I sighed, stepping forward to sing.
His shoulders firmed, his back straightened, his muscles ceased any movement. The drone nodded, stepping from the shadows. I followed her, passing the living statue through the cavern mouth. We stopped only so thedrone could pull the torch from its iron fixture, leaving ourvacousguard in the dark.
Crushed rock ground under my shoes. Dust clouded our feet. The chiseled tunnel ahead was squat. Wide but short, ending not far from the top of my head. Carts sat against the walls, lined with stone grain and chunks of mineral, a highway abandoned until sunrise. Scars ran the length of the cave, pockmarks shaped with a hammer’s swing.
The torchlight bounced as we walked, climbing around corners like some joyful demon of fire skipping ahead to show us the way. Air began to thin. Sound took its place, each step a haunting echo that reverberated across the hollow passage like an endless howl.
The further we journeyed, the more anxious I grew. Pheolix was in here. But no other living soul was. The mines lay entirely deserted. If no one in town knew his name, and if the mines were bare at night, why was he here?
Our passage angled down into stairs, and it occurred to me that we’d left the main tunnel, no longer walking where miners walked. We’d entered something else. Carbon and sulfur hung in the void, the taste of them gritty across my tongue.
I held my breath to subdue the urge to cough when we reached the bottom, as though I’d swallowed so much dust my lungs couldn’t fully empty. The thin air feltheavysomehow, sending a wave of light-headed fog through my mind. Ahead lay eight doors, dark holes in the rock, staggered so you couldn’t see the others when standing inside. Welded with bolts of iron. Seven of them were open.
One of them was closed.
I glanced at the top of them, searching for ancient scripture that might trap me inside. But the carving was the same scarred rock as the rest of the mine.
The drone held a hand out to me, a skeleton key trapped between her thin fingers. She waited for me to take it. Then wedged the torch intothe empty iron cage between the two nearest doors and turned away, disappearing back into the dark.
My breath ghosted from my mouth, a soft chime in the otherwise quiet belly of the mountain. Ahead, I narrowed in on the rhythmic thump of a beating heart. A beat I recognized. A beat I hadn’t heard in over a year.
I stepped forward. Fit the key into the iron hole.
And turned it.
53
Cebrinne
Asharp pang cascaded down my spine as my eyes locked into the gaze of the man holding me. Not a sailor.
Deimos.
Frost fogged in my mouth. Goosebumps erupted down my arms. A chill trickled across my skin. I called to the moisture in the air anyway, knowing it was futile. Wherever they were, drones waited nearby.
Deimos shoved me over a crate, twisting my arms behind my back. I kicked blindly behind me, but he avoided my blows. Rough rope coiled across my wrists, a sharp sting in my shoulders as he pulled me upright.
From the corner of my eye, more of them dipped into the berth. Sailors who had boarded the ship last-minute, each of them sending a prickle down my neck. One of them set his foot over a crate, leaning his weight into his knee. “Three days,” he said, shaking his head. “Three days of waiting for you to wander down here, away from the railing, where you might have jumped into the sea and escaped. I knew when you left that book behind, that was the way to catch you.”
I shoved right and left, searching for a weak point in Deimos’s grip. Inside, I roared. But my open mouth betrayed not a sound. The Naiads stepped closer. Five of them, five drones closing in under the hatch above.
Suddenly, I understood why sirens hate to sail. Why a ship is little more than a trap set with sanded timber, a prison drifting over the water. A chamber crafted for torture, the freedom of water so close yet so far.
“What’s going on?” the quartermasterasked.
Our heads swiveled to his.
The closest Naiad stabbed him in the gut.
His mouth shaped anOof surprise, his hands meeting at his middle over the wound. His body caved in as he bent forward into the knife. The Naiad thrust the blade away, summoning a stream of blood to carve trenches between the quartermaster’s knuckles. He stumbled and fell backwards in shock, still looking at all of us as though trying to unwind the words of a riddle he couldn’t understand.
A gasp came from the galley, the boots of the cook scuffling as he turned and fled into the ship. The Naiad with the knife wiped it calmly on the quartermaster’s shoulder. Then followed the sound of the fading steps.
“Did you think only one of us was following you in Calder?” one of the drones asked. A copper tint threaded through his hair, and I wondered if Rivea lingered somewhere in his ancestry. “There was only ever one of us that we let yousee.”
Somewhere on the ship, a man screamed. The drone facing me frowned. “Where’s your sister?”
I gave a silent laugh. He wanted me to speak?
