Suspended from the handle was a globular mass of writhing blue coils - a zombie glowworm, for all Max knew. The rest of the body attached to the hand shambled wetly into sight. Internal organs shifted restlessly within the zombie’s chest cavity, a trail of intestine leading back around one leg and up the tunnel. It looked around, searching eagerly for the source of the call. A second zombie elbowed its way into view, followed by a third; the smell was mounting well above the normal odor of the sewer, penetrating to Max’s nose even within the face-mask. He raised his hand, twirled the weighted cord twice around his head, and let it go. The cord spun around the torso of the first zombie, snapping through the rotten humerus in its right upper arm and flinging it off-balance to its rear. Sparks of white crackling along its length, the cord continued to spin, chewing its way through bone and flesh alike. One iron ball smashed through the second zombie’s ribs as the first creature slammed into it. The cord snapped tight, the momentum grinding the two together, one torso suddenly imploded under the pressure, and bits of tissue splattered against the walls. The third zombie tottered and fell as its feet were swept out from under it. With a paroxysm of splashing, the tangled mass of zombie floated quickly around Max and headed downstream. The current had taken the lamp, too - it bobbed behind them, spun in an eddy, dwindled, and went out of sight around a corner. Max allowed himself a quick smirk, then went around the arch into the side passage. He climbed a short ladder to the landing.
The landing was little more than an alcove in the side of the sewer tunnel. Max stowed his face-mask in the pack as he glanced around. The area was now almost totally dark, the only break in the blackness being provided by a wiggling blue wormlet that had snagged on the sharp edge of a rock. A small rowboat was pulled up into one corner of the alcove and secured with a cable through an eyebolt in the prow. Another ladder led up to a trapdoor in the landing’s roof. Max examined the ladder carefully, then gingerly climbed it, pausing at the top to ease open the trapdoor just enough to peek in over the edge. The trapdoor occupied the corner of a cellar otherwise filled with crates. The yellow-red light of candles showed in the jamb of a door in the wall above. Nothing was moving. Max pulled himself through the door onto the cellar floor, eased the trap down, felt his way to the stairs, and paused, one foot poised over the first riser. Something felt strange about the stairs.
Max lowered his foot back to the floor. Bracing himself with one hand against the rock-and-dirt wall, he closed his eyes, stretched gently out with his other arm, and made a flowing gesture with his hand. He concentrated, and the orientation of his senses precessed slightly out of their normal alignment. Max opened his eyes. A swimming haze surrounded him, small oval paddles like disembodied hummingbird wings spinning through it. He focused past his aura, up onto the staircase. A nebulous pink haze hung over the steps. It faded as he watched, still churning silently.
So much for the stairs. Max didn’t know exactly what the thing was, but that was fine with him; he wasn’t interested in research at the moment. It was Max’s firm philosophy to avoid the frontal assault wherever possible. To his great regret it wasn’t always possible. In this case, though, there were other options.
Max spotted a thick bearing beam holding up the ceiling in front of the door at the top of the staircase. Climbing over a crate, he reached a spot below the beam and raised his left arm. His sleeve fell back, revealing the wrist appliance he had last used back in the bar at the desert oasis. The spring-loaded mechanism in which Max usually kept a knife was good for other things as well; he removed the knife and inserted a dart. He steadied the appliance with his other hand and released the catch. Springs pinged, the dart lanced up, trailing a thin cord, and with a low “choonk” the dart embedded itself in the beam. Max leaned on the cord; the hold was solid. He went up hand-over-hand, fending off from the wall with his feet and grimacing from the load on his bad arm, taking care not to touch the staircase.
Max quickly drew abreast of the door, dangling below the ceiling and at the outside of the landing at the top of the stairs. He put his eye to the crack at the door jamb. The stairs continued upward beyond the door, ending flush with the floor of the next story in a closet that looked like a pantry. That door was standing open, admitting light from another room; Max’s door unfortunately was locked. He reached inside his suit and slid out a set of lockpicks. Max took a firm grip on the cord, taking the dead weight off his left forearm, lowered himself to the level of the lock, and inserted one of the picks. Ten seconds later the lock clicked. Max pulled the door open, swung himself over the banister and through the doorframe, and steadied himself with a foot up on the handrail and his free arm over the lip at the edge of the floor at the level of the top of his head; the current section of staircase looked fine, but he wasn’t quite ready to trust it more than the other. As he had spied through the crack, the stairs went steeply upward to an open door leading onto a plain whitewashed hall. The well for the stairs would ordinarily be covered by a wooden slab; this cover was currently raised on its hinged back and secured overhead. Stacks of dry goods in sacks and boxes covered the rest of the closet floor and were heaped against the walls around the open stairwell. There was no one in sight.
Max pulled himself up to the door sill at the floor level and took a quick glance around the door into the hall. It was still empty. Crouching, he let go of the climbing cord, reinserted his knife into the wrist appliance, turned the recessed crank that wound the springs, spent a quick moment stretching out his injured arm, which had held up remarkably under the exertion, and eased out into the hall, closing the door behind him.
Across the hall he could see the entrance-way to a darkened kitchen and a thick candle in a wooden holder next to it on the wall. To the right of the kitchen the back hall intersected another hall, this one much fancier, leading away toward the front of the building. Max slid across to the kitchen, blew out the candle, then leaned sideways to see around the corner into the front hall.
The front hall was cluttered with gilt mirrors and footed end tables. Max’s end of the hall was now in deep shadow, but the light was much better toward the front, where the left side of the hall opened onto a large space lit by the glow of many candles. The hall’s ceiling also opened, becoming a series of free arches casting strange patterns under the flickering light. A set of double doors broke the wall on the right. At the end of the hall was a small enclosed entryway leading to the front door.
Unfortunately these were not the only features. Two men-at-arms were visible in the corridor where it faced the larger open room, one positioned at each side of the double doors, a third was planted next to the half-closed door to the entry, and the shapes of two more were visible at either side of the door to the street. They each bore a strange device of purple bands with a column of coiling flames ascending from it. So Oskin Yahlei had his own private militia; that was a detail Karlini had neglected to mention.
Max glided silently back out of sight, A climbing staircase beckoned across from him, down the continuation of the back hall. The problem was that the man at the entry door was looking straight back along the cross-corridor. If Max tried to sneak across, even in the deep shadows at the rear, the guy would clearly spot him. Max had an advantage in that no one knew he was around; if he tried to direct the man’s eyes away or use some other distraction he might make it to the staircase, but he’d have a bigger chance of alerting another element of Oskin Yahlei’s forces. Or a trap. A staircase wasn’t worth that much. He decided to check out the kitchen.