Page 60 of Blightfall

“No,” Alanik said.

I tried the door again, as if by turning the knob harder I could make it magically open. I sighed, tapping my forehead against it. If the secrets to Elysium were down here, they weren’t going to be unlocked or unguarded. We could give up, but then we’d be no closer to figuring out what Ivy was up to than before we’d snuck in.

If we wanted valuable information, we were going to have to take some risks.

“We could try shooting the lock,” I said.

“The guards will hear that, yes?” Alanik asked.

They might, though we were two stories underground here, and the guards in the stadium were several levels above us. There was a chance our shot would go unheard, especially if no one was on the other side of the door. Though I didn’t want to count on it.

“Have Hoid prepare an illusion against the wall on the other side of the door,” I said. He wouldn’t know what color it should be until he saw it, but Alanik could communicate the general idea to him mind-to-mind before we went in. “We’ll shoot off the lock and then hide behind the illusion until we can push farther into the facility.”

Alanik nodded. “Hoid is ready,” she said after a moment.

I transferred Naga into my bag again, giving her a scritch, then pulled out my sidearm destructor and fired it at the lock.

The thing broke in half, and the door swung open, revealing a long stone hallway. Alanik and I ducked inside and flattened ourselves against the wall, Hoid’s illusion blending us in with the white stone. If we moved even a few centimeters forward, we would step through the illusion’s boundaries and become visible.

Somewhere down at the end of the hallway, a voice cried out in a strange language, and then footsteps approached.

Eighteen

Sadie

Nedd and I waited for the crowd around the gladiators to clear, but it didn’t. I was steeling myself to elbow my way in and ask a question or two, when the patrons on the terrace cheered again, and I turned to see Dayan Dayright making their way through the pub door.

Dayan’s demeanor was different than that of Kalia and Ephraim, who had encouraged the cheers and the shouts, interacting directly with the crowd. Dayan waved politely and smiled affably, but avoided eye contact with anyone in particular. Their short black hair was streaked with blue and purple. The fact that they chose blue made me like them immediately. I wondered if I could have gotten by without the headscarf after all—but even if others assumed it was dyed, blue hair would probably make me too memorable.

Dayan waved to Kalia and Ephraim, but then found a seat at the end of the bar opposite the other gladiators, where they could put their back to the wall. A small crowd immediately gathered around them. Someone offered them a drink, and they accepted. The bartender poured it, calling Dayan by name. Clearly they’d come here knowing they’d be surrounded by adoring fans, though they looked less comfortable with the attention.

The smaller crowd would be easier to elbow through, I supposed.

“I think we’ll have more luck with Dayan,” I whispered to Nedd.

He nodded. “Let’s give them a second to settle in.”

That made sense. It would be suspicious to pepper them with questions the moment they walked through the door.

Nedd ordered us a second round of coladas and we sipped them. The crowd around Dayan never cleared exactly, but when they spent more time talking to each individual person, some wandered away. Kalia and Ephraim seemed to be holding court with the entire crowd at once, which probably made it harder for any one person to steer the direction of the conversation.

Dayan was definitely the one to approach.

While we waited, I listened to the conversations around us to see what I could glean. The woman next to me finished her drink and left, and then two men sat down, already in the middle of an argument about copper. There had been an accident in a mine somewhere in the mountains above Epiphany.

“We shouldn’t have increased production,” one man said. “This happens every time we try. The mine’s cursed.”

“That’s just superstition,” the other said.

“Ain’t superstition if it happens every time.”

If that was true, he had a point. “Were people hurt?” I asked.

They both stared at me, and I wilted a little. People called me abrupt at home, which should have taught me how to interrupt people, but practice didn’t make me any less awkward at it.

“Not this time,” the first man said, and turned back to his friend. “We’ll get it up and running again, but Japen said we have to cap output at eighty-five percent of standard.”

“Just keeps dropping,” the other man said. “At this rate, we’ll never develop outside the city walls.”