Sau'ilahk's hand began to waver in his sight. Everything faded black for an instant. Exhaustion threatened to drag him into dormancy. He exerted more will to remain present, and he straightened, lifting his hand from the floor.
All glowing marks upon the stone vanished.
He whispered only with his thoughts. Awaken!
Another glow rose beneath the passage's floor.
Mute and pale yellow, it shifted erratically, darting about as if something swam through stone beneath the passage's floor. Sau'ilahk raised his hand higher, fingers closing like a street puppeteer toying with strings.
The glow halted. The floor bulged above it, like gray mud about to belch a bubble of noxious gas. And the light emerged—and winked at him.
A single eyelid nictitated with a soft click of stone as it closed and opened over a lump of molten-formed glass. Its oblong stone body holding that glass eye surfaced next and rose. Three small holes on either side of that mass were marked by small rippling warps of air where it would take any sound it heard. It stood up on four legs of thin rock, each three jointed, with pointed ends. Where those ends touched the floor, small ripples spread in rings, like those created by an insect shifting nervously upon a still gray pond.
Then it bolted for the passage wall.
No … no return for you … until I wish it!
The stone-spider skittered to a halt and began to quiver. Whirling around, that lump of glass eye opened wide, fixing upon him, and its light shifted to hot red. The servitor dashed straight at him.
Sau'ilahk curled his fingers, crushing their tips into his palm.
Obey!
The stone-spider halted, and quivers turned to shudders as that one eye burned with conscious rage.
Sau'ilahk sank his awareness into it.
Everything tinged red in the dim passage. Darker still was a black form of gently writhing cloak, robe, and cowl. He saw himself through the servitor's singular eye.
Very good … Follow the gray-clad one beyond the passage's end, but remain out of her awareness. You will not return until I recall you. Now go!
Sau'ilahk opened his clutching fingers, and the servitor rushed the wall once more.
It shot upward and across the passage's ceiling. Faint ripples in the stone marked its passing, like a fisher-spider darting across water.
Sau'ilahk watched it scurry out of the passage's top, and he drifted closer to the exit.
The walk back along Limestone Mainway seemed longer than Wynn remembered. But as she passed the greeting house, someone called from the mainway's end chamber.
"Wynn!"
Chane's raspy voice brought some comfort, and Wynn quickened her pace. He trotted to meet her. Noble Dead he might be, but he was always there for her.
"Did Ore-Locks come?" he asked. "How was it at the smithy?"
"Brutal," she answered. "I may have lost him, even more than Sliver."
He shook his head. "How?"
Wynn briefly recounted what had happened, and then asked, "And you?" "The duchess returned," he answered, "as you guessed. She is lodged at an inn off Breach Mainway, near the market."
Wynn took a deep breath, though her relief was small. At least one thing had worked out this night. They might yet follow the duchess and learn more of why she was here. In turn, perhaps something useful would come of that.
"Come," Chane insisted. "I will show you … before we return to our lodging."
He led the way back up the curving tunnel.
Wynn was tired by the time they approached Breach Mainway, but Chane suddenly stopped short of the end chamber. He turned sharply, staring past her down the curve, and Wynn followed his gaze.
She saw nothing but the tunnel's curving dark walls. Shade had stepped beyond them but returned to Wynn's side.
"What's wrong?" she asked.
Chane's brow furrowed. He looked all around, as if uncertain what he searched for.
"I thought I heard something," he whispered. "A click on stone."
He stepped farther downslope, looking beyond the curve.
"Shade would've heard it too," Wynn said. "It was probably just an echo of her claws on the floor."
Chane glanced over at her and then turned back. Wynn fell in beside him as they stepped out into Breach Mainway.
This level looked much like the one above, where the station was. Or at least, it did until she walked into a section where the ceiling rose out of sight. A gigantic gash lunged upward into the mountain above. She'd never noticed that before in all their hurrying about.
As they reached another left-side passage, Chane stepped close to the mainway's wall. Peeking down the side tunnel, he pulled her across to its right side.
"The third frontage on the left," he whispered, and pointed the way.
Wynn peered in. About to step around for a better look, she caught sight of a flash of chestnut hair that made her freeze.
The duchess stepped out of a shop farther down the way. She carried what looked like a thick, bulky comforter and headed up the passage with one of her bodyguards. With so few others about, her voice carried all the way to Wynn.
"This should help old Chuillyon," she said. "He hardly sleeps at all on these hard dwarven beds."
The bodyguard didn't answer, and they turned into the third frontage, exactly where Chane had pointed.
"Earlier," he whispered, "her boots and cloak's hem were soaked with seawater. I could smell it."
"Seawater?" Wynn whispered.
Her head began to pound. She and Shade still hadn't eaten. But a memory stolen from the duchess, of a strange room with a grate beyond a pool, pushed itself up in Wynn's head.
As if someone else had forced it there.
Wynn glanced down and found Shade watching her.
Something had moved in that dark adjoining space beyond the grated pool's chamber.
"We should return to our inn," she said quietly. "Arrange for supper and then talk." Looking up at Chane, she added, "We have to change tactics … again."
Wynn paid the innkeeper for two bowls of chowder and carried them back to the room, closing the door with her hip. It was good to be alone with Shade and Chane for a little while. She set one bowl on the floor for Shade, who hungrily lapped it up, and then sat on the solid dwarven bed.
"You should eat too," Chane said, settling on the bed's end.
She was too weary to argue—or too preoccupied to eat. While Shade finished, Wynn reiterated all that had transpired with Ore-Locks. Chane listened carefully, then shifted a bit closer.
"You did as well as you could," he said. "You lured him out and may have offered something he wants, though he would not … trade for it. It reasons that he would place loyalty above personal desire, if he holds his calling above his family. Perhaps in dwelling on it, he may yet reconsider."
His reassurance changed nothing, but it made her feel less defeated.
"I may have broken their family," Wynn whispered.
"That is nothing. Families are destroyed every day—and some do not deserve to be saved."
His coldness stunned her. She knew almost nothing about Chane's past.
"Do any of your family still live?" she asked.
"My father, as far as I know." He looked away. "Viscount Andraso of Rùrik, halfway up the peninsula from Bela toward Guèshk. My mother took her own life shortly after I encountered Toret, my maker, who was also called Ratboy. Considering my father's treatment, death was a blessing to my mother."
Wynn was dumbstruck, uncertain what to say. Another notion occurred, perhaps to avoid his last words.
"When your father … passes over," she asked, "won't you inherit his title, lands … fortune?"
Chane laughed without smiling. His maimed voice made the sounds come out like quick, hoarse pants.