The Infernal City (25 page)

He continued, each time fearing the next lifeless face would be Annaïg’s, but even after he went over them twice, she wasn’t there. But that didn’t mean anything. A carrion scorp or any of several large bottom feeders could have dragged her off.

He was about to begin a third search when a gleam caught his eyes, something in the sand.

He reached down and pulled it up—Annaïg’s magic locket.

He felt like something hot was vibrating in him when he got back to the skraw warrens. When he took Wert the anemones, he found him with Eryob, their overseer.

“You’re late,” Eryob said. His gaze moved to the anemones. Then to Wert. “Did you send him to do your work?”

“Wert does his job, and more,” Mere-Glim bristled. “I was just helping him out. Everything got done.”

Eryob’s bushy red eyebrows sank so low they nearly covered his eyes. “That’s not the point, skraw.”

“Well, enlighten me,” Glim snapped. “What is the point? And who are you to make it? You don’t inhale the vapors. You don’t pick around corpses or bring anyone up to be born. What does the sump need with you? Just leave us alone and everything will get done. In fact—”

He didn’t get to finish. Eryob lifted his fist and uncurled it, and black pain exploded in Glim’s head. His limbs spasmed and he toppled to the floor. It went on for a long time.

Heat woke her, suffocating heat wrapped around her body, burned into her lungs. She gasped and flailed; the air seemed incredibly heavy and murky. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling only slick, wet skin.

She heard a whimper and then a strangled shriek. She made out a silhouette a few feet from her, revealed in the dim illumination from four fuzzy-looking globes of a dark amber color, one in each direction, all above her.

“Slyr?”

“Yes,” the frantic voice answered. “What’s happening? We’re being burned alive!”

Annaïg swung her feet down and found the floor, wincing at the heat of the stone against her soles. The air hurt to move through, too, especially when she found the vent in the floor it was coming out of. She jumped back with a shriek.

“It’s steam,” she said.

“Why? What are they doing to us?”

Annaïg recalled the battle, and Toel’s blue eyes. Then he had touched her lips. That was all she remembered.

She found a wall and began working down it and soon discovered a seam that might be a door.

Slyr had joined her in exploring now, panting hoarsely.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Annaïg said. “But I … I think this isn’t meant to kill us. It’s hot, but not that hot. And I don’t think it’s getting worse.”

“Right,” Slyr said. “You must be right. Why would he go through the trouble of capturing us only to kill us? He wouldn’t do that, would he?” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.

“I don’t know Toel,” Annaïg said. “I don’t know anything about him.”

“Why do you think I do?” Slyr snapped.

There was something strange about her tone.

“I didn’t say you did,” Annaïg replied.

Slyr was silent for a moment.

“Well, I do know a bit,” she finally offered. “He—” She stopped, then laughed softly. She folded back down on her bench.

“What?”

“I think they’re cleaning us,” she replied. “I’ve heard they use steam to draw the impurities from the body.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Annaïg remembered. “In Skyrim they do it, and it’s come and gone as a fashion in Cyrodiil. Black Marsh is already a steaming jungle and Argonians don’t sweat, so it never caught on there.”

Her breathing slowed as panic faded. Now that the surprise and fear were gone, the pervasive heat actually felt pretty nice.

“What else do you know about Toel?”

“Everyone has heard of Toel,” Slyr said. “Most master chefs of the higher kitchens are born to it, but Toel started down with us. When he wants something, he will do whatever is necessary to get it.”

“Clearly,” Annaïg replied.

“More than you know. Qijne and her kitchen served three lords. Toel serves a much greater one, but that is still a dangerous thing. Bargains must have been struck, and probably a few assassinations accomplished.”

“A few?”

“Other than the rest of our kitchen, I mean.”

“They’re all dead, aren’t they?”

“I didn’t see anyone moving.”

Annaïg was starting to feel a little dizzy. It wasn’t getting any hotter, but the heat was beginning to sit more heavily on her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know many of them very well, but you …”

“I hated most of them,” Slyr said. “And I was indifferent to most of the rest.”

“But you saved my life. Qijne was trying to kill me.”

“You’re—ah—different,” Slyr said.

“Well—thank you.”

Slyr crossed her arms. “Besides, he came for you. If you were dead, what use would I be to him?”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

“I don’t,” Slyr said softly.

An awkward pause followed.

“I hope they let us out of here soon,” Annaïg ventured, to try to lighten things.

“Yes.”

But it was too hot to talk after that. Annaïg sat with her head on her knees, closed her eyes and pretended she was on the levee at Yor-Tiq, back in Black Marsh, lazing in the sun while Glim went diving for trogfish. It was a difficult fantasy to maintain; images of the slaughter kept coming back to her, especially Qijne’s dying gaze.

Remembering that, she felt at her wrist. It was still there, the torus. They hadn’t noticed it when they took her clothes. If she
could figure out how to use it, she would at least have one small advantage.

She squeezed it, tried to
think
the blade out, but nothing worked, and the heat made her so tired she finally stopped trying.

