by Marcin Wrona
Chapter 5: Cat and Mouse
When he was comfortable that his pursuers had followed the wrong corridor, Leonine kneeled down, back against a slick wall, and caught his breath. He considered simply leaving town, following the sewers to where they emptied into the Shalumes.
It will be too dangerous aboveground. The guards had been obvious despite their best attempts to stay low, but it was not terribly out of the ordinary to see soldiers skulking about Inatum the Lawless, pretending to be anything but.
At first, Leonine had not entertained any particularly compelling reason as to why Zagezi’s finest should be after him and not any other of the city’s countless criminals. Those hopes had been dashed the moment two Sarvashi warriors walked out of a back alleyway, failing abjectly in their attempt to look inconspicuous. It would have made him laugh, had a Hound not followed them.
That, ultimately, was the sort of thing that forced a man’s hand, and so Leonine found himself slipping quietly through the murk, following the warm light of the torch the Hound carried. He’d doused his own torch some time ago; he did not need it to follow sewer walls, and he certainly did not need it to follow a light in the oppressive darkness of buried Lumshazzar.
He could not allow a Hound to snap at his heels, especially now, after he’d killed one of his men.
Four killings in as many days, at least one more to come. That was not something the authorities would forget. Leonine would have to leave Inatum for a time. He wondered what Ibashtu would think about that. He’d have to go back and see her before he left, assuming the Hunt did not find the right mix of coins to jog a witness’s memories of a long-haired Sarvashi walking into Shudagan’s house. A dishonest man would probably know better than to send the guards Ibashtu’s way. She had earned a certain infamy among men that carried knives and kept to shadows. But what of the regular citizens?
Angramash take these meddlers. I’m too old to be skulking about the sewer, knee-deep in shit.
The corridor they had taken slowly widened. Leonine kept to the wall as he followed it, one hand tracing clay bricks that sweated in the damp air of the sewers. The Hound was far enough ahead that his torch was little more than a subtle gradation of light.
A sharp pang suddenly took his side, chasing breath from his lungs, and Leonine stumbled into the wall, gasping and shaking with pleasure. He thought he heard the echoes of a high-pitched scream from someplace behind him in the tangle of tunnels.
Sorcery. Leonine felt dizzy. He shook his head, and tried to breathe deeply, but settled for a series of ragged, shallow hisses. He had to leave, he knew, and quickly. The Hound must have felt the disturbance, and would be following it even now. He turned and ran blindly into the dark.
He did not look over his shoulder. He did not need to. The flickering torchlight would be drawing closer, and in the echoing sewer corridors, he thought he heard the thunder and jingle of armed men running.
The water rose, and he felt it splashing against his ankles, errant droplets cold against the skin of his legs. The tunic he wore flapped raggedly against his body. It was too long, more robe than tunic. He’d slashed a slit into the side while he ran, to allow his legs to pump freely, and he now ran with a left hand tracing the wall, knife and the sodden folds of his tunic bunched up in his right.
He reached the corridor fork where he had lost the Huntsmen. He could feel the residue of sorcery wafting from the tunnel to his left, and so he followed the right fork. If there was another sorcerer in these tunnels, the last thing Leonine wanted was to be caught between him and an angry Hound. Better to let the Sarvashi soldiers run ahead first, and come upon them from behind.
He saw the orange torchlight first, dancing a hundred paces ahead of where he stood flattened against a sewer wall. Then the Hound came into view, and his soldiers behind him.
“Left!” the Hound called, rounding the corner at a run, the other men behind him. When the last of them had his back to Leonine, he rose and loped after them, keeping his distance. The thought of simply leaving crossed his mind once again, but he dismissed it. He could ask for no better opportunity than this to send another Hound to Ahamash, as he had the bastard in Sarvagadis.
The torch stopped moving briefly. Leonine flattened himself against the wall in case one of the soldiers chanced to look back, and then it was moving again.
He followed, and the eldritch trail grew more obvious as he ran. It was strong, he realized, although this should not have been surprising. He could not remember the last time another man’s sorcery had been powerful enough to steal the breath from his lungs. He ached with desire, wanted more than anything to open up and draw in what he could, to try to match the shudders and shivers he’d felt earlier.
