Chapter 43 - Part 2: A Good Joke Never Dies (Patreon)

"What do you want?"

He asked it of Isabella, but he didn't take his eyes off me to do it.

"Entrance to the caves," Isabella said.

"We were told." He let go of the shaft and set the halberd's butt back on the rubble. "Academy lot, assignment, curfew lifted. Nobody's stopping you."

Isabella turned her hand over. A small leather pouch sat in her palm that hadn't been there a moment before, and it chinked when she closed her fingers on it. She held it out at the height of his belt and no higher.

"Then perhaps you have advice for us."

He looked at the pouch, and then at me again.

Valentina leant towards my shoulder. "She could just order him," she said, low enough that only I would hear it, and not quite low enough for that. "Paying a doorman. Small fry like that."

The guard heard. One ear turned. He took the pouch anyway and weighed it once before it went behind his baldric.

"The others are going in the middle three," he said. "Wide, lit, mapped. Most of what's in there has been cleared off or come out already." He pointed the halberd's head at the last mouth on the eastern end, the narrowest, with no lamp over it. "Two patrols out of that one this week. They didn't come along the upper tubes. They came up from underneath. Same place both times, a drop about two hundred paces in on the left. If I wanted to know where they're coming from, I'd start there."

"Thank you," Isabella said.

He grunted and leant back on the halberd. When I passed him he moved his hooves back half a step on the rubble, and did not seem to notice he had done it.

Isabella unrolled the map as she walked and found the eastern mouth with one finger. "This way we have fewer false leads to chase, at least."

"Or he takes your money and sends us down a hole anyway. Commoner. Tell her I'm right."

Aria made a noise through her teeth.

"The bet," Valentina said. "The whole expedition. Remember?"

Aria walked three more steps with her jaw set. "Valentina's making sense," she said to the rubble.

The corner of Isabella's mouth went up. "It is possible."

"Doesn't hurt to be careful," I said.

Valentina looked at me. Whatever she had ready, she didn't say it.

"True," Isabella said.

The eastern mouth was half the height of the others. Someone had stacked barricade stone across it once and someone else had pulled the middle out, leaving a gap wide enough for two abreast. Behind us the other groups were filing into the lit tunnels.

Aria went first through the gap without being told. Her knuckles found mine on the way past and let go.

I ducked under the lintel. My horns cleared it by a finger's width, and the air on the far side was cold.

*

The light from the mouth had dropped out of sight two bends back, and I had five runestones left in my ring.

Isabella stopped where the tube pinched in and closed her hand halfway over the glow in her palm. What leaked between her fingers found an obsidian vein in the left wall and broke along it in red slivers. I passed the next stone forward. Aria took it without looking at me.

"There." Valentina pointed past her with two fingers. "Under the lip, where the glass meets the basalt. No, lower. Lower. Are your eyes ornamental?"

Aria went down on one knee on the rippled floor and fed the stone into the seam. It warmed under her thumb, showed one thin line of light and went dark. She scuffed bone dust over it with the side of her hand and stood up slapping her stocking clean.

She fell back to walk beside me. "That's six. Six times on my knees in the dirt for her, and not even the good kind of on my knees."

I smiled. "Stay strong."

"Oh, easy for you to say. You're not the one getting bossed about like the help."

"You made the bet."

"I made the bet," she said, in a fair copy of my voice.

"Hell of your own making."

She bumped her hip into mine hard enough that I had to put a hand to the wall. The glass was smooth and cold under my palm. "You're loving this. Don't do the face. You're totally having the best night watching me crawl about."

I took my hand off the wall and said nothing.

"Fine. Okay." She blew her fringe up off her forehead. "For her, it's like... manageable. She hasn't bitten anyone."

"Told you. Give her something to work on and take her friends away, and she's reasonable."

"Which doesn't mean we're keeping her. I'm not dragging her along every time just so she stays house-trained."

"As if I would come." Valentina hadn't turned round. Her voice reached us twice, once from her and once late off the glass ahead.

Aria lengthened her stride until she was level with Valentina's shoulder. "So why'd you come now, then?"

