Taking the barrier down had also removed the gloomy shadows that had choked the cavern on our way in. That made the trip back a lot easier and went a long way toward convincing the members of my merry little band to follow me through the passage to the valley of Amankala.

The twin moons, however, still freaked everyone out.

“What the fuck is going on here?” Jaga demanded as soon as we stepped out of the cave.

“That is a question for Ryasina.” I gestured toward the witch who’d convinced me to come on this wild ride in the first place.

The Wave Serpent steepled her fingers in front of her chest, gave me a little shrug, then smiled.

“Witch shit,” she offered with a curse. “Or, more accurately, magi shit. The protectors of Amankala were very serious about their duties. It appears they moved the city to escape the corruption. Or perhaps the Midnight Emperor’s grasp threatened to claim them.”

“There you go: magic,” I said to Jaga. I hid my displeasure over this development behind a stoic mask. If Amankala had been moved to another world, it wouldn’t be much of a defensive position for my forces. I offered up a silent prayer to the Blood God to please not fuck us over too hard, and hoped we’d be able to figure this out before it was too late. “Do me a favor and keep the mercenaries from losing their shit.”

“As long as they see some money soon, they’ll be fine,” the riverboat pilot assured me. She had an uncanny knack for judging the attitudes amongst the mercenaries. “But it needs to be soon.”

We sent five of the mercenaries who looked the most shaken back to guard the sampans and their pilots while the rest of us set up camp. I’d be a liar if I said we weren’t all a little bit spooked by spending the night on what seemed like a completely different world than the one we’d woken up on, but I figured it was best to give everyone a chance to get used to the weirdness before we headed into the city the next morning.

Because there was no telling what we would find beyond that wall, and I wanted to space out the weirdness as much as possible. It would be a lot easier for the mercenaries to accept two moons if they didn’t also have to face down a bunch of weird monsters immediately afterward. A good night’s rest would help everyone settle in, and then we could tackle our hunt for the witch.

“You’re up early,” Aja said when I eased out from between her and Ryasina shortly after the sun rose. “Want some company?”

“Not for this,” I said. “Get some more rest. I’m just going out to clear my head.”

“Come back to bed,” she urged. “I’ve got something more fun in mind.”

She rolled onto her back and cupped her hands behind her head, baring her heavy breasts and jutting pink nipples. Her eyes burned with naked hunger, and the way she pinched her lower lip between her teeth reminded me of just how good it was to be me.

“Maybe just for a little while,” I said.

Later, much later than I’d expected to, I slipped out from under the pile of spirits and their witch mistress, all of us a little weak in the knees and pleasantly recharged.

“You three are always making me late,” I teased, patting Ayo’s naked ass. “Jaga’s going to be pissed I wasn’t up at the crack of dawn.”

“She should have slept in here with us,” Ryasina said with a grin. “I offered, but she wanted to sleep outside.”

“Bet she doesn’t tonight,” Ayo giggled.

“Bet she kicks your little blue ass for holding us up,” the riverboat pilot said as she poked her head through our tent’s flap. “You horny fuckers make enough noise to wake the dead.”

I intercepted Jaga before she could come into the tent and make good on her promise, gave her a quick kiss, and led her back outside with my hand in hers.

“How’re the troops holding up?” I asked her.

“Not bad,” she said with a shrug. “None of them are particularly pleased about the two moons thing, but they’ve seen plenty of weird shit in their time. Some of them hunted spirits after the war. But you need to get them some pocket money. Soon.”

“That’s the plan,” I said. “Once we find our way into the city, they should be able to loot whatever they can find as long as they remember the deal.”

“They know,” Jaga confirmed. “As many coins as they can carry, but any scripted items or gemstones have to come to you.”

“You got it,” I said. “How long until they’re ready to move?”

“I let most of ’em sleep in a little bit once I heard the three of you playing slip-and-slide with your privates,” Jaga said. “Not sure why nobody came to find me for those shenanigans, but whatever. The cooks will be finished with breakfast in the next ten minutes or so. I sent scouts to the wall at sunup, so those unlucky bastards should be back soon.”

It was nice to see the plan coming together at last. Jaga was a regular wizard at organizing everything, and I had to wonder if she had some military training she hadn’t confessed.

My only concern was the connection business. I still wasn’t sure how I’d be able to bond with the Lapis Scarab and open the gate again.

“Don’t scowl like that,” Jaga said. “It freaks people out.”

“I’m not scowling,” I said. “I’m thinking.”

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

“Whatever you call it, stop making that face.” Jaga grinned and kissed me on the cheek. “Looks like the scouts are heading in.”

Sure enough, a small group of lightly armored mercenaries emerged from the thick mist and hauled ass over to Jaga and me. We cleared a spot on the ground and crouched around the hide map they’d sketched on a scrap of well-worn buckskin with charcoal sticks.

“There’s no way around the wall,” the lead scout, a rail-thin bald man, said. “The wall around Amankala reaches from one side of the valley to the other.”

“But there are some gaps,” a stocky woman with a nose like a hatchet’s blade said. She stabbed her fingers at some X’s they’d drawn along the arc of the wall. “The wall’s come down in a few places. Two of ’em are wide enough and close enough to the ground we can cross without any trouble.”

“We’ll head in through here,” I said, picking the nearest gap as our point of entry. The scouts all nodded.

We broke for a breakfast of hard bread, salt jerky, and some eggs that could have used another few minutes over a fire. With our bellies full, the team made its way over the first wall and into the ruins a couple of hours before the sun was at its zenith.

“Everybody stay close for the moment.” I raised my voice to get the attention of all the mercenaries. “We don’t know what’s in here, and until we find out I don’t want you all running around searching for loot. The last thing we need is for someone to stumble into a trap or trip an alarm.”

