Page 361 of The Liveship Traders Trilogy

She had concluded long ago that he did not recognize her as the girl from the dance and the coach ride.

He treated her as a rather stupid servant.

She did not blame him. She was having a hard time holding on to that Malta, too.

Her memories of the ball and the accident seemed hazier and more distant than the memories of the city around her.

Her life as Malta seemed the tale of a frivolous and spoiled girl.

Even now, escape and survival did not drive her as hard as her need to find her brother and return with rods so they might free the dragon.

She had to find a way out. Helping them was incidental.

She passed the theatre, then abruptly turned back to the entrance to that vast chamber.

The door gaped blackly in the wall. She held the wavering lantern high to see how it had fared.

The once magnificent chamber had partially collapsed.

Efforts had been made to remove the earth, but the great blocks of stone that had once supported the lofty ceiling had thwarted the diggers.

She peered hopefully and decided it was worth a chance.

‘This way,’ she said to those following her.

Kekki wailed, ‘Oh, that is foolish. It has already mostly fallen down. We need to find a way out, not go deeper into ruin.’

Easier to explain than to argue. ‘Every theatre must have a way for the actors to come and go. The Elderlings preferred that they remain unseen, to better preserve the illusion of the play. Behind the stage, which yet stands, there are apartments and a means of egress. Often have I come and gone that way. Come. Follow me with trust and you may yet be saved.’

Kekki looked affronted. ‘Don’t give yourself airs with me, little maid. You forget yourself.’

Malta was silent for a moment. ‘More than you know,’ she agreed in a stranger’s voice.

Whose words had those been, whose diction?

She did not know and there was no time to trace a single memory.

She led them to the stage, up and across it and then down behind it.

Some debris blocked the hidden door, but most of it was wood rather than stone.

No one had been this way in a long, long time.

Perhaps the Rain Wild Folk had never even discovered this door.

She put the lantern down and set to work clearing it while the Satrap and his Companion watched.

She worked the latch by tracing the sign of the actors’ guild upon the jidzin panel.

When that did not work, she kicked the door.

It swung slowly into darkness. The lintel above groaned threateningly, but held.

She prayed the corridor would be clear. She set her hand to the jidzin strip in the wall, and the narrow hall suddenly glowed into life.

Clear and straight, it ran off ahead of her, beckoning them to freedom.

‘This way,’ Malta announced. Kekki caught up the lantern, but Malta was ready to trust to the jidzin strip now.

Her fingers rode it lightly as she walked the hall.

Echoes of someone else’s anticipation rustled in her heart.

That door led to the wardrobe, those to the chambers where the dancers might change and loosen their limbs.

It had been a great theatre, the finest in any of the Elderlings cities.

The back door, she recalled, opened onto a wonderful verandah and a boathouse that overlooked the river.

Some of the actors and singers had kept their own small vessels stored there, for moonlit trysts on the river.

With a shake of her head, Malta rattled it free of dreams. A door out, she told herself. That was all she sought, a door out of the buried city.

The corridor ran on and on, past practice rooms and past the small shops of those who supported the artists of the theatre.

That had been a costumier’s shop, and this door had gone to a fine little drug den.

Here was the wigmaker, and there was the paint and paste artist’s shop.

Gone, all gone, still and dead. This had been the beating heart of the city, for what art is greater than art that imitates life itself?

Malta hurried past them, but inside her heart, the memories of a hundred artists mourned their own demise.

When she did see daylight ahead, it was so pale and grey, it seemed a cheat.

The final stretch of the corridor was damaged.

The jidzin strip was gone, and their lantern failing.

They would have to hurry now. The blocks that made up the walls had lost their plaster and frescoes.

They bowed in, and gleams of water edged down them.

Stains on the wall showed Malta that this corridor had been flooded, and more than once.

Whenever the river was swollen with the rains, it probably filled these tunnels.

It was only good fortune that the way was clear now.

Even so, they waded through soft muck. Malta had long ago given up any care for her clothes, but both the Satrap and his Companion made dismayed noises as they squelched along behind her.

