assumed Stone was staying behind. Unable to stop himself from sounding accusing, he said, “Why did you come? This place is too small for you to shift.”
Even in the dark, he could tell Stone was giving him that look. “That’s none of your business.”
“It’s my business if you collapse the ceiling on us.”
“Both of you, quiet,” Jade snapped.
Chapter Fourteen
The ramp curved down into darkness, the stale air heavy with the scent of old and new decay. The light caught carvings rimed with mold: processions carrying biers, faces twisted in pain and grief.
In the dark it was it hard to tell, but they all looked like the blue-pearl groundlings. Maybe they lived here first, Moon thought, and the others all came later. Maybe it was their crazy idea to tame a leviathan. He suspected many of their descendants had cause to regret it.
They were some distance below street level when their light fell on an opening in the wall that looked as if it had been roughly chiseled out. It stank of edilvine that was gradually fermenting into something else, and as Jade stepped inside they saw bundles of the vine, stuffed into vats filled with dark liquid. Esom made a gagging noise, clapped a hand over his mouth and nose, and retreated back to the corridor.
“That’s the drug,” Stone said, and stepped past him. “It smells like that wine bar.”
The stink of it was intense, but it wasn’t having any ill effect on Moon or the other Raksura.
“That’s not what we want.” Jade turned away, hissing in frustration.
Moon glanced at Chime just in time to see him flinch, as if something had suddenly poked him. “Are you all right?” Moon asked, as they followed Jade down the ramp.
“Yes.” Chime kept his voice low. “It’s that… thing I told you about. It’s worse here.”
Chime meant he was sensing the leviathan again. Unlike Chime’s flash of insight about the barrier over the door, Moon didn’t see how an awareness of the leviathan could help them. It wasn’t like they didn’t know the creature was here. Though maybe Chime would be able to give them warning if it was about to move again.
“What thing?” Flower demanded from behind them.
“You didn’t tell her?” Moon said, his attention on the corridor ahead. It still sloped down, curving back toward where the mortuary temple lay on the surface.
Chime protested, “I didn’t have a chance—”
Then Jade said, “Quiet, there’s light ahead.” She handed the light-rock back to Stone, who tucked it away in his pack. After a moment, Moon’s eyes adjusted, and he saw the dim white glow somewhere down the corridor.
Following it, they found the passage ended in a wide doorway that led to a much bigger space, scented of earth and cold water and more decay.
They stepped through and made their way down a crumbling set of steps into a cavernous chamber, the ceiling curving up out of sight. It was lit by fading mist-lights, their vapor heavy in the air. The lamps stood on metal stands only ten paces high and secured to the floor with clamps, leaving most of the chamber in heavy darkness. Dozens of thick, square pillars supported the ceiling, and every surface Moon could see, the walls, the pillars, was covered with plaques carved with unintelligible writing. It felt like a deep underground cavern, but they hadn’t come down nearly far enough for this space to be completely below the surface. “We’re under that dome,” Moon said softly.
Her tail lashing, Jade turned to Balm, River, and Chime. “Scout this place.”
River flicked his spines in annoyance, but he leapt to the nearest pillar, and scrambled up to jump to the next. Esom ducked nervously as River passed over his head. Balm and Chime bounded away in different directions. Moon tasted the air, but the stench of decay and the competing odor of the fermenting edilvine overlaid any more subtle scents.
Jade looked around again, thoughtful. “This carving—is it writing?”
“It’s in the city’s native language. I think it’s names, the names of the dead.” Esom stepped closer to the nearest column and squinted to see in the dim light. “The plaques must cover their burial vaults.”
Moon wondered why the inhabitants of this place had chosen that method. He had seen groundling cities that stacked their dead in aboveground mortuary vaults, and it never seemed like a good idea to him. For a city on the back of a leviathan, it was worse. But it might be a holdover from their homeland of Emriat-terrene,