On the far side, water spilled across the floor, running from the back of the cavern, where some branch of the Amar had been breached, to the front, where it spilled out of the cave’s mouth. It seemed barely deep enough to wet boot leather, but Jame stopped Shade before she could step into it.
“Look.”
One couldn’t make out much due to the poor light, but in the middle of the flood a long, serrated line broke the surface, moving in a sinuous ripple that cut the flowing water. Something seemed to lurk beneath it, impossibly big for so shallow a depth.
“I’ve seen such a thing before,” said Jame. “A leviathan in a puddle. Then, it was a dead god.”
“That’s not all that’s dead.”
Shade gestured downstream. Black-robed bodies sprawled in the shallow water, or at least parts of them did. Their blood darkened the flood.
“I think this is an Old Pantheon water god,” Jame said, “probably the one that walks on baby feet. Listen.”
They heard the children’s voices again, coming from the other side of the water, echoing flatly as if within some close-set place.
“We’ve got to cross,” said Jame. “No, not you, Jorin. Stay. Shade, you’d better go first. This is likely to rile it.”
Shade gave her a sharp, sidelong look, then took a deep breath and backed up. The stream was about twenty feet wide, split down the middle by that shifting spine. She took a running start and jumped. Her foot came down on the monster’s back between notches. She launched herself off of it and made the far shore.
WHOMP.
The creature’s head jerked up in a spray of water, toothy jaws agape, baby hands flailing. Jame leaped to its back. Slimy scales shifted under her feet, nearly throwing her off, but she managed to lurch to the far side where Shade caught her.
THOMP.
It settled back into the water grumbling, only its nostrils above the surface, its tail atwitch.
The voices echoed out of the entrance to a maze of side caves. More luck than skill led them down the right branch into a cavern shaped like an amphitheater. Fang’s urchins scuttled around its upper galleries, pelting a black-robed figure below with rocks. He in turn swung a long sword wildly, trying to bat the missiles away. Fang herself stood guard at the narrow mouth of a side cave. The man rushed at her. She ducked back as he swung his sword. It hit the stone lintel and almost jumped out of his hands with the shock. Before he could recover, Fang stepped in and knifed him under the ribs. He fell. The children cheered. Fang wiped her blade on his robe, then saw the newcomers.
“About time you showed up,” she said to Jame. “This is the third we’ve killed in the Undercliff so far, not counting the ones that the Guardian of the Ford has claimed.”
Jame prodded the fallen man, who was obviously a Karnid.
“What are they after?”
“Come and see.”
She stepped back into the side cave. It was fairly comfortable as such things go, lit by glowing chunks of diamantine, its floor covered with rugs and furs. The former Lord Merchandy lay on a pallet by the far wall, unconscious, breathing with a harsh rattle. Dani, formerly Lady Professionate, sat beside him, holding his hand. She looked up, her eyes wide with fear.
“Are we safe?”
“For the moment,” said Fang, sheathing her knife. “It would be better if we shifted you farther back into the caves, though.”
“He can’t be moved. I think he’s dying. Oh, why did Mother Vedia have to go Overcliff?”
Then she saw Jame. “At last!”
Jame wondered why everyone was so glad to see her. What did they expect her to do? For that matter, what was going on?
“I told you,” said Shade, reading her expression. “The city is infested with Karnids and has been for months. Come the rising, which I guess is tonight, their mission is to kill every former guild lord and grandmaster who doesn’t support Prince Ton.”
“Why would they do that for a Kothifiran?”
“Ton is a Karnid sympathizer, or so he tells them. If the Karnids can make him king, their prophet hopes to gain indirect control of the Southern Host.”
Jame stared at her. “Now you tell me?”
Shade shrugged. “When has there been time?”
“But surely this means that King Krothen is in danger too, more so than anyone else.”
“We hear,” said Fang, “that Prince Ton is holding him prisoner at the top of his Rose Tower. All of his Kencyr guards are outside the city walls on the clifftop plain. Gemma has finally sent an army against us.”
Jame remembered how raiders from that rival city had plagued Kothifir even before the Change had weakened it. Just the same . . .
“Why now?” she asked, helplessly.
Fang shrugged. “The rumor in the city is that Ton has promised Gemma the treasure towers if it attacks at the same time as his palace coup. More likely, though, that’s a lie, and it’s his mother Princess Amantine who’s behind all this maneuvering.”
Jame stood for a moment, fitting all of this together in her mind, deciding what to do next.
“I have business Overcliff,” she said. “Will you be all right here?”
Fang grinned, her filed teeth flashing. “We’ll manage.”
Without the need for immediate action, Shade had sagged against a wall, hands over her face. Between her fingers, her features twitched and changed. “I’m no good to you like this,” she said in a distorted voice. “Go on without me.”
“Walk wary,” Fang called after Jame. “All the Old Gods except for the Guardian went up into the city last night to protect it from the Karnids. You may meet some of them coming back.”
Jame found Jorin on the near side of the stream, anxiously waiting for her with pricked ears and wide, moon-opal eyes. He had apparently crossed by jumping from Karnid body to dismembered body, as she probably should have done herself rather than risk the Guardian’s maw. They returned by this route to the west bank and climbed up the regular stair that debouched on a back street, the same shaft down which Hangnail had pushed Jame so long ago. Luckily its lid was still off, maybe permanently so in order to accommodate those who depended on this route to the Undercliff.
By the time they reached the Overcliff, the eastern sky was faintly aglow with the harbinger of dawn and the moon had set.
To the right, Jame could see the gaping hole through which the tower had fallen, surrounded by leaning buildings. Some swayed, creaking, and dropped stones into the pit. Others settled, crunching, on their broken foundations. The sooner Kothifir got back its god-king, the better.
They made their way toward the former site of the Kencyr temple. The towers Jame passed were dark and quiet, their windows shuttered. Threatened both by the army outside its gates and by the enemy within, the citizens were hiding. From somewhere in the distance, though, came shouts and an occasional crash. The Karnids wouldn’t be so noisy, nor probably the Old Pantheon gods. Who else was abroad tonight?
Here was the place where she had last met Dorin, son of Denek, son of Dinnit Dun-eyed, next to the broken foundation of the tower that had contained the Kencyr temple. Rubble still loomed dark in the predawn light. However long she had been gone, no one had yet done anything about it.
Jorin pressed against her leg, growling. Three dark figures had emerged from the shadows and were silently approaching. Karnids, for certain. Jame might have run, but she had unfinished business here. She slid into fighting stance. Then someone stepped between her and the advancing men.
“Don’t look,” said the Earth Wife’s red-haired Favorite to Jame over his shoulder. Then he spread wide his coat.
A blinding flood of light emerged, fiercer than it had been for his predecessor when he had appeared as the sun at the summer solstice. It painted the inside of Jame’s eyelids crimson as she turned her face away and shielded it. She heard the Karnids cry out and smelled something burning. They stumbled away, their faces seared, their eyes, burst, streaming down into their beards.