Milka nodded, and the rest of us agreed. We turned to look at the gate of antlers. Jaspin limped forward and pushed the gate with his gloved hand.
“Now I understand why you got blown up by a bomb,” I remarked. He ignored me. The antlers twisted, their prongs bending inward, leaving a man-sized passage through the barrier.
“Looks like one of those fish traps,” Lorencz said, eyeing the hole with distaste. “You know, where the fish swim in but can’t swim out.”
“Maybe Yzyrchye consumed a fisherman’s soul recently.” I reached out and put a hand on Jaspin’s shoulder. “Let someone with two good legs go first.”
“How about someone with two good legs and one good head?” Lorencz slid in front of both of us. “If you go in first, Yzyrchye might lock the door behind you.”
“Oh, Lorencz,” I cooed. “You care.”
She made her favorite gesture and stepped through the antlers. The ends caught her greatcoat and she pulled it free, looking apprehensive. Then she was through.
Milka went next, then Jaspin, then Far, then Michael, Axton, and me. The antlers did seem to move slightly, as if trying to snag our clothes. They reminded me of Yzyrchye’s probes.
When we were all through, the antlers rearranged themselves, blocking off the exit.
“Someone counted us,” Michael guessed. “Or else you were right about Tegeus.”
“Swell.” Lorencz glared at the spiked, ribbed, impossibly canted palace. “Droit, just for the record, I still blame you for all of this.”
“Only half of this is my fault. Hargrave and the Banishat are the Vigilance’s problems.”
“I’m starting to wish you still had Might.”
I remembered her with a baleblade through her stomach.
“No. You really don’t.”
“Come.” Far began to walk.
The doorway was tall and lopsided, and the door itself was as shiny and bumpy as a clam’s shell. No handle broke its surface.
“Far, can you call us some weapons?” Michael asked, sounding nervous.
“No. Yzyrchye not permit.”
“Good day to die,” I reminded them all.
“For you, maybe,” Lorencz snapped. “I still gotta apologize to Elliot.”
“If I were you, I wouldn’t,” Michael advised. “Sometimes it’s better to keep your thoughts to yourself.”
Since Far didn’t seem inclined to open the door, I stepped forward and gave it a shove. Nothing happened, although I noticed that its surface was warm. As warm as a living body.
“We’re going to have to break in.” I dropped a hand to my borrowed rapier. Basket hilts have one advantage — they serve well as brass knuckles.
“You think that door’s as brittle as it looks?” Lorencz asked.
“Let’s find out.” I waited until everyone had backed away, then pulled my coat collar up and buttoned it high to protect my face. I tucked my fist into the sword’s hilt and slammed it against the door.
With a high-pitched crash, the door shattered like glass. Splinters flew everywhere. A hot wind blew out the doorway into our faces, rich with the scent of carrion. I turned my face away, fighting an instinctive gag reflex. Around me, everyone but Far was doing the same.
“What is that?” Milka howled, holding her hands cupped over her face. “It stinks!”
“Dead people,” I said.
“Long dead,” Lorencz added quickly. “Too long to be your friends.”
“They aren’t my friends. They’re my responsibilities.”
The door opened into a twisting, uneven hallway that looked more like something that had grown than had been built. That made sense. Yzyrchye didn’t enter too many buildings. But it had entered an awful lot of bodies.
“Doesn’t look safe.” Lorencz stepped up to my side. Michael gingerly picked up a long shard of broken doorshell and wrapped his handkerchief around one end to create a makeshift dagger.
“It isn’t.” My head ached. “You and me first?”
“That’s our job, partner.” She turned. “Far, walk behind us and tell us which way to go. The rest of you follow him.”
Lorencz was slipping on her pronouns, too. I didn’t care; if Far wanted to be male, I wasn’t going to argue. I’d had a captain once who’d said she was female despite the meat between her legs. She’d been a good fighter. Played a cutthroat game of Sovereignty, too. She’d died in an action off Jackscrag.
I frowned. It had been a long time since I’d thought of her. I’d had friends, back before I’d become Yzyrchye’s Hound. Or, if not friends, people whose company I’d enjoyed before they’d died.
And they had all died.
“Droit?”
I blinked. “What?”
“You okay?”
“Of course I’m okay. I’m the only one who has a sword. Speaking of which….” I slid a dagger from my belt and handed it to her. She made a face as she took it.
“I ain’t planning to get this close to the Sovereign of Hell.”
“We’re inside the Sovereign of Hell.”
“Yeah … I been trying not to think too hard about that.”
We simultaneously stepped into the hallway.
The floor was slick with the same shell-like substance that had created the door, all knobbed and curved. Our leather soles slipped on it, so we kept our free hands close to the bumpy wall as we walked. Everything around us had a dead-body scent, tainted with the faint alkaline smell of an ocean slough.
“Go straight,” Far ordered.
“Don’t have much choice, do we?” Lorencz griped. “Can someone call us a light?”
“No.”
“I’m hating you more and more, Droit.”
“Stop whining or I’ll hit you.”
“You can barely stand straight, pal.”
The light emanating from the rigid walls remained steady as we walked deeper into the castle’s gut, its bale-gray hue making us all look several days dead. We trudged onward, turning down new hallways according to Far’s directions. I gave up trying to memorize our route and hoped someone else was doing it; Michael, maybe.
“Straight,” Far said at last, and we turned a corner and found a membranous door.
“Through that?” Lorencz asked. The translucent membrane trembled at her voice, and the balelight beyond it silhouetted narrow veins running through its expanse.
“Yes.”
Lorencz and I glanced at each other.
“It’s going to bleed,” I warned. “You might as well be out of the splash radius.”
“Yzyrchye doesn’t have acid for blood or any bullshit like that, does it?”
“Nothing has acid blood.”
“You sure?”
“The general is correct,” Axton said, from behind us. “You’re stalling, Captain.”
“So?” Lorencz shot a glare over her shoulder. “You ain’t the one about to pop Yzyrchye’s cherry, or whatever the hell this thing is.”
“Hurry up!” Milka sounded impatient. “If you can’t do it, I will.”
“Great. Upstaged by a twelve-year-old,” Lorencz muttered. She faced me and lifted the dagger in a mock salute. “Crappy day to die, Droit.”
I returned the salute and we hacked through the door of skin.