Page 108 of City of Stone and Silence

“Silvoa intended to confront Prime regardless. She lied to me about it, but that is on her account, not yours. As her friend, I … can’t blame you for accompanying her.”

“She was always impossible to stop once she’d made up her mind,” Gragant says. He smiles, very slightly. “I’ve missed you, Catoria. You’ve grown.”

Something passes between the two of them, wordlessly and too deep for me to understand. It lasts only a moment, and then Gragant turns to me.

“I take it Catoria allowed you to use her access point?”

“This morning,” I say with a nod.

I had managed to catch only a few hours’ sleep, which somehow made me feel even worse. This time, when I’d gone to the access point and let the tendrils of the Harbor’s system wrap around my mind, I’d felt Prime’s presence from the beginning. But he’d said nothing, only watched, as the system withdrew and made its announcement in its dead, flat voice.

access request received; home//balthazar

result:

authorized/accepted

Two down, one to go.

Gragant listens intently as I explain the plan that Catoria and I have worked out. Harak frowns, disapproving, but Gragant himself nods thoughtfully.

“It’s an awful risk for you,” he says. “With our combined strength, we might be able to simply overwhelm Prime’s defenses.”

“I’m not so certain,” I say. “That ziggurat has to be packed full of traps and guards he hasn’t shown us yet. Even if we won, it would cost too much.” I hear, involuntarily, the screams of the crew I’d led to their deaths, Safiya’s wet gurgle as the monster ripped her in two. “I can’t accept that.”

“Even still,” Harak rumbles. “There will be a cost.”

“Of course there will,” Catoria says. “But it is a necessary one. We have avoided dealing with Prime for long enough.”

“I think,” Gragant says slowly, “that I agree. The Divine Being has set us a challenge, and we must meet it.”

“If that is the case,” Harak says, “then the Minders should act alone. The Divine Being’s challenge is for us.”

“Perhaps the challenge is not only the defeat of Prime,” Gragant says.

Harak frowns, but doesn’t answer.

It’s hard to keep track of time in the cell, but it has to be getting close to evening when Prime comes to see me. I glare as a single human figure enters, the lizard-birds remaining motionless.

“You’re late,” I tell him. “The last time I was in a cell, things were a lot more interesting.”

“I’m terribly sorry to disappoint you,” Prime says, in his actor’s baritone.

For a moment I wonder if he’s finally come to see me in person, but it’s clear immediately that this body is only another puppet. It’s handsome, square-jawed with high cheekbones and slick, well-coiffed hair, but it looks more like a piece of sculpture than a genuine human face. It moves deliberately, under careful control, with none of the unconscious tics of a living person. When Prime isn’t concentrating, it remains absolutely still, just like the corpse-monsters behind it.

“Are you ready to bargain?” I say.

“Bargain?” The dead face manages an ironic smile. “I’m not sure you’re in much of a position to bargain.”

“I think we’re in the perfect position to come to an agreement. We both have something the other wants.”

“That’s a fascinating theory.” He leans forward. “You’re aware, of course, of what I can do to you whenever I choose.”

“It won’t get you what you want, any more than it did with Silvoa.”

“You’ve been talking to my little wayward ghost, I see.” The smile again, like something he’d rehearsed from a book. “What do you think you have that I want?”

“The ability to leave this building, obviously.”