Doesn’t fully trust us yet, he decided. Worried how we’ll react to what she’ll tell us, maybe. He also suspected there might be another reason for her reluctance. Could be she’s more scared of what she might learn from me than what I might learn from her.
“There’s gotta be fish in here,” Loriabeth commented a few hours into their second artificial day on the road. She paused to peer at the water below. “Like Krystaline Lake. The drakes there preyed on dolphins and such, Scriberson said.” She turned to Kriz, making a flapping motion with her hand before pointing at the water. “Fish in here? Yes?”
Kriz returned her gaze for a moment, possibly contemplating if there was any danger in providing a response, then nodded. “Fishhh,” she said carefully. “Yes.”
“It would be nice to catch a few,” Sigoral put in, chewing unenthusiastically on some dried beef.
“I’m all out of rods and nets, Lieutenant,” Clay told him.
“You could go for a swim, sailor boy,” Loriabeth suggested with a sweet smile. “See what you can catch.”
Sigoral replied with a bland smile of his own and strode on.
A mile or so later they came to a fork in the road, a second walkway branching off to the right to disappear into the haze a hundred paces off. Kriz strode past the junction without pause, barely glancing at the alternative route and ignoring Clay’s question about where it might lead.
“It seems she has a definite destination in mind,” Sigoral observed.
“As long as it leads to a way out of here,” Loriabeth replied. “Never thought I’d say it, but I’m sorely missing the sight of the ice.”
They passed several more junctions before the light faded again, Kriz again ignoring each one. As the darkness descended and they made their customary halt for the night, Clay noticed a definite increase in the number of Blues disturbing the water on either side of the road.
“Gotta be double the number there were last night,” Loriabeth surmised, squinting into the gloom.
“They hungry or just curious?” Clay asked Kriz.
He saw her fingers twitch on the brass-and-steel gun, a grim decisiveness colouring her gaze as she watched the Blues churn the water. “Hungry,” she said, getting to her feet. “Yes.”
She went to Loriabeth’s pack, pointing at the lantern fastened to the straps. “Want me to light that?” Loriabeth asked, receiving a nod in response. Loriabeth struck a flint to light the lantern’s oil-covered wick, Sigoral quickly following suit with his own heavier sailor’s lamp.
“Look,” Kriz said, gesturing for the two light-bearers to cast their beams out over the water on either side of the road. “Move . . . fast,” she added, starting off at a rapid pace.
They marched through the darkness, Loriabeth and Sigoral constantly playing their lights over the surrounding waters. Clay noticed that the Blues seemed shy of the lights, diving down whenever one of the beams caught them on the surface. But whatever threat they sensed wasn’t enough to force a retreat and the night air was constantly riven by the sound of multiple splashes.
An hour’s rapid marching brought them to another junction and this time Kriz took the alternate route, branching off to the left. She moved with greater urgency as the journey wore on. Clay noted that the Blues were becoming bolder, rising close enough to the road to cast an increasing amount of lake-water over the party.
“Getting right feisty, ain’t they?” Loriabeth commented. She moved with a pistol in one hand, the barrel aligned with the lantern’s beam.
“I guess a meal like us don’t turn up too often,” Clay said, grunting a little with the effort of matching Kriz’s pace.
Finally she slowed as a bulky shape resolved out of the darkness ahead; another island. It was much smaller than the last one, formed of a slab of rock rising to a height of perhaps fifteen feet from the water, lacking buildings or vegetation. They followed Kriz to where the road met the island, giving way to a series of steps carved into the stone. She started up the steps immediately, whilst Clay and the others lingered at the bottom. The water on either side of the road seemed to be roiling now.
“Gotta be fifty or more,” Loriabeth said, her beam tracking from one shimmering form to another. “Reckon I could get a couple. Even from here.” She drew back the hammer on her revolver, aiming carefully. “How’s about it, Lieutenant?” she asked Sigoral, who duly raised his carbine in readiness.
“We got maybe thirty rounds between us,” Clay reminded them. He turned as Kriz called to them from the top of the steps, voicing a phrase in her own tongue that sounded far from complimentary. “Come on, looks like we’re wanted. I doubt she’d’ve brought us here without good reason.”
They followed the steps to the bare flat crest of the island, finding Kriz standing beside another plinth. As she touched the crystal set into the plinth, Clay and the others started in surprise at a sudden thrum of grinding rock beneath their feet. A near perfectly square cloud of dust rose a few feet away as a section of the island’s surface descended then slid aside. Clay felt a rush of wind on his skin and saw the displaced dust being sucked into the revealed opening.
“That’s weird,” Loriabeth said, levelling her revolver at the opening.
“Air filling a vacuum,” Sigoral said, stepping closer to peer into the gloomy depths below the hole. “A hermetically sealed chamber of some kind.”
Kriz motioned for Loriabeth to hand over the lantern then moved to the opening, playing the beam around until it alighted on a series of iron rungs set into the wall. She handed the lantern back and began to descend, soon disappearing from view as the three of them continued to stand immobile. After a pause they heard her call out an impatient summons.
“If she meant us harm,” Clay said, watching Loriabeth and Sigoral exchange a suspicious glance, “we’d already be dead ten times over.”
Moving to the opening, he lowered himself onto the ladder and started down. The shaft proved to be about a dozen feet deep, Clay stepping off the ladder to find Kriz waiting at the bottom, surrounded by darkness. He called to Loriabeth to toss down her lantern, catching it and casting the light around to illuminate a long tunnel-like chamber. The walls were lined with racks containing what appeared to be mechanicals of some kind. Some were long, others short and stubby and most featured handgrips set behind what were unmistakably trigger mechanisms.
Guns, he realised, noting how each device bore a similarity in construction to Kriz’s stubby weapon. Steel and brass merged together in an intricate harmony that no manufactory he knew of could match.
“Looks like she’s brung us to an armoury,” Clay told Loriabeth as she climbed down.