3
The stairs were better than the elevator platform—less scary—but still dangerous. They were steep, and the constant circling made us all （with the possible exception of Radar） dizzy. Looking down the center of the spiral was a bad idea; it made the vertigo worse. After Leah and I came Radar, Iota, then Jaya. Eris brought up the rear.
After a descent of a hundred steps or so, we came to another of those low doors. Leah passed it, but I was curious. I peered into a long room, musty and dusty, filled with dim shapes, some covered with sheets. The idea that I was looking into an enormous attic bemused me at first, but then I realized that every palace must have one. They just don’t bother to put it in the storybooks.
After descending further—the glass wall thicker, the light dimmer—we came to another door. I opened it and saw a corridor lit with a few guttering gas-jets. Many more were out. A crumpled and dusty tapestry lay abandoned on the floor.
“Leah, hold up.”
She turned to me and raised her hands, palms out.
“Are there more doors as we go down? Opening on different parts of the palace? Living quarters, perhaps?”
She nodded, then made the twirling gesture again, the one that said we had to push on.
“Not yet. Do you know of an apartment that’s lit by electricity rather than gaslight?” What I actually said—I think—was do you know of chambers. But that wasn’t why she looked puzzled. She didn’t know electricity any more than Jaya had known riling, as in riling them up.
“Magic lights,” I said.
That she understood. She raised three fingers, considered, then raised four.
“Why are we stopping?” Jaya asked. “I want to get down.”
“Hold your water,” Iota said. “I know what he’s about. Or at least I think I do.”
I thought of asking Leah if Mr. Bowditch had installed the magic lights and the generator to power them, but I already knew. Cowards bring presents. But based on what I’d seen of the old-fashioned genny, he’d done it long ago, probably when he’d still been Adrian instead of Howard.
One of the suites graced with slave-driven electricity was almost certainly the private quarters of the late king and queen, but that wasn’t the one I was interested in.
Leah didn’t just point down the tight spiral of the stairway; she jabbed her finger repeatedly. She had only two things in mind: finding Flight Killer before he could open the Dark Well, and assuring herself that the usurper wasn’t her brother. I cared about those things as much as she did, but I cared about something else, too. I had been in the particular hell of Deep Maleen, after all, as had Iota and the two women who had elected to come with us.
“Not yet, Leah. Hear me, now. Do you remember a suite of rooms, one equipped with the magic lights, that had a long blue velvet sofa?” She made no sign that she did, but I remembered something else. “What about a table with a tiled surface? The tiles make a picture of a unicorn that looks almost as if it’s dancing. Do you remember that?”
Her eyes widened and she nodded.
“Is there a door from these stairs that opens on that part of the residences?”
She put her hands on her hips—sword on one, dagger on the other—and looked at me with exasperation. She jabbed her finger downward.
I fell into the vernacular I’d learned in Maleen. “Nah, nah, my lady. Say if we can enterwise that part from here. Tell me!”
Reluctantly, she nodded.
“Then take us there. We’ve still got lots of daylight…” I might actually have said a moit of daylight. “… and there’s other business than yours.”
“What business?” Jaya asked from behind me.
“I think that’s where we’ll find the Lord High.”
“Then we must go there,” Eris said. “He has much to answer for.”
Fucking right, I thought.
4
We passed three more doors on our continuing descent, and I began to think Leah meant to bypass Kellin’s cozy nest. His electrified cozy nest. Then she stopped at another door, opened it, and took a startled step backward. I steadied her with one hand and drew Mr. Bowditch’s .45 with the other. Before I could look through the door, Radar hurried past me, wagging her tail. Leah put her palm to her forehead, not in salute but in the distracted gesture of a woman who feels her troubles will never end.
Crouching in the corridor, just past the point where the swinging door would have knocked it over, was the Snab. Radar nosed it between its antennae, tail wagging. Then she dropped on her belly and the Snab hopped aboard.