Just as she thought she couldn’t take any more, light came flooding through what she had earlier guessed was a door, and behind it the sweet kiss of cool air.

“Out, and into the pool with you,” a voice said. Annaïg hesitated, embarrassed at her lack of clothing but anxious to get out of the heat. She saw the mentioned pool ahead. It looked cool, lovely.

Slyr was already on her way, so she followed. To her surprise, she didn’t see anyone, although the voice had sounded near.

The water was so shockingly cold that for an instant she thought she might lose consciousness. Her yelp literally got closed in her throat.

“Kaoc’!” she finally managed.

“Sumpslurry!” Slyr gasped.

Their gazes met, held for an instant—and then together they began laughing. It just exploded out of Annaïg, as if it had been bottled and pent up for a thousand years. The feeling wasn’t happiness; it was more like being crazy.

But it was a lot better than crying.

“You should have seen your expression,” Slyr giggled when she finally got control of herself.

“I’m sure it was no more ridiculous than yours,” she replied.

“Lords, this is cold.”

Annaïg took in the new chamber then; it had low ceilings of cloth woven in complicated, curvilinear patterns of gold, hyacinth, lime, and sanguine. It draped down the walls, giving the appearance that they were in a large, very oddly shaped tent. Globes like those in the sweat-room, but brighter, depended here and there, filling the chamber with a pleasant golden light. On the near wall, two golden robes hung.

“I hope those are ours,” she said.

“Not yet they aren’t,” the voice from earlier said. “Back in the heat with you.”

This time her gaze found the speaker—a froglike creature about two feet high, mottled orange, yellow, and green. It was crouched above the doorway.

“We have to go back in there?” Annaïg said.

“You’re both extremely polluted,” the thing said. “This could take a while. But at least you seem to be enjoying it.”

She wasn’t enjoying it an hour later, when the alternating heat and cold had rendered all the strength out of her. She was also starving. But finally the frog-thing gave a little nod and sent them across the room to the robes.

The fabric was like nothing she had ever touched before, utterly smooth, almost like a liquid. She thought she had never felt anything better.

“Come along,” the creature said, hopping down from its perch and landing, to stand on its hind limbs. It waddled off, through a slit in the cloth that draped the walls and into a smooth, polished corridor.

After a few turns he led them into a room appointed much as the pool-room had been, except the drapery was of more muted, autumn shades. Her heart struck up a bit when she saw a small, low table set with a pitcher of some sort of liquid and bowls of fruits, fern fronds, and small condiment bowls.

“Eat,” the creature said. “Rest. Be ready to speak with Lord Toel.”

Annaïg didn’t have to be told twice.

The pitcher contained an effervescent beverage that had almost no taste, but reminded her of honeysuckle and plum, though it wasn’t sweet. The fruits were all unknown to her: a small orange berry with a tough rind but sweet, lemony pulp inside;
a black, lozenge-shaped thing with no skin that was a bit chewy and was a lot like soft cheese; tiny berries no larger than the head of a needle, but clustered in the thousands, which exploded into vapor on touching her tongue. The ferns were the least pleasant, but the various jellies in the small bowls clung viscously to them, and those were delightfully strange.

She couldn’t taste alcohol in the drink, but by the time she felt sated, things were getting pleasantly spinny.

“This is nice,” Annaïg said, looking around. There were two beds, also on the floor. “Do you think this is our room? One room just for the two of us?”

“Like our little hideaway in Qijne’s kitchen.”

“But bigger. And with beds. And—ah—interesting food.”

Slyr closed her eyes. “I’ve dreamed of this,” she said. “I knew it would be better.”

“Congratulations,” Annaïg said.

Slyr shook her head. “It’s because of you. These things you come up with … when Toel figures that out, I’ll be out of his kitchen, just as your lizard-friend was out of Qijne’s.”

“That won’t happen,” Annaïg said. “Without you, I wouldn’t have known where to start, and now I don’t know where to start again. I need you.”

“Toel will have cooks of more use to you.”

“He won’t,” Annaïg said. “It’s both of us or neither.”

Slyr shook her head. “You’re a strange one,” she said. “But I—” She put her head down.

“What?”

“I said I didn’t care about anyone in Qijne’s kitchen. But if you had died, I think I might be sad.”

Annaïg smiled. “Thanks,” she said.

“Okay,” Slyr said, rising unsteadily. “Do you care which bed?”

“No. You choose.”

Annaïg soon found her own bed. Like the robe, it was a delight, especially after weeks of hard pallets and stone floor.

She was dropping off to sleep, feeling content for the moment, at least in a creature sort of way.

She thought maybe she should open her locket, contact Attrebus, let him know how things had changed.

But then it struck her: Her amulet was gone.

Even with worry as her bedmate, when she woke the next morning she was more rested and felt better than she had in a long time, even before coming to Umbriel. Slyr was still dead to the world, but the frog-creature had returned and was waiting patiently near the table.