"Go get a Thoth-den and the police," Rian told the attendant tersely, as Evelyn lowered himself down the shaft. "Run."
"Lyns?" Evelyn, voice tight with distress, lifted the Alban woman carefully. "She's so cold."
"Then hand her up, man!" Prince Gustav said.
Rian climbed swiftly down to join Evelyn, glancing from a wadded bloodstained cloth to the trail of dark red smears decorating the floor of a downward sloping tunnel leading from the shaft. The blood was tacky, crusted. Lynsey had crawled to this point, then collapsed.
"I'll prop, you lift," she told Evelyn, and wasted no time in doing just that, with Gustav and his driver hauling from above.
Climbing back up, Rian said: "Stabbed, I think. I can tell that her heart's still beating, but it's very weak."
"Where is the nearest Thoth-den?" Evelyn asked Dama Wishart, managing to stand cradling the tall Alban woman in his arms. "We can't wait here."
"I'll show you," Dama Wishart said. "Not far, thankfully—we are at a pyramid, after all."
"Good, good," Prince Gustav said. "Go without delay, as will I. The sound it will have carried, the rats they will run. But they do not escape."
Taking the torch from Dama Wishart, he leapt into the hidden tunnel, his driver quickly dropping down after him.
Evelyn wavered, but Rian took his shoulders and turned him toward the exit.
"I'll look for Lyle," she said. "Go."
How would Lyle feel, knowing that only vampiric intervention was likely to save Lynsey? Climbing back into the shaft, Rian decided she would not ask him if she found him.
Gustav and his driver had already disappeared around a curve, two rivers rapidly gaining distance. Rian shook her head, wondering what diplomatic consequences there would be for Prytennia if one of Sweden's princes, and Alba's current Lord Protector, met a messy end in London.
Had she become someone who protected Prytennia's interests? It was an odd thought, as strange as the idea of living a thousand years in the service of Cernunnos and the Trifold. But to do that she needed to survive now, and so did not race immediately after the Swedes, taking the time to ready her pistol and strain her senses, feeling for other rivers ahead. Nothing seemed to be in range.
The tunnel was neatly cut but narrow, close enough to brush elbows on either side, though she did not need to bow her head, and could manage a brisk pace without making a great deal of noise. Height and her Makepeace-given senses allowed her to gain on Gustav, so that she was within sight of him when he stopped, outlined by a dim glow.
A reverent curse drifted back to her, and the two men spoke softly before moving forward at a much more cautious pace. They had not progressed more than a few feet by the time Rian reached the entrance of a long chamber lit by several fulgite lamps.
Work tables, camp beds, and corpses. It was a slaughter house, reeking.
Rian recognised the head of a man lying on the ground to her right. He had been with Felix, coming from a meeting with Princess Leodhild. His body was several feet away, meaty chunks. She looked hastily around for Felix and Lyle, not spotting them immediately, counting five bodies, three men and two women, all torn apart.
Prince Gustav had found a sixth, the one that mattered above all others. Gleaming in dull purple tones, it was spread in countless crystalline fragments on one of the tables amidst a collection of the tools used to break it down. But enough was intact to be damning: a forearm, part of a foot, an entire hand.
"So it is true!" Gustav said, picking his way toward the table. "I guessed but did not believe, because the stone of rept does not at all resemble the crystal of fulgite. But I see the way of it. Look here, this is used."
He had found a machine, resembling a tall drum or barrel, which opened up to reveal a scarred interior and a partially shattered fulgite person.
"So, it is fulquus itself they use," Prince Gustav said. "Not a special thing that Rome alone controls." He threw Rian a vastly entertained glance. "The cat, the pigeons, yes?"
No understatement. Egypt's Otherworld was not easily reached, and even those who did not strive to become stars relied upon a well-preserved body to house their ba while it gathered strength to make the journey to the Field of Rushes. To destroy the body of an Egyptian was, potentially, to leave their ba homeless, without any choice but to attempt that journey immediately. Unlike Prytennia, where efforts were made as soon as possible to sever the tie between body and soul by breaking the body down, or the Nordic lands where the soul was sent on by means of fire, there was nothing more dreadful to the Egyptian than to interfere with the preserved bodies of the dead.
And over the past few decades, half the world had started powering their lamps with them.
Even looking beyond Egypt's reaction, if the world now knew how to make fulgite, what would happen? None of the experiments in replicating fulgite's ability to store and release fulquus had come anywhere close to creating a battery of similar capacity. None of the alternatives, old or new, could begin to compare to fulgite's efficiency.
"I begin to see why the Nesweth sent the Huntresses," Rian said, and Gustav ceased to be amused.
"No, it is impossible," he said. "They could not have known, and could hold no hope to hide this now." He looked around, then recovered his cheer. "Rome, it is about to enjoy a war, I think."
"None of these are Dem Blair, my prince," said the driver, Ishi.
"That is good. Let us find the Lyle."
"There were several exits, one of them blocked by a heavy, close-fitting door, and two others that proved to lead to partially filled shafts—not, in Rian's estimation, beneath the Black Pyramid, but perhaps one of the smaller pyramids used by the Thoth-den. They soon returned to examine the heavy door.
"They ran, and sealed it behind," Prince Gustav said. "Do the vampire parts of you feel them near, Keeper of Albion?"
Rian had been trying to gauge that very thing, hoping to select a direction, and finding it not an easy process. "There's no-one close," she said.
"Then we make noise again," he said, and did so, this time shattering the stone door into flying fragments.
