But this, Naryn remembered. “It’s a lift,” she informed them calmly. Silhouetted against the lights from the first portion of the passage, she slipped her hand inside the wall—Aryl rubbed her eyes—then grimaced as she felt around. “Substandard piece of—” Naryn muttered confusingly, then stood back with an exclamation of pleasure. “There.”
The outlined section of ceiling lowered itself, spilling light and dust everywhere, and came to rest at their feet.
Haxel, who’d leaped aside, muttered something of her own as she returned to squint upward. “Good place for an ambush. Veca, wait here. Now, how do—” She fell silent as Naryn walked onto the piece of ceiling and gestured they should do the same.
Enris stepped on, grinning happily. One of them, Aryl thought grimly, should put sense ahead of adventure, but she followed her Chosen. Haxel and Syb drew their longknives as they did the same.
“Up,” Naryn said.
And the section of ceiling rose into the air, carrying five M’hiray—one large—without effort. Aryl glanced down at Ve ca’s dimly lit face, disappearing below, then resolutely faced where they were going.
The ceiling became floor, leaving them standing somewhere so different from the passage below, from anywhere she could imagine, that Aryl could hardly believe her eyes.
If not for the ceiling above, they might have stood out in the open, so vast was the space. The floor stretched, smooth and flat, away from the wall behind them. Wall? It was more like the slanted side of a huge buttress root, but what could be above to need such support?
Root?
Aryl shook away the confusing image.
More isolated sections of slanted wall connected the floor and ceiling as far as she could see. Between, everywhere, immense pipes writhed like growths. White ones. Red ones. Black. Some narrow, some oval. Some looped up to a distant ceiling. Others flopped along the floor and headed in either direction as far as the eye could see.
They could see, Aryl realized, because one kind of pipe glowed. She stepped closer. The pipe was clear-sided; what produced the changeable bluish light was inside. And moving. Aryl averted her eyes quickly. What flowed within was more disturbing than this place.
“Maintenance Layer,” Naryn informed them, and pointed left. “The next lift is over there.”
“This one’s the only access below?”
“To the theater, yes.”
Haxel looked to have as many questions as she did, Aryl thought, but merely nodded. “Aryl. Call Karne, Galen, Bula, Josel, and Imi.”
She nodded. An instant’s concentration to send those names into the M’hir, less to find the five, and their groups, standing beside them. They looked around in awe, then focused on Haxel. “We’re going that way,” she pointed. “The rest of you fan out, look for a way to the next level. Naryn?”
Naryn used her hands to mark out a square. “Lifts are marked by a panel, this size. On a wall, or in the floor. Press it and the lift shows itself. You speak your command, up or down, to control it.”
The others nodded.
“When you find one,” Haxel took over, “check the next level. If it’s promising, send for your next three groups and have them fan out. If not, keep going up on your own till you find something worth exploring. Understood? I don’t want M’hiray scampering over each other or worse, being noticed. We need to see as much as we can, not take risks. Don’t ’port where you could be seen. By anything.”
Several looked uneasy at this. Karne d’sud Witthun among them. “What do you mean, ‘anything’?”
“Stonerim III is more Commonwealth than Trade Pact,” Naryn answered, making, in Aryl’s opinion, no sense at all. “Most of the beings you’ll encounter above will be Human.
They look like M’hiray. But you’ll see those who don’t. Avoid conversations with either.”
Haxel’s scar gleamed white. “I’ll want reports. Often.”
Agreement. The scouts turned and left.
“Syb?” The First Scout turned to the grizzled Chosen. “Picked your spot?”
“Up there.” His nod indicated a shadowed rise of gray pipe. He’d have a perfect view of anyone approaching the lift.
“Good.”
Aryl nodded to herself. Haxel knew her people. If Veca and Syb couldn’t stop would-be intruders—unlikely, but most of what was around them was unlikely—from here, they could ’port back to the others to deliver a warning and share the locate to this layer.
While she, Enris, and Naryn would receive the scout reports. Good news, she hoped.
Their own quiet footsteps were swallowed by the gurgle and thump of the pipes as Naryn led them across the floor to another slanted wall.
“Maintenance Layer,” Enris commented. “So these carry water, heat, whatever’s needed above us. Makes me wonder.”
Aryl glanced at him. “Go on.”
“What’s above that could need so much?”
He didn’t expect an answer.
Aryl wasn’t sure she wanted one.
When they reached their destination, Naryn ran her hands over the featureless smooth wall, and gave a helpless shrug. “There should be a lift here. I thought there was. This is all—it didn’t matter,” with an odd desperation. “Only the theater mattered.”
Aryl understood Haxel’s somber expression, the grim that leaked through her shields. None of the other groups had found a lift yet. If Naryn’s memory couldn’t guide them . . .
“We’ll split up here. You try that way,” the First Scout ordered, waving Enris right, Aryl left. “Make it quick,” she added.
And careful, Aryl sent to her Chosen, who grinned back at her.
You, too.
Quick suited her. Aryl ran along the wall, eyes searching for a panel. When the wall ended, rather than follow it around, she sped to the next section, doing her best to ignore the sudden drafts of cold or blasts of heat when she passed under different pipes, listening for danger past the gurgle and occasionally loud thunks coming from the same source. Not a place for living things, she decided.
But living things were what she found.
Voices, ahead.
Avoiding one of the glowing pipes, Aryl veered into the shadow of a black one and crept closer. Closer. After a cautionary touch to be sure the metal wasn’t of the too hot or too cold variety, she found a seam and eased herself on top.
There.
She grinned. Perfect.
Who needed a lift, when there were stairs?
Stairs currently in use by a raggedly dressed assortment of beings, some M’hiray-like—Human—others definitely not. The arrangement of poles and steps appeared solid, if clumsily built.
And not, she guessed, supposed to be here.
The beings had attached a cluster of small tubes to a yellow pipe’s lower loop using some kind of disk. The tubes led to a droning machine that spewed forth a white liquid the beings were collecting in a variety of containers with every indication of delighted greed. Full containers were being carried up the stairs, while others carried down what Aryl presumed were empty ones to fill.
One tripped, its container spilling on the floor.
“That’s outta your share!” shouted a Human near the machine.
The sloppy individual lifted its container. “Lemme refill. There’s plenty.”
“Get greedy and you’ll get gone, my friend. Think this is a perm-tap? Them as work for Grandies will be down sooner than not. We’ll all be locked then, won’t we.”
“I’ve a family—”
“Who don’t need juice? Ack. Take your due and hurry it. All a’you.” This as others on the stairs slowed to watch. “We need to wrap this.”
The mess was ignored; the sloppy one refilled its container and ran up the stairs.
Good, Aryl decided. The sooner they finished their theft, the sooner they’d leave the staircase and the opening to the layer above they’d made through the wall at its top.