But how was the skulk being controlled? Skulks worked for no one, obeyed no one, cared for nothing but death.
“We have to find the skulk,” he said briskly.
Vix was not going to be so easily distracted. “Not until I know what’s happened to Sheroth.”
Kalev faced her. “Vix, if the skulk got a look at your true shape, it could have used it to lure Sheroth away from here.”
Vix’s eyes flashed amethyst. Then, she turned and started swiftly down the alley with Kalev following right behind.
They rounded the corner of the Arena, to a space filled with theatrical wagons painted with bright murals advertising acts and actors. Vix threw open a metal trap door set into the cobbles. Without hesitation, she climbed down a series of iron staples bolted to the wall. Kalev did the same. When he finally reached the floor, Kalev heard Vix speak a word he did not recognize. White light flared around her.
Kalev raised an eyebrow. Vix held up the glowing crystal for him to see. “We’re all issued one. It’s not safe to have flames burning unattended in here.”
The room around them proved to be a storage space for fabric. It was lined with shelves stuffed with bolts of cloth in all textures and colors. Vix unlocked the door and let them into a hallway lined with doors.
“What are these?” Kalev asked as they walked into the corridor.
“Store rooms, mostly,” replied Vix. “Doors to other stairs, to the work rooms, pump rooms, light rooms.”
“How big is this place?”
“No one knows. There are rumors about whole families having lived down in these tunnels for generations.” She ducked into another store room, surveyed the shelves, and reached one handed between two bales of fabric. To Kalev’s surprise, she pulled out a spear made of a piece of black glass tightly lashed to a wooden shaft. She handed it to him and then brought out its twin.
“These rumors…,” he began, but she looked at him in a way that said quite eloquently she would answer no question that followed those words. Clutching his new weapon, Kalev turned away, but froze.
A trail of footsteps showed up plainly in the grime on the floor.
“Well, someone’s been this way recently.”
Vix held the crystal high and swore. “Sheroth.”
“Are you sure?”
Vix pointed to the print of a huge, flat foot. “What else has a print like that?”
Kalev said nothing, just gestured with his spear, indicating that she should lead the way.
Following the faint trail in the dust, they traversed a series of ancient store rooms filled with the dusty detritus of the theater: pots and jars and crates, stacks of wood, coils of rope, folds of canvas. They passed through rooms filled with props, looking as if the contents of whole homes had been stacked in corners and piled on shelves. The corridor doors had been placed at strange angles, seldom directly across from each other, so each exit was a quarter turn from the entrance. The result was the uncomfortable sensation of going in circles.
Mildew permeated the stale air. A constant rustling accompanied them, and Kalev glimpsed the flash of red eyes as rats scuttled away from the unexpected light. Rickety stairways, their entrances half hidden by piles of debris or crates led them farther down. Kalev found himself quietly praying Vix’s crystal didn’t fail. Without the light, they’d be permanently lost in this labyrinth.
To keep his mind off that highly uncomfortable possibility, Kalev turned over the thousand questions that thronged his mind. What had convinced Sheroth to come down here? Had he truly followed a skulk in Vix’s shape? But who controlled the skulk? How? It would have to be a powerful spell, or…
Kalev remembered the sight of Vix fighting the skulk, shapechanger facing shapechanger. Could a skulk mesmerist itself be under the spell of another kind of mesmerist? Someone who could not or would not enact their own murder. Someone who had a quick mind, and the glib tongue to cover any small inconsistencies.
Someone who had a predictable routine and could hide in plain sight, if they had the help of the Memory Eye…
They came to a stair that was stone rather than wood. They saw no more trail, but there was also no other exit from the room, so they headed down. It ended in a small space with walls of rough stone. Sewer stench permeated the draft that curled around Kalev’s neck. Icy water leaked through the mortared joints and puddled on the ancient flagstones. For a moment he thought they’d hit a dead end, but then he saw a low crawlway near the floor.
Must go under the sewers, he thought.
Vix saw the crawlway too, and she held the crystal close to it, but the white light only penetrated a few inches into the stinking dark. Kalev looked at the changeling armed with her makeshift spear. “You’d better head back. I’ll find Sheroth and bring him out to you.”
“No,” she said flatly, as he expected. “Sheroth has always stood by me. I’m not abandoning him to whatever’s down there.”
For a moment Kalev considered telling her who he was, and who he worked for. She was trustworthy. She could take a message back to his control for him, to let them know what had happened, just in case he never came out of this hole.
But all he did was nod once. “Then let’s end this.”
To Kalev’s surprise, she let him go first, handing over the crystal without argument. Awkwardly, because of the spear and the crystal, Kalev crawled into the tunnel. It bent like a saddlebow and was coated with a stinking slime Kalev did not care to speculate about. His breath steamed in the crystal’s light.
Finally, every joint aching, Kalev emerged from the tunnel into what he felt to be an open space. He held the crystal up high.
They stood in a strange, irregular chamber. Its filthy walls and ceiling curved sharply inward, making Kalev think it might be a juncture of sewer tunnels. Fetid heaps of dirt and refuse filled the many corners.
In its center stood Sheroth.
“Sheroth!” Vix cried as she emerged from the crawlway and darted forward. “What…?”
“Get back, Vix!” bellowed Sheroth.
In the next heartbeat, the warforged drew his broadsword and charged, straight for Kalev. Kalev sprang to the side. Sheroth’s momentum carried him past, but he pivoted faster than Kalev would have credited, and charged again.
“Sheroth!” cried Vix. “Stop!”
“He’ll kill you!” Sheroth aimed a swing at Kalev’s head. Kalev skipped back. He didn’t dare parry. The spear’s shaft would snap like a stick against Sheroth’s blade.
“No! He’s a friend!”
“He’s a liar!” roared Sheroth.
If Kalev were facing a human, he’d just keep him on the run, using his speed to stay out of range and wear the other down. But he would wear down long before the warforged would.
Desperation giving him strength, Kalev hoisted himself one-handed up the pile of debris.
“Coward!” bellowed Sheroth as he charged again.
“Sheroth!” Vix leaped into his path. “What’re you doing?”
“He’s the murderer!” The warforged’s eyes glowed with his outrage. “He killed the duke!”
“The skulk killed the duke!” Vix grabbed the warforged’s raised sword arm and hauled down with all her strength. “Who told you this?”
Sheroth looked at her, momentarily paralyzed with confusion.
“I did,” said a man’s smooth voice, and Kalev was absolutely unsurprised to see Gledeth Shore emerge from the shadows, flanked by two skulks.
“What are you doing here?” Vix asked. Gledeth smiled indulgently down at her.
“He’s a psion,” said Kalev, not taking his eyes off Sheroth. “He’s using his mind to control the skulks. He made them steal for him. He’s convinced Sheroth you’re in danger from me.”
“So I very much suggest you get out of his way,” said Gledeth to Vix.
“Sheroth’s not going to hurt me,” replied Vix calmly, looking up into the warforged’s dull eyes and shifting, revealing her true form. “Sheroth will never hurt me.”