The final dip in the spike track has no upturn; it merely ends, sending Dyeawan careening out the other end of the corridor. Her front wheels hit the floor and she leans far back to compensate and prevent herself from tipping dangerously forward. Fortunately her back wheels touch down evenly enough that she stays righted, even if it is a hard landing that jars her from her gut to her jaw.

The chamber beyond the corridor isn’t like any she’s seen in the Planning Cadre, other than its circular shape. It’s almost completely empty and there are no windows. The floor is smoothly cobbled, like rolling over the scaly back of some great unimagined beast. It’s an impossible room; Dyeawan knows that the door through which she entered belonged to Sanitation. Unless the spiked corridor wound so deftly, it seemed to be a straight path while leading her into a completely different part of the keep.

Resting in the center of the chamber, slightly tilted to one side, is a rowboat barely large enough to fit one fully grown person. There are no oars, only large and empty rusted rings. It sits there, looking particularly lonely in these contrary surroundings.

The chamber’s only other distinguishing features are torches lit in sconces and half a dozen or so wrought-iron grates bolted along the walls. The grates are set much higher than the sconces, several dozen feet above the cobbles. Their bars are thick and the grates themselves are large enough to herd hogs through.

“Hello?” Dyeawan calls out, mostly to break the oppressive silence of the space.

It’s no surprise when only her echo answers.

She urges her wheels forward, staring at the shoddy little rowboat that looks as though it’s been left behind in the wake of some hasty rush to clear out the chamber. Dyeawan knows it must mean something; every choice Edger and the planners have made thus far has been deliberate, precise, and connected somehow to another piece of a puzzle.

Her mind is racing to discover that missing piece when a very distinct scent hits her and Dyeawan sniffs at the air.

She smells the sea.

That might only have puzzled her further, except for one alarming and undeniable fact; she did not smell the sea just a moment ago.

She hears the first dribbling of water before she sees it, a stream of unending tears pouring onto the shiny cobbles beneath her. Dyeawan looks up and sees the bay water beginning to spill through all the grates in the walls. At first it merely drips through the bottoms of the heavy iron bars, but a deep and distant rumbling informs her ears of what her eyes will confirm moments later, that more water is coming, and it sounds as if it might be the whole of the bay.