For the first few days of our journey, things go surprisingly well. We encounter no antler-folk, no Draapire, no terrifying storms, and Xan doesn’t kill either Lucas or me. The terrain is mostly low, sloping hills and soft dirt. The weather is so nice we only start a fire if we want to cook. And, it turns out, Xan is not a bad cook.

  I’m still shaken by the discovery of just how ruthless she can be. I had started to think she had an almost visible soft side but I can’t reconcile that with her casual attitude toward murder.

  Still, the three of us have achieved a peaceable rhythm and as long as she doesn’t decide to dispatch us in our sleep we can probably keep it up. I keep reminding myself that she’s voluntarily escorting us through a completely unknown area full of unknown dangers to save a station full of people she’s never met. I will just have to keep a closer eye on her, I decide.

  Besides, it’s not like she’s wrong about Matthew, rational Tali comments from the back of my mind.

  If she feels any regret about my newfound caution toward her—or amusement regarding the apparent realignment between Lucas and me—she doesn’t let on.

  A week or so after we leave Cabe’s Falls, the soft dirt hills give way to a rocky landscape from which no living thing can grow. We light no fires, having run out of fuel to do so, and thus eat our dinners cold and sleep on the hard ground. We can’t plant stakes in the ground to set up shelters and there is no shade for miles as far as I can see. My feet start to ache from the unyielding surface and my mood grows considerably less congenial.

  At least the sun-warmed rock keeps us insulated against the cooling of the night air. In the pros and cons of solid rock landscape column, that’s one point for and six against so far.

  A few more days of this unpleasant stretch and I see the hopeful silhouette of trees on the horizon. Not long after that, the rock begins to yield once more to softer ground and eventually we leave it behind for the welcome protection of a gently arranged forest.

  Though my feet are much relieved, I find my tension has ratcheted up several degrees. Where there are trees there is cover, and where there is cover there may be antler-folk. We can’t afford to be attacked again; not when there are only three of us.

  “Why don’t you carry a gun, like Yanto does?” I ask Xan one night as I roll out my bedroll. I drew the short straw which means I get the final watch of the night—the last few hours before dawn.

  “They’re not easy to come by, for one.” She pokes at the fire with a long stick, though it doesn’t need stoking. “Which means I never had much training with them. I’m more comfortable with weapons I have practice using.”

  “So you took mainly knife-wielding classes at mercenary training school?” asks Lucas.

  Xan nods, deadpan. “Knife-wielding, hand-to-hand combat, how to sense someone following you, and teatime etiquette.”

  “What does a mercenary need teatime etiquette for?”

  “It was an elective. I just like tea.”

  “And you prefer it to be enjoyed properly,” Lucas says, nodding sagely.

  For all my caution regarding Xan, talking with her has been easier than it was in the larger group. She’s a long way from anything anyone would refer to as talkative, but she participates in conversation more comfortably now, especially with Lucas. He seems to understand how to disarm her in a way that I can’t. Come to think of it, he’s a lot more fun to be around now too, possibly because he’s less afraid I’ll snap his head off if he speaks.

  “How did you become a mercenary though?” I ask. Xan is the only member of our party, other than Yanto, never to share any back story with the rest of us.

  “I passed a test in not answering questions about my life.”

  Ah. There’s the old surly Xan.

  I flash her a rude hand gesture, eliciting a grin, and roll over to go to sleep.

  “This is crazy,” Xan says. She’s pointing at a patch of something bulbous protruding from the ground at the base of a nearby tree. “I’d bet a hundred credits and a gallon of blood the Citadel doesn’t know about this place.”

  I don’t recognize the plant she’s standing over, but I think I understand what she means. For the last several miles the forest has started to look different. It’s not just stubborn trees that somehow persisted past The Siphoning. Other, more delicate types of fauna have begun to appear: grass between the tree roots, healthy-looking ferns, lichen, even a few flowers.

  “What is it?” Lucas beats me to the question.

  “Mushrooms.”

