Si glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Next day, a knock on the storeroom door announced the arrival of a visitor. Simon expected Danta or Vikki; it turned out to be Vikki, with Jonas at her heels.

She handed over a bag of groceries. ‘Thought you might appreciate some food.’

‘Come in.’ Simon hefted the bag. ‘This is very kind. I wasn’t expecting you to feed us, though.’

‘Consider it a house-warming gift.’

‘Settling in all right?’ Jonas looked around. ‘Not exactly cosy.’

Simon shrugged. ‘We’ll manage.’ He handed the groceries over to Nana while Jonas and Vikki found seats on gas tanks.

‘I’ve been thinking about what you said,’ Jonas said. ‘About the codex. You were right. Eranon shouldn’t have it. What he paid us—Well, it’s not enough is it? We signed up for a simple trip to Sark, not being torn apart by stone monsters.’

Simon sat beside him. ‘I agree, but you’re a little late. What do you propose we do? Steal it back from him?’

Jonas laughed. ‘No, of course not. Impossible. But…’ He shifted on his gas tank. ‘Actually, we could.’

‘Be serious, Jonas.’

‘I am serious. Now I think about it—why not?’

‘Because no one steals from a House, especially House Oryche. The Watcher in the Stone, remember?’

Jonas leaned forward. ‘Sure, sure, but you’re an Earth Adept. You could fool the Watcher, couldn’t you?’

Simon glanced around. Nana was organising their food supplies. Lorie sat cross-legged on the floor, reading the Second Grammar. Sam was curled up in his blankets, asleep. ‘Let’s discuss this outside,’ he said.

They filed out and stood in the corridor. Simon shut the door behind them. ‘I’ve never thought about rigging the Watcher, but I suppose I could. At least in theory, but…’ He raised his hand. ‘Without my fingers, I can’t scribe anything.’

‘That I can help with,’ Vikki said.

‘But even if we can bypass the Watcher, stealing from the House would still be incredibly risky. I have my family to consider.’

Jonas nodded. ‘I understand, but we only need you to get us past the Watcher. You can leave the actual burglary to us.’

‘Us?’ Vikki said.

‘You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,’ Jonas said. ‘But you know about locks and things, right?’

Vikki rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, Light. If I don’t help, you’re going to do something stupid, aren’t you?’

Jonas slipped his arm around her waist. ‘Please, my sweetling.’ He gazed into her eyes, adopting a pleading tone. ‘You know I can’t do it without you. Please, please, please.’

Vikki sighed.

‘I think I know where Eranon would keep the codex,’ Simon said. ‘It’s still mad, though. When do you want to do it?’

‘Tonight,’ Jonas said. ‘No point waiting. No need for a complicated plan, we just go in, grab the codex, and get out.’

Vikki and Simon exchanged glances. She, at least, seemed to realise Jonas was being unreasonably over-confident. Still — it might just work. Jonas knew his way about the House, and since he was a member, he had every right to be there. The only dangerous part was getting into Eranon’s study, and then escaping with the codex.

‘Doesn’t give Vikki much time, for the fingers,’ Simon said.

‘Well, don’t expect anything pretty,’ she said. ‘Functional, I can do.’

‘All right.’ Simon swallowed. It was madness through and through, but all he could think of was having a working hand again. ‘Meet me at the Labyrinth entrance at midnight. I’ll get you past the Watcher. The rest is up to you.’

When Jonas and Vikki left, Simon put Sam to work rearranging the gas tanks.

Nana puttered at meaningless chores, saying nothing. Her eyes were red and puffy, though he hadn’t seen her crying.

It had been hard telling them of Sark’s destruction. He hadn’t dwelt on the details and they hadn’t asked many questions. Each took the news in their own way: Nana, pale and stoic; Lorie, tearful; Sam, silent and withdrawn.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

The children, he trusted, would be all right, but Nana worried him. She had left Sark behind with no expectation of seeing it again, or the friends and family who still lived there. And she’d seemed content with that, or resigned, but Sark had still existed, she could visit it in memory and know life went on there as usual.

He had ripped that comfort from her, and he felt like a murderer. So he kept busy shifting gas tanks to make walls and rooms, and tried to avoid meeting Nana’s eyes.

In the constant light of the cold-lamp, time passed seamlessly. No noise came from the outside world. The temperature never varied. Only hunger and tiredness told Simon it was time for the evening meal.

Nana divided a meat pie from the supplies Vikki had given them. They ate in silence.

‘I have to go out tonight,’ Simon said. ‘I might be gone for a couple of hours.’

Nana nodded.

‘What are you doing?’ Sam asked.

‘Nothing that concerns you.’

After dinner, the children played a dice game. Nana stared at nothing. Simon sat, and paced, and sat again. Jonas’s plan to steal the codex had seemed mad enough this morning, but he’d allowed the younger man’s enthusiasm to override his better judgement.

