“When he’s done, we’ll send him to you.”

Pete withdrew, and Avery returned his attention to the window. Lights of small boats bobbed on the water, mist curling around them. “It’s kind of beautiful here,” he said. “Strange, but I think I like it.”

“Yeah,” Janx said. “Mu took me here a few times.”

“There’s other cities, too, scattered about,” said Hildra.

“Really?” Avery lifted his eyebrows. The idea was evocative. “Are they all independent, I wonder? Or are they all like city-states?”

“Oh, there’s a common lord and master, all right,” Janx said.

“I had no idea.”

“Would I lie about the Sewer King?”

Avery almost smiled. So did Layanna, sitting across from him.

A sly gleam entered Janx’s eyes. “Y’know, one time me and Mu were in Doxer, that’s another city down here, an’ we met the King his own self. That’s right. Me and Mu were brought to his palace.”

“Palace, you say?” Avery kept his face straight.

“Well, so we were brought before the Sewer King, an’ he says to us, he says, I hear you’re some capable boys. I need you to do a job for me. See, my daughter’s been kidnapped by the White-Fash—that was the boogeyman of the town, said to be hundreds of years old, he lived in the tunnels no one went to—and so the King, he says, I need for you boys to get her back. Well, that started one of the weirdest adventures of me life ...”

The group listened amiably, throwing in a question here and there and laughing occasionally, and Janx hadn’t finished his story long when the door cracked open and an old man stuck his head in.

“I’m Jeffers. Wanted to see me?”

They beckoned him in, and the wizened mutant, who had suckered tentacles for arms, three on his right, one on his left, entered cautiously, looking about him as if this might be a trap of some sort. Avery understood that he made his living ferrying messages and deliveries from one isolated township to another, traveling the eerie labyrinths of the sewers; he probably wasn’t used to the company of people, especially strangers from topside.

“How c’n I help you?” he said, pulling up a chair. He had a tangled beard with what looked like barnacles poking through on one side, and one of his eyes bulged like a fish’s.

“We understand you’re the one who found the bodies,” Layanna said. “The ones that were dismembered, some burned by acid.”

“That’s right. A terrible thing it was.”

“Can you tell us more about what you saw?”

Jeffers rubbed a tentacle across his forehead. “What exactly is it you wanna know?”

They traded glances conspiratorially, and at last Layanna said, “There’s a ... creature. A being. We believe it’s responsible for the murders and that if you told us more about how you found the bodies, it might help us find the killer.”

Jeffers stared at them. “You wanna find the Collossum? You’re mad!”

This time the looks they threw each other were surprised, not conspiratorial.

“You know about the Collossum down here?” Hildra said.

“’course. Everyone does.”

“Michael said it was common knowledge,” Avery remembered, “but I thought ...” To Jeffers, he said, “What do you know of it?”

Jeffers hitched his chin toward the window. “Only what the priests’ve said.”

“Priests?”

Jeffers seemed perplexed. “Yeah. ‘course. Shit, you folk don’t know that either?” He rose and pointed to some lights shining on the other side of town. “That’s where they are, the priests of the creature. That’s the church of the Collossum.”

Fifteen minutes later they stood outside of (but not too close to) a squat, rounded structure with the symbol of a trident over the door. Low singing came from within.

“Think they’re sacrificin’ somebody?” Janx said.

“They must do other things besides human sacrifice,” Avery said, though, even as he said it, he could not discount the possibility.

“Damn it all,” Hildra said. “A Collie church here in Muscud.” To Layanna, she said, “Is the Collossum there?”

“No. I would sense it.”

“Everyone knows its location’s secret,” Jeffers said.

Avery peered at him seriously. “I think it’s time you told us your story.”

The old man sighed. “A few weeks ago, I was travelin’ to Vosli, that’s another town down here if ya didn’t know, and as I was goin’ up the channel a buncha bodies come down toward me, driftin’ on the current. A whole mess of ‘em, all as bad as that one I gave Boss Vassas. I was so scared I wouldn’t go the rest of the way. Didn’t want to come on whatever’d done that. About a week later I got up the nerve, though. Vosli was gone. Blackened. Twisted. Half sunken. Bodies lyin’ in the streets, bein’ chewed at by bugs and ratkin.” Jeffers looked off, as if seeing it anew, and his face filled with horror. “I heard a sound. It were a boy, all dirty and starved. He’d been trapped in the rubble when it all went down and had been spared, or maybe whatever did it wanted the world to know and left him alive. He’d gotten free, anyway.”

“What’d he say?” Janx asked.

“Said a few weeks before it happened, some priests had come to town, preachin’ a new religion. The New Order, they called it. They worshipped some heathen god. They tried to pressure the town mayor to let ‘em build a chapel there, to help spread the word, if ya follow me. The mayor told ‘em where to stick it. A few days later, it came. The boy didn’t get a good look at it, but he heard the screams and the destruction right enough.”

“What happened to him, the boy?” Hildra said. “You bring him back here, or to one of the other towns?”

Jeffers seemed reluctant. “I tried. He wouldn’t come. Said the ghosts of his family talked to him there. He wouldn’t leave Vosli.”

“Poor kid.”

“Yeah. Well, after word spread of what happened there, no one went against the priests when they came to visit. Pretty much every town agreed to host a chapel if the people of the New Order’d spare them. But the priests keep the lair of their god a secret. They’ve only said it resides at the holy city that’s the local center of their faith, somewhere here in the sewers. This one in Muscud’s just what they call a satellite. A branch.”

Layanna bit her lip. “So Vassas struck a deal with the Collossumists. That’s why he didn’t want to talk to us about it.”

“He only did what he had to, to prevent Muscud from becomin’ another Vosli.”

“Should we confront him?” said Avery.

“Don’t you dare,” said Hildra. “He’d slit our throats.”

“Maybe. Besides, he obviously hasn’t converted, himself, otherwise he’d wear a trident necklace or show some other sign of the faith.”

“Not to mention he would’ve turned us over by now,” Janx said.

“Maybe we should waylay a priest,” Hildra suggested. “Get the bastard to tell us where the main Collossum temple is.”