  My eyebrows arch in surprise. “What like… real mushrooms? Natural?”

  “That’s what it looks like.”

  Nothing edible grows naturally in Salus anymore. That’s why the Citadel greenhouses and the mages that work in them have the highest levels of security. They provide the fruit and vegetables for the rest of the world: grown by magic in a lab, delivered by train.

  “I’ve never had a natural mushroom,” Lucas says in a tone of quiet awe.

  “And you’re not going to now,” Xan replies. Before we can protest she adds, “When they used to grow, some kinds were poisonous.”

  Lucas frowns. “How do you know?”

  “They teach history at mercenary school.”

  “But how do you know this kind is?” I ask.

  She looks at me like I’ve just asked whether we can maybe hop the rest of the way to the Citadel on one foot.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  “I don’t. Would you like to test it?”

  “Oh.”

  “Right.”

  It is not the last patch of mushrooms we spot. As their appearance grows more frequent I consider what Xan said about the Citadel. We must truly be in uncharted territory, far outside the realms of trains and stations if there are areas where things grow naturally like they did before the Pall.

  I wonder whether the land here could be cultivated and used to augment supplies from the Citadel. Maybe the soil could be moved to remote stations and they could even begin to grow their own food. As the thought occurs to me, I feel a sudden, fierce protectiveness of this little forest I never knew existed til today.

  Echoing my thoughts, Xan observes, “If the Committee ever found out about this place, they’d have a dome over it and a full lab team here in about five minutes.”

  Later, I will think back on this and wish Xan had kept her casual predictions to herself.

  I am not, apparently, the only one of us whose thoughts are fully occupied by our discovery. When a woman steps out from behind a tree pointing an old-fashioned crossbow with a wicked looking bolt at us, Xan looks as surprised as Lucas and me.

  Still, she’s quicker to move. “Down,” she orders without looking to see if we comply, and before I understand that she’s telling me to get on the ground, she has a knife in one hand and another is sailing toward the assailant. The woman sidesteps the knife with more grace than I’ve ever seen anyone other than Xan use, the crossbow never wavering. Thankfully, she doesn’t fire it.

  As Xan raises her arm to hurl the second blade, the woman holds up a hand and coolly advises, “I wouldn’t. There are more of us than there are of you.”

  As if summoned by magic, her friends materialize around us. Where there was only silence and trees a moment ago, there are at now eight more crossbows, along with eight more humans wielding them.

  Apparently, they teach ‘how to know when you can’t win’ in mercenary school. Xan’s knife disappears into whatever hidden fold in her clothing housed it originally and she raises both hands in a gesture meant to de-escalate.

  Easy now.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” she says, her voice low and even. “But if you’re from around here, we do have a few questions about the mushrooms.”

  Our captors are fairly polite, all things considered. They don’t speak much, and they do bind our hands securely, but they don’t shoot us with crossbows and a few of them helpfully carry our packs once our hands are out of commission.

  Given the choice between being tied up by the crossbow people and clubbed to death by the antler people, I’ll take this option every time. Still, I really don’t have time to be kidnapped and further delayed.

  “Where are you taking us?” I address the question to the first woman we met, assuming she’s in charge. She doesn’t even glance at me. I clear my throat and repeat the question more loudly.

  Xan turns to look at me but I don’t think she’s signaling me to quiet down. If anything, she looks curious—maybe just waiting to see if they kill me so she can adjust her own strategy as needed.

  The captors continue ignoring me, which I find particularly infuriating. Tying me up was one thing but refusing to acknowledge me at all is just offensive. I stop walking. Someone gives me a gentle shove from behind and I dig my heels in, feeling more stubborn by the second.

  With an air of patience for a petulant child, one of the captors takes my left elbow and gestures to another who follows suit on my right. They try to propel me forward, but I’m starting to think petulant children may be on to something. I sit down abruptly, crossing my legs in front of me and staring stubbornly at the boss lady’s back.

