Sigrud slowly turns to look at her. “What … ? What has happened?”
“You’re here,” she says. “You’re here in the Warehouse, with me.”
He rubs his temple, shaken.
“The things here are … They’re very old,” she explains. “I think they’re bored. And they’ve been … feeding off one another. Like fish trapped in a shrinking pond.”
“I have found nothing missing,” he grumbles. “The shelves are quite full. Over full, even.”
“Me neither,” says Mulaghesh’s voice from the next aisle. “You don’t want us to climb the ladders, do you?”
“Does it look like the ladders have been moved?” asks Shara. “Look at the dust.”
A pause. “No.”
“Then it would have been something on the first few shelves.”
Shara directs her own attention to the lowest shelves of her remaining aisles and continues her search.
Four brass oil lamps. A blank, polished wooden board. Children’s dolls. A spinning wheel whose wheel is slowly rotating, though there seems to be no flax, and certainly no spinner.
Then, in the final spot, just ahead …
Nothing.
Maybe nothing. Nothing that she can see, at least.
Shara thinks, Something missing?
She strides toward the empty space. Her eyes are so used to seeing random material in the corner of her vision that she does not pay much attention to what’s below her. But as she nears the blank space on the shelf, she thinks, briefly, Did I see something shining on the ground?
A wire, maybe?
Something catches at her ankle; pulls; breaks—a tinny ping!
There is a tinkle of metal from the next aisle over; a tiny steel key goes skittering across the boards.
Immediately Sigrud roars, “Down! Now!”
A puff of black smoke across the aisle to her right.
Then a wild blossom of orange flames, and a concussive blast.
A wave of heat batters her right side. Shara is lifted off the ground. She crashes into the shelves next to her, sending ancient treasures flying: a leather bag tumbles through the air, vomiting an endless stream of golden coins; a streamer of pale ribbon strikes the ground and turns to leaves.
Dust and metal and old wood spin around her. She falls to the ground, paws at a shelf, but cannot stand.
A fire rages to her right. Smoke coils and curls up on the ceiling, like a black cat finding sanctuary in a sunbeam.
On her left, the statue of Taalhavras crashes off the shelf. Sigrud awkwardly clambers through to kneel beside her.
“Are you all right?” he asks. He touches the side of her head. “You have lost some hair. …”
“What damned miracle,” she pants, “was that?”
“No miracle,” he says. He looks back at the spreading fire. “A mine. Incendiary, I think, or it did not ignite properly.”
“What the hells is going on over there?” shouts Mulaghesh’s voice.
Somewhere in the darkness, many tiny voices chitter.
Flames rush across the dust on the floor, hop onto one shelf, burrow into the blanket-wrapped corpse.
“We need to leave,” says Sigrud. “This place, so dry and old—it will burn down in moments.”
Shara looks out at the growing flames. The top of the shelf on her right is almost completely ablaze. “There was a blank space,” she murmurs, “on that shelf ahead. Something has been stolen.” She tries to point; her finger drunkenly wanders to the ground.
“We need to leave,” says Sigrud again.
There are pops out in the darkness. Something screeches in the fire.
“What in shitting hells is going on over there?” bellows Mulaghesh.
Shara looks at Sigrud. She nods.
He effortlessly hauls her up onto one of his shoulders. “We are leaving!” he shouts to Mulaghesh.
Sigrud sprints down the aisle, turns right, and makes a beeline for the stone door frame.
A ruby red glow filters through the forest of towering shelves.
Decades, thinks Shara. Centuries. More.
Gone. All gone.
*
Sigrud sets Shara down when they’re back in the Seat of the World.
She coughs, then weakly asks, “How bad am I?”
He asks her to wiggle her fingers and toes. She does so. “Good,” he says. “Mostly. Lost a lot of an eyebrow. Some hair. And your face is red. But not burned—not seriously. You are lucky.” He looks up at the inferno raging on the other side of the stone door frame. “I do not think whoever set that trap knew what they were doing. But when I heard it …” He shakes his head. “Only one thing in the world sounds like that.”
Mulaghesh leans on one of her soldiers and, in between hacks, attempts to light another cigarillo. “So the sons of bitches mined the Warehouse? Just in case we followed?”
A broiling heat comes pouring through the stone door frame.
At every moment, thinks Shara, they’ve been one step ahead of me.
“Let’s cave that damn tunnel in,” says Shara, “and be done with this damned place.”