“That’s madness. We’d have to go up the stairs. Virine …”

“We’ll have to chance it. We can’t go outside, and we can’t stay here, that much is certain. But the roofs …”

Layanna was watching him. “You have an idea, don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, maybe, I just might, but it will depend on luck as much as anything else.”

She sort of smiled. This time it looked better. “I think we’re due for a bit of luck, don’t you?”

They moved to the stairs and up them, and Avery was glad to have the screeching, thrumming and altogether unpleasant music recede behind him. At the top of the stairs was a door, and beyond this a room with a desk manned by a beautiful woman whose kinky black hair had been arranged in long tendrils. She had evidently applied some alchemical compound to the hair, for the tendrils actually contrived to move, however sluggishly, giving the impression of snakes writhing on her head. Another devotee of the snake cult, Avery thought. Behind her stood three velvet-curtained doorways, and beside each one a strong-looking individual, two men and one woman. None of them were glabren, Avery was happy to note, but they were obviously there to restrict access to the rooms beyond nonetheless.

The woman started to smile at Avery’s group, but her face fell when her eyes landed on Coleel. “Mister Coleel,” she said, in tones of both awe and fear—not fear of him, Avery felt certain, but for him.

“That’s me. Listen, I’m in a hurry. Can my friends and I have a pass to the rooms? No need to let us choose our own escort—we’ll find one ourselves—or two, if the mood strikes.”

“But … you can’t be here,” she said, with a quick dart of her head to the nearest goon. None of the guards seemed inclined to do more than stand there; they weren’t paid to think or carry out company policy. “I mean, I’ve always wanted to meet you—” Though she was dark of skin, Avery thought she was blushing “—but Sir Virine … it’s not safe for you here.”

“So he’s in, then?” Coleel shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. My friends and I are really in the mood for company. Just, uh, do me a favor and don’t spread word that we’re here.”

Hoping it would speed things along, Avery deposited what he thought was a generous amount of money on the desk. The receptionist, if that’s what she was, stared at it blankly for a moment, studied Coleel once again, then began counting the bills. While she worked, she said, “I really wish you would just leave. If you won’t, though …” She inclined her head to the left doorway. “Go down that way. But … he has eyes everywhere.”

“Understood.”

Coleel tore the velvet curtain aside and pushed through. After a moment of hesitation, Avery and Layanna joined him. A hall lined by doorways stretched before them, and they started down it. Avery saw a man leave a room, then turn to kiss a woman on the cheek. She smiled, and her purple eyes flashed. She closed the door, and the man shouldered his way past Coleel, Avery and Layanna, back toward the reception room.

“A glabren whorehouse,” Avery muttered, disgusted.

“Do any of the girls have free will—or at least awareness?” Layanna said.

“I don’t know much about the process, to be honest,” Coleel said. “There are many legends about it, but they often conflict. He controls them with his mind somehow, that’s all I know. And there’s not just girls here. There’s boys, too. And men. And pre-humans.”

Grunts, gasps and moans came from the rooms as they past them, and Avery tried to tune the sounds out. He wondered what the attraction would be in making love to a mindless automaton—or, worse, a person that had someone else looking through their eyes. Then again, that woman had smiled at her john—had the smile been genuine? Had it been given by the woman or whoever controlled her, presumably Virine? Surely one person couldn’t control very many glabren at the same time.

“How many are there—glabren?” he said. “Hundreds?”

“Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. They’re used all throughout the city. Even the Octunggen occupiers use them. For office functionaries and canon fodder, mainly.”

“And Virine exerts control over them all? Surely that’s impossible.”

“Oh, I doubt he tells each one what to do every moment of the day. He probably just winds them up and lets them perform their functions, like clockwork. But I don’t really know. To tell you the truth, I don’t want to know.”

They took a cross-passage to another hall, looking for a stairway up. Instead, the hall spilled out into a large open room, about half the size as the cavernous club room on the first floor. Here naked glabren paraded one at a time down a catwalk, their purple eyes staring blankly while their bodies swaggered and strutted. Most were human, a few infected, and one, to Avery’s shock, was a red-feathered Nisaar, one of the bird-people. Avery saw that its chest, belly and face weren’t red but a myriad of colors, blue, green and gold being the most prominent. Its eyes, however, were just as purple as the others on the catwalk. When one glabren had reached the pinnacle of the stage, it would pause, and those in the audience would lean forward or peer through glasses to get a better look. As Avery watched, a bidding war broke out over one particularly handsome-looking young man, whose body glistened with the oils it had been covered with.

“Selling the glabren to private bidders,” Coleel whispered. “Or at least selling the time left in their contracts.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Layanna said.

