Chapter 28 Is She Here for You?
Is She Here for You?
Immediately upon exiting the bedchamber, though, I noticed that the hallway had curled in on itself. It no longer ran the way I wanted it to, south and down. It was heading east and upward instead, toward the surface.
“Hey!” I said aloud, like an idiot. “Turn around!”
Was I making it up, or did the walls and floor judder slightly, as if they’d heard me?
I grumbled. Surely not. Surely the catacomb’s movements, inconvenient though they were, had to be random. This was the land of chaos, after all.
Well, I wasn’t going to be beaten by some stupid tunnels.
I considered removing my boots in order to sense the movements of the floor more easily, but I didn’t really want to walk around barefoot with the hundred pounds of my mother on my back.
I followed the catacomb’s slope for a little while, waiting for a fork. Nothing.
The catacomb kept leading me upward.
I stopped walking. Aloud again, I asked the catacomb, “Are you trying to get rid of me?”
Nothing. The jewels twinkled in the walls.
“Hey,” I said, “fuck you.”
Then something occurred to me. If I’d always navigated the underworld based on instinct and sense, rather than knowledge…
I closed my eyes.
I inched slowly, carefully, along the path. Feeling the vibrations of the catacomb’s floor through the soles of my boots, the soles of my feet.
I couldn’t be sure, but I thought it was working.
I knew, instinctively, when I hit a fork in the road; there was a sort of opening-up sense under my feet.
I took the right fork. And again, here, a fork up and down; I couldn’t go up, I didn’t have the spider-legs, but I would have picked the downward route anyway…
I tripped.
I knew before opening my eyes that my experiment hadn’t worked.
Instead of taking me to the Lake, the catacomb had led me to the invasion shaft that Calix’s men had dug.
I kicked the wall ferociously. “Now you listen here,” I started to hiss at the wall, like a crazy person. “I got Hades’s workers to dig a pipe-shaft right through you and I will do it again. OPEN UP.”
The air eddied slightly.
I froze. Had it worked?
But no. The eddy came from someone else emerging into this catacomb.
The Vizeking.
When he saw me, he stopped. “I thought I locked you up,” he said. There was a strange, distant, dark look on his face, as though he truly could not remember whether he had.
That expression made my stomach crawl. I dropped my mother on the ground behind me and put my fists up to my face.
The Vizeking turned his head up to the empty entry-tunnel the human soldiers had dug. “Is she here for you?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure I’d understood him properly. “What?”
From high up the entry tunnel, a male voice also said, “What?”
I stiffened. I recognized that voice.
It couldn’t be.
A moment later, Calix’s feet landed flat on the earth.
My blood ran cold.
I was behind him. He hadn’t seen me. The Vizeking looked back and forth between us.
Calix tossed his hair and said to the Vizeking, “Sorry I’m late.
I had a funeral this morning, and then I had to oversee the transport of some additional equipment.
The first thing the Body wants to do is get as many drills in here as possible. ”
I cleared my throat.
Calix jumped. He turned and spotted me.
The blood drained from his face.
“What,” I said clearly, “the fuck.”
“Well,” said the Vizeking thoughtfully. “This is interesting.”
“What are you doing here?” Calix said wildly. He whipped to the Vizeking. “What is she doing here?” To me: “Did they kidnap you again?” To the Vizeking: “This wasn’t part of our deal —”
“DEAL?” I screamed.
“I certainly don’t know what she’s doing here,” said the Vizeking. “Perhaps you sent her.” Calix boggled. “As a spy.”
“I have certainly not been spying on Your Suzerainty,” Calix said stiffly. “I haven’t the faintest idea why you would make such an accusation. I have —” He stopped.
“You’ve what?” I demanded.
“I did not mean to suggest you were spying on me,” said the Vizeking. “Perhaps you were spying on His Lordship. I found her in his bedchamber.” He added dryly, “I see she has changed her clothes since then.”
Calix’s eyes fixed on my clothes. Or lack thereof. The blood rushed back into his face. He opened his mouth.
“I don’t want to fucking hear it from you,” I said furiously. “What is this?”
Calix got a retreating look in his eyes. Then he frowned. He sniffed the air. “Is that formaldehyde?”
“Don’t change the subject.”
His eyes fell on the bundled package of my mother behind me. His face contorted into a mask of horror. “Persephone. What did you do?”
“What did you do?!”
Calix stepped forward tightly. He boxed me against the wall.
The Vizeking, watching us, tilted his head curiously.
He still wore that dark, faintly blank expression.