None of the mercenaries were very happy to be reminded about the possible dangers, but they kept their grumbling to a minimum. I led the way, with Ryasina, Aja, and Ayo next to me. Jaga hung back a bit to keep the sellswords in line, a job she seemed to enjoy because it afforded her the opportunity to vent her temper whenever she felt like it.

“No one’s home,” Aja said as we headed through the outskirts of Amankala. “I don’t smell anyone, anyway.”

“There’s a lot of power here,” Ayo commented. “I can feel a dream meridian just beneath us.”

“I feel it, too,” I said. The thrum of power ran right under my feet, straight along the middle of the street. “Looks like whoever built this place lined the streets up with the meridians.”

“We could follow this path straight to the nexus,” Aja said.

“Not if we want to live,” I chuckled. “I’d bet a whole sack of imperials that the main roads are covered by some powerful defenses. Let’s stick to the side streets.”

As we wound through alleys and narrow byways, we passed abandoned homes and empty businesses. The structures were still in good repair, though they’d suffered some erosion from the passage of years and the cloying mist that clung to everything. All the buildings had been shuttered, their doors closed and locked. If the city was really abandoned, its residents had left it in a remarkably orderly fashion.

I didn’t like it.

“This isn’t how people abandon a city,” I said to the witch. “What the fuck happened here?”

“That is a very good question,” Ryasina said. “I was told Amankala was overrun by the Midnight Emperor’s forces, and the magi sacrificed themselves to preserve their witch goddess. I appear to have been misinformed.”

I glanced back at Jaga and the mercenaries, offering them a phony smile and a wave to let them know everything was totally fine, just having a little chat, don’t mind us.

“Did anyone else notice these statues?” Ayo inclined her head toward a shadowy corner of a small building.

What appeared to be a skeleton carved out of lapis lazuli was nestled in the gloom. The deep blue statue was shot through with threads and flecks of gold that glittered under the small sun in the sky above us. It held a scimitar in one hand and a shield in the other, and its skin was polished to a high sheen.

“I didn’t,” I admitted. “How many have we passed?”

“At least a dozen,” the spirit said. “Maybe more. It looks like there’s at least one at every intersection, hidden in the shadows near the buildings.”

“Shit,” I grumbled. “Just what we don’t need.”

I focused my spirit sight on the nearest statue and cursed again. The construct didn’t have a core, but a thread of blue shio sprouted from the crown of its head and soared out over the tops of the buildings toward the city center. Other threads rose above the buildings and headed in the same direction. It was impossible to be certain from where I stood, but I was willing to bet my left nut those threads were connected to more statues.

Lots of statues.

“This is not good,” I said. I put on a happy face, then turned back to address the rest of my team.

“You may have noticed the statues that we’ve passed.” I pointed toward the nearest lapis figure. “Don’t touch them. In fact, stay as far away from them as you can.”

I had no idea what the statues could do, but I suspected they were guardians of some sort. The shio threads probably bound them to a central control somewhere. Maybe we’d get lucky and they wouldn’t come after us.

And maybe eels would shoot out of my nose.

“You heard the man,” Jaga shouted at the mercenaries. “Don’t touch anything until he gives you the go-ahead to start looting.”

“And when’s that going to be?” a hawk-faced woman with an angry scar across her brow shouted right back. “We were promised coins, not bullshit.”

“I don’t know when we can start looting,” I said honestly. “This is all as new to me as it is to you. My hope is we’ll get to the fun stuff soon.”

The mercenaries grumbled amongst themselves at that and eyed me suspiciously. If I were in their shoes, I probably would’ve done the same. They’d been on the road for two weeks without a single coin to show for it, and now, after we’d reached our target, I’d told them not to loot the place. That had to be frustrating.

“This is some bullshit,” muttered a man in the front ranks of the sellswords. He had a ferret’s eyes and a perpetual scowl that pulled down to the left thanks to a puckered twist of scar tissue on that side of his mouth. “What you’re telling us is—”

“I’m telling you to calm the fuck down and wait a little bit,” I said and stepped up to Jaga’s side. “I’m asking you politely to not do something that will get you killed.”

“And what if we don’t want to wait?” a tall woman with a wicked battle axe asked. “What’s to stop us from taking what we can and going home?”

Being king was turning out to be a giant pain in my ass. The mercenaries didn’t seem to understand I wanted to save their lives, not throw them away on the promise of some shiny trinkets. But if I lost control of them, then at least some of them were going to sneak off and loot whatever they could find anyway. That would almost certainly trigger the lapis statues. I needed to make sure they understood what a terrible idea that was.

“I can’t stop you from being stupid,” I called out. “But I can guarantee you that Amankala has more tricks up its sleeve than you can get past on your own.

“I can help you avoid those and get rich. Or, you can go off and do your own thing. Kick open doors, crack open some chests. Shit, who knows what you might find? If you do that, though, and you trigger the city’s defenses, you’re on your own. I won’t lift a finger to help anyone who breaks ranks.”

The sellswords glared at me, and more than a few of them fingered the hilts of their weapons as if spoiling for a fight. I had no doubt I could take any of them in a fair fight because not a single one of them had even advanced to an earthbound core.

If I did that, though, I wouldn’t be much of a leader. I’d be a tyrant. I didn’t want that.

Finally, the tension leaked out of the air, and the mercenaries relaxed and waited for my next command. I’d avoided a rebellion, at least for the moment.

“Let’s get moving,” Jaga whispered to me. “You bought yourself some more time, but I wouldn’t try that shit again. They’re all on edge, and I can’t guarantee they won’t lose their shit soon.”

That was just fucking awesome. I turned away from the mercenaries, circled my hand in the air over my head to let them know we were moving out, and went deeper into Amankala.

I’d gone almost ten steps before I ran into the first trap.