and Lark at the front of our group, Gwenna turns and gives me an uneasy look. “You’re sure you want me to do this again? What if we’re messing with something we don’t understand? What if we’re pissing off some sort of ancient magic that lives down here?”
She has a point, but I’ve never been the type to be overly worried about the gods. “We’re not doing this to be cruel. We can make a big apology donation to the church once we’re out of here.”
“With what money?” Lark sputters. “I’m broke.”
“We’ll find something. That’s a problem for the future.” I nod at Gwenna, where she holds the makeshift dowsing rod. “Are you all right with doing this again?”
“Do I have a choice?”
“Do you want to stay here and wait for the ratlings to return?”
She sighs heavily and closes her eyes, holding the dowsing rod out in front of her again. “Please lead us to an artifact this time.”
The thing practically jumps in her grasp. It immediately turns her, veering toward the wall, where the tunnel has been collapsed over time. There’s no path there, no way forward, nothing but piles of rubble in front of us.
Kipp glances back at me and sheathes his blade, pulling out a tiny pickaxe instead.
I nod. “Looks like we’re digging for a while.”
We pick at the rocks, loosening them, and roll the larger ones aside. As we do, a pattern starts to emerge, and I realize we’ve encountered a stone wall of some kind. It pains me to destroy it, but if getting to the other side will somehow get us out of here, we have no choice. Still, it looks as if Gwenna has pointed us in the right direction once more, a fact that elates me and unnerves Gwenna.
One of the stone bricks crumbles under Kipp’s pickaxe, and open air appears with a puff of dust. It’s dark inside, and as we push the crumbling rocks away, the entrance grows larger and larger. We’ve tapped into an antechamber of some kind.
Gwenna surges forward, the rod practically demanding that she go through the broken wall. “Should we go forward?” she asks, turning to me, and practically fights the stick in her hands. “Aspeth?”
I nod, grabbing my pack. I’d set it down nearby so I could dig. “Let’s see where it takes us.”
“If it takes us to a graveyard, I’m holding you personally responsible,” she tells me.
“There were no Prellian graveyards. They buried their dead in an antechamber attached to the family’s home so the spirits of the ancestors could be close and watch over them.” I lean the staff over the hole, looking inside.
“That’s horrifying,” Mereden says, settling her pack on her shoulders.
I thought it was kind of sweet, but I guess it could be unpleasant, too. I swing the light from my staff forward, the red bleeding into darkness. “It doesn’t look like a graveyard anyhow. It could be a shop of some kind.” I turn to the slitherskin. “Lead the way, Kipp.”
He nods, pickaxe moving to his belt and changing it out for his small sword once more. We move forward as a group, stepping into the hole and through to the other side. There’s more rubble here, with part of the ceiling of the old building collapsed, and dust drifts down from above. Mereden waves a hand in the air, trying to clear it, and my heart thumps with excitement.
It’s a ruin of Old Prell. Judging by the dust that’s filtering in, we’re probably the first ones to see this. I swing my staff toward the wall, where a mural of a family is made out of chips of tile. The family offers bowls of fruit to the gods, their depictions crude and stylized in the Prellian fashion.
It’s incredible.
“Where are we?” Lark asks. “What is this building? What are these racks?”
“Racks?” I ask, turning my light source toward her. Sure enough, on the other side, there are fallen racks on the ground, and what look like niches carved out from the stone. They repeat in a regular fashion and the floor is covered in some sort of dark stain, along with coils of hammered metal on the floor. “Gwenna, try pointing the rod toward the floor and see if you pick up anything.”
She lowers herself, her eyes still closed tight, and turns the rod in a half circle before shaking her head. “It’s pulling me past. There’s nothing here it wants.”
“But it looks like a tomb,” Lark points out.
“What?!” Gwenna’s voice takes on a sharp edge. “Aspeth?”
“It’s not a tomb,” I say, trying to soothe her. I put a hand on her shoulder, because I can’t imagine how terrifying this is with her eyes closed. “Like I said, the Prellians didn’t make tombs like we do.”
“It’s a wine cellar,” Mereden blurts suddenly. “This is where they kept their wine.”
“How do you know?”
“My father has a similar cellar.”
“So where’s all the wine?” Lark demands. “If this is a wine cellar.”
“The wood rotted away,” Mereden says, nudging some of the metal hoops on the floor. “All it left behind are the cooping.” She glances over at me. “My father is really into wine.”
It makes sense. I nod. “I think you’re right. And wherever Gwenna is leading us, it isn’t here, so we keep going.”
“So we’re in a wine cellar,” Lark says as Kipp pushes farther into the darkness. “Does that mean there’s a wine store above us?”
“Or someone’s estate. My father keeps his barrels in the cellar of our hold and he checks them daily.” Mereden picks her way forward, the rope tugging at my waist as she moves. “There’s bound to be a door somewhere.”
The room is full of rubble that has to be climbed over, along with piles of dirt, leaves, and twigs (of all things). We guide poor Gwenna, grasping her arm. I thought it would be more impressive to find intact ruins, but this place is so full of rotted garbage that it’s impossible to tell what we’re climbing over mixed in with the rocks and debris. The darkness doesn’t help, either.
Then Kipp points into the shadows at the far end of the massive chamber.
“There’s a door,” Lark calls out.
At the same time, Mereden shrieks and points in the opposite direction. “I just saw eyes!”
We all turn to where Mereden is pointing, and then I see them, too. Eyes, glowing red in the darkness. Something hisses and brushes past my skirts, and I bite back a scream, swinging my staff.
Ratlings.
“Friends, I think we’ve stumbled into a nest,” Mereden whispers.