"Curiosity." Valentina stepped over a ridge in the floor. "Once. I wanted to see how you lot go about it. It won't happen again, so don't get comfortable."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Aria dropped back and hooked her arm through mine, and pulled me in close enough that her horn brushed my hair. "You sure it's not a teeny secret crush on our Lily here?"

Valentina stopped. She turned on the uneven floor, and her eyes went to Aria's arm in mine before they went to Aria.

"How dare you." Her tail had gone stiff out behind her. "A crush. On a commoner."

Aria giggled. Her eyes slid up to my horns, and back down. "No, course not. Certainly you wouldn't."

I sighed. "Aria. Don't feed it."

"I'm not feeding anything, I'm agreeing with her—"

"Quiet."

Isabella hadn't raised her voice. Her hand closed fully over the glow and the slivers in the wall went out. In the dark Aria's arm left mine.

Then I heard it. Footsteps, a lot of them, unhurried, and the tube gave each one back a moment later from a direction it hadn't come from. Somewhere ahead. Somewhere under us.

"Be ready," Isabella said.

Valentina's breath came in sharp through her nose, close on my right.

Aria rolled her shoulders on my left. "Finally. Some action."

*

The first of them came round the bend below us before the echo of its feet had finished. Isabella opened her hand, and the obsidian threw the light back across yellow bone and grey, sagging skin. Skeletons in front, walking upright and even. Behind them, slower, the zombies, dragging one heel each, the smell of them reaching us a step ahead of the rest.

Aria bounced twice on her toes. "Okay. Time to see if any of Kara's stuff actually works."

"There was not much of it." Isabella was counting the heads coming round the bend. "We have barely begun her course. I expect she wants us to collect experience, and the caves are cheaper than a tutor."

"Bella. Don't ruin the moment."

Isabella snorted. She didn't look away from the bend. "Does anyone require a weapon? This is the last time I will ask."

Valentina turned her wrist. The air beside her gave up a mace, a long dark haft and a flanged head, and when she set the butt down on the basalt the top of it stood level with her eyes. She held it one-handed and looked at us over the head of it. "I have one."

"Show-off," Aria muttered. She flexed her fingers and pulled the knuckles one by one. "Fists. Let's see how far I get with just these this time."

I opened my mouth to say no and shut it again. Apart from that one time in London, I had never held a weapon in my life, in either body. The whip was in my ring. The tube was barely wider than my wingspan folded, and the first stroke would end on the wall.

"Give me something that works in here," I said. "If you have it."

Isabella smiled and reached into the air at her hip. The sword she drew was plain, a straight blade longer than my arm, the grip wrapped in black cord. She turned it and held it out hilt first.

"Keep to the zombies," she said. "A skeleton has nothing worth cutting. Leave those to whoever can break them."

Valentina's eyes went from the hilt to my hand closing on it.

The sword was heavier at the point than I expected. My wrist wanted to drop, and the grip sat wrong against the base of my thumb wherever I put it. I shifted my fingers once, then again, and the third time they closed and stayed, and the point came up level with the bend before I'd asked it to.

I had never held a sword.

I shook my head and looked at the bend.

"Listen to me." Isabella brought the light up to shoulder height, enough for all of us. "I have done this before. When I give an order, you follow it, and you argue afterwards." She turned her head. "Valentina. You as well."

Valentina's lip curled. "Obviously. I'm not stupid. In a fight, command goes to the house that makes its living by it." She shifted her grip lower on the haft. "Lilitu fields soldiers. Morgenstern does not."

"I was only making certain."

"You needn't."

"Then I have wasted a sentence." Isabella pointed with two fingers. "Valentina, front and centre. That mace needs room. Aria, on her left, against the glass. Take the skeletons she knocks loose. Lily, behind them on the right. Anything with flesh that comes through, it is yours. I will stand behind Lily."

Valentina stepped up and planted her feet across a ridge in the floor. Aria slid in at her shoulder, close enough to annoy her, and grinned when Valentina's elbow came out. I took the right side, two paces back, sword low, my shoulder against the rough basalt. Isabella's light settled on the floor behind my heels.