“It’s a little late to ask, isn’t it?” Nemini replied as she emerged from the shadows. “The decision’s already been made.”
“That doesn’t mean you have to go along,” Bex said, glancing at the snakes that were curled in tight, protective coils around Nemini’s hornless head. “If you want to sit this one out, I’ll understand.”
“What’s the point?” Nemini asked, staring listlessly down at the hole in the floor that led to the Lowest Hells. “I’ve already passed through the worst part. If I quit now, the pain will be the same, so I might as well keep going.”
“There’s my optimist,” Bex joked as she put her arm around Nemini’s shoulders. “Thanks for sticking it out with us, Nemini. Your help means a lot.”
Nemini shrugged off the gratitude, but she didn’t duck out from under Bex’s arm, allowing the crownless queen to walk her down the tunnel following the noise of clomping demon feet and the ghostly blue light of Leander’s sorcerous fire.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
“Let me get this absolutely bleeding straight,” Desh was saying when Bex and Nemini caught back up with the front of the group. “You used tunnels made by our ancestors, the ones they dug to escape the Hells, as cover so you could move your troops around where we couldn’t see them? Is that what you’re telling me?”
“That’s exactly what I’m telling you,” Leander replied, ignoring the fear demon’s rant as he carefully studied what looked like a perfectly normal section of the tunnel’s stone wall. “The so-called ‘Founders’ Tunnels’ have been known to Gilgamesh since their creation. He was planning to have them filled in once he’d amassed enough spare stone, but I convinced him it’d be more efficient to use the paths as a quick-access network for our own troops instead.”
Desh rolled his orange eyes. “Sounds like you were quite the little suck-up.”
“I prefer to think of it as good strategy,” Prince Leander said. “Gilgamesh has always favored efficiency above all other virtues. I merely used his cheapness to my own advantage. By convincing him the Founders’ Tunnels were more useful open than closed, not only did I avoid having to oversee a construction project involving miles of passageways filled with violent, rebellious slaves, I also gained a secret tunnel network unknown to the rest of my family. My ultimate plan was to dig a new tunnel that Mara and I could use to escape, but I didn’t get to finish it before I got the summons to destroy the Queen of Wrath.”
“That’s a pity,” Bex said, pointedly choosing to ignore the ‘destroy the Queen of Wrath’ part. “We could’ve used an escape tunnel.”
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Leander said morosely. “Digging the tunnel was merely a matter of labor, but I was never able to figure out a way to cross the void between life and death safely without a chain.”
Adrian had, but Bex didn’t think bragging to Leander about the awesome accomplishments of the brother Gilgamesh had chosen to replace him would go over well. Leander was too busy staring at the wall to listen to her anyway, though Bex wasn’t sure why. This part of the tunnel didn’t look any different to her, but Leander was squinting at the wall like he was trying to read a novel written in a very tiny font. This went on for two entire minutes before Leander suddenly reached out to press his fingers against a patch of stone that looked exactly like every other part of the wall and began speaking loudly in Ancient Sumerian.
“Blow away all that impedes royalty’s presence, Passage of the Summer Storm.”
The sorcery was still ringing in Bex’s ears when the stone wall in front of Leander rolled away exactly like a summer raincloud to reveal a dark staircase as wide as a two-lane highway.
“Whoa,” Bex said, backing into Nemini, who was still hovering behind her like a nervous cat. “What is that?”
“The continuation of the central stair,” Leander replied, lifting his ball of blue fire to show Bex the enormous, open, corkscrew staircase that went both up and down the giant cylindrical shaft in front of them. “It used to go all the way up to Heaven, but the entrance to this part was sealed off when Gilgamesh started using the Lowest Hells as a prison.”
Bex could see why. Now that he’d opened the wall, she could feel the crushing, falling terror of the void demons seeping up from the darkness below. It was just an echo of whatshe felt when she actually jumped in, but it was still enough to make their whole attack force stop in its tracks.
“Well,” Lys said with a swallow, breaking the sudden silence. “At least this explains why the Middle Hells tower has a floor at the bottom. I always wondered how the warlocks got down to the Lowest Hells, but now I see. They didn’t.”
“No one comes down here,” Leander agreed, tossing his glowing ball of fire up to illuminate the stone ceiling that abruptly cut through the giant black stairwell fifty feet above their current position. “The Lowest Hells have been off-limits to everyone except Gilgamesh and his princes for eons, which makes it the last place they’ll be expecting an attack from.” He flashed Bex a superior smile over his shoulder. “Convinced I’m on your side now?”
“It’s a good start,” Bex said, stepping gingerly through the hole he’d made in the wall to join Leander on the spiral staircase. “Ask me again after we’ve actually won something.”
The prince scowled, but he let the comment lie as he started up the steps, which looked very different from the ones in the Middle Hells. Bex had only gotten a brief glimpse of the inside of the warlocks’ tower before the princess spotted her, but everything she’d seen had been as white and fancy as the Holy City itself. The walls here, on the other hand, were the blackest Bex had seen since entering the Hells. She didn’t know if the stone was naturally dark or if years of sin had just stained it that color, but the matte black soaked up the light and made it very difficult to see. She’d just put her hand on the wall to make sure she didn’t miss a step and accidentally fall to her death when Bex felt the familiar, toxic burn of sin iron.
“What the—” She snatched her hand away, squinting at the walls in the faint light of the prince’s distant fire. “Are thesepipes?”
“Sin-iron water pipes,” Leander confirmed with a nod. “They’re what bring the deathly rivers up to the other Hells. How else do you think we maintain a steady stream of river water for the demons to strain sin out of?”
He reached out to rap his knuckles against the wall, which Bex only now realized wasn’t made of very dark stone like she’d thought. It was sin iron. All the walls of the circular, spiral stairwell they were climbing were covered in sin-iron pipes of various sizes. She was scrambling to think how they could use that to their advantage when the prince tapped her on the shoulder.
“Don’t dawdle, please,” he said in a low voice. “We’re in a place only Gilgamesh and his direct family are allowed to access. The security measures aren’t checked often, but they do exist. If we linger long enough to get caught, our advantage will be lost, and this place could turn into a trap.”
“Right,” Bex muttered, turning to signal General Kirok to start moving everyone in before jogging up the long spiral to join Boston, who’d already galloped up to the wall that separated the bottom of the Middle Hells tower from the terrors below.
“I can’t believe Gilgamesh just bricked it over,” the familiar said, standing on his hind paws to get a better look at the white stones mortared together just above his head. “There’s not even a support beam to prevent collapse. What if it broke and someone fell through?”
“I told you Gilgamesh was cheap,” Leander whispered as he joined them. “Speaking of which, please lower your voices. There’s only one layer of stone between us and the main security desk.”
Bex could hear it. Now that she was crouching right below the floor, she could hear the warlocks walking around in the tower above them. She could even hear the murmur oftheir voices, though she couldn’t hear what they were saying or pinpoint where exactly they were standing. She was pressing her ear to the stone to see if she could pick up something more useful when Leander pressed his palm flat against the stones beside her.
