he spotted her and sank again as Silas grabbed the back of his neck, forcing him away.
Kate pushed back through the crowd and forced her way through to the exit leading to the city above. She climbed up a long twist of spiral steps, hoping that the two tunnels came out at the same place, but the narrow staircase was full of people. She tried to run, but the steep steps and heaving bodies made it difficult to move quickly.
A burst of sunlight met her at the very top, and she found herself standing in the middle of a busy path framed by high stone walls. There was no sign of Edgar or Silas anywhere, so she followed a handful of people in front of her and tried to look like she knew where she was going.
The thin path turned and split like a maze, with rusted hand-painted signs directing people to Narrow Way North, Traitor’s Gate, Sunken Lake, and more. Kate lost sight of her guides while reading one of those signs and decided to take a chance and follow the path marked Traitor’s Gate, hoping it would lead her to Edgar.
The way became dirtier and quieter the farther she went, until she had the feeling that the only people who took that particular path were those who were forced to. Then the path turned sharply and Kate froze, face to face with a pair of wardens. They were just guards, standing on either side of a small door. There was no way they could have known of her escape, but her terrified face must have betrayed her guilt, because both of them drew their daggers as one. Fear overrode everything else, and Kate ran.
The wardens gave chase, their bootsteps closing in upon her as she raced off down the pathway. She ran as fast as she could go, rejoining the main flow of people and pushing her way through them, and when the path turned sharply, she collided solidly with a small man in a tall hat.
“You there!” the man said, grabbing hold of her wrist. “What is your business here?”
“Let me go!” Kate struggled to free herself but the man held her tight, taking every kick and tug as he tried to get a good look at her face. Finally their eyes met and his face registered shock.
“You!” he said. “You’re one of them.”
Two wardens ran up the pathway in answer to the man’s call, their bootsteps closing in on Kate, gaining every moment.
“Let me go!”
Kate tore her hands from the man’s grip and raced off down the pathway with the wardens close behind. She ignored the signs, knowing they couldn’t help her, and chose turnings at random, until suddenly she found herself at a dead end, with a wooden door sunk into the wall, bolted tight shut.
There was nowhere else to go. The wardens were almost upon her. She slammed the bolt to one side, heaved open the door, and ran through, not caring where her panic was taking her. And there, topped by a wide patch of perfect blue sky, Kate got her first true look at the grand graveyard city of Fume.
Chapter 8
Feathers & Bones
Fume was a city of darkness. The buildings were tall and angular, built from black stone and dark wood, each one reaching up to six stories high, casting shadows across the winding streets. Kate was standing upon a wide balcony at the top of the northern wall, alongside a spiral staircase leading down into the city itself. From that vantage point she could see the rest of the city’s outer walls circling round like encompassing arms, reaching far beyond the horizon, and the pointed roofs of the towerlike buildings scratching at a layer of fog that balanced across them like a sickly blanket.
Every building was an exaggeration of other buildings she had known. Where Morvane had ordinary houses, Fume had clusters of tall towers huddled together like whispering old men and streets of grand homes with black slate roofs all shimmering with frost. It was powerful, aggressive, and magnificent all at once, built upon the bones of Albion’s ancestors. Kate had expected to see riches, but nothing like this.
She looked behind her. The wardens had to be close, so she grabbed the handrail of the curling staircase that wound in upon itself impossibly tightly and headed down.
The metal steps creaked and wobbled beneath her, but she kept going, clinging on to the central post for balance and hitting the ground