cathedral, all soaring columns and statued alcoves. She wanted to stop and gawk, but forced herself to keep walking, eyes on Ciaran.
He sat on a bench against the wall, surrounded by his deathly audience. A few of them fled at her light, melting into the shadows or skittering up the walls like insects, but most remained, giving her no more than a passing glance. She waited till he finished the last verse and silence filled the vaulted room once more. Eerie eyes glittered, reflecting opalescent flame. No tears, but the rapt expressions on bone-pale faces were just as eloquent.
Ciaran smiled as she approached, his face alight. He loved an audience, no matter how unusual. “Sound carries beautifully in here. It would make a marvelous concert hall.”
“You should discuss that with Lady Tenebris the next time we visit. But I’m afraid we need to leave now.” She glanced at the gathered crowd, but recognized none of the faces. “Where’s Spider?”
“Here,” the vampire said, appearing at her elbow. “I’ll escort you up.”
The vampires stared at Ciaran as he stood and straightened his coat, their eyes hungry. He bowed with a flourish as graceful as any he might offer a crowd at the Briar Patch, or an orpheum. A slender arm reached out of the shadows, almost shyly, and pressed something into his hand. Isyllt caught his sleeve and pulled him away before anyone demanded an encore.
When the tall stone doors shut behind, Isyllt finally let out a sigh. The back of her neck still prickled furiously and her muscles were strung tight as kithara strings.
Spider smiled crookedly. “How was your meeting?”
She kept walking. “Trying,” she said at last, voice low. “She doesn’t care about any of this. It’s not just our skins—” a vague upward gesture encompassed the city above them “—I’m trying to save, you know.”
“I know.” Spider took her arm with casual grace. “That’s what happens to the very old ones. They grow torpid, dull. All they want to do is sleep, the rest of the world be damned.”
“She said you might help me.”
He nodded, pale hair drifting like cobwebs around his face. “I will, little witch, I will.” The doors vanished into shadow behind them and soon the light lapped at the cliff wall they’d descended. “I’ll listen in the dark and see what I find.”
She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. “And how is it that you know what to listen for?”
He grinned. “I’m very good at listening in the dark.”
“Who was the other mage Tenebris mentioned, who you were so fond of?”
“Another sorceress, years ago. Decades, it must be. She wanted to learn our secrets, and even managed to charm one or two out of us. She’s dead now, I fear.”
He turned at the wall instead of hauling them back up the way they’d come as Isyllt expected. “There’s an easier way back.” He led them to a narrow door in the rock, where a stair twisted up into shadow.
Isyllt raised her eyebrows. “You couldn’t have brought us down this way?”
“It’s not as much fun.” He bent close, till she could smell his coppery poison-sweet breath. “I’ll find you when I have something to report.” He bowed over her hand and pressed a cold kiss against her knuckles. “The stair will take you back to the bottom of your sewers. Don’t use it again without permission.”
Before she could speak he was gone, leaving only a lingering chill in her flesh.
The stair was narrow and low, with only room for one at a time to pass. The steep uneven stairs were worn shallow in the centers, and Isyllt wondered how long the vrykoloi had passed this way in the silent dark.
Ciaran went first, the light bobbing ahead of him. Darkness crawled up the stairs in their wake, whispering against Isyllt’s back. Her skin still tingled with the aftermath of nerves. A liability, Kiril called her craving for danger, but he understood it. They waded in death, drank it and swallowed it whole; sometimes it was good to be reminded that they still lived, and wanted to go on living.
“What did the vrykola give you?” she asked Ciaran as they climbed.
He paused to fish in his trouser pocket and pulled out a coin. Gold, crusted along the edge with a dark grime Isyllt didn’t care to identify. The profile stamped on the face wasn’t one she recognized. Ciaran peered at it for a moment, then laughed.
“It’s a chrysaor.” The winged boar that had been the