The stair behind the old customs house had forty-one steps; a fact the guild receptionist seemed adamant that I remember.
We watched in silence as every few minutes the whole flight rose a finger’s width, held, and settled again — a slow wet inhale through the stone.
“Again,” Dagny said, behind me. “It’s repeating that same rhythm again.”
“Don’t stand on the joins.”
“What happens if I stand on the joins?”
“Nothing. It’s a stair.” My palm was flat on the wall. The wall was unusually warm and quite out of place on a chill October evening. Something about the dungeon itself?
Somebody had to give the briefing, so I gave it. There are six floors, we survey only, and don’t go past the fourth arch. Dagny front, Silwen second, Pell behind me. If the ceiling starts moaning or glowing, we leave. If I say we leave, we leave. No discussion.
“Yes,” said Pell, in the voice of someone reciting a component.
“Yes,” said Silwen, and then, once the echo had died, “Nice speech.”
Pell had named us on the way down. Wick — three low flames and one good draught. I said it was a fire hazard. I have been answering to it all evening.
Before I finished the briefing, Dagny had lifted my satchel off my shoulder and onto her own. She did not ask, and she did not slow down.
“I can carry my own bag.”
“You’re not carrying it down forty-one steps,” Silwen said, from behind me. “Teacher.”
She only calls me that when she is telling me what to do.
Dagny shifted the bag on her shoulder. “If these steps get any steeper I’m putting you over the other one.”
“I’ve got the map.”
“I’ve got the arms.”
Behind me, Pell was already eating something she hadn’t offered to share, which meant she had packed for four.
We went down in the order I’d given.
Dagny took the front the way she took everything: shoulders first, kite shield up like she expected an argument, breastplate dented across the ribs where something had already won one. Copper hair cropped short and standing up where her helmet had been.
Silwen walked second with her bow unstrung and her ears doing the work instead — grey-violet skin gone the colour of wet slate in the lantern light, silver braid pulled so tight it looked like a punishment.
Pell came last, both hands on her staff, the twelve charms knotted at its head clicking at every step. Her robe was two sizes too big. She had bought it to last.
Ninety silver a month, for six years. I know what that bought: a room above a chandler’s, boots that didn’t leak, and the privilege of standing in a guildhall while a man with better shoulders told the room what a find I was. Brannoc would put his hand on my shoulder when he said it. He never asked what I could do. He asked me to hold his shield.
Nobody’s hand was on my shoulder now. Three people waited in the dark for a plan. The plan was right.
“Down,” I said. “Slow.”
The Throat was dressed basalt with brass veins in it and no light of its own. The walls warmed my hand at every step, and the cuff of my coat, mended so many times the mends outnumbered the cloth. Warm like a bath. Warm like a bed.
Nine paces in, something started up in the stone. Not in the ears — along the bone behind them. A dry rustle, like a room of people turning pages. Then a whisper. Then a great many.
“Anyone hearing that?”
“Water,” Dagny said.
“Your boots,” said Silwen.
“Nothing,” said Pell, and stopped walking. “Should we be hearing something?”
Then it arrived in my chest, and it did not hurt, and I had no shelf for it.
Heat. One bright wash of it, sternum to hips, down the inside of my arms. My collar went tight enough to notice. The seam across my shoulder became a line exactly as long as it was. The buckle of my belt turned into a small hot point against one hip. Everything touching me had an opinion, and I had not asked for any of them.
I stood still and waited for it to pass. It made itself comfortable instead.
“Yvan.” Silwen, at my shoulder now, ears flat to her head. “Your voice did a thing.”
“Cold,” I said. “Draught coming off the water.”
“There’s no draught.”
“There’s a draught,” I said, “and it’s cold.”
The wall under my palm was a baker’s hearth. The tips of my ears had gone hot, the shell of them, and I turned my head so she couldn’t see.
Dagny stopped ahead of us, shield up, breathing hard through her nose. “Ceiling’s not moaning,” she announced. “I’m calling that a win. And if this is cold, I’m a cathedral.”
“Yvan.” Pell had stopped reciting. “It isn’t in the walls. The walls are just where it comes out.”
“Say the true one,” Silwen said. “Say it back to me.”
I looked at the brass vein beside my hand. There was a version of the next ten seconds in which I told them — the warmth that would not leave, the way the stone had started taking an interest.
“Counting Room,” I said. “Nobody touches the brass until I say so.”
Under my palm, the wall went warmer. Warmer. The stone had heard me choose.