The verandah and boathouse that had once been the terminus of this corridor were now tumbled wreckage.

There was no clear pathway. Malta ignored the protests of the others, and picked her way through, moving always towards the grey daylight ahead.

Rains had washed dirt and leaves into what remained of the corridor.

Some quake long ago had cleft both earth and corridor.

‘We’re out!’ Malta called back to them. She climbed over the remains of stacked boats, wriggled through the muddy cleft and suddenly stumbled out into early morning light.

She drew breath after breath of the fresh air, rejoicing simply in the open space around her.

She had not realized how being surrounded by dark and earth had oppressed her spirits until she stood clear of it.

She stood clear, also, of all the whispering spirits.

It was like wakening from a long and confusing dream.

She started to rub her face, then stopped.

Her hands were smeared and gritty. The few fingernails she had left were packed with mud.

Her clothing clung to her in muddy rags.

She discovered she had but one shoe on. Where and who had she been?

She was still blinking as the Satrap and his Companion emerged.

They were a bit muddy, but not near as bedraggled as Malta.

She turned to smile at them, expecting thanks.

Instead, Magnadon Satrap Cosgo demanded, ‘Where is the city? What is the use of bringing us out of the wreckage to this forsaken spot?’

Malta gazed all around her. Trees. Sluggish grey water around the bases of the trees.

She stood on a hump of tussocky ground in the middle of a swamp.

She had lost all her bearings in her time underground.

She oriented herself by the rising sun and looked for Trehaug.

The forest blocked her view. She shrugged.

‘We’re either upriver or downriver of it,’ she hazarded to herself.

‘As we seem to be on a tiny island, that seems a very safe thing to say,’ the Satrap opined.

Malta climbed to higher ground for a better view, but it only confirmed his sour guess.

It was not so much an island as a hummock in a swamp.

She could not be sure which direction was the river channel and which led to swamp.

The immense grey columns of the river trees extended as far as she could see in every direction.

‘We’ll have to go back,’ she concluded, her heart sinking. She did not know if she could face those ranked ghosts again.

‘No!’ Kekki uttered the word with a little shriek, then sat flat on the ground. She began sobbing hopelessly. ‘I cannot. I will not go back into the dark. I won’t.’

‘Obviously we don’t have to,’ the Satrap observed impatiently.

‘We climbed over a number of little boats getting out. Maid, go back in and find the best one. Drag it out here, and row us back to the city.’ He looked about in disgust, then drew a kerchief out of his pocket and spread it on the ground.

He sat down on it. ‘I shall rest here.’ He shook his head.

‘This is a poor way for these Traders to treat their rightful leader. They will regret their careless misuse of me.’

‘Possibly. But not as much as we regret how we have allowed you to misuse us,’ Malta heard herself say.

She was suddenly angry with these ungrateful wretches.

She had toiled through the night to guide them out of the tunnels, and this was her thanks?

To be ordered to fetch a boat and row them to Trehaug?

She shook out her ragged skirts and mocked a curtsey at the Satrap.

‘Malta Vestrit, of the Bingtown Traders, bids Magnadon Satrap Cosgo and his Companion Kekki farewell. I am not your servant to be put to your bidding. Nor do I consider myself your subject anymore. Goodbye.’

She pushed her hair back from her face and turned towards the muddy crack in the earth.

She took a deep breath. She could do this.

She had to do this. Once she got back to Trehaug, they could send a rescue party after the Satrap.

Perhaps a time sitting marooned on this hummock of land would teach him a little humility.

‘Wait!’ he commanded. ‘Malta Vestrit? The girl from the Summer Ball?’

She looked over her shoulder. She acknowledged the connection with a nod.

‘Leave me here, and I will never send my ships to rescue your father!’ he informed her grandiosely.

‘Your ships?’ She laughed, a bit wildly. ‘What ships? You never intended to help me. I am surprised you can even remember that you said you would.’

‘Fetch the boat and row us to safety. Then you shall see how the Satrap of Jamaillia keeps his promises.’