“It’s farther down than I thought,” Croy said, frowning at the expanse of fen before them. “The last time I was down here I came on horseback. Still, it’s just over there.”

“What is just over there?” Malden demanded. Croy was pointing to a low point in the swamp, where reeds as tall as houses shimmered in the sun.

“You’ll see.”

Otters plunked down under the water and crabs scuttled away from their feet as the two men clambered into the muck. It never got past Malden’s ankles but clung to him like the hands of dead men in a haunted graveyard. He sloshed noisily through the water and pushed at the reeds with his hands, trying to make a path.

“This is your revenge, isn’t it?” he demanded. “You don’t like the way I talk to you, as if we were equals. So you bring me down here to remind me I’m the lowest of the low.”

“Hardly! I only think—” Croy stopped speaking to pull his boot out of the mud. He had to bend down and get his back into it, and he winced at the pain as his wound grieved him. “I only think that if I told you what we were looking for, you would insist that we run away.”

“Ah. So you think I lack courage,” Malden said. He drew his bodkin and tried to slash at the reeds but they just bent away from the sharp point. For the first time all day he wished he’d let Croy bring his swords.

“No,” Croy said. “No, I’ve seen you be brave. It’s just—well.” He pushed a stand of reeds down so Malden could see their destination. “Here we are.”

They had arrived at the pipe itself. Its entrance was flush with the Swampwall, which rose up before them toward the sky, its face hidden by generations of creepers. The pipe’s bottom was buried in the murk, but it made an arch taller than a man. Sunlight streamed inside its length but only penetrated a few dozen feet before it was lost in perfect gloom.

Malden leaned into the pipe and smelled foul air. Water dripped from the curved ceiling and echoed like drumbeats as it fell into the turbid water below. The bricks that formed the side of the pipe were rotten to the touch and thick with niter.

“In there?” he asked.

“Yes,” Croy said. “If he’s at home.”

“I’ve heard . . . stories. I think maybe we should run away after all.”

Croy strode into the pipe, the sloshing of his steps like thunder crashes. “I thought you might. Come—if you dare.”