ChaoticArmcandy

  I hurried along the narrow underground service corridor, following a cluster of thick pipes as they snaked their way towards the Arcane Tower, thrumming with heat and pressure, water and steam. The main boiler facility for Harmine was embedded in the brooding shadow of the Tower, so I figured these pipes would guide me there, like a wheel-spoke to its hub.

  Right?

  If I was right, I should be close, because I’d been down here for a while. I desperately hoped I was right, or at least not catastrophically lost? Whenever I thought of giving up and turning back, however, the unbidden memory of Mi’s eyes floated up, her voice urgent and soft in my ear.

  I’m a tea girl, Ellie—I’m kuffa, too.

  I swallowed, and pressed on, my breast warming. Sisterhood. It was--it had to be the most important thing for me. And I would lose it, as surely as if I’d never had it, unless I found a way to break Aralia’s hold on me.

  Every so often, there was a split in the service corridor, and I chose whichever way had the most pipes running along it, lit by the steady golden glow of alchemical mps.

  A high-pitched scream echoed faintly from up ahead, then cut off abruptly. I froze, a chill and a shiver running down my spine in the echoing silence. Had that been a mechanical valve, letting off steam? Or a person? I tried to tamp down my careening fear-thoughts, my heart thumping wildly in my ribcage.

  One of the pipes beside me began to bang loudly, as if someone was hitting it with a hammer, and I let out a long exhale. Ugh. By all the sightless gods of dread. It was probably just the noise of the boiler. I must be close.

  I started forward again, and almost stumbled as my feet found a rougher surface than the smooth-id brick of the passageway. What?

  I peered down, and in the dim light, recognized the bumpy, uneven surface as hewn limestone. Staring ahead, I saw that the walls and ceiling of the service tunnel also transitioned from brickwork to carved rock. What in the Nine hells? Were there caves, below the University?

  I continued, stepping slower this time. Every so often there was another spat of eerie banging, cttering, hissing noise, echoing from ahead. Gradually, I became aware of a new feel to the air, a moist, cold fvor. Then I rounded a turn and stopped dead in my tracks, gaping at the sight before me.

  The service tunnel abruptly lost all sembnce of a narrow corridor as it opened into a vast cave of dripping, pale limestone. The ceiling of the cavern was mostly lost to gloom, except where it cascaded to the floor in ropy, unduting pilrs and trunks of dripping stone.

  A limestone forest, under Harmine. I shook my head in dumb amazement. How big was this pce? I couldn’t even see its edges.

  The wet, sloping floor of the cavern was strewn with pools of vivid blue-green water, opening like portals into still and endless depths below. Every so often, drops of water stirred their surfaces into perfect ripples.

  I shivered. This pce gave me the eeps.

  The thrumming cluster of pipes plunged past me and forward, into the jungle of water, stone and darkness. In the gaps between pilrs, I could see the faint glow of alchemical mps receding ahead, lighting the path that followed the pipes.

  There was another spate of metallic bellows, cngs and scrapes from the boiler.

  I swallowed, my chest tightening. I could turn back now. Aralia would never know.

  My mind raced. I had no illusions about safety—I was pying a dangerous game by choosing to stalk Aralia. This was an arena of hunters, all trying to turn each other into prey.

  But the quandary I was in left me no choice, not really. Mi was a tea girl, like me. And now that Aralia wanted me to spy on her…

  No. Fuck that. I needed to take action, seize the advantage, wrest free of this checkmate. I paused to lean against the wall of the service corridor and heave a deep breath. I could do this. I had to.

  I bit my lip and plunged ahead, into the vast, eerie cavern.

  All around me, the slow, echoing sound of droplets falling into pools, a parody of rain. Gigantic arches and columns of white limestone, textured into smooth ripples and bulges by time and water, loomed suddenly and then faded into the darkness.

  The pipes, fking with rust and encrusted with calcified mineral deposits, wove a path through the maze. Every few hundred paces was another mp, casting a little sphere of glowing light that barely overpped with the next one. On and on, until—

  I caught my breath as I rounded a limestone pilr as thick as a house and saw the end of the cavern—a vast cliff face stretching into the gloom above, its surface honeycombed with hundreds of holes of different sizes, like lipless inky mouths, frozen open in silent screams.

  I could immediately tell that about a dozen of the openings, including several of the ones right in front of me, had been artificially bored out and widened into tunnels. Faint light shone from these openings, illuminating clusters of pipes as they split and snaked and sank into the cliff face.

