Despite the newfound gangliness of his limbs, Mephi still moved with the grace of a serpent across the rocks. He slipped through the hallways even more silently than I did. I caught a glimpse of Lin ducking behind a pillar to avoid a servant.

I waited in the shadows, Mephi’s tail curling around my leg. When she moved again, I moved. I’d shadowed people before – to find out where they’d hidden things, to obtain blackmail and to eavesdrop on secret meetings.

Perhaps smuggling and spying weren’t so different after all.

She stopped at a small door, looked both ways, unlocked it and slipped inside.

“Mephi…!” I hissed.

He was moving before I’d even said his name, darting across the floor as swiftly as a river. I rushed to catch up to him, trying to keep my footsteps light, my heartbeat hammering.

He’d caught the door with a claw just before it had latched. I’d been able to read his moods from his face, unlike as it was from my own, and now I read “smug” in his expression. I gave him a grudging nod. Yes, I’d have been very put out if I hadn’t brought him. Yes, it had been a good decision on his part. Yes, I needed him more than I thought.

Mephi gave me a perfunctory nod back before prying the door open a crack.

I watched Lin move to the back of the room, her lamp held high, watched her open a door carved with a cloud juniper. I opened the door wide as soon as she’d slipped inside and Mephi rushed forward.

There wasn’t time for me to examine the room, and with the door shutting behind me, the light faded. There were no windows here, no places for prying eyes to reach. I found Mephi by touch.

We followed Lin into the darkness, the glow of her lamp lighting the way.

What was this place? The walls were stone and became rough-hewn; the floor tilted at a slope, leading us down. It took me a moment to realize we were no longer in the palace. We’d descended into the mountain the palace abutted. An old mine? I’d heard that Imperial Island once had a witstone mine, but it had been closed without explanation years ago. Judging by the vein of white I saw running across the ceiling, it hadn’t been for lack of stone.

So what was Lin doing down here? The Emperor had her own store of witstone; she wouldn’t need to mine any herself. She was here for another reason. Was she hiding something? Keeping someone prisoner? The place certainly felt like a dungeon – dark, closed-in, oppressive. Mephi pressed in close to me, and I found his presence more comforting than I’d thought I would.