which seemed to be all the energy he could muster before collapsing again with a vague and dreamy smile. The street, which previously had been full of broken and uneven stones, was smooth, the square-hewn blocks so perfectly fitted that they seemed a single surface.
Leodora looked over the wall at the pulley arms jutting from the stone below. One of the platforms on which goods were hauled up from the harbor hung there unattended. The platform had been pulled up—apparently hours before, because there was no ship below now. Baskets and bolts of cloth swung there in the mild breeze.
“Everyone seems to have taken the day off,” Diverus said.
“This is the Colemaigne of legend that Soter described, much more so than what we encountered when we arrived.”
“Then maybe it’s a holy day.”
“If it is, we’re the cause.” She stepped up on the wall.
“Lea,” he gasped, “what are you doing?”
“I’m going to jump to that platform, so that I can go into the undercity.”
“But if you miss—I can’t even bear to look down there!”
“Yes, but I can. I scale bridge towers, remember?”
“You—you shouldn’t do this alone. And you’ve already risked . . . You just recovered from the Dragon Bowl, from Edgeworld. That’s enough, isn’t it? Besides, there’s bound to be a way into there from someplace up here—people aren’t spending their whole lives down there!”
“Why? They did on Vijnagar, didn’t they?”
“Please,” he begged.
“I’ll be fine, Diverus, I’m not going to miss the platform. There’s barely a hand’s width between the wall and it. It’s hardly a jump at all.” With that, as casually as if she were strolling along the boulevard, she stepped off the wall and dropped.
She landed on a bolt of cloth and fell forward onto her hands and knees. The pendant swung and slapped against her, and the platform bounced slightly off the wall but otherwise hung steady.
Where she lay, she was looking directly into an opening, with a pulley arm above her, and the ropes bearing the platform all running to a winch set back far enough to allow for the unloading of the goods. She realized that if she had taken one step to the side before jumping, she would have struck the pulley and possibly missed the platform altogether. Her stomach clenched. She would not point this out to Diverus.
Lifting one of the baskets, she found it to be as heavy as if it were filled with wet sand. She heaved it into the opening and, using its weight as a fulcrum, hauled herself up and in beside it.
The area beneath the span receded into darkness. What light did play through the opening showed nearby containers and amphorae, baskets and crates all neatly stacked. It looked familiar: the cargo from the boat that had brought her here.
“Lea!” called Diverus, and she stuck her head out to show him that she was fine. He laughed in relief.
“I think this might go all the way across the span, Diverus,” she called up. “I’m going to follow it. Don’t wait for me here, go back to the theater. I’ll find my way out.”
“But I’m not sure where the theater is.”
“Just go to the far side of the span and walk down the sea-lane, same as we did before, past the Dragon Bowl. Just don’t walk out onto the beam.”
Disregarding her levity, he replied, “I’m not happy about this.”
“You could come down here with me.”
“No,” he said, “I couldn’t. I can’t.”
“Well, I can’t come back up now that I’m here. So you have to go on top and me underneath.”
“You’re crazy, Leodora, do you know that?” He shook his head at her and then withdrew.
“All too well,” she said to herself.
When he didn’t reappear, she ducked back inside, but his final statement stayed with her. He was right, she had taken ridiculous risks, although she hadn’t seen them as such at the time. She hadn’t expected the hexagonal bowl to ignite, to do . . . whatever it had done to her. She glanced down at the pendant, fingering the edges of it. Whatever had been done, she could hardly reverse it now. She was who she was. Jumping down here, though, had been no risk at all, for someone used to scaling bridge towers. Diverus would just have to understand.
She turned her attention to the space ahead.
The underspan had a low ceiling, and while the floor was not a natural formation, it otherwise reminded her eerily of Fishkill Cavern where she’d first met the Coral Man. It