I wondered how much he understood of what was going on.
Hell, I didn’t understand what was going on.
“This is what I had to do to rescue you,” Calix muttered.
“I did what you wanted me to do. Okay? I negotiated with the godlings. And now I find that you, after I go to all that trouble, come back here of your own accord —”
“You weren’t supposed to negotiate with the Vizeking!” I hissed. “The Vizeking sucks! You were supposed to negotiate with —”
“I can’t get to the King,” said Calix. “No one can get to the King.” Not yet, were the unspoken words.
“Not the King, stupid. The Prince.”
The Vizeking laughed.
“The Prince?” Calix said disbelievingly. “It looks like you’ve done enough negotiating with the Prince for both of us.”
My blood boiled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I think you know very well.”
“I can do what I want,” I said, as if I had done anything at all. “Meanwhile, you came to rescue me in exchange for what? How many jewels are you extracting for the Body? How many people did you kill?”
“How many people did I kill?” Calix repeated, clearly unable to believe his ears.
“You think they’re people? They’re monsters!
The Body doesn’t care about the money, Persephone.
” Now it was my turn to laugh. “What they want is the same as what you and I want. To eradicate this evil. And we will. We’ll take out the little bugs first. We already wiped out vast numbers of them when we saved you. ”
“They’re not bugs.” I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. Had I caused this massacre by staying in the underworld to help the chaosgotten with their reservoir, instead of trying harder to escape to Calix?
My guilt was a knife. Everyone in the Lake cavern, everyone Calix had killed, had been a worker who’d followed me from the reservoir. Because they’d believed in me. Because they’d been protesting my execution.
How many of them had Calix and his War Police murdered?
“The little bugs first,” Calix was repeating, fervently. “Then the Royal Family.” My breath caught. “And then, finally, whatever creature they call the Monarch of the Void. The thing they think is the god Chaos.”
“Stop. All this killing was never what I wanted, Calix. I just wanted water. I wanted life. Not death.”
“We’ll get the water,” he said earnestly. “Once we have access to the mountain. That’s what gave me the idea, you know.” His eyes shone. “The Body had already set me to conquer the underworld…”
“You’re joking. You’re telling me that’s your fucking capstone project? A war?”
“…but it was you, pointing to the mountain, who gave me the idea of how to do it.” Calix hesitated. He glanced sideways, behind him, at the Vizeking. He cleared his throat to lower his voice. He moved a hair closer to me.
I said loudly, “Step off.”
“You can help me,” Calix whispered. I backed up an inch. My heel touched my mother’s carpeted corpse. “You’ve spent three days down here. You have a greater understanding of these creatures than any other human alive. You can help all of us, Persephone.”
“Not all of us. Just all of you. Monarch’s balls, you’re an idiot.
” I pushed him aside. I turned and bent to gather up my mother, miserably aware of my thighs and ass pointed toward Calix.
A week ago, I would never have been so bold.
Now, if he touched me, I would slap him.
I hoisted my mother over my shoulders. “I don’t want any of what you’re describing.
But I am going to get what I do want. And I’m going to get it my own fucking self.
So I’ll tell you one more time, Calix: Step. Off.”
Calix’s lips were parted, his eyes unmoving. He stepped backward.
An instant later, his expression flickered. He hadn’t meant to obey me.
I’d simply scared the shit out of him.
I laughed. Before he could change his mind, I walked around him, back into the catacomb. I was almost gone when the Vizeking said, “Hold on. What are you doing, exactly?”
“I’m giving you —”
Then I stopped.
I’m giving you your precious sacrifice, I had been going to say, snidely.
But…
But the Vizeking hadn’t really wanted me sacrificed, had he?
He hadn’t wanted me fed to the Monarch. He hadn’t wanted anyone fed to the Monarch.
He hadn’t even had a tribute kidnapped on time.
He’d practically lost his mind when Hades had kidnapped me.
And he’d negotiated with Calix, apparently, to ensure that I’d be rescued at the last minute.
In fact, it seemed he would do anything to make sure there wasn’t a sacrifice.
But why?
I didn’t understand. My mind whirred, but not fast enough. I was sure I was correct — it was the only thing that made sense — but I couldn’t figure it out.
But if I was right, one thing was for certain:
I couldn’t let him get my mother.
I broke immediately into a run.
And this time — and I thanked all the gods, thanked the Monarch, thanked even the Monarch’s human wife — the catacomb bent at once for me. It formed a straight shot to the throne room. Far ahead, I could even see the edge of the stalagmite throne.