Page 85 of His Realm

“I thought when you said that the vampyrs here eat, you meant…I don’t know. I thought perhaps they chewed on the flesh when they drank blood or something.”

“No. They actually eat.”

“So they have humans here?”

“No. The iceni in Ophir have regular human lifespans and consume food like I do.”

He shook his head. “That’s not possible.”

“It’s not a behavior you’re familiar with, but certainly, you could. You have the ability to eat and digest food.”

“I’m having some sort of obscene fever dream, aren’t I?”

I chuckled because he sounded so horrified. “Come on. I’m hydrated. Let’s get out of here.”

“Let’s look around for anything to use as a weapon first.”

That was also an excellent suggestion, but there was nothing there but a brush sitting on a vanity table.

Leaving the room, we found that I was right since the front door led us outside, not to another area, but to a narrow landing. They were medieval apartments carved out of rock.

“You were right. Each abode has a balcony.”

After descending five staircases to the main floor and walking out through an iron fence, I realized that the back of the apartment house was built into the rock. Only the front had places to look out from or to bring in any air.

It was odd that there was no one home in any of the apartments. We were the only ones there. Perhaps, wherever everyone worked, there were set times.

Once we were outside, we walked down a cobblestone path to a narrow walkway of rock that looked to be only three feet above the icy black water of the lake.

“We need to get on a ferry and cross to the other side,” Cirillo suggested, and pointed ahead of us. “There’s a dock right there.”

“Yeah. From where we were up high, it looked like there was an atrium on that other side.”

“Great. Let’s catch a ferry,” he said, his voice shaky.

We kept our heads down and our hoods pulled low, and since everyone else taking the plain wooden ferry was dressed the same, no one questioned us. The only things that got weird looks were our shoes. Everyone else was in shearling-lined boots. I could have really used a pair.

Once we got off on the dock on the other side, we walked into a crowd of people, all in a hurry to get somewhere. There were steps carved out of the rock that looked like the kinds in front of courthouses or national monuments. Like hundreds of people could be taking the same stairs at the same time. It hit me then that I’d been correct. The apartment complexes were where the iceni lived, and up the stairs, we were going to where the iceni worked, in the homes of the nobles.

It was so different from how Zev remembered it. And yes, there was a five-hundred-year or longer time span from when he’d been here last. But I also knew, when you were little, you remembered things differently than you did when you were older. Things that had looked massive came into scale with your adult eyes. And something like all the people living in raised homes on the water could only have taken up a small piece of real estate. Perhaps the people he’d seen on the water had fisheries? Once we explored more, I would have my answers.

At the top of the stairs, we turned back to look at the homes of the iceni, and they reminded me of all the places I’d been in the world as a marine where people were forced to live in cramped quarters. Yet another thing to speak to Varic about.

We walked from the wide openness of what felt like a hole in the roof of the world to underneath a cavernous ceiling, at least three hundred feet high. There were beautiful rock formations above us, and I could get lost looking up all day. From there, we emerged into a giant amphitheater. Taking the same kind of long, wide stairs straight down would take us to a large plaza, and if we climbed the steps on the other side, there were manor houses, huge estates, nothing butting up together or into the rock, all freestanding, on a man-made street.

“This is nuts,” I told Cirillo.

“It’s like an underground city except it’s all built into the side of a mountain,” he said, turning to his left where, as far as we could see, there were people walking under the three-hundred-foot ceilings.

“It’s beautiful,” I commented.

“It would be if there were kids running around and dogs and birds and…something natural. Everything here is decidedly unnatural.”

We were both quiet, thinking about that.

“All right,” he said under his breath, “which way to the castle?”

“It has to be that way,” I said, gesturing ahead of us. “Zev did say it was built into the rock, so I bet this thoroughfare passes along the outer wall. Before Decimus closed Ophir to the outside world, there had to be a way to cross into the holding without entering the castle.”