Beyond, the tunnel divided, and Gustav chose left without preamble. Rian paused to check her pocket watch. Makepeace would surely be on the move by now, perhaps even able to enter the south-facing pyramid.
"Someone alive ahead," she said, catching Prince Gustav up. "And others, further away."
"Good, good. But not so good."
They were in a straight section, and Ishi's torch had picked out another door, and the uneven lines of a rock fall scattered around a man's body. Lyle.
"The rats have teeth," Prince Gustav said, as they moved quickly to uncover the fallen Alban. Beyond the door was a clanging, mechanical digging noise.
"Heartbeat is strong," Rian said, then winced as the Swedish prince employed some rough-and-ready methods to encourage Lyle to consciousness.
"...Highness?"
"Today I am the aide, yes?" Gustav said, with a note of genuine relief. "You make the bad show, Lyle. It is a poor warrior that adventures without weapons."
"Lynsey had—Lynsey!" Lyle attempted to bolt upright, and reeled.
"She's alive," Rian said quickly. "Evelyn's taking care of her."
Further discussion was forestalled by additional banging, as if a horse was trying to kick down a stable door.
"Is it that they run?" Prince Gustav wondered.
"What happened, Lyle?" Rian asked. "How did you end up here?"
Lyle was holding his head, investigating lumps, and spoke haltingly.
"There was something I guessed...but you must know it, if you've been through that first room. I wanted to check the tombs...the tombs for any sign of damage, so we took a tour, and dropped off the back. We found one that looked freshly painted...didn't make sense. Then a piece of the paving lifted up. Did they know the timing of the...? We hid, and watched as they worked on the freshly-painted tomb, making the inscription look older. Then..."
He trailed off, face creased with confusion, and then flinched as another round of banging came from beyond the door.
"Why did we follow them? We must have followed. We were—I remember standing outside that room's entrance, watching them. They were making preparations to seal tunnels, to fully erase any sign that they had ever been—ever been... Did someone come up behind us?"
He stopped, bewildered.
"Enough for you this day, my Alban," Prince Gustav said. "There are no bones broken, yes? The Keeper, she will lend you a shoulder."
"There's at least eight people in there," Rian said, since the prince was clearly contemplating going through the door. "And...I'm not sure it's them making that noise. We can't be sure it's the Huntresses that killed those people."
"It is the stomach of milk that would not find out!" Gustav said cheerfully, and bent to help Lyle up, and out of the way.
"Your Highness," Lyle said, clearly horrified. "The risk..."
But axe haft was already meeting door, and Rian decided she would really rather not see what the thing would do to people.
"Let's get you out of here, Lyle."
"Do you know what the Swedes will do to Alba if he gets himself killed?" Lyle staggered toward Gustav.
Rian rather thought Sweden would exact a blood price and send a new Lord Protector, but forbore to comment, moving to join the Alban man as he followed Gustav through the door.
Beyond was a siege.
A makeshift barrier, a jumbled combination of mining spoil and metal plates, sectioned off part of the room. In the very corner an upward ramp had been cut into the wall, and two men using noisy machines were breaking into a wall of stone blocks exposed near the ceiling, while most of the remaining Romans struggled to ward off a now-familiar hulking creature.
The bull-bear was smeared with dirt and covered in gashes. From the condition of the rest of the room, it looked as if the creature, like Lyle, had been brought down by a rock fall, though one that had involved collapsing an entire tunnel. Perhaps the Romans had believed themselves safe from it, and turned their attention to opening an escape route until it had dug its way free.
Gustav, of course, bounded directly for the thing, and it turned to throw itself at him. The Swedish prince met the bull-bear's attack with competence, if not ease, while his driver drew a gun of his own, and circled so that he had a clear shot if it became necessary.
The Romans' response to sudden assistance was to redouble their efforts to break through the wall above. As they moved, Rian stiffened, spotting two people she had missed at first glance because they were kneeling on the floor. A middle-aged woman and an older man, hands pressed together, lips moving in silent chant. Strangers to her, but familiar thanks to Eleri's precise sketchwork. The Mendacii.
Obvious what they were doing. The most logical response to a god-touched creature like the bull-bear was a god-touched counter. And the thing that had chased the children had been monstrously powerful.
Rian shot the man first. She had a good angle on him, and the bullet struck him in the temple, but the woman flinched away as he fell, and Rian's second bullet pinged off the far wall.
And she had acted too late. The whispers came from every corner, words not quite strong enough to be audible, skittering around the cramped room. Rian's spine crawled, and she moved to try for a clearer line of sight, but the Romans were using their barrier to block her now, and she had to dash quickly for an overturned table when two produced guns, and fired back.
Lyle gasped, and she thought that he'd been hit, but it was worse. Greenish-grey hands had reached up from the uneven floor, and were pulling him down. Before Rian even understood what was happening, he had vanished to his knees.
"Ishi!" Prince Gustav shouted imperatively, landing a creditable blow on the bull-bear.
Gustav's driver had already acted, joining Rian's attempt to bring down the shooters, or the remaining Mendacium. Rian took the chance and grabbed Lyle's hand, then dragged the fallen table to him, as if it was a life buoy that might keep him afloat. He had sunk to his waist, and Rian struggled to hold him without coming into contact with the reaching spectral hands. Her efforts seemed to make no difference.
"Arianne, I..." Lyle's eyes were wide, his panic and horror beating at her.
But then that blast of emotion calmed, his features firmed, and, gaze fixed on her...he pulled her toward him.