oceans before coming to an end. She imagined the nautiloid shape enclosing her, and wondered where the ship had entered the maze and how far she might be from where she’d begun.
“You are halfway across the infinite,” the head told her as if she’d asked it aloud. “Given the nature of infinity, however, I’m sure that’s not helpful.”
“And where is Diverus?”
The lion’s brow creased. Its gold eyes shifted away from her. “He is above. A soul in torment. Another displaced.” The eyes rolled back to her again. “Act wisely and take care to be Jax.” It became still again.
She held it a moment longer to be certain it had finished riddling. She gnawed awhile on what that was supposed to mean, and finally reached into her tunic and pulled out her domino mask. Wrapping it around her face and the top of her head, she tied it firmly in back, tucked her hair into her cowl, and pulled the cowl up. She didn’t know why the pendant thought it important, but she knew better than to disregard its advice.
She left the foredeck, then stepped up over the rail and down a plank to the jetty. Even from directly below, the end of the span seemed to rise up forever. All the same and however far, that was where she was going.
If the span that had once been Calcaria looked like anything at all, it looked like her first glimpse of Colemaigne, but in far worse condition. Here a powdery shale covered the surface and billowed with each step she took. The buildings, however they had once stood, were decomposed into gritty heaps that made it seem she walked through an antediluvian graveyard of enormous creatures, their bulk decayed and deformed into mounds over skulls and ribs and long, broken limbs. And everywhere beneath these grotesque heaps stood the statues. She knew too well how these statues had come to be, and what they really represented. The citizens of this span had been round-eyed and long-snouted creatures, reminiscent of Yemoja but with longer, thinner snouts, inhuman round eyes, and crested foreheads. Weaving through their various silent poses, she mourned not merely their obliteration but the eradication of their collective story of themselves, a world of tales that would now never be heard.
The only sound on that windless span was her feet crunching through the ruins. Unlike Colemaigne, nowhere here did any pristine structures remain, and no live creatures lurked among the groves of the pale dead.
Then somewhere in the middle of the span, she turned a corner and stopped, amazed.
There, as if grown from the debris surrounding it, stood a stepped ziggurat of the same grayish white hue, except that this shape gleamed. Its curved edges were smooth and hard. Against the gloomy backdrop of fog the structure seemed an illusion, a place where the lowering clouds had congealed. Barely visible from the ground, a bluish dome capped its heights.
A great rectangular arch had been cut out of the lowest step of the ziggurat, an entrance that could have accommodated the Agents’ abandoned ship in the harbor.
In no doubt of her destination, Leodora walked into the ziggurat. No torches or lamps were visible, but the walls themselves gave off a glow, a phosphorescence that she’d seen before in sea creatures at night. The entrance became a ramp. She had no choice but to ascend, though her legs were already tired from the climb onto the span. She found it odd that the ramp took her up without any access to lower levels, of which there surely had to be at least three or four. Instead it rose steadily until she reached a landing that opened upon a chamber so vast she couldn’t see the far side of it. Ahead, light poured down from the blue dome she’d seen. It made her feel that she was moving through water. She thought of Oceanus and his pool of the true heart, but this was nothing as benign.
Furniture and objects lay scattered everywhere—benches, rugs, draperies, hookahs, filigreed trays and stands, painted amphorae, faience bottles, and real statuary—a treasure hoard taken from spans too numerous to count, the final remains of whole worlds devoured and destroyed in Tophet’s passing.
Directly under the dome stood a dais covered on the sides she could see by gauzy curtains. Shapes moved behind the curtains, although she couldn’t tell what they were. She drew nearer, but a movement on her left caught her attention. For a moment she didn’t know