Leah was turning a small valve-wheel. The gas-jets brightened. The balcony was actually a gallery, lined with high-backed chairs. Below us was a circular room with a bright red flagstone floor. In the center, on a kind of dais, were two thrones, one slightly bigger than the other. Scattered about were chairs （much plusher than those on the balcony） and small divans like love-seats.
And it stank. The aroma was so thick and foul it was almost visible. I could see heaps of rotted food here and there, some of it squirming with maggots, but that wasn’t all. There were also piles of shit on the flagstones, and especially big piles on the two thrones. Blood, now dried to maroon, splashed the walls. Two headless bodies lay below the chandelier. Hanging from it on either side, as if to keep it in balance, were two more, the twisted faces bunched—almost mummified—with age. Their necks were stretched grotesquely long but hadn’t yet torn free of the heads they were supposed to support. It was like looking at the aftermath of some awful murder-party.
“What happened here?” Iota asked in a hoarse whisper. “My high gods, what?”
The princess tapped me on the arm. Her mouthless face looked both exhausted and sad. She was holding out one of the papers she’d taken from the kitchen. On one side, someone had written a complicated recipe in crabbed cursive. On the other Leah had printed, and in a fair hand: This was my father and mother’s reception hall. She pointed to one of the hanging mummies and wrote: I think Luddum. My father’s chancellor.
I put an arm around her shoulders. She laid her head all too briefly against my arm, then pulled away.
“It wasn’t enough to kill them, was it?” I asked. “They had to defile this place.”
She nodded wearily, then pointed past me to a flight of stairs. We went down them, and she led us toward another set of double doors, these stretching at least thirty feet high. Hana could have walked through them without ducking.
Leah motioned to Iota. He placed his palms against the doors, leaned forward, and pushed them open along hidden tracks. While he did that, Leah faced the beshitted thrones where her mother and father had once listened to the requests of their subjects. She dropped to one knee and put her palm to her forehead. Her tears fell on the dirty red flagstones.
Silent, silent.
10
The room beyond the reception hall would have put the nave of Notre Dame cathedral to shame. The echoes turned the footsteps of we five into the march of a battalion. And the voices had returned, all those entwined whispers full of malice.
Above us were the three spires, like great vertical tunnels full of shadowy green gleams that deepened to purest ebony. The floor we walked across was hundreds of thousands of small tiles. Once they had made an enormous monarch butterfly, and in spite of the vandalism that had chipped away at it, the shape remained. Below the central spire was a golden platform. From its center, a silver cable rose into the darkness. There was a pedestal beside it with a large wheel protruding from its side. Leah motioned to Iota. Then she pointed at the wheel and made cranking motions.
Eye stepped up, spat on his hands, and began to crank. He was a strong man and he kept at it for quite awhile without flagging. When he finally stepped back, I took over. The wheel turned steadily, but it was hard work; after ten minutes or so, I felt like I was turning the damn thing through some kind of glue. There was a tap on my shoulder. Eris took over. She managed a single revolution, then Jaya took a turn. Hers was little more than a token effort, but she wanted to be part of the team. Nothing wrong with that.
“What are we doing?” I asked Leah. The golden platform was pretty clearly a lift that went up the central spire, but it hadn’t moved. “And why are we doing it, if the Flight Killer has gone below?”
There was a croak from thin air, almost a word. Must, I think it was. Leah put her hands to her throat and shook her head, as if to say ventriloquism was now too difficult. Then she wrote on another of the recipe papers, using Jaya’s back as a support. The ink on the nib of her quill pen was very faint by the time she finished, but I could read it.
We must go up to go down. Trust me.
What choice?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE The Lift. The Spiral Staircase. Jeff. The Lord High. “The Queen of Empis Will Do Her Duty.”
1
Iota returned to the wheel, and now the resistance was so great that he grunted with each quarter-turn. He moved it half a dozen times, the last only a few inches. Then, from somewhere overhead, a soft chime sounded. It echoed and died away. Leah motioned Eye to step back. She pointed to the platform. She pointed to us, then raised her arms and made an air-hug.