They found a stairwell and made their way to the third and final floor. At the top stood two glabren bouncers, both large men bearing semi-automatic rifles.

“Halt,” one said, as Avery and the others approached. Coleel put his head down, evidently not wanting to be recognized, and again Avery wondered if Virine could see through his puppets’ eyes; evidently Coleel wondered the same thing. “What do you want?” The glabren’s voice came as if from far away, slow and monotone. His blank purple eyes stared at nothing but seemed to see all.

“We have urgent business,” Avery said. “You’d best not detain us.”

“State your names. We will communicate them to the Master.”

So their minds do link directly to him. But not necessarily continuously.

“Certainly,” Layanna said, and stepped forward. As the least threatening-looking of the three (or so Avery told himself), she was able to get right up to the guards before they stopped her. She came to a halt before the guard on the left, then turned back to Coleel. He’d been trying not to look up, but at her cough he did so. She caught the merchant’s gaze and indicated the guard on the right. After a moment, he nodded. Avery, realizing what they were up to, was insulted Layanna had not asked for his help. Then again …

“Your identification,” the guard said.

“I have it right—” Layanna made as if to reach for something in a pocket, then grabbed onto the man’s rifle with both hands. He tried to tear it lose, but she clung to it with a strength born of desperation.

The other guard began to raise his own weapon. Losg Coleel barreled forward, his weight crushing the guard against the wall. He ripped the weapon free and struck the glabren over the head with its wooden butt, and the glabren collapsed, his purple eyes closing.

Meanwhile Layanna was losing the fight with the first glabren. Avery leapt forward and grabbed the rifle, too, shoving its lethal end away from Layanna’s face, which is where the guard had been trying to aim it. Coleel arrived, struck this guard too over the head and, when the man didn’t go down, struck him again. The guard fell, bleeding from the head, and Avery retrieved the gun. Weapons were still foreign to Layanna, it seemed. She was the weapon, and it apparently offended her to have to use a gun, as she had made no move to take it.

“Nice … work,” she told Coleel.

He nodded, sweat dripping from his broad brow. “I only hope … they didn’t send off a message …”

“Let’s get these two out of the way,” Avery said. “It’s lucky no shots went off. We might get out of this yet.” No one seemed to have seen the fight, and he couldn’t hear the sound of footsteps approaching.

They found a nearby room, checked to see if it was empty, then dragged the two guards inside. That done, the three moved off down the halls. The third level proved less busy than the second but by no means deserted. Hard-looking men and women came and went from various rooms, some clutching briefcases. A few were accompanied by bodyguards. Other bosses, Avery thought, either partners with Virine in this venture or some other. Some of the criminals gave Avery’s group a look of vague interest, but that was it, and he wasn’t surprised. There would be many strange comings and goings in the Ezzez underworld.

As the group moved through the corridors of green stone, he noticed that they were obliged to pass several long mirrors with elaborate, serpent-themed frames. Gooseflesh crept up his arms, but he wasn’t sure why, not then. Something about those mirrors looked familiar, though.

At last they reached a staircase leading up to what must be the roof, and Avery stared at the door above with barely contained eagerness. It would be all too good to get out of this place. He’d been feeling more and more claustrophobic as they marched their way up through the Snake’s Tongue, and he was almost desperate to be out. Looking about them to make sure no one was following, they started up the stairs. Coleel went first, with Layanna next, then Avery. Coleel reached out a hand toward the door knob, grasped it, took a breath, and turned it.

“Here goes,” he said, as though in prayer, and swung the door open.

Purple eyes glared down at him. Two rows of glabren huddled beyond the doorway, silhouetted against the stars, and yet Avery could still see the gleam of their eyes.

“Damn,” he said, feeling as though the floor had dropped out from below him. We came so close.

Footsteps behind him.

Avery spun. Two groups of glabren spilled from two different rooms to either side of the staircase. Avery began to lift his assault rifle. A hand seized his wrist. Another tore the gun away. Something struck him on the side of the head. He fell to one knee.

A cry from above. Glabren must have attacked Coleel, too. Avery jammed a hand into his pocket, going for the pistol, but strong arms lifted him up and dashed him against a wall. Pain filled him. Vaguely he was aware of other hands rooting through his clothes, removing the pistol, then—No! he tried to scream, but could not find the voice—the god-killing knife.

Layanna was shouting something, from worlds away it sounded like, but then Avery heard the strike of flesh and she fell silent.

Something hit him again. A bright flash of fire filled his synapses. Awareness faded. The world blurred, became a mist, then nothing.