Our Lady of the Islands (35 page)

“Yes, this is it.” Sian watched as Arian sat down and dipped her feet into the water, sliding them slowly forward. “Is this the floor, or … aha! It is!” She stood up and took several cautious, plashing steps around the flooded chamber they’d descended into, twin to that in which they’d started, as far as Sian could tell, anyway.

Sian was no longer able to see much of anything clearly, so wan had their light become. They had not wanted to ignite a new globe until this one was entirely exhausted. “Is it all right then?”

“Yes, come down — it’s not deep. Look, there’s the door.”

“I’ll take your word for that.”

Sian groped her way down the last few steps until she felt water on her toes, the stone grown slippery beneath them. She gripped the railing with one hand until she was sure she’d reached the bottom and her footing was secure.

“This way,” came Arian’s voice, from the left.

Sian moved slowly through ankle-deep water to where Arian crouched before another open metal hatch.

Arian bent even lower and slipped through. “It’s just fine,” she called from the other side.

After winding Het’s cape around her shoulders, Sian followed, on her hands and knees, heedless of the muck and water. Better safe and stable than sorry, and things seemed to dry out again down here quickly enough. On the other side, Sian found the plash of Arian’s footsteps almost easier to follow than her bobbing globe of dying light. “I can’t see anything, can you?” This wasn’t entirely true; she could sense that the tunnel grew deeper in the middle; and she could sort of make out the curving edges of a wall beside her, the cavernous ceiling above, as well as Arian’s dim figure before her. The mossy tunnel floor was more gentle on her feet again than the rough stone staircase had been, if far more treacherous to her balance.

“Not really,” Arian replied. “But we’re heading south again, I’m pretty sure.”

“That’s good, I guess. Should we perhaps take out that second glow float yet?”

“I can still see a little,” said Arian. “Come take my hand if that will help, but I think we dare not waste a single drop of light.”

As Sian was fumbling forward to accept her offer, Arian drew the failing light along the wall beside her, just inches from its surface, then paused. “Ah! There!”

Sian stopped where she was. “What’s happened now?”

“Powder flares!” After a bit more splashing in the dark and the grating wrench of rusty metal, Sian heard a scraping sound, then a brilliant, smoky flash of light burst up before her, followed by the smell of sulfur as the flare subsided to a dull white-orange glow. Sian blinked and gasped, covering her face with a hand until the spots before her eyes had faded.

“I’m sorry!” Arian said. “I thought you knew what I was doing.”

“I did — just not how bright it would be. I’ll be fine.” She blinked again and looked about. The powder flare burned low and steady now, not quite so bright as the globe had been when it was new, but far brighter than what they’d been making do with recently. It did seem they were back in the tunnel they had come from. Though its contours had changed: it was higher and more rounded than before. The tile faces were gone too. Near the spot where Arian had lit their flare, Sian could now see a tall metal locker mounted to the wall. “Is there food in there?”

“If there were, I doubt we’d want to eat it. Who knows how long ago these things were left here.” Arian walked quickly further down the passage, stopping at the intersection of a smaller side-tunnel, to study something on the wall. “And here’s a map at last!”

Sian waded after her to look. It just seemed a random jumble of hash marks to her. “If that’s some language of the Ancients, it makes no sense to me.”

“It’s a simple shorthand, really. Not that hard, though I remember less of it than I had hoped.” She scrutinized the marks a while longer. “All these are tunnels. And these dots denote the distance, while these angled shapes indicate directions of the compass, I believe. … I’m pretty certain this one means south, in which case, we’re still headed in exactly the right direction!” She turned happily to Sian.

“That’s wonderful,” Sian replied. “And is there something in that closet of supplies that we can use to roast those mussels? I may lose consciousness from hunger soon.”

“Well, I don’t know. Let’s go see.”

As it happened, there was an empty wooden box just larger than Sian’s hand, in which some other, long-vanished supply had been contained. It took them very little time to pry more of the omnipresent mussels from the channel rim, and when they pressed their powder flare against the wooden box, it produced just enough heat to set the wood ablaze — in a sullen, smoldering fashion. They piled their stash of mussels into it and let them cook as it burned down. When there was nothing left but charcoal underneath their stack of now-gaping shells, Sian reached down to nudge one up, tossing the hot little morsel back and forth between her hands until it cooled enough to pry further open. She scooped the bit of flesh inside it eagerly into her mouth, and made a face. “They can’t have tasted this way at Escotte’s.”

Arian tried one next, and grimaced too. “Perhaps they’re better raw. They were certainly more artfully seasoned when Viktor used to cook them for me. I’m … not sure these have been fully roasted, actually. That may be the problem. Sadly, we are out of wood.” She looked thoughtfully around. “We could try holding our powder flare directly to the meat …”

“And add sulfur and who knows what else to this grim recipe?” Sian asked. Arouf would have known exactly how to cook these creatures. Alas. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to put the flare out prematurely by shoving it into a wet shell. How long do they last, anyway?”

“Half an hour, perhaps. We have five more now, which should extend our light supply considerably. And there will surely be more such caches on our way.”

Sian heaved a disappointed sigh. “Well, if it’s these or starve …” She took another mussel from the pile. If they died of poisoning here, well … then they wouldn’t have to worry any longer about running out of light.

“Think of them as an acquired taste,” said Arian, reaching for another shell herself. “I hated caviar the first few times. Now I just adore it.”

Sian scooped, and swallowed, trying not to taste at all, unable to imagine ever liking such rubbery little balls of fishy slime. Still, it was surely nourishment. Her body
needed
fuel.

When they had finished eating, they got up and started off again. Before long, the shallow water they’d been sloshing through for so long retreated back into its proper channel, to Sian’s extreme relief. Her bare feet had started to both look and feel like days-dead fish.