Then Leonine’s foot kicked something heavy, and he stumbled, whirling his arms in a vain attempt to keep his balance. He landed on his hands in the muck, knife skittering away, and cursed his inattentiveness. The thief’s heartbeat quickened with the fear that somebody had heard the splash and grunt of his fall, but he dismissed those fears as irrational. The Hound and his unit were making far more noise than Leonine could. In this, at least, he was safe.
Turning to pick up his knife, Leonine caught a fleeting glimpse of what had tripped him up, and curiosity brought his eyes back to it. It was a crocodile, splayed out on its back, obviously dead. It happened, from time to time, that river beasts lost themselves in the sewer tunnels and starved there, but that explanation, he realized, was inadequate. The sorcery was very strong here, in the carving-etched walls, the water, and more than anything the corpse itself. The crocodile must have attacked someone, hoping for food. It was strange that it should be a sorcerer – beasts normally knew better than to anger his kind – but if hunger drove men to do things they might otherwise avoid, should not the same be true for animals?
Leonine got up and followed the tunnel, noting with a frown that pain ebbed and flowed in his knee as he walked. He must have bruised it in the fall, and he cursed once more the chain of events that had led to this. The theft from Ila-uanna’s was supposed to have been easy. Leonine did not much like complications.
The torch that burned merrily ahead of him took a turn and disappeared around a corner. Leonine heard a commotion, a number of voices raised in surprise. One of the soldiers laughed then, in the disbelieving way of a man who has been through so many twists and turns that the shocking seems commonplace. Leonine reached the corner, and peered around it.
The men stood in a semicircle, their backs to Leonine. The echoing corridors carried their voices clearly back to his ears.
“It’s alright,” one of them said, in the idiot voice some reserved for babies and pets. “We won’t hurt you. We’ve come to take you from this place.”
Leonine could not see the person they addressed.
“I’m not going anywhere with you! Leave me alone!” came the reply. To Leonine’s shock, it was the clear, high song of a little girl.
One of the soldiers moved forward, head gleaming in the torchlight. He looked as though he had dunked his head into a barrel of oil, like one of the dandies strolling about the Perfumed Gardens of Hatshut. When he spoke, his voice was sweet and fluid. It was youthful, and better suited to seducing women with poetry than barking out commands on the field of battle.
“Come on, love. You don’t want to be stuck here in the dark, do you? We can –”
“No!” she cried, and Leonine heard splashing. “Stay back! Don’t touch me!”
“We won’t hurt you. We’re here to help –”
“Stay back!” she shouted, and suddenly Leonine felt a rush of power, of sorcerous energy rushing from all directions to coalesce in the tunnel ahead, until he saw – or felt – strands of power whipping and roiling inside a vessel shaped like a girl. He felt a second rush ahead of him, the Hound mustering his own powers. Leonine’s breath burned with anticipation. He realized to his surprise that he too had opened himself in preparation for sorcery, that his own veins had grown hot.
There was a scream. Power rushed and roared, burst its bonds like a flood shattering an earthen dam, until the air itself seemed to catch aflame. The man that had moved forward writhed and twisted. He shrieked as he fell twitching to the ground.
Leonine felt terror caress him with ice-cold fingers, and he burst into song, spilling forth the first rebellious lyrics of the Rahavashaska, a song of resistance and iron will, of Rahava the shepherd refusing to heed the honeyed words of the Crone of Beshadis. The soldiers had scattered. Three ran past Leonine, oblivious to his presence, stumbling and clawing at each other in their desperate flight. He realized with a shock that he knew one of the men, the grey-bearded steward of Ila-uanna, but now was not the time to consider such things. Now, he could only sing to shield himself from the awful power of the girl’s shriek.
She was still screaming, and he could see her now that there were no soldiers in the way. The tunnel ahead was empty, save for the girl and the Hound, who had also raised a ward. He took one step towards the girl, then another, his sword drawn. Leonine knew he was muttering a prayer, although he did not hear it. The Hounds did not sing of Rahava; they prayed to Ahamash to deliver them from Daiva sorceries.
As the Hound moved closer to the girl, Leonine realized with a start that she was still radiant with energy. She had not closed herself. The very air seemed to vibrate with power.
She’s going to burn out. In the realization, there was a pang of sympathetic pain. So very few sorcerers had someone to teach them control. So few sorcerers lasted. Even those that eluded the Hounds so often boiled their own blood, and died writhing and spitting flame.
Her scream faltered, and she fell to the ground. The horror that had tried to rend Leonine’s defensive song dissipated, and he found himself running at a Hound similarly freed, knife in hand.