  Old pieces of scaffolding, rusty tools, and empty lengths of pipe were scattered all around. The boiler cnged again, loud and close, but I couldn’t tell which entrance the sounds were coming from. All of them, perhaps?

  Still, I breathed a sigh of relief, and hurried forward. Hopefully I was almost out of this creepy pce.

  Then I startled as a voice floated out of the darkness.

  “You lost, girl?” The words echoed and bounced, defying my ability to track the sound.

  Heart galloping, I stared wildly around and saw the floating embers of three lit cigarettes staring back at me from the darkness of another, smaller hole in the rock face, just ahead.

  I swallowed. “Whose there?” My voice tried for firmness, but I couldn’t keep the quaver completely out of it.

  There was a scrape of footsteps and then a tall girl with hard eyes and honey-amber skin wearing the soiled canvas jumpsuit of a boiler engineer strode lithely out of the gloom, stopped in front of me and set her hands on her hips with a scowl.

  “What in the Nine hells are you doing down here?”

  I scowled right back. “I’m here on an errand. What’s it to you?” My hands were shaking but I tried to muster an air of nonchant certainty. She looked to be about my own age, after all, no matter how confidently she spoke. I had to match her.

  “Right,” she scoffed. “Maids come down here all the time. Polish the mirrors, dust the mantle.” She turned, waving to the other smokers. “Go on, I’ll catch up to you,” she called over her shoulder, and I saw two women in the same soot-stained gear amble out of the darkness, nod, and head down the rightmost faintly-lit tunnel ahead. I stared after them.

  She turned back to me, frowning. “And even we don’t come down here alone. It’s not what you’d call a safe pce,” she said darkly. “Folks’ve been going missing.”

  I shivered and something in her gaze softened as she watched me. She cocked her head. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  I hesitated. I knew better than to trust a stranger with even that small truth.

  “Okay, okay, never mind.” She eyed me curiously. “I can see you’re jumpy. Don’t worry, I won’t snitch you out. Can you at least tell me where you’re trying to go?”

  Though, I did need help.

  I bit my lip. “I have business in the Tower,” I muttered. “Maid stuff.”

  “And I’m a turkey’s uncle,” she snorted. “If that was true, you’d not be down here.”

  I blushed and ignored her. “So, if that’s the way to the boiler room,” I said, pointing at where the other two had gone. “How do I get into the Tower from down here?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to get into the Tower from down here. Haven’t you been listening?” She rolled her eyes. “That’s actually the worst way you could go, right now.”

  I picked one of the other tunnel entrances at random and started forward, grimacing. “Fine. I guess I’ll just have to find out, then.”

  She cursed but didn’t try to stop me. “What are you doing, no wait—not that one!”

  I turned triumphantly. “Which is it, then?”

  “You want to die of thirst trapped in some maintenance shaft?” she muttered, throwing down the stub of her cigarette and scuffing it out with her boot. She pointed irately towards the leftmost entrance. “Gods of my mothers. You’re stubborn as a goat, girl.”

  “Thanks!” I smiled at her, then stiffened as she reached down and pulled a wicked-looking knife from her boot. “Wh-what are you doing?”

  “What does it look like?” she snapped, twirling it between her fingers with liquid ease. “There’s no way I’m letting you go down there by yourself.”

  I blinked as the bde disappeared up her sleeve without a trace. “Oh.”

  She wanted to…come with me? The idea was strangely comforting. But, could I trust her?

  “I’ll take you as far as the Spiral. Once you’re up in the hustle and bustle of the Tower proper, you’ll be be about as safe as you would be anywhere else on campus.” She brushed by me, heading to the tunnel entrance she’d indicated. “So, not safe at all. But at least you won’t be down here. I’m Monarda, by the way.”

  “Uh...Kisma,” I lied, hurrying to keep up. A white limestone mouth loomed overhead and then enveloped us as we crossed the threshold. The passageway tilted and began to descend. In the dim alchemical glow, I noticed rippling patterns unduting along the walls and ceiling.

  “So what happens to people down here, anyway?”

  “Nobody really knows.” Monarda gnced at me, her dark eyes somber. “Some of the old hands among the staff say this pce has always eaten people. Every so often, they say someone comes down here and disappears without a trace. But it’s gotten worse tely. A lot worse.”

  I shivered and gnced over my shoulder, into the gloom.

  “Lately,” Monarda said grimly, “we’ve been finding the bodies.”