Several others like the leader watch the machine. They pamper it and make adjustments as it edges relentlessly north. Due to mechanisms that lock the wheels in one direction and a great anchored tail off the back, the engine can only advance into the wall. The toothy maul dissolves inches of stone in minutes.
It takes only seven and a half hours to eat through ten feet of stone.
Finally the barrier between the castle sewers and the necropolis sewers burst in, caving slightly under a fine rain of debris. The thick stench of raw sewage gobbles hungrily at the dry cloud of dust.
Long-legged men in striped suit pants and overalls and other various occupational costumes clamber through, disregarding the fumes. They begin sniffing their way through the tangled pools, searching for a hint of cleaner air.
They have an inside man. Someone who knows they are coming. This has been prepared and rehearsed as carefully as the show Caliph and Sena sit watching.
From slick black tubes and catch basins, under baffles and hoods and around garbage-clogged weirs, the man-things hunt fresh air. Like Mr. Naylor they clamber through small spaces. They pass grinding pumps that move scum and sludge into deep containers that gel with slowly thickening sludge cake and lime. Walls, lumpy white and griseous with coagulated fat from the castle’s kitchen seep into chunky waste below.
They pass a grit chamber thronging with mycophagous creatures that pause in their filthy reverie to listen to the man-things clamber through. The creatures twist back and forth like grubs rooted in fecal chowder, wavering blindly at the intruders.
The man-things ignore them. They stalk onward through the pitch black, now and then banging their heads or shins on odd projections or hidden chunks of fallen stone. They seem oblivious to pain. Their eyes are no better than Mr. Naylor’s but they can decipher vague radiations.
Without a trace of light, they are only partially blind. They catch a hint, a whiff. Lose it. Search in repetitive back and forth swathes; sniff and catch it again.
Finally.
The faint sweet smell of blossoms trickles on a downward draft, sifting pollen through circular grates overhead. The lead man claws upward. He fumbles at the grate. It has already been unlocked. He eases it up and sets it aside.
A short vertical culvert above the first grate supports a secondary grate just a few feet overhead. It too is unlocked. With a faint creak and muted thud the grate opens trapdoor style onto a plush crop of perfectly manicured grass.
The sheltering arms of a black mulberry normally help conceal the grate in the sumptuous gardens. Now they cloak creatures hauling themselves up into the courtyard as across town Caliph and Sena leap into the carriage, making good their escape.
The man-things spread out quickly and quietly. One lurks at an adit until a pair of sentinels walk past.
The creature waits, biding its time, emotionally detached from its goal. Then, at precisely the most favorable moment it casts its long sinuous arms out and pulls both men deep into shadow. Before they can scream, iron-like fingers burke them with savage efficiency.
The strangled corpses are pulled into corners behind bushes and sculpted shrubs.
While their fellows at the opera are bent on putting an end to the Sslî they fear, those at the castle advance relentlessly through the courtyard, searching for the book and putting an end to any sentry in their path.
Caliph and Sena had gone slack in the aftermath.
The carriage rumbled past Gilnaroth through Barrow Hill to King’s Road and turned north into the Hold. By the time they reached the castle gate, the terror at the opera house had been replaced with nausea and exhaustion.
As usual, huge gears began to turn the instant the High King was inside, pulling up the drawbridge, locking the castle down on its island for the night.
Vhortghast leapt from the back of the carriage before it had fully stopped. Since the metholinate lamps had been shut off, torchlight licked the edges of the vast court where governmental buildings crowded. He opened the door and helped Sena and Caliph clamber out.
A quad of soldiers crossed the yard heading in formation toward the east gardens. Their leather cuirasses and barbuts glared as facets of the armor turned in unison from the light. Despite their presence, something felt strangely wrong.
The carriage driver was quick to bid everyone good night. He had not asked what had gone on inside the opera. With a curt tip of the hat,