Zaina led the team forward, watching out for traps and other nasty surprises. Nua suspected that there was no need for that, at least for now. They’ve opened the door with Anki’s ether, and so, according to the king, they were “authorized”, whatever that meant. The fire dancer caught her sight, though, with her nimble movements and perceptive glances cast at the shadows and crevices where the traps could be placed. Nua thought she could learn this kind of “city scouting” as well. If she really wanted to become a master thief, Zaina would be a better teacher than Hessa.

Shortly after that, they arrived at an intersection. It was a circular chamber adorned with magic lamps. Marble benches, now partly cracked, were located next to the walls, indicating it was a waiting room of some sort, but the first thing the party had noticed was a human-sized sculpture in the middle.

It was a statue of a woman with a serene, understanding face and a dog at her side. It had been damaged in the earthquake – both arms of the statue were fractured, and the dog lacked a tail. Still, Nua couldn’t stop but wonder at the lifelike details. Her hair, her face with little wrinkles showing her smile, the folds of the fabric of her robe, everything has been carved with painstaking care. She was also painted, though the dye faded over time, leaving only faint traces of color on the grey marble. If not for the damage, she would look almost alive.

“Ninisina Nammu,” Anki’s voice cracked a little. “The goddess of this city.”

“She was someone you knew.”

“Yes.”

The tone of his voice, and the pain behind it, were obvious. Nua cast him a long glance.

“You loved her.”

“She was the blood of my blood,” the king answered, almost choking on his words. “So yes, you could say that I loved her.”

He went silent and vanished out of Nua’s sight.

So that was his daughter. The only daughter, most probably; after all, he told her that it was hard for the Autarchs to have children. Nua remembered that she was a reputed healer, and as it turned out, the goddess of the city of medical wonders. He had hoped she would cure the plague, then he woke up after a thousand years to the old world forgotten and destroyed, and that’s how he knew that she had failed.

Was he looking for her remains?

That was so unlike his usual practical attitude. But except for being a practical person, he was also mad with grief, only hiding it most of the time.

Now he went quiet, although, at that very moment, she could use some of his help. The remaining members of her team clustered around the statue, waiting for the decision on how to proceed. Apparently, it depended on Quintus. The poet downed a vial of ether, and was already carefully distributing the faint, lavender power along the channels of his body. Nua watched him make the effort. Perhaps he needed more training than her, but he was managing just fine, showing years of experience behind his actions. Unlike the girl, he didn’t lose a wisp of it – everything he swallowed was about to be put to good use. She was making mental notes to mimic some of his techniques later on. Maybe their talents were minor, but they made them go a long way.

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“Now,” Quintus said. “Everybody hush for a moment. I need to listen what the Muses have to say.”

He closed his eyes. Nua focused, in case anything appeared that looked like a Muse – a minor Mycean goddess, or so she has been told. Nothing like this happened, so it was possibly a metaphor. Quintus didn’t explain how his Technique exactly worked.

After a moment, he looked at them again and nodded to himself.

“So?” Oswald urged.

“There’s a passage on the left,” he said. “The others are blocked. I can hear a large chamber at the end of it, the size of at least that of a barn. I’ve heard the vibrations of stone, but there is also metal and glass, and I think some of it could be etheric. Danger or treasure, I cannot tell.”

“That would be my job,” Zaina stretched. “How long can you keep at it?”

“For hours, if I don’t use the ether for anything else. Might be enough for this whole trip,” he hesitated. “Remember that the Muses do not sense living creatures.”

Zaina nodded.

“I know, and that, in turn, would be Oswald’s job. There’s probably nothing alive down here except for us, though.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Quintus answered. “I am telling you this because I think I’ve heard movement in the air. The ruins are not isolated from the outside anymore. We’ve come from a stairway that was never open, but who knows if there is another entrance that formed during the earthquake? Take a look at this statue,” he pointed. “I know a lot about art, you know. The paint is gone; humidity was at work here.”

Nua watched the statue once again, then something came to her mind. She frowned.

“This is a non-etheric statue since it broke over time,” she said. “And it’s probably the goddess, or the matron, or a ruler of this place. And yet it’s not made in a special way. It means we’re not in a special place. The real spoils are not nearby.”

“Anything that was not important for the ancients could be precious for us,” pointed out Raya. “Or deadly.”

Nua thought so as well. Right now, she could really use Anki’s scouting. She tried to summon him – she knew that she could do that almost from the beginning. She could even sense his presence right now, a cloud of dark mood hanging in the vicinity of the sculpture. He chose to remain silent, though. With the realization that this city made the king less reliable than usual, she felt a pang of unease.

If the road ahead was really dangerous, he would tell her, right?

“Anki, pretty please, do not space out here. At least come back when we’re nearby. This large room sounds like something that could kill us.”

She wasn’t sure if he registered her words. The party moved on, Zaina leading them once again. They traveled at a snail’s pace with their scout stopping every several steps to investigate a door frame or all the suspicious areas where the walls have collapsed. At some point, her efforts paid off. Part of the ruined corridor turned out to be lined with loose wires, apparently torn out of the wall, and when she looked closely, she told them all to watch out.

“They have traces of ether,” she said. “Better not to touch them.”

Nua exerted her Sight and noticed a faint halo around the copper and golden cables. She wouldn’t see it without Zaina’s warning. That was a drawback to her night vision – the scarce magic lamps on the walls and the oil lamps the party carried were enough to her to make the surroundings almost as bright as an interior of a well-lit inn was for the others. It made her overlook the ether in the wires. She put down a mental note to pay attention to that, too.

Finally, they got to the entrance of the chamber Quintus was talking about, and the mere sight of it was enough to make them all gasp with awe. The central part of the ceiling was collapsed, wires and metal rods sticking out, but there was still plenty of space left to explore. And at first sight, the whole chamber was filled with human-sized cylinders made of metal and glass.

Suddenly, Anki came to life.

“Oh, subdermal therapy tanks,” he said. “I wonder if any of them still works.”