“Is it?” Kosar asked, but things instantly felt different, as if the two of them were talking about something forbidden.

A’Meer turned away and started down the passageway again. Kosar followed.

Within a few heartbeats they sensed a breeze of aromatic air coming from their left. They took a fork in the passage, ducking under the twisted spiral of a metal machine where it supported the ceiling, and ascended rough steps cut into the side of some gargantuan buried thing. To left and right ran a crevasse, bridged only here by the steps that led up. It was pitch black, but Kosar had the sense of something massive hiding down here, not dead but dreaming, its exhalations making the dark darker. He shook his head but could not vent the visions. A’Meer glanced back, wide-eyed. She had felt it too.

Kosar had never been so pleased to see the filthy streets of the hidden districts. They emerged through a rent in the side of a building, framed by twists of fossilized machine, and a few curious stares greeted them. A’Meer shook herself, as if to shed her black hair and white skin of the dust of underground, and her packed weapons whispered together.

Kosar looked away from each set of eyes he met, only to meet another.

“Come on,” he said. “We don’t want to cause a stir.” They headed off quickly, running deeper into the districts.

It was usually held that those who lived here were criminals—thieves, murderers, rapists, bandits on the run—but it was also true that the districts offered shelter for those poets and prophets who still listened to their heart. It was a rough, dangerous place, but at least here life still sang through the air on occasion, and the future held possibilities.

Most people carried weapons, much more so than out in the normal streets, but few to the extent of A’Meer. And as the two of them progressed, they drew attention whichever way they turned. Chatter stopped, trading paused, and Kosar could hear whispers from those hunkered in doorways or pressing themselves back against walls to let the two of them pass. Most of them had never seen a Shantasi warrior, and the crowd’s fear was palpable.

“This won’t help us find Rafe,” he whispered to A’Meer. “It’ll more likely hide him from us more.”

“There’s someone I know,” she said. “She’s not far from here; we’ll go to her. She’s always listening out for news of strangers passing through. She’ll know if Rafe has been seen.”

“Who is she?”

“Shantasi spy.”