The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that he should have refused to help. Eranon already wanted him dead. Going anywhere near House Oryche was a bad idea. As the older, and hopefully wiser head, he should have talked Jonas out of it.

Sam yawned.

‘I should go,’ Simon said. It would take half an hour to reach the Labyrinth entrance, longer if he avoided the busier corridors.

Nana touched his arm. ‘Do be careful.’

He patted her hand. ‘I’m always careful. Don’t worry. Go to bed. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

On his way out, he left the door unlatched so he’d be able to get back in without waking them.

Sa glyph [https://i.imgur.com/plK5EWM.png]

Sam woke to a rock ceiling overhead and the steady glow of the cold-lamp. The only sound was Nana’s soft snore.

He didn’t know how long he’d slept. He’d dreamed — of Sark, Sark in summer, and he’d been running between the houses playing tag with his friends. Then the ground began to crumble beneath his feet, falling away into holes, and he’d run faster and faster, more and more desperate and short of breath, his legs like lead. One by one his friends had fallen into the earth and disappeared, until finally he’d fallen too.

Sark was gone. He hadn’t believed it before. It was too big to sink in all at once, that his friends, and their families, and everyone he’d grown up with was gone, all in a moment. But waking from his nightmare, he’d felt the truth of it, like a black wall bearing down on him, crushing all the light.

And now he lay awake with walls around him and stone overhead. All day he’d been stuck in this stinky storeroom, and probably he could look forward to the same tomorrow. How long would they have to stay in hiding? Dad hadn’t said. Weeks, maybe, or forever.

Meanwhile, what was Andra doing? She couldn’t get into the fight den on her own. There was only one way in, and those thugs guarding the door. If Dad hadn’t turned up when he had, Sam might have found out something useful for her. Just bad luck that guy thought he was a pickpocket, when he’d only brushed against him in passing.

If only he could go back there… He could, if he got out of the undercity. But the fight den was underground too — maybe there was a way to get there through the undercity. And if there was another way in, maybe Andra could get in that way too.

With excitement tingling in his toes and fingers, Sam sat up. Nana still snored. Dad wasn’t back yet from wherever he’d gone, might not be back for hours. Time enough for Sam to explore the undercity — just a bit. He wouldn’t go far.

He collected his boots and padded to the door. Dad had left it unlatched. Sam let himself out. Out in the corridor, he put on his boots, and set off to discover a new world.

He tried not to get lost. He tried hard to remember the turns he took, and to look out for differences between the very similar hallways, and to notice the numbers on the walls. He had actually listened to his father’s explanation of what the numbers meant, though it had made a lot more sense at the time than it did now.

In general, he was good at finding his way. He’d navigated the streets of Athanor with ease. The problem with the undercity was all the hallways and junctions looked alike, more or less. And many hallways, it seemed, could have the same numbers, and they intersected at odd angles, and in short, all sense of direction deserted him.

He was lost.

When he realised this, Sam didn’t panic. Only small whiny children panicked when they got lost. He hadn’t been walking for long anyhow, so he had loads of time to find his way back, and if he was really stuck, he’d ask someone. In the meantime, he still had the whole undercity to explore.

He kept walking. The current hallway was long and full of people sleeping, so that he had to tread carefully between blanket-shrouded, snoring bodies. After that came a room where steaming water poured into long troughs. Red-faced women chattered and pounded laundry in a thick fog of humidity, soap, and sulphur.

The time bell rang, louder than he’d heard it before, and when the echoes faded he thought he heard a distant murmur of voices. The thread of noise grew louder as he followed it through the maze, until he found himself in a large square room.

A giant bronze bell hung from the domed ceiling, high over the heads of hundreds of people who didn’t seem to know it was night and they should be asleep. There were stalls selling food and cloth and other things. There was a man strumming a guitar, badly. There was the usual mix of Athanor people, browsing the stalls and talking loudly and drinking.

Sam wandered between the stalls, seeing what there was to see. The smell of cooking sausages drew him to a grill where a small greasy old woman presided over sizzling meat and piles of onions.

He stared. Dinner seemed very long ago. He stuck his hands in his pockets, in case some money had turned up, but found only dirt and a length of string.

‘Are you hungry?’ The question came from a girl about his own age. She had curly brown hair, and brown eyes, and wore a sort of long dress, which was green. More importantly, she had the most beautiful smile he’d ever seen.

His heart bounced so hard it drove all thought from his head. ‘A bit,’ he said.

Her smile made her cheeks dimple. ‘If you are, my friends are handing out bread and soup over there. It’s free.’ She pointed to a group of green-robed teenagers. They were doling out bread to a queue of small children and old people, all dirty and ragged.

‘Oh.’ Sam straightened his coat. ‘I’m not poor.’

‘You don’t have to be.’ She took his hand as if they had been friends for years. ‘Come on. What’s your name? I haven’t seen you here before. I’m Ellise.’