The Hound had not noticed him, had not heard his song in the chaos. He was moving towards the fallen girl, faster now than before. Leonine was faster still. He swung his knife in a vicious arc, burying the point in the back of the Hound’s neck, then ripped it out. The Hound made a horrible retching noise and fell, his life’s blood spraying Leonine’s face.
The torch! Leonine grabbed at the falling man’s arm. He could not afford to allow his only light to be extinguished by the water. There were still soldiers around, and by now they could have recovered from their horror. Leonine did not want to stumble blindly into the head of a spear.
He took the torch and made to leave, but he stopped short.
The girl.
She was probably dead, Leonine thought, looking past the soldier who had tried to placate her. He was young, would have been pretty if not for the grimace of fear that had twisted his face as he fell. He stared up at the tunnel’s ceiling with bulging eyes; he too was likely dead.
She’s still breathing. Leonine saw the girl’s chest rise weakly, then fall. He could carry her, if he wanted to. She couldn’t possibly weigh much, and he did not like the thought of leaving her for the Sarvashi. They had given enough sorcerers to the Shimurg. Why give them another?
Sentimental idiot. She’s powerful. Terrifyingly powerful. She’ll rip you apart like she did this youngster when she wakes. He could leave her behind. He doubted she would have much trouble with the rest of the Sarvashi, if they tried to take her. Their Hound was dead, and with him their only chance at protection from her powers. He could leave her here, let her kill them off, and go in peace to find the tunnel buried deep within Lumshazzar that led to Shudagan’s house.
And yet…
With a strangled cry of frustration, Leonine picked up the girl and threw her over his left shoulder like a sack of wheat. Torch in his right hand, child in his left, he ran back in the direction from which he had come. He would run to where the crocodile died, where he had seen the carvings. That had to be where the sewers turned into Lumshazzar. Once he reached the buried city, it would be easier to figure out where, in the twisted labyrinth of corridors, he would find a safe path leading to the surface. Ibashtu’s gift would see to that.
He ran past the dead crocodile, and then thundered down the corridor to his right. His heart caught in his throat as he rounded the corner, coming face-to-face with one of the Sarvashi soldiers that had fled past him. The man was dumbstruck for an instant, but he was well-trained. His features twisted quickly from confusion to hatred, and he charged at Leonine, hands scrabbling at a weapon in his belt.
Taken by surprise, it was all Leonine could do to get the torch between him and his attacker’s head. He saw sparks fly, and the man screamed in anguish. Leonine kicked the soldier’s leg out from under him, sending him ruined-face-first into the tunnel wall, then leapt nimbly over and kept running.
He saw no more soldiers as the tunnel grew wider and the water more shallow. Within moments, he found himself in what must once have been a street of Lumshazzar, the walls beside him cut through with doorways. Inside the first doorway was a hearth ringed by strewn potsherds, and little else. It was a house, and the back wall was missing, leading into another dark corridor.
From what he remembered of Ibashtu’s map, Lumshazzar’s humblest houses had been in the western portion of the city. If memory served, the underground passage that led to Ibashtu’s house would be nearby.
The girl was growing heavy. A moment’s rest would be welcome, and a chance to consult the map… but not here. He was still much too close to the Sarvashi for comfort, and the one he’d burned would know which way he went. The soldiers could as easily follow the light of his torch as he had theirs. Now was not the time to grow complacent.
Leonine dropped the torch for a moment, shifted the girl from his left shoulder to his right, and picked it up again. He turned right the first time a road presented itself, then left, then right again. He passed a square that had once been open to the sky, and now had grown almost crescent-shaped with rubble fallen from a collapsed tunnel ceiling. That was always a danger in a place like this. He wondered absently how many men had been lost in the excavation.
In the middle of the square was a well, and looking at it made him realize how thirsty he was from the morning’s exertions. The bucket, unfortunately, had long since rotted away, as had the rope. Leonine sighed, and kept walking. To his right, the tattered remnants of a rotted awning hung from a storefront. They’d gone far enough, Leonine decided. The store would be an adequate place to sit down a moment.
No sign remained of what the store had once sold. Everything that was not brick or the occasional shard of pottery had long since rotted – or been carried – away. Leonine laid the girl on the ground and sat on the brickwork bench where the merchant would have sat by evening, scratching the day’s sales into his ledger tablets. He put the torch down beside him, and pulled Ibashtu’s map from the inner pocket of his tunic, relieved to see that it was unbroken.
