Jeffers nodded. “Hold your breath when we get close. If I do this wrong, you don’t wanna be breathin’. They spew this gas what clogs you up, lines yer lungs with snot and mucus. Suf’cates ya.”

“Death by mucus,” Avery said. “Lovely.”

“I think I hear ‘em behind us,” Janx said. “We’d better hurry this up.”

“Have to be careful now.” Jeffers’s voice was low. “Approach ‘em too fast, with too much noise, they’ll spew right off.”

He shucked the oar-fins off one of his tentacles. He had a long pole he must use for shallow water, and his tentacle curled around it, lifting it up.

Avery tensed. If he harpoons that thing—

They were very close to the first slugmine, just a dim, glistening mound in the darkness. Its filmy eye stared at them but showed no reaction. Avery wondered if it actually saw them. Possibly it was blind like many of the cavefish he’d read about.

But no.

Jeffers leaned forward with his pole. Delicately, almost lovingly, he prodded the pole against the monster’s eye. Avery wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first, but then he realized the slugmine’s eye was covered by a membrane of some sort. Jeffers peeled back the membrane.

Then, in one smooth motion, his third tentacle jabbed a flashlight into the thing’s eye and flipped it on at full brightness.

A strange watery shriek filled the tight hall. The slugmine flailed about, then shot away from the boat, squid-like. Alerted by its shriek, the slugmine’s mates—lovers?—panicked and fled. The whole mass of them squirted around the bend, screaming wetly.

Jeffers threw back his head and laughed, and laughed. He laughed so much he had to wipe his eyes.

Avery watched him with new respect. The old man had learned how to manipulate the monsters’ flight-or-fight reflex—in his favor.

“Don’t worry,” Jeffers said, when he could. “Soon as we get gone, the things’ll be back. Horny buggers. Whoever’s chasin’ us won’t know how to send ‘em off. They’ll come roarin’ down the channel with their boats, the ‘mines’ll get riled up and start spewin’. Wish I were here to see it.”

Avery took a breath. “Please, just take us to the holy city.”

Chapter 7

The darkness had begun to oppress Avery. It had a tendency to seep into a person, he found, a way of getting into one’s mind. How did the denizens of the sewers survive down here? Then again, they grouped in villages and lit them with light. Only the ones half-mad already, like Jeffers, traveled the lonely ways between the hubs of proto-civilization with any frequency.

The lap of water echoed softly on the tight stone walls, and Avery’s arms ached. It had been his turn to row, and he had been at it for too long. At the bow, the boatman shone a lantern, while to the stern, Janx carried the shotgun across his lap and tried not to yawn. They’d been journeying through the dark for hours since the incident with the slugmines. They’d used the motor sparingly, less and less the closer they drew to their destination, stopping several times to partake of the food they’d brought with them, and to rest.

“There!” the boatman said, and quickly doused the lantern. “Light ahead.”

At first, Avery didn’t see it, but then he made out illumination flickering off the walls, growing stronger with each stroke. More than that—noise. People were ahead, a good number of them. The little boat reached the end of the tunnel, and Avery could tell, even before he saw it, that a large cistern chamber waited beyond, and he was not surprised to see, when they rounded the final bend, that a town bobbed on the surface of the chamber just where Evers’s map said it should be. But he was surprised at its construction.

The holy city or township of the Collossum didn’t look like a town at all, really, but a huge ungainly block of sheet metal, rotten wood and various debris all lashed together in two stained, listing stories. It was all of a piece, with no individual buildings or even any streets visible. The town was one great structure, albeit irregular and lumpy, with sections thrusting out at places, others rearing in towers, the whole of it composed of many different colors and materials. Glistening flail nests dotted it and bats swept about its squat spires. Slowly Avery understood. This place must have started off as a city like Muscud, but over time the locals, to maximize their limited space, had incorporated it all under one roof. Why waste room on streets and squares and individual dwellings when they could make it all one great big shared affair? It was, Avery had to admit, logically the best use of the space.

When he’d adjusted to the oddness of the town, he began rowing forward again.

“So what’s the plan?” Janx said, keeping his voice low, not that there was anyone in earshot. If there were sentries about, they were toward the other side of town, the side Evers and his people had approached. Avery had hoped that would be the case and was relieved to find it so; the Collossum expected them to come again, in greater numbers, from the same direction they had before. It could not know they were aware of the existence of a rear entrance. It probably wasn’t aware. It would know there were some tunnels back here, but it likely wouldn’t know where they went. It seemed few did.

“We’ll sneak inside,” Avery said, speaking low. “Pretend to have come for the event if we’re questioned, then break away and go about our business. Locate the relic Davic gave Sheridan, steal or destroy it, find out what the nature of the event is—put a stop to it if we can—and, also if we can, kill the Collossum.”

