The word that floated to his lips sent a chill over his skin.
“Bones,” he finished awkwardly.“It’s a valley of giant bones.”
Subhas’s face blanked with shock.He looked from the sheared piece of stone to Neil.“None of that is here.”
Neil rubbed a tired hand over his face.“I know how it must sound.”
“But you recognize it,” Constance filled in cannily.“What Neil described—it’s a real place, isn’t it?”
Subhas’s expression was tight as he nodded.
Neil reeled.Nothing on the pillar would have prompted him to intuit what once filled that broken space—and yet he had done it, drawing the truth from the blank stone.
“Where?”he rasped.
“It’s not a place my people go,” Subhas warned.“I haven’t been to it myself, but those mountains in the carving—they’re three miles to the southwest.There’s a stream that runs between them.You can follow it to the pass that will take you there.”
“Three miles?”Constance pressed eagerly.“We could be there by this afternoon!”
A response sounded from across the hollow air.
“How very convenient,” Colonel Charles Borthwick commented as he stepped into the light.
?
Thirty
Adam stared intoa secret world painted with streaks of filtered golden light, surrounded by soldiers and helpless with dread.
The stepwell was the sort of place he could imagine exploring for days, listening to Ellie ramble on about underground aquifers while she made him survey each arch and angle.
Adam wouldn’t be doing any surveying now.Instead, he was watching everything go straight to hell.
Singh Rao had been the first to descend the ridge, slipping into the ruins with a hand-picked detachment.Adam had followed behind with Borthwick, Dawson, and Ellie.When they’d caught up to the advance force, they’d found themselves on the heels of a successful ambush, with Singh Rao’s men guarding a dozen disarmed and battered Adrija.
Jignesh had been among them, his wrists bound.The wiry old hunter’s eyes had flashed with recognition when Adam stepped into view, but he’d kept silent.
Seeing the Adrija caught had brought home how much more now depended upon Adam’s ability to maintain his thin and uncomfortable set of lies.
When one of Singh Rao’s men had reported hearing voices rise from an opening in the ground deeper in the ruins, Borthwick had left the Adrija under guard and navigated his way to the stairwell.Adam had joined them as they silently descended through the labyrinth of soaring arcades, fearing the worst—and then finding it.In the heart of the well, Borthwick’s soldiers had fanned out along the gallery and pinned Subhas, Constance, and Neil with their rifles.
The clatter of cocking hammers echoed off the high walls and pillared galleries.Constance’s hand froze at the pocket of her trousers, where Adam knew her knives were hidden at her thighs.Subhas’s expression was grimly determined, but he made no move to reach for the antique Enfield slung over his shoulder.
Neil looked scared.
He should be scared.The place was a dead-end trap.
Ellie moved into view overhead, staring down into the well with an expression of terrible worry.Kalb hovered by her legs.The dog didn’t look worried—but then, he probably just figured that Adam would solve the problem.Kalb had complete and abiding faith in the man who snuck him sausages.
Adam had no idea how to solve this.
Borthwick descended to the landing that framed the still pool of green water, pacing casually.“I was wondering whether you two would turn up again.I must say, I will appreciate the opportunity to find out who sent you here to try to steal my arcanum.And I’m sure you’ll tell me, given the right degree of persuasion.”
Borthwick’s hand dropped to the coil of his whip, and Adam’s skin went cold.
Of course, the colonel assumed that Neil and Constance must be working for someone who wanted the astra for themselves—a perfectly natural leap of logic for a secret policeman to make.
He’d peel the answer out of Neil’s skin—and expose Constance’s family to the full wrath of the Raj.