He scanned the western half of the map, following with a dirty fingernail a network of streets in search of open places where a market might conceivably have been. He found a square that looked promising and mentally retraced his steps, matching the turns he had taken to the streets on the map.
They seemed to match up. If he were to head north from here, then turn right, he would be close to the centre of the Mound and Shudagan’s home.
“Wh-who are you?” Leonine almost leapt into the air. He had not heard the girl stirring. When he looked over, she was scrabbling on hands and heels to the back wall, eyes wide.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said to her, his voice as calm and understanding as he could make it. “I won’t hurt you. I’m like you.”
Her eyes were narrow with suspicion, mouth pursed. “The other man back there…” she looked around, obviously unsure where ‘back there’ could be found. “He was ‘like me’ and he drew a sword.”
Leonine smiled, held his hands open in front of her. “If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have done so earlier, when you collapsed. Instead I carried you here, away from the soldiers.”
She thought abou
t that for a moment, and slowly nodded. When she spoke again, her voice trembled.
“Wh-what happened to me?” she asked. “I was scared, and then I screamed, like when the monster tried to bite me, and everybody was running away, and … and I think I killed the first man. I don’t remember anything after that, and now my head hurts. Why does my head hurt?”
“You almost burned out,” Leonine said gently. “Sometimes, when people like us pull in too much power, it can destroy us. I thought you were dead, at first. Afterwards, I wasn’t sure if you’d even wake up.”
Something struck him, then. “Is this… was today the first time you’ve used your power?” he asked. She shook her head, and looked down. In the torchlight, he could see her face growing red. It looked as though she was about to cry.
“N-no, but … but that’s not important now,” she said, mustering a fragile smile. “My name is Ilasin. I’m from Nerkut. What’s your name?”
Nerkut? Nerkut was a very long way from Inatum, an overland journey of a week at least, or several days by river.
“My name’s Leonine,” he said. “I’m from Sarvagadis.”
“That’s not a real name!” She giggled unexpectedly, face brightening.
“Oh? Well, it’s what I call myself,” Leonine replied. “Maybe I don’t think Ilasin is a real name.”
“Well, it is!” she said indignantly. “I know three other girls named Ilasin, and a grown-up too! I don’t know anybody named Leonine.” A strange expression crossed her face, then her eyebrows rose.
“Wait, you’re from Sarvagadis? Are you… Sarvashi?” the question was a whisper, as though she feared that proclaiming the answer too loudly would be dangerous. That was true enough, in some company.
“That’s… that’s a surprisingly complicated question. My father was Sarvashi, but my mother was Ekkadi, and Sarvagadis is in Ekka. I think of myself as both, but nobody else seems to agree.”
Ilasin thought about that a moment, and nodded.
“My father used to say that we should not let Sarvashi people come to our city. He said they exploited us. He never explained how, but a lot of people agreed with him.”
“It’s the way of the world,” Leonine replied with a shrug. “But that’s neither here nor there. We need to go. The Sarvashi man with the sword is called a Hound. It’s his job to catch people like you and I, and you don’t want to be caught. It would –”
“Wh-what will he do to us?” she asked. She had the eyes of a calf, big and dark.
“He? He will do nothing. He’s dead. But his soldiers aren’t, and if they catch us they’ll put nails through our hands and feet out in the desert, and leave us there to die.”
Ilasin blanched. For an instant, Leonine felt guilty. But is it not my duty to be frank? Sorcerers had to know the stakes of their actions. The enemy would not spare her simply because she was a child. Not with a power like hers.
She jumped to her feet and ran to the door, then turned and looked back at Leonine. “Well? Let’s go!”
Leonine took his burning torch from the bench and nodded. He led the way, and she followed after. Shadows danced across Lumshazzar as they left the market, falling on the soft jowls of bearded merchants and the unveiled smiles of the women who would barter with them for eternity, chiseled into the buried foundation stones of a city lost to honest men. Lumshazzar’s artistic tastes were, Leonine decided, somewhat more pleasant than those of the vicious Artalum.
“Where are we going?” asked Ilasin, as they overtook peasants bowed beneath the weight of the reed bundles on their backs.
“I need to talk to someone – a friend – and then I’ll take you out of the city. It isn’t safe here, for either of us. I can take you back as far as Nerkut, if you like.” No sooner had the words left Leonine’s mouth than he berated himself for speaking them.
