The winch took us down one and a quarter leagues, about a third of the way into the rock. It was much deeper than we’d gone at Brabazul’s Ruin but there was still the same size of swallower pulling at us, and by the time we reached the level of the Ghostie stuff we were all feeling twice our normal weight. Everything was harder. Just standing up in the bucket took effort, and my suit pressed down on my limbs like there was another one of me standing on its shoulders. I felt every sharp edge inside it, every bad join or rough seal, and I knew I’d have a nice set of bruises to remember the day by, no matter what else it brought. Bruises would be the least of it, though. We were all double our normal weight, and so was Strambli’s equipment, and the bucket we were standing on. All of that extra load was going up through the same lengths of yardage we’d begun with, and none of those threads had got any stronger since we started out. We might have come as deep as we meant to go, but the shaft carried on down below us, and our torches could only poke a little light into that plungey horror.

When Prozor told us how Githlow died, I’d struggled to wrap my head around the idea of someone panicking as badly as Sheveril had; panicking so badly that they tipped the bucket and sent the two of them falling. But it made peachy sense to me now. This was a shivery place, and I couldn’t wait to be somewhere else. I knew that the swallower was just a little knot of matter, squashed so tight that even its own light couldn’t break free of it, and I knew it didn’t have a mind or a will or anything you could think of as an appetite. But I still couldn’t shake the idea that at the bottom of the shaft, in the middle of this little rock, there was something that wanted to drag us down, and all it had to do was tug a little harder.

Luck’s a rum old thing. I’d have said it was against Trusko from the moment he left Mazarile. I’d have said it was against me from the moment I sneaked into Madame Granity’s. But when that winch brought us down to the level of the Ghostie stuff, we couldn’t have been more nicely lined up with the door if we’d planned it. We hadn’t, though. Trusko had just set the frame in place and chanced his arm, and for once the stars hadn’t sniggered at him.