Han rode cross-country, wrapped in a glamour, sidestepping the main clan pathways from the city to Marisa Pines Camp and beyond. He hoped to avoid any Demonai patrols. Since his night in Hanalea’s garden with Raisa, he’d become more interested in his future, too.

All the way up Hanalea, Crow said little. Either he was lost in his own thoughts, or he was worried that his voice inside Han’s head would be off-putting. Han felt his presence, though, as a kind of light pressure, as if he actually occupied space.

The entrance to the armory was located on the southeast slope of Hanalea, which faced Gray Lady, across the Vale. It was an area infrequently traveled—pocked with geysers and hot springs and bubbling mudpots. The surface was a thin crust of baked mud that could collapse under an unwary foot. Han had been there before, hunting plants for the markets.

He hobbled his horse well away from the steaming fissures and picked his way across the chancy surface toward a chasm that spewed a sulfurous vapor.

“Here we are,” Crow said. “We go in through that fumarole.”

“Is that real or a glamour?” Han asked.

“It’s real,” Crow said. “I didn’t want to leave behind any magical residue to tip anyone off.”

Han eyed it distrustfully. “Seems like I might get boiled alive.”

“You have to go in between eruptions,” Crow said. “If I recall correctly, it erupts every twenty minutes.”

“That might have changed in a thousand years,” Han said. “Willo says that geysers and springs come and go, and change their habits over time. We don’t even know when it last erupted.”

So they had to sit and wait until it spewed, and then watch until it blew again, and mark the time between on Lucius’s old pocket watch.

Fifteen minutes.

“I hope it’s regular,” Han said. “Maybe we should time it again.”

Sixteen minutes this time.

Han sat on the edge of the fissure and dangled his feet into the chasm. He peered down between his knees into the steamy darkness.

“How far down does it go?”

“About ten feet,” Crow said. “Not far enough to break any bones.”

“How do I get back out?”

“Assuming you don’t want to ride the geyser, you’ll have to go out via Gray Lady.”

“So this is a one-way entrance,” Han said.

“There used to be a rope ladder. It will have rotted away by now. We should have brought one with us.”

“I would have if you’d said anything.”

“It’s been a thousand years. I forgot.”

Han couldn’t argue with that. “What’s at the bottom? Boiling water?”

“At the bottom of the shaft, a tunnel goes off in both directions. One way leads to the geyser pool. You need to go that way first.”

“Wait a minute,” Han said, thinking he’d heard wrong. “I’m supposed to go toward the pool?”