“Lotta ‘ifs’ in there,” Janx said, then tensed as they neared the docks, setting the shotgun down and bringing out a large knife. Jeffers picked up the shotgun, then hunkered low as if giving Janx room to spring should he need it.

They crossed the small watery clearing around the city in silence, at least for their part. The city itself was a raucous din of noise and songs, plates clattering and people talking. A narrow walkway, interrupted in spots by juts of the town’s outer wall overhanging the water, encompassed the perimeter, and Jeffers tied the boat up at one of the jetties, having to squeeze between two others. Boats laid siege to the town, empty and, just slightly, rocking. The town was full. Whatever event was going on was big.

Quietly, Jeffers nodded to Avery and Janx. The two stepped onto the walkway. Boards creaked under them, hardly noticeable over the din. Jeffers remained on the boat, as agreed, shotgun ready.

In single file, Avery and Janx made their way along the rickety walkway, at times having to navigate around a rotten board or an unwholesome gap, until they came to a metal door overgrown with verdigris. Its knob didn’t budge when Janx turned it, but when he put his shoulder to it it gave easily enough. He and Avery slipped through, into darkness.

Avery switched on his flashlight, which was one of his very few supplies. It was this, a pistol and the god-killing knife. Nothing else. Playing the light around the room, he saw stained, sagging walls covered in peeling wallpaper fifty years out of date. Flies buzzed around something in the corner—not a body as Avery had first feared, but human waste. Couldn’t the offending party have gone a few feet more?

Janx shoved through another doorway, and Avery followed, finding himself in a narrow, tilting hallway lined with alchemical lamps to drive the stench away. Not wanting to seem as if he’d just come from the channels, he removed his nosegay.

“Which direction?” Janx said softly.

Avery frowned, staring one way, then another. Down the first direction came the sound of noise and activity. Down the other, quiet.

He chose the quiet, but almost immediately bumped into a man going the other way. Avery recoiled, and the man laughed. He was short and fat, with a genial round face.

“Aren’t you going the wrong way?” he said.

“Well, we—”

“Stuff and nonsense.” The little fellow took Avery’s arm and wheeled him about, then marched off arm in arm, navigating around Janx, though not without comment. “Well, you’re a big fellow! No dawdling, though. The Great One doesn’t abide dawdling.”

“I’m sorry,” Avery started, “but I think—we had something to do in the other –”

“No no, it’s all this way. You’ve clearly never been here before. Well, I have, I assure you, and I won’t let you get turned around. You just stick with ol’ Rigurd now, won’t you.” He tapped his ruddy nose. “He’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”

“Well,” Avery said, “I do appreciate that. It’s just that—”

Ahead the noise grew louder. Avery was tempted to have Janx waylay Rigurd, knock him out and store him somewhere, but just then a door opened and two more figures emerged, both women, apparently having just groomed themselves; they wore fresh make-up and their hair was newly primped.

“Ha ha!” Rigurd said. “More little pigeons, eh?” They nodded, giggling, even though neither was below fifty. “Oh good! I say, it will be a merry throng, of that we can be assured. So many pigeons come home to roost.”

Avery glanced over his shoulder to Janx, who shrugged. This would be an excellent opportunity for them to discover what was going on, and they could break away later when they needed to.

They poured into a crowded room. Here men and women who were clearly priests, wearing dark ceremonial robes, passed around lighter, grayish robes to the gathering—people who must be pilgrims, Avery supposed, come to visit their god, to attend whatever ceremony was about to happen. Some were clearly infected, sporting gills or needle teeth, but others were not, likely boasting more subtle mutations; they would have to hope Janx came off as one of these. The priests distributed the robes to everyone, talking and laughing with the parishioners as they did, trying to make sure each one received the proper size and knew the proper codes of conduct. The women who had come in ahead of Avery complained that the cowl would mess up their hair, but a priest informed them that they need not pull it up if they didn’t want to. “The Great One will want to see your lovely faces, I’m sure,” the priest added, and they giggled again.

“Oh, isn’t this thrilling?” the man who called himself Rigurd said, slipping his robe on gracefully and reminding Avery of a snake slipping out of its skin in reverse. “I just love these sorts of things.”

Janx grunted, holding his robe at arm’s length as though it were something foul—easy enough to find around here. To provide a proper example, Avery stuffed himself into his own garment, pulling it over the clothes he’d come in with as he’d seen some of the others doing; still more stripped, going naked before everyone, blushing but clearly basking in the thrill of it all, before donning their new vestments. Janx, though he wore a sour expression, pulled the robe over his head. It tugged at his arms and chest, but he was able to put it on without breaking it.

“Oh, there there!” said Rigurd. “Don’t we all look splendid!”

“Splendid,” Avery agreed. Rigurd looked at him expectantly, and Avery added, “We’ve really been looking forward to this.”

“Oh? Oh. But I didn’t think anyone knew—I certainly didn’t. Wasn’t it only just announced?”