Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass #1)(81)

Elsa shook her head. “It seemed cavernous down there.”

Faraz picked up a pebble and tossed it a few meters ahead. Instead of clattering against stone, it disappeared into the floor without a sound. “Definitely too far to jump.”

Leo ran a hand through his hair. “Okay. So, in addition to dead ends, we have impassable gaping holes in the floor. Fantastic.”

Elsa rolled her shoulder, testing for torn muscles, while she considered the problem. “Listen, when I was down there, I couldn’t see the other four walls. The space looked much wider than this corridor. If we move one corridor to the left or right, I think we’re likely to encounter the same chasm.”

Porzia said, “So we retrace our steps. Go back to the entrance and try our luck in the southeast quadrant, instead.”

Faraz stroked one of Skandar’s tentacles. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our ‘luck’ hasn’t been of much assistance so far.”

Porzia rolled her eyes. “The southeast quadrant can’t be worse than falling to our deaths in a bottomless pit.”

“Now you’ve done it,” Leo said with a wry grin. “Now we’re definitely going to find something worse than a bottomless pit.”

But in the end they all agreed that Porzia’s plan seemed best. They followed the curve of the corridor, retracing their steps. Left, left, past two turnoffs, right, left again.

“Wait,” Elsa said. Up ahead, the corridor ended at an unfamiliar wall. “Does this look right? Did we take a wrong turn somewhere?”

Porzia scowled. “We were all counting the turns. We should be able to see the entrance from here.”

Faraz spun in a slow circle, looking around. “Where in hell are we?”

*

Leo planted his fists on his hips and exhaled sharply. This was getting ridiculous.

At this rate, they would need to go back for provisions, except that they probably couldn’t. They’d lost the entrance, and he’d bet his favorite screwdriver that Montaigne had scribed the world such that portals could only be opened at the Edgemist. Which meant they were not only failing to find the book, they were also getting themselves increasingly entrapped.

It was time to try a more radical approach. He unbuckled his sword belt and handed it to Faraz.

“What are you doing?” Faraz said, accepting the rapier.

“We’re lost.” Leo flashed him a grin. “I think it’s time we cheat.”

With that, he wedged the toe of his boot in the crack between two fieldstones, and he began to climb.

“Oh good Lord,” Porzia swore. “Be careful!”

“Fortune favors the bold!” he called down to her. Best to sound confident. The strain of clinging to the wall with only his fingertips was already making the muscles in his forearms burn, and a bead of sweat trickled down his spine.

“If you fall and split your skull open, I am not cleaning it up,” Porzia huffed.

Leo had to smile at that. It was just so … so Porzia. An oddly comforting familiarity.

Finally he got his hands over the top edge and—through a combination of pulling and scrabbling that probably did not look especially suave to the watchers below—heaved himself onto the top of the labyrinth wall.

He stood, surveying the domain that stretched away from him in all directions. He’d known the labyrinth must be large, but it was a different matter to see the expanse with his own two eyes. The air was also eerily still. In the real world, if he climbed up on top of a structure there would be a breeze, or at least the feel of warm air convecting off the sun-heated stones. Here, nothing. There wasn’t even a sun—the sky was the swirling bruise-purple of Edgemist, made luminous enough to cast a meager quantity of light down upon the labyrinth. No wonder it seemed like perpetual dusk down below.

Up here, with the world laid out at his feet, he could see that the group’s current position was close to one side—presumably the south side—though the walls blocked them from the gap he guessed had been their original entry point. From the curvature, he could be reasonably sure of where the center was, though both the distance and the shallow angle of his line of sight made it difficult to discern. As he looked out across the vast expanse of curving corridors, he once again felt that slight tremor through the soles of his shoes. And as he watched, a section of wall sank into the ground, disappearing from view.

“We have a problem,” he called down to his companions. “The labyrinth is changing.”

*

Elsa frowned as she, Faraz, and Porzia followed Leo’s directions. Leo walked along the top of the wall, keeping pace with them and occasionally instructing them on which turns to take. His apparent disregard for his own safety only served to irritate her more.

“I still don’t like it,” Elsa muttered to Porzia. “It’s too easy.”

“Perhaps Montaigne didn’t expect to be pursued by an acrobatic Venetian swashbuckler,” Porzia said. “The walls are plenty tall. I certainly wouldn’t have made it up there.” She gestured at her dress, which was admittedly not suitable for wall climbing.

Despite her suspicions, Elsa grudgingly had to admit to herself that Leo’s plan was expediting their progress. From atop the wall, he could pick the shortest route to the center and watch out for changes in the labyrinth. They still had to retrace their steps a few times when the labyrinth grew a new wall to thwart their passage. But Elsa could tell they were getting close by the tighter curvature of the corridors.