You intend to run from spears with a child in tow?
“No,” she shook her head. “Not Nerkut. I’ve been on my own a long time now, you don’t have to take me with you anyplace.”
“We’re both in danger. No reason why we shouldn’t travel together.”
I can think of a few. Idiot.
“Besides,” he continued, “somebody needs to teach you control, or you’ll have every Hound in Ekka after you soon enough.” His voice softened, grew reflective. “I didn’t have a teacher.”
They walked in silence. Beside them, men dropped the reeds from their shoulders and used them to build homes beside their fields, watched over by some god or other: a richly garbed figure, twice the height of a man. Birds circled his crowned head, their beaks open in song.
The street-turned-tunnel that they followed opened into another square, this one larger than the market, confirming to Leonine that they followed the correct path. This had been a temple garden once, according to Ibashtu’s map. A crisscross of canals that once flowed with water was now heaped with rubble. Of the plants they had watered nothing remained, except for a few lonely palms and flowers etched into the backs of stone benches, watched over by sculptures of snake-headed beasts that walked on four legs. In the distance, the monolithic first step of the temple ziggurat rose into the ceiling, as though supporting the weight of the younger city above.
They passed the temple, following the street that would ultimately lead to the surface and Shudagan’s home. It was far less clean than the others they had followed, strewn with earth and the remains of stone and brick. The ceiling had partially caved in some time ago, Leonine guessed, and had probably taken more than a few slaves with it. At the tunnel’s narrowest point, Leonine was forced to crawl through on his knees, Ilasin behind him. He became keenly aware once again of the sheer weight of the world above his head.
His wrists and hands were bloodied from a hundred little gashes by the time the tunnel cleared and he was again able to stand upright, knees protesting stiffly. Ilasin was silent behind him, absorbed in her own thoughts
Leonine and Ilasin followed the street until it ended, forking left and right, exactly as Ibashtu’s map had said it would. Leonine found himself grateful once again for the surprising gift. He took the right fork, beckoning to the girl to follow after him. He stopped in front of a doorway with a leering face engraved into its lintel.
This is the place.
“We’re here,” he whispered, crossing his lips with a finger. “I’m going to go up to the surface. Wait here until I come back. I don’t know for sure that it’s safe.” If the guards had not found Shudagan’s home already, they would soon.
Ilasin nodded, and sat down inside the doorway, a little heavily. The morning had been eventful, Leonine realized. She was probably tired.
The house they had entered had three floors, linked by a crumbling staircase. The third floor opened into a room that was unremarkable, save for the hole knocked into the wall to his right. It led to a tunnel that snaked upward. The incline was gentle at first, but grew steeper as he went. He soon found himself climbing, bracing his feet on earth just barely solid enough to hold his weight. He started a small landslide of dirt and grit each time he pulled himself higher with his right hand, awkwardly trying to avoid burning himself on the torch in his left.
Leonine’s legs, tired as they were from the morning’s run, quivered as he climbed, but the slope mercifully ended before his muscles gave way and sent him tumbling to a broken limb or neck. He found himself on even ground, the torch warming a panel of gleaming mahogany that seemed incongruous after a morning spent among brick and soil.
He took a deep breath, and laid the torch on the ground beside him. Drawing his knife, he slid the panel aside, revealing a dark space hung with cotton and linen. A closet? Leonine pushed past the clothes, and through a wooden door. It opened into a tastefully appointed room dominated by a copper bathtub. It reminded him of the great Bhargat cauldrons that dominated the fears of his childhood, huge pots in which the fire-eyed desert raiders could stew a dozen unruly children at once.
As Leonine closed the door behin
d him, he heard footsteps. He ducked behind the mahogany closet, knife in hand, and peered cautiously around its edge. He breathed a little easier when he saw Ibashtu round the corner.
“Ibashtu, lis–”
“Leonine!” she interrupted, her face livid. “What in hell have you done?”
News travels fast.
“A Hound,” he replied, noting with some petty satisfaction that Ibashtu’s nose wrinkled in distaste. She had evidently caught the sewer stink. “He must have tailed me.”
“What do you mean, a Hound? How could you blunder like this?”
Leonine began to laugh, and she trailed off, staring at him in stupefaction.
