The must of soaked masonry. The ring of voices across stone and water. They stand on a terrace set in curved walls that wrap out through the vagaries of Achamian’s light to form a perfect cylinder, one that soars as far as any of them can see, terminating in a point of shining white. Elongated glyphs band the surface, some as tall as a man, others engraved in panels no larger than a hand. A stair ascends from the terrace, as broad as a Galeoth wain, winding in helical loops into the obscurity above. Glittering water threads the open air, falling from unguessed heights into the pool that forms a mirror-black plate three or four lengths below the terrace. For a vertiginous moment, Mimara has the impression of staring up from the bottom of an inconceivable well, as though she were no more than a mite, waiting for gods to draw water. It seems impossible that this shaft runs the entire height of the mountain, that a single work can link the heavens to the hell at their feet.

“It’ll take days,” she murmurs.

“At least we have water,” Pokwas says. He leans out, still precarious on his feet, so that Xonghis and Soma reach out to catch hold his steel-plated girdle. Eyes closed, the Sword-Dancer lists into the nearest of the silver threads and wincing, begins pawing the grime and the blood from his face. He takes a long drink before retreating from the unrailed edge. He warns the others to be wary the water’s bite—“It falls fast enough to crack teeth!”—but he swears that it is clean and good. Godsent.

They begin taking turns, the man behind holding the belt or hauberk of the man before.

Agitated, Achamian continually stares into the black depths of the hallway they had just fled from. “We don’t have time for this,” he warns Lord Kosoter.

A wordless stare is his only reply, and Mimara finds herself relieved.

Suddenly water is the only thing she can think about. How long has it been since their last drink? Never in her life, not even on the slave ship that still haunts her nightmares, has she suffered such deprivations. The qirri is there, a kind of inner hand holding her upright, assisting cramped limbs, but the body it braces teeters on the brink of collapse. When the qirri wears away …

She must have water.

Perhaps seeing the thirst in her eyes, Soma surrenders his place in the small crowd. She thanks him grudgingly, unable to forgive the image of his fleeing back as she hauled Achamian alone through the corridor mere moments before. What was it about such circumstances, hidden so far from the sun, that they could incite courage one moment and plunder it the next? Was she so different from Somandutta?