As a third powder flare followed their second one, the tunnel began to turn more often, then to branch. At each such intersection, Arian found another of the inscrutable maps, and occasionally diverted them into some different passageway, to keep them traveling in the right direction. Twice her choices led them to dead ends. Blushing, Arian just led them back to the last intersection and took Sian the other way.

To Sian’s relief, the mussels they had eaten did not make them sick. But they’d made a very modest meal, and her hunger began whispering again before much time had passed. Though the watercourses they followed were quite brackish, they’d found lots of freshwater seeps running down the tunnel walls along their way, so thirst, at least, had been no problem. Less happily, while there seemed no shortage of tunnel maps now, they all proved either unaccompanied by supply lockers, or the lockers had been raided and left empty. Arian had still not found another stash of powder flares when their last one began to sputter.

“I guess we’ll have to use another glow float,” Arian conceded. “We can’t be that far from our goal now, I suppose.”

This was fine with Sian. The glow float’s light was better, and she breathed much easier without all that sulfur smoke the flares had cast behind them as she followed Arian.

On and on and on they slogged. In time, Sian followed Arian almost without thinking anymore, just trudging, trudging … Her limbs grew ever heavier. Her eyes kept wanting to close. She wondered if perhaps it was already evening in the world above, though she didn’t think it very likely. She could walk almost the length of Alizar in less than a day up on the surface, and these under-ways seemed much straighter than the winding streets and patchwork bridges she relied on there. Still, she wondered where they were, and when, if ever, they would finally reach their destination, whatever that might be, and how Arian would know it when they did.

The second glow float had begun to wane when Arian paused suddenly ahead of Sian, blinking in surprise at a side tunnel angled steeply upwards. “I … think this is it,” she said.

“This is what?” asked Sian.

“Our exit.”

“From the tunnel?” Sian felt sure she must be misunderstanding.

“I think so!” said Arian. “As you see, it’s very different from the others. I could hardly be mistaking it, could I?”

“You’re not asking me, are you? I have no idea what we’re looking for.”

“Well, let’s go up and find out!” She turned to Sian. “Have you got the last glow float?”

Sian reached into the pocket of Het’s cape and pulled it out. “Should we light it yet? The other one’s still got a little life in it, I think.”

“If I am right,” said Arian, “we should have more than enough light now. If not … Well, I’m tired of living in the dark, aren’t you? We’ll just exit wherever this comes out, and make the rest of our way to Home across the surface. Very carefully, of course. But I’m quite certain this is Apricot, at last.”

Sian’s budding excitement was extinguished all at once by a dreadful thought. “Are we going to have climb another waterfall?”

“Oh, of course not. I have never seen another entrance like the one on The Well. The egress here is concealed in an abandoned warehouse, if I’m not mistaken.”

Sian sighed with relief. “Then why are we standing here?” She handed their last glow float to Arian, who shook it as she turned to light their way.

This tunnel contained no water at all. But it was not an easy climb either, or a short one. Hours, it took, or seemed to. They had resorted to their hands and knees well before their last glow float began to dim. Sian watched it nervously, hoping desperately that Arian had not miscalculated, or mistaken some tunnel to nowhere at all for the exit she’d intended. When they came at last to a square, vertical shaft lined in solid stone, and Sian saw the iron rung ladder ascending its side, she buried her face in both sandpapered hands and groaned.

“Sian? This is the end,” said Arian.

“I knew it,” Sian murmured. “I knew we would get lost and die down here.”

“What? No, I mean, we’re here! Just raise your head and look.”

Sian raised her eyes, and realized that Arian had put the float away. The pale light around them came from up above now. She shuffled forward and stood inside the shaft, gazing up at dazzling light streaming through a grate not twenty feet above their heads. She had to look away, so painful was the glare. Had her eyes become so accustomed to the darkness that even the dim light inside a warehouse was this blinding?

“It’s just a little climb this time,” said Arian. “Shall I go first, or would you prefer to?”

“You’re the leader here.” Sian smiled at her, abashed now at her lack of faith in Arian.

Arian virtually scrambled up the rungs, then paused at the top, looking through the grate. “That’s odd.”

“Is everything all right?” Sian asked, a few rungs beneath her.

“I’m not sure.” She fumbled at the edges of the grate. “As I said before, it has been a long, long while since I was here … Aha!” Having found a latch, it seemed, she released it and swung the grate open on rusty hinges, then clambered out.

Sian climbed after her, and emerged, wincing, not into a warehouse, but into an alley that debouched onto a set of docks. It was late afternoon at least, or later, judging by the sunlight’s low slant. The air was warm and heavy with fish odors, people smells and smoke. A fair amount of it. Someone must be burning refuse — or there was a lot more industry on Apricot than she remembered. She heard shouting in the distance, and the ever-present prayer lines. “Out at last,” she sighed. “But where’s your warehouse?”

“Well, it’s likely been torn down.” Arian looked around. “I was a fool to think the world would not have changed much in two decades.”

Sian still blinked painfully as she joined Arian in gazing about, trying to reconcile what she was seeing with her own knowledge of the island of Apricot. It seemed bigger than she remembered, and far more crowded. “Where exactly are we?”

“East shore,” Arian said, pointing at a little island further east. “That’s Toad.”

Sian tried to adjust her perspective, but … “Arian … This isn’t Apricot. We’re on Malençon. The
eastern edge
of Malençon!”

“Don’t be absurd!”

But Sian knew she was right. Beyond the row of tumbledown shacks they stood beside, people milled about on crowded docks. Very familiar docks. “My daughter lives not far from here, Arian. That’s not Toad, it’s Crux. See, there’s the curving roof of the Suba estate.”