Page 61 of Spelunking Through Hell

Sally shot him a glance. “If they try, I’ll play the xylophone on their ribs. Now come on. I understand there’s snacks on offer.”

As a group, we tramped down the hall, following the path charted by Aadya and the Murrays, moving deeper into the estate. When we passed a wide doorway, the guards who were still carrying their fallen companions stopped, looking to Sally. She nodded, sharply.

“Take them to the meeting hall to lie in honor until they can be given to the fields,” she said. “Tell their husbands and their wives that they died fighting for the glory of the Autarch and the protection of their people, and tell them that I understand the knowledge does nothing to stop the pain.”

“We shall,” said one of them, quietly, and they walked through the door in a smaller, sadder group, taking the bodies with them. Sally looked at me.

“The war we’re fighting here... it’s not a game,” she said.

“I never thought it was.”

For a moment, she stared at me challengingly. Then she thawed, sighing. “Just as long as you know.”

We continued on, fewer than we’d been before, but still standing.

Maybe that was all that mattered.

Aadya had taken the Murrays to the kitchen to raid what looked, to me, like a fairly pathetic continental breakfast—hard bread, mealy fruit, and strips of some unidentified meat that I was at least reasonably sure hadn’t come from anything intelligent—but which the Murrays had already fallen upon like it was the greatest feast they had ever seen by the time we arrived. Which, to be fair, it might well have been. None of them had been eating regularly. Some of the women chewed bites of bread and meat before offering it to the children, openly weeping, and not one of them tried to refuse anything they were given. Pickiness is a product of plenty, after all.

Watching them made me miss my own children, who hadn’t been children in a long, long time, who had always felt like they had the privilege of being picky. Other than Nem, who had had good reason to make a choice she clearly regretted, I didn’t think any of these people had made crossroads bargains: they looked too much alike, unified by a blend of genetics enabled only by the Lilu aspects of their heritage. They had been born here. They had expected to die here. And not a single one of them deserved it.

I turned my face away, momentarily closing my eyes, and opened them when a hand touched my upper arm. Sally was standing closer than she ever had before, looking at me sympathetically.

“It’s hard here,” she said. “It always has been, and it’s only been getting harder. But it’s not going to be hard for too much longer.”

Either we’d be out of here, or we’d all be dead. Strangely enough, I found that encouraging.

“I think we’d have a riot on our hands if we tried to take these nice people away from the food,” I said, and looked to Aadya. “Can you keep them from eating themselves sick?”

“I’ve raised three of my own,” she said, amused. “I can babysit.”

“Good. ’cause I need to report in before I head back to the wall to join the rest of the guard,” said Sally. “And if I don’t get the lady here back to the boss before he loses his patience, we’re going to have issues.”

I couldn’t feel bad about my presence hurrying us along. Sally and I left with about half the guard, leaving the others to stand watch over the Murrays as we made our way to the throne room to report to Thomas and his council.

Normally, I would have wanted to stop and clean myself up before any more potentially fraught introductions, but as the only place I knew of to change my clothes was on the othersideof the room, that wasn’t so much an option. The guards peeled off when we were about halfway there, heading for the wall Sally had mentioned, and we carried on alone to the throne room.

It was empty when we arrived, but the door to the council chamber was standing open, and soft voices drifted from inside. Sally made straight for the door. I stopped outside, standing there for a long moment before I took a breath, steeling myself, and stepped inside.

Thomas, Sally, and several men in linen robes were gathered around the table in the center of the room. I paused in the doorway, trying to identify their original dimensions. None of them looked familiar in the slightest, save for the fact that they all followed a roughlybipedal body plan, which is more common than not in the dimensions that can support human life. Finally, I walked toward them, hoping I wasn’t about to get another exciting round of “who are you and why are we supposed to trust you?” It hadn’t been fun coming from Sally, and at this point it was starting to get a little old. Thomas glanced up and sucked in a sharp breath at the sight of me, that familiar pained inhale that usually came right before someone said, “Oh,Alice...” in a pitying tone.

Not that Thomas had ever been much for pitying me. I still wasn’t in the mood for being fussed at, no matter how much I might deserve it. “You should see the other guy,” I said brightly. “Hi, honey, I’m home. Hello, gentlemen. You weren’t here when I left.”

Everyone in the room turned to stare at me, almost as one. One of them, who could have passed for human if not for the two smaller sets of eyes, one above and one below the normally-sized pair, reached over and gripped Thomas’ sleeve.

“You were speaking truly,” he said. “Your lover—”

“Wife,” I amiably corrected.

“—has come to help you save us all.”

“It’d be great if everyone in this dimension could stop questioning whether or not I’m married to you. It’s enough to give a girl a complex. And if by ‘help him save you all,’ you mean the assholes who were getting ready to attack you are dead, you’d be right about that,” I said, strolling toward them. “They were trying to kill me, and I didn’t like it. I take that sort of thing personally.”

Thomas’ look of dismay blossomed into one of almost malicious delight. Guess he didn’t like being called a liar any more than I liked being called a lover. Learn something new every day. “I appreciate you handling a few little problems for me, dear,” he said. “My advisers and I were just attempting to agree on a plan.”

“So I see. Where were you keeping these fine gentlemen during our tour?”

“They were attending to their duties here and in the village,” he said, holding out his hand in invitation.

---