The empty tank remains far below the graveyard. A drain field additionally helps to suck excessive water away—preventing the kinds of grisly landslides that occasionally plague Marbolia, the cemetery of the rich.
A lateral tunnel from the Barrow Hill septic tank runs north, pouring into what would have been the Barrow Hill castle’s main line to the sea. When the site was abandoned, this second vault was sealed off except to the east where water collects under the graves, sluiced down through narrow pipes into the labyrinthine channels under Temple Hill.
Thus there are two sewer systems sequestered and forsaken from the rest of Isca’s gurgling conduits. They are entangled and fight for space like two tarantulas below the hills but at no place do they ever intersect or intersect the rest of the city sewers.
A thieves guild once toyed with the idea of a base of operations in the Barrow Hill tunnels. But they are so inaccessible and so prone to sudden flooding that the guild reconsidered and settled Thief Town instead.
The powers in Ghoul Court rediscover them and fathom a use.
A tall gaunt man oversees operations in the dark. He has pink eyes like Mr. Naylor. On the morning of the twenty-fourth, long before the Byun-Ghala is set to leave Isca Castle for the spindle in Murkbell, the engine sparks to life.
A maul, head covered every inch with teeth, begins chewing methodically at the north end of the tunnel, pumping up and down. It rips chunks of rock away and kicks up heavy dust.
The gaunt man seems capable of ignoring the choking haze. His associates, who are crawlers—more like Fenwick Bengello—are forced to retreat up the southern tunnel toward Gilnaroth.
Several others like the leader watch the machine. They pamper it and make adjustments as it edges relentlessly north. Due to mechanisms that lock the wheels in one direction and a great anchored tail off the back, the engine can only advance into the wall. The toothy maul dissolves inches of stone in minutes.
It takes only seven and a half hours to eat through ten feet of stone.
Finally the barrier between the castle sewers and the necropolis sewers burst in, caving slightly under a fine rain of debris. The thick stench of raw sewage gobbles hungrily at the dry cloud of dust.
Long-legged men in striped suit pants and overalls and other various occupational costumes clamber through, disregarding the fumes. They begin sniffing their way through the tangled pools, searching for a hint of cleaner air.
They have an inside man. Someone who knows they are coming. This has been prepared and rehearsed as carefully as the show Caliph and Sena sit watching.
From slick black tubes and catch basins, under baffles and hoods and around garbage-clogged weirs, the man-things hunt fresh air. Like Mr. Naylor they clamber through small spaces. They pass grinding pumps that move scum and sludge into deep containers that gel with slowly thickening sludge cake and lime. Walls, lumpy white and griseous with coagulated fat from the castle’s kitchen seep into chunky waste below.
They pass a grit chamber thronging with mycophagous creatures that pause in their filthy reverie to listen to the man-things clamber through. The creatures twist back and forth like grubs rooted in fecal chowder, wavering blindly at the intruders.
The man-things ignore them. They stalk onward through the pitch black, now and then banging their heads or shins on odd projections or hidden chunks of fallen stone. They seem oblivious to pain. Their eyes are no better than Mr. Naylor’s but they can decipher vague radiations.
Without a trace of light, they are only partially blind. They catch a hint, a whiff. Lose it. Search in repetitive back and forth swathes; sniff and catch it again.
Finally.
The faint sweet smell of blossoms trickles on a downward draft, sifting pollen through circular grates overhead. The lead man claws upward. He fumbles at the grate. It has already been unlocked. He eases it up and sets it aside.
A short vertical culvert above the first grate supports a secondary grate just a few feet overhead. It too is unlocked. With a faint creak and muted thud the grate opens trapdoor style onto a plush crop of perfectly manicured grass.
The sheltering arms of a black mulberry normally help conceal the grate in the sumptuous gardens. Now they cloak creatures hauling themselves up into the courtyard as across town Caliph and Sena leap into the carriage, making good their escape.
The man-things spread out quickly and quietly. One lurks at an adit until a pair of sentinels walk past.
The creature waits, biding its time, emotionally detached from its goal. Then, at precisely the most favorable moment it casts its long sinuous arms out and pulls both men deep into shadow. Before they can scream, iron-like fingers burke them with savage efficiency.
The strangled corpses are pulled into corners behind bushes and sculpted shrubs.
While their fellows at the opera are bent on putting an end to the Sslî
they fear, those at the castle advance relentlessly through the courtyard, searching for the book and putting an end to any sentry in their path.
Caliph and Sena had gone slack in the aftermath.
The carriage rumbled past Gilnaroth through Barrow Hill to King’s Road and turned north into the Hold. By the time they reached the castle gate, the terror at the opera house had been replaced with nausea and exhaustion.
As usual, huge gears began to turn the instant the High King was inside, pulling up the drawbridge, locking the castle down on its island for the night.
Vhortghast leapt from the back of the carriage before it had fully stopped. Since the metholinate lamps had been shut off, torchlight licked the edges of the vast court where governmental buildings crowded. He opened the door and helped Sena and Caliph clamber out.
A quad of soldiers crossed the yard heading in formation toward the east gardens. Their leather cuirasses and barbuts glared as facets of the armor turned in unison from the light. Despite their presence, something felt strangely wrong.
The carriage driver was quick to bid everyone good night. He had not asked what had gone on inside the opera. With a curt tip of the hat, his nervous meaty hands whipped the horses toward the livery.
Caliph glanced back in the direction of the gates. It was three hundred yards to the drawbridge from the center of the south bailey. He felt strangely isolated.
A courthouse and a row of statues shone green in the sultry night. Crickets chirped. The last queelub of the season flickered in a stately stand of maples to the west. After dusk, when the visitors had signed out, the small village of governmental edifices became austere and chilly, like monuments in a park. Even with all the night noises, the humidity seemed to stifle sound.
“Why are the lights out in the kitchen?” asked Caliph. The bank of mullioned panes west of the foyer usually glowed all night.
The spymaster scowled. “I don’t know.”
A lone cicada screamed from nearby.
“Everything is fine,” Caliph soothed.
Even so, Sena felt her skin prickle.
Zane led them toward the front door, up a steep staircase, across another miniature drawbridge to the lavish foyer decorated with tile and statuary and lit by gas. Vhortghast rapped. The glazed door was unlocked.
They stepped inside.