"Did our wounded get through?" I asked.
"Some of them. There must be a point in the water where the field is most effective. We just brushed it. Lucky, really." He started to turn away, then paused. "Some of those… things came through, too. We cut them and threw them back."
"What about the girl?"
He nodded down the hallway. "Yeah. We've got her guarded, best we can. Took her toys away and made her drowsy." He rubbed his knuckles around the cuffs, like an old man worrying the arthritis from his bones. "She's scared, Eva."
"Yeah. I scare people."
"Not sure it's you. Not sure it's any of us." He pulled one of his cuffs off, buffed it against his shirt, and put it back on. "Anyway."
I nodded, and he returned to the row of bodies lined up along the center of the corridor, checking pulses and invoking his rings. I eased myself into a more comfortable position and did a quick inventory of the meat. One of the Healers had already patched me up, Owen or one of his boys. I felt pretty good, for a girl who had just fought off a horde of dead men, followed promptly by a short period of drowning and unconsciousness. My sword was in its sheath, either returned by one of my fellow survivors or plucked out of the water by the articulators as it fell out of my hand. Watching the sheath do its thing could be creepy sometimes, like watching a spider pounce across the tense strands of its web. But it was good at what it did.
"How much of the city is like this?" I asked myself, quietly. The waterfall at the end of the hallway looked like a living painting, an artifact from the time of the Feyr. Might even be that old, though most of their ancient city had been torn apart after the siege. "How many burrows are there, for our little Amonite friends to hide in?"
"He did build the city," Owen said. He was sitting against the curve of the wall behind me, still rubbing his hands. "Who knows what Amon laced between the walls?"
"These guys do, obviously." I looked up at him. "If I can't get the girl to talk, maybe we should have a chat with your friends in the Library Desolate."
He shook his head. "We've found places like this before. Hidden rooms, empty tunnels. Sometimes evidence that someone had just left, or maybe provisioned the place like they intended to come back. We've interrogated the captive Scholars about it. Nothing."
"There are no plans for the city, somewhere?"
"Sure. They were in Amon's personal library. The one you guys burned to the ground."
"Ah. Well." It had happened in the angry days between Morgan's murder and Amon's capture. "Sorry about that."
He shrugged, then pulled off his Healer's rings and dropped them into a satchel on his belt. "We should get going. A lot of these guys can't be moved, and they're beyond my abilities. We'll have to bring a real Healer down here."
"Sure." I stood, then looked around the corridor. "Can your guys watch the girl?"
"Cassandra. She said her name is Cassandra."
I looked at him in the dim light of the waterfall. He wouldn't meet my eyes.
"Can your guys handle her?"
"Sure. She's out. Come on."
I nodded and checked my pockets. "I think I lost my gun. You see it?"
"Nope. Then again, I lost ten guys and whatever evidence those monsters destroyed on the way. So maybe I wasn't looking too hard for your gun."
He spoke quietly to one of the Healers he was leaving behind to watch the injured, then pulled a frictionlamp from his pack and started down the corridor. I followed, balancing my way past the line of dead and injured that took up the center of the path. We walked that way longer than I expected. Cassandra was at the end of the row, three Healers crouched around her, taking turns touching light fingers to her temples, her wrists, her ankles. She was out. She looked a lot paler in the frictionlight than I remembered. Once we were past all the quiet bodies, Owen and I walked in silence and shadows.
* * *
The brick tunnel led to a series of ladders that ended in a monostation on the city's inner horn. It was pretty clear that these were maintenance tunnels. There were doors that led to rooms that were nothing but machine and conduit, loud, hammering rooms that looked as if they'd been running for generations and could run for generations more. Several times the tunnel filled with vented smoke or steam, only to ventilate just as suddenly through hidden ports.
Also plenty of signs of recent traffic. Someone had bled all over one of the ladders, someone else had thrown up in a cubby-room off the main drag. There were abandoned clothes, a bag of dinnerware thrown to one side, even a muzzleloader that probably hadn't been fired in years, propped up between two pipes. There was plenty of dust, too, but it had been disturbed. This passage was ancient and hardly used. It was an easy trail to follow.
"How many people know about these places?" I asked. It was the first thing either of us had said since we'd left Owen's people behind. "Amonites come down here for maintenance, remember it when they get away from your zero-escape-rate Library?"
He shook his head thoughtfully. "Probably not. Maintenance is a problem. We know these passages exist, we just don't know where they are. Long as something doesn't break, we don't worry about it."
"And if something does break?"
He shrugged. "We dig to it."
Once we were on the surface, Owen disappeared to coordinate the rescue party. They closed off the monotrain station and filled the newfound tunnel with men carrying lamps and shotguns. I waited until the girl was brought up, arranged an escort for her back to Alexander's royal court where she could be questioned about the Fratriarch's disappearance, then lost interest. I had been gearing up emotionally for a hell of a chase, and it had just ended in a flash. There was still the Fratriarch to find, and these coldmen to figure out, but for now I was between tasks. I caught the last mono the Healers let stop at that station and began the long series of circular orbits and exchanges that would get me back to the Strength of Morgan.
I sat alone in the plush cabin of the mono, staring at the pendant Cassandra had left for me on the dock. It was the Fratriarch's, though not something associated with his office. More accurate to say that it belonged to Barnabas, the man I knew, rather than the Fratriarch I served. He had been wearing it as long as I'd known him, which had been forever. As long as I can remember, at least.
Did this mean that she knew where he was? If her compatriots were holding him captive, he would be bound and nearly naked. The icons of the faith are powerful tools for channeling the invokations of Morgan. My sword was an obsessively precise mimic of Morgan's own blade, the Grimwield. Same with the revolver. My armor, the pauldrons and gauntlets and greaves, all mirrored Morgan's battle dress, at least in style and spirit. At the higher levels of the faith, the icons became more obscure and more genuine. The staff Barnabas carried had at its core the driftwood staff that Morgan had carried with him into the mountains during the Thousand Lost Days. Many of the pendants and charms that the Elders wore or had stamped onto their robes reflected some aspect of Morgan's personal life. Some were genuine, some were decoy, to protect the secrets of Morgan's life. It was only knowledge of these things that powered them, and that knowledge was carefully guarded by the ranks of the initiated.
So they would have stripped the old man. Of his robe, his jewelry, even that ancient staff. This pendant would have been taken from him, too. The girl could have lifted it from the stash of his belongings, feeling some regret perhaps over her involvement in his kidnapping. It didn't make any sense.
Soon enough, the Chanters of the Cult of Alexander would find their way into the girl's brain, and then we'd know. It was a slow process, but she didn't seem the type to give it up to fear or intimidation. I sighed and rested my head against the glass of the window. I'd know, soon enough.