They found the mummified corpse of a boy no more than a hundred paces down the passageway Cleric had chosen for them. He was curled as though about a kitten, his back to the wall. He had been at most thirteen or fourteen summers old, Xonghis estimated. The Imperial Tracker had no idea how long he had lain there, but he pointed to the propitiatory coins that had been set on his hip and thigh: three full coppers, two grey with dust, one still bright. gifts for the Ur-Mother—not the coins, but the acts of surrendering them. Apparently others had passed this way as well. With the rest of the company clustered about him, Soma fell to one knee and added a fourth, whispering a prayer in his native tongue. His eyes sought out Mimara afterwards, as though seeking confirmation of his gallantry.

“You need to watch that one,” Achamian murmured to her as they continued down the corridor. They had not spoken since waking, and he found himself regretting the way he had cut short their conversation the previous night. It seemed absurd, offering words like coins in the bowels of a mountain, but the small things never went away, no matter how tremendous the circumstance. Not for him, anyway.

“Not really,” she said with a weariness Achamian found vaguely alarming. Their was peril in feminine exhaustion—men understood this instinctively. “It’s usually the quiet ones you need to watch. The ones waiting for the door to clap behind them …”

The sound of other voices welled into her silence. A debate had broken out regarding the fate and provenance of the dead child. Strangely enough, the boy and the mystery of his end had inspired a return to normalcy of sorts.

“Ainon taught me that,” she added with reassuring bitterness. “You know … where they took me.”

The expedition marched on, a collection of pale faces in the long murk. The conversation, quite inexplicably, turned to which trades were the hardest on the hands. Galian insisted that fishermen had the worst of it, what with all the knots and nets. Xonghis described the cane fields of High Ainon, endless miles of them along the upper Secharib Plains, and how the field slaves always had bleeding fingers. Everyone agreed that if you included feet, fullers were the sorriest lot.

“Imagine marching in piss day in and day out—and without moving a cubit!”

Then they started on beggars, trading tales of this or that wretch. Soma’s claim to have seen a beggar without arms or legs was met with general derision. Soma was always claiming things. “So how did he pick up his coins?” one of the younger wits asked. “With his pecker?” In the spirit of mockery, Galian went one better, saying he saw a headless beggar when he was in the Imperial Army. “For the longest time we thought he was a sack of ripe turnips, until he began begging, that is …”