As they approached the first floor, they heard a quiet argument in deep cactus voices. Yagharek translated what he understood in a tiny whisper, something about being afraid, an exhortation to trust the elders. The corridor was bare and unadorned. Shadrach paused and Isaac peered over his shoulder, saw that the door to the cactus-people’s room was wide open.

Inside he saw a large room with a very high ceiling, wrought, he realized as he saw the fringe of planking that skirted the walls seven feet up, by tearing out the floor of the rooms above. A gaslight was turned on low. A little way from the door, Isaac saw several sleeping cactacae, standing with their legs locked, immobile and impressive. Two figures next to each other were still awake, leaning in slightly, whispering.

Very slowly, Shadrach stalked like a predatory creature up the last of the stairs and past the door. He paused just before he reached it, and looked back and pointed at one of the monkey-constructs, then beside himself. He repeated the gesture. Isaac understood. He pulled himself close to the aural inputs of the construct and whispered instructions to it.

It scampered up the stairs with a quiet clatter that made Isaac wince, but the cactacae did not notice it. The construct squatted quietly down beside Shadrach, blocked from sight inside the room by his dark-drenched form. Isaac sent another construct to follow it, then signalled Shadrach to move.

At a slow, steady crawl, the big man crept in front of the doorway, shielding the constructs with his body. Their forms still caught the light, would glint as they passed the threshold. Shadrach moved without pause past the line of sight of the cactacae talking within, with the constructs creeping beside him hidden from the light, then on past the edge of the doorway into the darkness of the corridor beyond.

And then it was Isaac’s turn.

He indicated two more constructs hide behind his bulk, then began to crawl along the wooden floor. His belly hung down as he shuffled along with the constructs.

It was a frightening feeling, to move out from behind the wall and emerge in full view of the cactacae couple talking quietly as they stood ready to sleep. Isaac was huddled against the banisters on the hallway, as far from the door as he could go, but there were still several intolerable seconds when he crept through the dim cone of light towards the safety of the dark corridor beyond.

He had time to stare at the big cactus people standing in the hard dirt on the floor, whispering. Their eyes passed over him as he crept before their door, and he held his breath, but his thaumaturgic shadows augmented the darkness of the house, and he went unseen.

Then Yagharek, his scrawny form doing its best to hide the last of the constructs, crept past the light.

They regrouped before the next stairs.