“Oh, think nothing of it.”
Neither of them moved.Around them, the city was deathlystill.
“Zaria,” Isaac said.“I do agree with you.I need your help.I wouldn’t have made it through the catacombs without you.There is a place fordumb, brute strength.”
“No need to qualify my talents as such, love.”
“It’s accurate, isn’t it?”
“To a point, I’d like to think.”
“Look,” he said, lowering his hands.“You can trust me.Youcan do so because I have told you, repeatedly, that you can.”
She shrugged, as if helpless.
“Look,” he repeated.“I have no intention of revenge.Forboth our peace of mind, I’ll just ask one favor of you, and then we can burythe hatchet.Okay?”
She nodded.“Sure.Gladly.”
“Come closer.”
She looked at him, unsure.
“Closer,” he said.
She hesitated, almost said something, and decided toapproach.When she was on her hands and knees above him, he grabbed the strapof her one leather pauldron, trying to yank her down.She hardly budged.Itfelt like bending a tree.
“Let me pull you,” he said, irritated.
Zaria rolled her eyes.When he yanked again, she pretendedto collapse over him, as if he had caught her by surprise.Her snout hoveredabove his nose.
“I told you so,” he said.
She made a face.“That all?”
“Yes,” he said, releasing his grip on her armor.“That’sall.Consider the matter resolved.”
She stayed above him.Her eyes roamed.When he met her gazeagain, her ears were twitching beneath the pale yellow light.A moment passed.He forced himself not to shy away.Eventually, she cleared her throat, sat up,and leaned back against the battlement, adjusting the strap of her pauldron.
“Sorry,” she said.“I’ll listen, now on.”
He did not answer.
Minutes passed.Zaria continued to hold watch over theladder.For a time, Isaac’s only concern was tearing through the rations.
“Where are we?”he asked.
“A watchtower, looks like.It’s gothigh cover, one way in or out.”
Isaac looked down at the open hole in the tower floor.Shemust’ve climbed up the entire ladder with his limp body hanging on hershoulder.
“It’s a city out there,” she said, gesturing.
He pulled himself up between two battlements, gazing out.
Buildings stretched down the body cavity of the giantcorpse, their rooftops covered in shadow from the distant, hanging lights.Itwas a much bigger city than the one he had grown upnext to.In the distant past, it might’ve held a population in the tens ofthousands.From where he was, he could see streets and shops, the occasionalpillar of watchtowers, water mills and granaries, signs written in a languagethat hadn’t been spoken in millennia.
From what he could see, all the buildings were made ofstone.Most were still in remarkably good condition.There was no sunlight tobeat on their roofs, no rain to erode their walls, and not a single footprintin the dust that covered the streets.It was all so well preserved that heimagined he could stroll into a house and still see the mummified remnants offood on the table, though he already had a sobering idea of what thenecromancers usually ate.
