“I suppose it does,” Achamian heard Soma admit after a long silence. The man invariably erred, Achamian had noticed, when it came to honesty. He was always revealing too much.

“Frighten you?” Mimara replied. “Of course it does.”

Soon the talk sputtered out altogether, and the scalpers unrolled their mats and bedding across the pitted stone of the platform. Men kicked stones clicking into the night. The moon hung over the fissure for a time, disclosing the scarps and ravines in a curious light, one that argued stillness, uncompromising, absolute, like mice in the panning eyes of owls.

Few slept well. The black mouth of the Obsidian Gate seemed to inhale endlessly.

The ruins revealed in the morning light were more melancholy than malevolent. Hands eroded into paws. Heads worn into eggs. The layered panels appeared more riddled with fractures, more pocked with gaps. For the first time, it seemed, they noticed the little appendages scattered like gravel across the platform. Nocturnal fears had become sunlit fragments.

Even still, the company ate in comparative silence, punctuated by the low comments and laughs typically reserved for recollections of hard drinking. Forced normalcy as a remedy for uncertain nerves. Their small fire burned through what little fuel remained before Achamian had a chance to boil water for his tea, forcing him to mutter a furtive Cant. This filled him with dread for some reason.

They paused to watch Xonghis confer in low tones with Lord Kosoter. Then they entered the Black Halls of Cil-Aujas with nary a commemorating word, let alone the fanfare Men typically attach to fatal endeavours. They simply assembled, leading their mules, then followed Cleric and their Captain in a file some thirty-five souls long. With Mimara at his side, Achamian glanced skyward one final time before joining the string of vanishing figures. In the slot of a hanging ravine, the Nail of Heaven twinkled alone in the endless blue, a beacon of all things high and open …

A final call to those who would dare the nethers of the earth.

CHAPTER TWELVE - The Andiamine Heights

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Andiamine Heights

Little snake, what poison in your bite!
Little snake, what fear you should strike!
But they don’t know, little snake—oh no!
They can’t see the tiny places you go ...

—ZEÜMI NURSERY SONG

Early Spring, 19 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), Momemn

Kelmomas had known his father had returned almost immediately. He saw it in a host of subtle cues that he didn’t even know he could read: an imperceptible contraction in the Guards’ posture, an alertness of pose and look in the Apparati, and a long-jog breathlessness in the slaves. Even the air assumed a careful taste, as though the drafts themselves had grown wary. Nevertheless, Kelmomas didn’t realize he knew until he overheard one of the choir slaves gossiping about the Yatwerian Matriarch pissing herself beneath the Holy Mantle.

He’s come to console Mother, the secret voice said.