Page 82 of The Devouring Time

“I have a couple of ideas.” Titus holds up a right foreleg. “One, we start a fight. Any damage to one of us will get their immediate attention.”

“And get both combatants locked away in isolation for the rest of their time here,” Khephnes warns.

“It’s a sacrifice, but a worthy one.” A left foreleg joins the right. “Two, one of us pretends to be injured or sick. It would have to be a dramatic performance to get both guards to leave their posts, but it probably wouldn’t end up with the person in a small cell.”

“Oh!” Yrsa perks up. “We once traveled with a troupe of performers for a few weeks—my father and I are merchants, we’ve gone all the way to Italy—and I play-acted with them after we’d camp for the night. Father wanted to be furious, you know what they say about actors, but he was laughing too hard.” She wilts a bit. “I hope he’s all right. He’s not young anymore, and I do most of the work these days.”

I’ve managed to keep myself from worrying too much about James, but there are nights I lie in my mossy bed and remember that Zebulon Hart had been expecting him instead of me. The Swarm in my body was supposed to be in his, and I’m afraid what they might do to him in my absence.

There’s nothing I can do to help him now, so I focus on the moment at hand. “So you want to pretend to be sick, Yrsa?”

“I can do it,” she says, confidence filling her mind-voice.

“It’s safer than staging a fight,” Khephnes agrees. Titus seems a bit disappointed, but doesn’t protest. “I caution against injuring your body in some way, though.”

A memory from the war flickers into my mind: a fellow private whose name I can’t recall, thrashing helplessly in the mud. He’d recovered, but been shipped to the nearest hospital. I don’t know what happened to him after. “Pretend to have a seizure. That should be alarming enough to bring the guards running.”

“When should we do it?” Yrsa asks.

“After dinner, just as we’re all settling in for the night.” Bianca clicks her forelegs together thoughtfully. “The Swarm are daytime creatures like us, so there should be fewer of them moving about in the corridors.”

“Let’s do it tonight, then,” Titus says. “There’s no sense in waiting about, letting our nerves get the better of us.”

I agree—waiting for an action to start was the second-worst part of my experience as a solider, the worst being the action itself. We scatter, Bianca and Yrsa to chat to others among our fellow captives, Khephnes to stare out his window, and Titus to perform his daily exercises. I try to distract myself by re-reading the inscriptions on the walls.

Hopefully by dawn tomorrow we’ll have answers. What good the answers will do us, I don’t know—can’t know, until we have them.

Dinner arrives, and I force myself to eat, despite the nerves curdling my gut. After, I swim in the pool a bit, then return to my bed as the light outside the windows fades. Most of the other prisoners do as well, and there’s only the faintest murmur of movement when I crawl into my bed.

Time passes, and those around me settle into sleep. Has Yrsa’s nerve failed her? Has she fallen asleep by accident? Has⁠—

Yrsa lets out a horrible, chittering sound—made by her carapace, since the Swarm have no vocal cords. She tumbles from her bed, limbs flailing, segments whipping wildly about.

It’s a convincing performance, at least to me. To the guards as well—they both scuttle in her direction, but are hampered by the other prisoners rushing to aid her.

“Out of the way, please!” one trumpets into our minds.

I slip off my bed and scurry to the door, moving on all limbs both for speed and to lower my profile. Bianca is already there, and within a half second we’re joined by Titus…and Khephnes.

I’m surprised, but there’s no time to dawdle. The door is unlocked, and we’re out in a moment, shutting it behind us. Bianca gestures to me with her trunk, and I realize I’m the only one who knows where to go.

Trying to be both swift and quiet, I lead the way through the corridors, the others behind me as I follow the signs. Soon we’re in a part of the ziggurat we’ve never been in before, going down long sloping ramps, deeper into the earth.

Cold blue light illuminates the underground passage, generated by the crystalline globes the Swarm use. The murals here are badly degraded, perhaps by the damp, and no one has tried to restore them. Hieroglyphic signs appear at every juncture and we follow them, until at last the hall ends in an ornate door.

Grim determination fills me. We’re finally going to have answers.

The door is unlocked. We slip inside and Titus quietly shuts it behind us. The Hall of Records is enormous, holding thousands of papyrus scrolls tucked into shelves, most of them covered in a thick layer of dust and rotting to pieces. Khephnes and I could spend days in here and only read a small fraction.

Closest to the door, however, is a jumble of crumbling papyrus; marks in the dust show someone was here within the last few months, at least. Was this the pile the guards took the papyrus from to give to Khephnes for my lessons?

“No one’s been here for a long time,” Khephnes observes.

“Wrong.” Titus points just ahead of us, and I finally notice a path straight down the middle of the room that is entirely free of dust. “Let’s see what they’ve been looking at in here.”

We follow the clear path, which leads to another door. It’s already half-open; we push it back the rest of the way.

The room beyond is small and has no other entrances or exits. It’s entirely empty except for a plinth that looks inexpertly patched together from miscellaneous metal rods and parts.