was the sound of the place, she realized as she headed deeper in. It was the way her footsteps echoed as in a great cave.
Her eyes grew used to the dimness. There must have been hundreds of containers, perhaps thousands if they continued into the darkness. It was as though ships had been coming here since the beginning of time, their cargo hauled up but never passed along.
She soon came upon the first set of steps leading back to the surface, their zigzag shape like a fracture in the darkness.
She went up them bent low, her hands on the steps above, as if ready to fling herself off at the first sign of trouble from above. Nearing the top, she raised one hand and patted it against the shape of a trapdoor. Her fingers closed around a metal ring dangling from it. As the underspan reminded her of Fishkill Cavern, the trapdoor was all too unpleasantly reminiscent of her boathouse on Bouyan, and an irrational terror seized her that if she lifted that trap, she would be back there with her uncle looming over the opening, waiting for her. For a moment as she crouched in the darkness, she had the wild notion that she had never left the boathouse and that all the adventure between there and here had been an illusion, and now she must return to the cold horror, relive it all. This terror so pressed and compacted her that she flung open the trap in defiance of it.
It wasn’t the boathouse, of course. She was in someone’s kitchen—there was a wooden block, and on it knives, pots, and empty red-glass bottles. The place looked gray and disused, although that might have been a trick of the light coming through the smudged, distorting glass of the windows. Before anyone came into view, she lowered the trap and retreated down the steps, but then sat at the bottom of them until she could see in the darkness again.
The house above might have been one of those that had been blighted until yesterday. That would explain its sense of emptiness, of stillness. She didn’t know if people had continued to live in the blighted places. Orinda had continued living in the back of the theater, but did that constitute reliable evidence?
In the murk around her she now could make out jagged edges of more scattered stairways up to the surface.
She got up and continued walking. She passed a few small barrows and a larger cart. The cart, half unloaded, had lengths of rope dangling off it, conveying a sense that all work had simply stopped. That seemed to be what had happened. Perhaps it was because of the rejuvenation of the span, or maybe this was just a day of rest. She thought of the people lying about among the flowers above—a day with no obligations, no work to be done. It sounded terribly inviting if utterly alien to her.
She walked deeper into the space and shortly came upon another stairway to the surface. Beside this one stood one of the stone statues, like those she’d seen along the refurbished boulevard. Someone had opted not to carry this one to the surface, although it looked to her perfectly formed. It was the figure of a man. Even in the poor light she could see how well defined were the folds of his tunic, how the sculptor had dramatically captured every detail of him. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to leave it down here in the dark.
Off in the distance, someone laughed. She listened, and tried to determine where it had come from, but the sound bounced off a hundred surfaces, circling her. She guessed at an approximate direction and started walking, cautiously. She walked past a thick pillar, an unlit lantern hanging from it.
She realized that she was seeing a wan light in the deep distance, one that flickered from behind stacked crates and boxes. She passed by more statuary, figures in crouched poses, looking as if they were in the middle of lifting something, and another pillar hung with another unused lantern, and more small carts. The light from outside, where she’d entered, shrank and shrank until it was like the glow of a distant star. The reflected light ahead looked brighter. She felt her way past amphorae and woven baskets toward a murmur of voices.
Someone cried out, “I serve you with a writ!” and she stopped dead. Whatever she expected next, it wasn’t the groan