Page 31 of Spelunking Through Hell

“Can you tell me why you’re armed like you plan to start a war against whatever gets in your way? Some of these grenades are older than my grandfather.”

“Like I said, it’s a long way from Earth, and I did the whole trip on foot and by myself,” I said. “And like I said, I’m not a sorcerer. I can’t just fling a fireball at somebody if they decide I shouldn’t be allowed to keep going.”

“Most people aren’t sorcerers, and yet most people don’t go around with half an armory on their back,” she said, and looked me up and down again, apparently coming to a decision. “I’m sorry, I really am, but I can’t. Not until you’ve seen the Autarch. If he says you can have your things, you can have your things. Boss calls the shots, the rest of us just count the bullets.”

“Nice effort to fit the metaphor to the person you’re talking to, even if it fell a little flat in the execution,” I said. I turned to Rubina, who had been watching us with confusion and concern. “All right, since you came to get me, when do I see this Autarch of yours?”

“Please, as if you didn’t come here specifically to try and play the lost Anastasia?” said Sally, snapping my attention back around to her.

“I’m sorry, what?” I asked.

“You look human,” she said. “You say you started from Earth, but you don’t have an accent I recognize, and you mention traveling through other dimensions like that’s something someone from Earth would know as anything other than science fiction. Which they wouldn’t, by the way. Whoever prepped you forgot to mention that Earth is still isolated enough that we mostly don’t know other dimensions even exist, much less how to move between them.”

“But you’re from Maine, and you know those things,” I said.

“Yeah, because I attracted the attention of the crossroads and got slingshot across creation to wind up here,” she countered. “I’m stuck.You came here voluntarily. Forgive me if I’m suspicious. And then just look at you.”

I raised my eyebrows again. “Look at me?”

“Whoever prepped you missed the mark by a couple of decades, Princess.” Sally gave me another up and down look, not even bothering to hide the way her lip curled. “Too young to be the wifeorthe daughter, assuming either of them survived, and the wife, which I assume is the goal, didn’t have any tattoos. You’re not good enough. You’re not going to pull it off.”

I stared at her, a hard, cold feeling starting to gather in the pit of my stomach. It had begun with her casual mention of the crossroads throwing her here, which was exactly what I’d been hoping for but somehow sounded upsetting coming from someone else’s mouth. If the crossroads had been putting their victims here, then I might be in the right place.

In the palace of an Autarch who grabbed every woman who entered his territory. “I don’t need to be good enough for anything,” I said, tightly. “I’m moving between worlds because I’m trying to find my husband. He disappeared, and I’m looking for him so I can take him home. I’m not here to steal anything that belongs to you, or to mess around with whatever system you’ve got going here.” I waved my hands vaguely, indicating the whole room. “I don’tcare. Maybe that makes me a bad person and I should be worrying about how to set you all free from whatever messed-up form of communal bondage you’ve gone and fallen into, but I’ve been doing this for a long fucking time, and I’ve had plenty of opportunities to learn that sometimes you don’t want to mess around with the way the locals do things.”

Sally pursed her lips. “Rubina, go tell the guards that we’re going to need an escort,” she said. “I’d like to chat with the new girl in private for a minute.”

“Oh, I’m sure that won’t be—”

“Now, Rubina.”

“Yes, Sally.” The thorn-skinned woman turned and hurried away toward the nearest set of guards, leaving me alone with Sally, who gave me a slow, measuring look.

“If you have a way to leave, you should leave, now,” she said. “I know what you’re trying to do, and they didn’t prep you as well as they probably think they did. Something got lost in translation.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you?”

She was fast, I’d have to give her that: she grabbed the front of myrobe and yanked me toward her, stepping backward through the archway as she did. The room on the other side was smaller than the main room, about the size of my bedroom back in Buckley. Shelves lined the walls, piled with a wide assortment of bags and boxes. She let me go once I was safely in the room, waving a hand at the wall across from the entry.

“See?” she snapped. “He’llknow, you fucking imposter. He’ll know.”

I said nothing. I just stared, silent. Because there on the wall, looking back at us, was me.

Not literally me. A painting. I even remembered the picture it had been painted from. The year between Kevin and Jane, the library had decided that we would treat staff photo day as an occasion and asked us all to come to work dressed for a formal portrait. I’d worn a pink dress and my grandmother’s pearls, and I’d done my hair in pretty curls, the way my mother always wore it in the posters.

Thomas had liked that picture so much he’d carried a copy in his wallet. His wallet, which had disappeared the same night he did. Guess I knew where it had gone now. Guess I didn’t have to wonder anymore.

“They should have modeled you off of the historical records, not whatever messed-up assumptions they’ve made about how the family would change,” said Sally, not appearing to notice the sudden tension in my stance, or the way my breathing had gone fast and shallow. “They didn’t do you any favors. They didn’t—”

She was so confident about being in the right that she didn’t even block as I brought my knee up and slammed it into her stomach, grabbing her hair at the same time and jerking her head downward, so that her forehead connected with the hard surface of my lower thigh. When I let her go, she staggered backward, off balance.

“Shut the fuck up,” I snarled, and punched her twice in the face. She was unprepared for the sudden additional assault, and clearly too dazed to hit me back fast enough. I took the opportunity to strike her under the ear with my forearm. She went down without a sound, landing in a heap on the floor. That was no guarantee that she’dstaydown. People are frequently sturdier than they seem.

I heard voices just outside. I didn’t have time to tie her up or to really properly loot the place. None of my things were immediately visible. Fuck. I’d have to find a way to come back for them later. Sally might be armed, but—if so—it wasn’t obvious. I decided my best betswere still speed and the element of surprise and left her where she was as I stepped back into the main room.

Rubina had returned with one of the guards, an anxious-looking green-skinned man with the facial features indicative of the dominant species on Cornale, gauzy wings wrapped around his shoulders and a fauchard in one hand.

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