  My two guides try to pull me back to a standing position and I let my legs go limp, refusing to put my weight on them. Others have stopped walking now. Xan is staring at me, her mouth twitching slightly as if trying to quell a laugh. I can’t see Lucas’s face, which is probably for the best.

  The woman leading the procession turns at last to look at me, her expression beleaguered. I suppress an inexplicable urge to giggle at her.

  “Where are we going?” I demand for the third time.

  She gazes at me steadily and for a few seconds I think she might give in. Instead her eyes flick upward toward my two escorts and she turns her back to me again. Whatever she meant to communicate with that brief glance, the escorts take it to mean “No need to be gentle with that one,” and respond accordingly.

  A moment later I find myself dragged along between them, each having hooked an arm through the loop created by my bound hands. I begin to holler in earnest now. I don’t know what I hope to accomplish by this, I just find the idea of quiet acquiescence intolerable.

  Eventually one of the kidnappers tires of my protests and yanks me to my feet. The one who was holding my left arm moves behind me and wraps their arms around me to hold me still. The other steps in front of me so I get a good look at him. He’s about my height, stocky, and strong. There are little flecks of pearlescent green scattered like freckles across his dark skin. I’m still wondering what those could be when he pulls a t-shirt from my bag, rolls it up lengthwise, and shoves it in my mouth.

  He takes a step closer to tie the ends of the shirt behind my head and my eyes meet his. I see no malice in them, which I suppose should make me feel better but violence doesn’t always require malice—just cold utilitarianism. He surprises me by dipping his head in a respectful, almost apologetic bow as he steps back.

  Thus effectively silenced I begrudgingly decide I’d rather walk the rest of the way to wherever we’re going than continue to be dragged. The man looks relieved when I indicate this, and nods to his partner to release me.

  Altogether my resistance adds about three minutes to our walk, which amounts to only ten or fifteen minutes total. Coming to a place that, from my perspective, is entirely indistinguishable from any other place we’ve passed, the woman in the lead halts and holds up a hand for the rest of us to do the same.

  Two of the polite kidnappers approach and stand on either side of her. For a moment I think they’re performing a ritual of some kind, as both turn toward her, kneel, and place their hands on the ground in front of them but then they rise again, lifting what appears to be a large lid made of earth.

  “Holy shit,” Lucas mutters from somewhere to my left as the woman proceeds forward, disappearing slowly into the newly revealed hole.

  We follow her down a set of neatly carved stone steps that seem to extend forever into the earth. I’m not exactly claustrophobic—I grew up on a train, after all—but the narrow stairway into the depths still gives me a shudder as we descend.

  The stairway is lit at regular intervals by dim lights and a low hum that feels simultaneously familiar and foreign rises to meet us.

  How in the Custodian’s name did they get electricity down here?

  As Lucas reaches the landing ahead of me I hear another “Holy shit,” this one almost reverent, and when I emerge from the stairwell a moment later I understand why.

  I am expecting to step into a cave of some sort, but what opens up before us can only be described as a cave in the same sense that The Siphoning might be referred to as ‘a hiccup in nature’.

  The cavern before me is enormous and circular with a high, vaulted ceiling. The floor around the circle’s edge spirals down to a second level, and then a third leaving open space in the middle. There are dozens of doors set into the spiral’s walls. On the one nearest to me hangs a small wood-carved sign, just slightly too far away to read. Another one farther down has cheery flowerpots set to each side like it’s a front porch. I can see the flowers vividly because, unlike the stairwell and the cave I imagined it would lead to, the entire circle is brilliantly lit.

  Strings of lights criss-cross the open space under the roof like a Citadel garden, and hundreds of wall sconces shed soft light on the spiral walls. The hum I heard in the stairwell was the murmur of voices. There are people everywhere, moving around the spiral with the familiarity of long-time residents, greeting one another, popping in and out of doors. A few of them spot us and I see a few raised eyebrows and questioning looks but apparently the appearance of bound and gagged strangers is not enough to raise an alarm in this place.

  “You know, I’m beginning to think,” Xan notes drily, “that the disappearing city thing might be real.”