I sat back, withdrawing my hand. He curled his hands into fists, and I watched him climb the pinnacle of disdain as his expression settled into the scornful arrogance that had so scalded me when we had first been thrown together. One wrong word and he would lash out. Not with his fists—as Auntie Djeneba had once said, “He don’ seem like that kind”—but with words meant to cut and intimidate.

“I don’t understand how you can see through the illusion,” I said soothingly. “I still see the city. The ziggurat is quite splendid if you don’t mind knowing you’re meant to be the main course at the feast. I’m ready to go on, if you are. You know I trust you, my love.”

“We can’t get out of this foul pit quickly enough.” His voice was harsh, but I understood the anger was not directed at me.

I took a swallow of water and offered him the rest.

He wiped his mouth, his lips so dry they were cracking. “I hear them. They’re following us again. There’s one gap we have to clear. That gap is the one you described as a moat. But I have a plan for that. If you’re sure, Catherine, utterly sure the creatures can’t harm you.”

“I’m sure,” I lied. I could have become an actress in the theater after all, because he did not guess how my heart trembled. “Remember, I was bitten by a salter and not infested. The teeth of the plague can’t take hold in my blood.”

But even though it was true I could not be harmed by the bite of a human infested with the salt plague, the bite of a ghoul was rumored to be far more potent and virulent. I had to take the chance. Nothing mattered except that we escape, and this was the way we had to do it.

We climbed, sometimes a little up or a little down but always transverse. Once I thought I was moving through a fall of water, only there was no pressure and no current, only grit sifting into my face, the dust and salt of the mortal world. Was this place pitted with gates into salt mines all across the mortal world? Now was not the time to find out.

He had plotted our route well. Had we not had so many narrow ledges on which to take quick rests, I would never have made it, for my arms were beginning to feel they were being squeezed in a vise. Naturally he spoke no word of complaint, just massaged my forearms whenever we halted, although his, too, had become as hard as the rock we clung to. My legs trembled from fatigue, and my buttocks ached from all the pushing up and down and sideways.

He whispered. “Look, love. Look. We’ve made it to the edge.”