Yorl makes a bow. “His grandson, Yorl.”

I watch Lysulli put something together in their head, and they look back at me, clearly ignoring Malachite.

“Fine. I’ll bring you to the council. But if they execute you, don’t come for me in the afterlife.”

“No promises,” I chime. Lysulli scoffs again and turns on their heel, the sound of their bone boots clicking sharp against the stone floor. We all scrabble to catch up. Without even looking at him, Lysulli’s sure to keep a careful distance from us, and Mal most of all.

Lucien and Fione march determinedly, but Yorl’s head is on a constant swivel, taking in every tapestry and door and piece of stone-cut furniture lined with scaled cushions.

“Never been down here?” I ask.

“Not in the ancestral council building,” he says, green eyes gleaming with the reflections of a gem-encrusted wall that forms a mosaic of the beneathers fighting the valkerax. “It’s where they keep the majority of their historical records and artifacts. Only the ascendants of the beneathers are allowed here.”

“Ascendants?” I tilt my head.

“Beneather culture is based on a merit system.” Yorl touches a tapestry lightly with his paws. “If you contribute greatly to the culture by some measure, whether in trade or an invention or by battle, you’re granted the title of ascendant, and given privileges not allowed to others. The Olt’reya family, for example, are a family that’s had many ascendants, so they’re known as an ascendant family, and kept in high regard.”

“So, it’s the beneather version of high society,” I muse. “Like Vetris and their nobles, except based in practicality, not the luck of being born into a bloodline.”

“Precisely,” Yorl agrees. “Though such a system puts passive strain on the culture as a whole to contribute, and creates much negative bias against those who can’t, or don’t.”

“Like Malachite,” I say. “Who just left upworld to be a bodyguard for a human prince.”

Yorl doesn’t say anything to that, whiskers twitching, and that’s all the confirmation I need. Lysulli leads us past a long line of guards dressed in the same armor as them, and it’s then I realize that, unlike the beneather guards upworld, these guards have beneather runes carved into their armor. Something deep in my gut recoils at the sight of them, and I realize my body starts making space between me and them as I pass, an instinct, a tic I disturbingly can’t control. It’s like a goose following true north—I must avoid them. I have to avoid them.

“Valkerax repelling runes.” Yorl watches me move as the guards do, though the guards’ gazes are filled with far more suspicion. “Try not to be so obvious about it.”

“Big words,” I mutter, sidestepping another guard, “from the guy who made me like this.”

“By accident,” he insists.