“Where are we going to go?” Dario asked. He sounded justifiably worried.

“Go down,” Jess said.

“The sphinxes—”

Jess took in a deep breath. “You go this way. I’ll draw the sphinxes to the other side of the building. Stay here and watch. When it’s clear, climb down.”

“Excuse me—climb down?”

“Swing over the edge, grab hold of a statue, shinny down to the next level. Repeat. You can make it.” It never occurred to him that it might be terrifying; he’d grown up seeing that kind of activity as normal. From the look that Dario shot him, clearly he didn’t share that idea. “Do you want to try to outrun the sphinxes instead?”

Dario silently shook his head and moved to the edge. “Are you sure none of these statues I’m supposed to grab onto are automata?”

“I can’t guarantee it,” Jess admitted. “Best of luck.”

Dario glared. Jess didn’t really blame him. “Go with God,” Dario said. “And also to the devil, scrubber, for making me do this.”

“I’ll take whichever of them will make me faster,” Jess said. “Give me two minutes to lead them off. Good luck. I mean it.”

Dario nodded and offered his hand. They shook, and Jess backed up and ran down the steps they’d ascended. The sphinxes would be expecting him to emerge from the tomb’s only door. He wouldn’t want to disappoint them, but he did want a good head start, so he stopped a floor up, in the area lined with glass cases, and eased between them to reach the statues beyond. This was the layer with rearing horses and warriors, and, luckily, they all were stone, or he’d have been dead in seconds. The sphinxes hadn’t seen him yet and were crouched at the tomb doorway.

It would be a long jump and hard fall, but he’d had worse. Jess took in four lung-expanding breaths, then launched himself forward into a flat dive. He had a terrifyingly good view of the sphinxes’ twitching tails as he sailed over them, but he’d done it well enough; the dive carried him to a landing point several feet behind them, and he curled into a ball before impact, rolled up, and was digging feet into the gravel and running before the sphinxes even knew he’d arrived.

It didn’t last more than a couple of fast heartbeats. He heard the twin shrieks of the automata, and didn’t need to look back to know they’d risen to join the chase.

Go, Dario. Get out. That was the only good wish he could spare for his friend, because he had to concentrate on angling his body just right to take advantage of the footing, the breeze at his back, the way his feet rose and fell. He needed every possible fraction of a second to live through this . . . And then he saw the corpse lying ahead of him in the path. It was the body of the man they’d been set to meet—a sailor fresh from a boat, or so Dario had said. Didn’t matter now; he was just a sad heap of meat and crushed bones, but lying next to him was a leather drawstring bag.