“Come off it, Ibashtu,” he said. “You knew full well that I’d probably need to use certain talents to get the vase out. Why else would you have hired me? That Hounds happened to be nearby is hardly something I can be blamed for. Anyhow, I came to let you know that I need to leave town, and that you probably would do well to do the same. But it seems you’ve already learned that.”
The scribe took a deep breath, then spoke from between gritted teeth.
“How could I not? There are guards swarming the Mound, and already people in the street are speaking of Hounds and escaped sorcerers. It won’t be long before Zagezi’s men learn that you came here, and even the thickest of them will be able to reach unpleasant conclusions about my line of work. Of course I need to leave – I’ve no desire to be sacrificed to your bird god.”
“For what it’s worth,” Leonine said, “the Hound is dead. There won’t be anyone to identify you as a witch.”
The look she gave him was scathing. “That, in point of fact, is worth very little. Instead of being staked out in the desert, I’ll be whipped and hanged.”
Leonine shrugged. This is getting tiresome.
“So find Shudagan and Nazimarut and leave. In a few months this will all be forgotten, and you’ll be able to return and live as though nothing ever happened.”
They would probably lose the house, Leonine knew. The city would have to repay Merezad somehow for the loss of pious Sarvashi soldiers, if they failed to catch their killer – and Leonine certainly did not intend to be caught. It was a small price to pay in any case. Ibashtu would be able to buy several houses with the proceeds she made from selling the Akrosian vase.
She did not look particularly satisfied with that line of reasoning, but there was nothing to be said. What was done was done, and she would know as well as Leonine did that crime was inextricably linked to unexpected difficulties.
“Well,” Leonine continued, “I’ll be leaving. I just wanted to come and warn you, and to apologize that I will not be able to help you with your … other interests.”
Ibashtu chuckled at that. “Oh, no. You won’t be getting away quite so easily. I still have need of your services. As you say, this unpleasantness wasn’t your fault, and it would be remiss of me to hold it against you.”
Bitch.
“I’ll have to spend some time hiding in Lumshazzar while I wait to make contact with the Crescent,” she said, looking up at the ceiling while she reasoned out her next steps. “Afterwards, I can commission a boat to Numush-ummi. I expect you to be there by the time I arrive.”
Numush-ummi, the sister city of Numush. The smaller of the two, it was nevertheless a sight larger than Inatum. Together, the two dwarfed even Hatshut. Leonine had some contacts there. He would be able to find a place to stay, and someone willing to take the girl off his hands.
“So be it,” he said. “Where shall I meet you?”
“I have a contact there, an Ekkadi dock official named Luwa-shagir.”
That was unfortunate. Leonine had little doubt one of the Huntsmen would think to send a messenger ahead to the Numushes. The docks would almost certainly be watched, unless he moved quickly.
“He lives on The Bridge,” Ibashtu continued, “near the southern end. A house painted green and gold. The doorposts are fashioned after stalks of barley… but he is very rarely home. Give the name Hafis to the gate guard. That will be Luwa-shagir’s sign to find you.”
“So I meet you there in a few days, I do whatever job it is you have for me, and you never again bother me with more nonsense about the Crescent. Is that about right?”
She smiled, a little coldly. “Let’s say six days. Now go. You stink.”
Leonine had not truly expected Ibashtu to answer his question. Somewhere along the way, the mention of a secretive cult had fundamentally changed their relationship. It was a shame. He had rather liked Ibashtu, and did not relish the thought of cutting her spidery throat. Still, that was premature. He could bide his time.
Leonine bowed, and plastered a courtly smile across his face. It did not look genuine. It was not intended to. He passed through the closet and into the tunnels to Lumshazzar. His torch still burned on the ground at the tunnel-mouth, if a little less brightly than before. He would have to take another when the opportunity presented itself.
As he bent over to pick up the brand, he realized that he was famished. The girl would be as well. I can’t risk going back into town. Unfortunate, but such was life. He’d gone hungry before. What thief had not?
His thoughts awash in practicalities, Leonine half-climbed, half-slid down the earthen slope that led back to Lumshazzar. Ilasin sat where he had left her, arms curled around her knees, hugging them close. She got to her feet as he descended by way of a crumbling staircase into the crumbled house.
“So what now?” she asked.
“Now I take you as far as Numush-ummi.”
A glimmer of something like disappointment flashed across her dirty face, but it was gone as swiftly as it had come.
“Alright,” she said. “Let’s go.”