Yama said, “And this one came for me.”
“That was bad luck, and not just for you,” Magon said. “It must have been bound in the shrine. No doubt that’s why the monastery was built around the shrine. It’s all too easy to mistake the stirring of a hell-hound for the intimation of an avatar. Those poor monks, praying for thousands of years to a weapon of their enemies! There’s irony for you, eh, dominie? Well, they’ll worship the shrine no longer. The hell-hound stole the residue of the shrine’s potential energy when it manifested.”
“It seemed to grow stronger in sunlight,” Yama said.
He had the horrible thought that whoever had fired at the hell-hound with a pistol would have fed its strength. He added, “Perhaps darkness would kill it.”
“It was never alive,” Magon said, “So killing and dying don’t apply.”
Eliphas said, “Even in sunlight it loses binding energy. Sunlight’s energy is too dilute to sustain it, just as we would gasp for air at the peaks of the Rim Mountains. I imagine that it is imprinted on you, brother. It will follow as long as it can. We must escape it.”
Magon said, “It’s a terrible thing, but it’s old and easily confused. If we’re lucky it will give up, or lose track or memory of you, and dissipate when its binding energy drops below a sustainable level.”
“We have had little in the way of luck so far,” Yama said. “I think that I will have to find a way of destroying it.”
“As for that,” Magon said, “some ways are better than others, as the fox said to the hen lost in the forest. We’ll go through here. Don’t worry about the water. It’s dry on the other side.”
They had reached the base of a kind of well or shaft. A patch of pale daylight showed high above and a sheet of water fell down one side and drained away through grids in the floor. Behind the water three corridors radiated away at sixty degrees to each other. Magon plunged through the water and trotted down the middle corridor.
When Yama and Eliphas followed—the water was as warm as soup—they found the gambler waiting at the other end, where a slim metal bridge arched across a narrow, half-flooded cavern. Green lights flickered deep beneath the water. Waves clashed and broke against the stone walls, casting shivering shadows on the arched ceiling.
Magon stepped quickly and lightly across the bridge’s span and turned at the other side and beckoned to Yama and Eliphas. As he crossed, Yama saw shapes move swiftly just beneath the water’s restless surface, things with sleek, arrowhead-shaped bodies that ended in knots of long, twining limbs: creatures like the polyps which swarmed in the river at midsummer, but grown to the size of a man.
Eliphas saw them too. He grasped the rail of the bridge and looked down into the water and said, “There are more things forgotten in the Palace than anyone could dream of in a lifetime of sleep.”
“Not forgotten by everyone,” Magon called from the other end of the bridge. “They come up from the Great River through flooded passages beneath the streets of the city. Lupe says they might have had a purpose once upon a time, but that’s long forgotten. They come here by habit now.” He told Yama, “We should press on, dominie. Lupe is eager to meet you.”
Eliphas said, “Begging your pardon, Magon, but I always understood that no one lives inside the walls of the Palace but thieves and cutthroats.”
Magon flashed his crooked smile and said, “Their kind doesn’t last long. We see to that. It isn’t far now, I promise. Lupe is waiting for you, dominie, and your friend is welcome too. We know him.”
“You know everyone, it seems,” Yama said. He leaned beside Eliphas. Below, the reflected stars of his crown of fireflies were drawn apart and flung back together on the shivering surface of the water. The sleek shapes were gathering beneath the bridge. Their bodies were limned by patches and dots and lines of green luminescence. Something like a snake rose up, a pale, glistening rope that sinuously elongated in the air. It caught hold of the middle of the bridge’s high arch for a moment, then fell back.
Magon said, “It isn’t safe to tarry here, dominie.”
There was a note of pleading in his voice now.
Yama did not trust the gambler. His ready smile and quick wit seemed assumed, a mask, an act. He said, “Before we move on, Magon, tell me how you know who I am. It is not just because I saw through your sleight of hand, is it?”
Magon said, “Of course not. Please, dominie, we must go. You don’t know the dangers here.” His calm, knowing pose had dissolved. His hands writhed in a knot before his chest. “You shouldn’t play with poor Magon. Lupe can answer your questions. I am to take you to him at once.”
“You are not a gambler at all, are you? That is just a cover for what you really are. So, who are you? And why do you know so much about me?”
There was a loud splash out in the darkness, as if something big had lifted itself out of the water and fallen back. Magon’s left hand darted to his hip, where something made a shape under his loose shirt. He said, “Lupe said to bring you direct, and you want me to answer your questions. I’ve tried to do my best, but I can’t do both, dominie.”
Eliphas told Magon, “Keep your hand away from your side, brother. You’ve something hidden there—a knife in your belt, most likely, and no doubt there’s another in your boot. I know those footpad tricks.”
Yama said, “How long have your people been watching me?”
“You were supposed to go to the Department of Indigenous Affairs, but your escort arrived without you. That’s when we started looking, but we didn’t catch sight of you until after you called down the feral machine.”
“My escort? You mean Prefect Corin?”
For a moment, Yama thought that Magon was in league with the Prefect.
“I wouldn’t know his name,” the gambler said, “but someone in the Department of Indigenous Affairs isn’t happy he lost track of you. He’ll be searching for you hard, now you’ve been spotted in the Palace. We’ll make sure you’re safe, dominie.”
Magon did not meet Yama’s gaze as he answered these questions, but looked from side to side as things splashed in the darkness on either side of the bridge’s span. When a nest of pale tentacles rose from the water directly beneath the bridge, he gave a cry and took a step backward. Yama said, “I will not go with you until you have answered all my questions. How long have your people been looking for me?”
“When you fought the thing in the Temple of the Black Well, we knew for sure. Lupe said that you were the one foretold. You don’t have to worry about the little interdepartmental dispute you’ve become involved with, dominie. We’ll always be here to see you right.”
“And my friends?”
Out in the darkness beyond the bridge, something huge surfaced with a loud splash. Big waves clashed beneath the bridge; spray wet the walls of the chamber. Magon said, the note of pleading in his voice stronger now. “Dominie, you’ll have to ask Lupe these questions. That’s why I’m to bring you to him. Truly, it is not safe—”
Yama said, “This is not the first time I have met people who claim more for me than I would ever claim for myself. And I have business elsewhere today.”
This was the day that the Department of Vaticination opened its doors for public inquisition of its pythonesses.
It was the day of the assassination plot, in which, Yama suspected, Brabant, the servant with the keys to the kitchens of the House of Twelve Front Rooms, was Prefect Corin’s agent, doing double duty after he had led Yama to the Prefect. Yama still did not know who was the target of the plot, but that did not matter as long as Brabant was unmasked.