This wasn’t going to be subtle.

  Wat marched down a tuhe sound of dozens of boots on stonework cacophonous to the point I’d covered my still-enhanced ears. They’d broken out armor for this, breastptes shining as they trod through the narrow tunnels, barely able to fit two across. Rifles had been traded for pistols and swords for the close-quarters the tunnels would for them.

  It made for a cramped passage and a worse racket as they walked. I’d have gone in more subtly, but I wasn’t in charge here.

  I kept back, mostly an observer for this one. My position in the formal hierarchy ich could best be described as a ‘tolerated person we are no longer allowed to touch’. I was here at Malstein’s invitation, and I was only too aware of how much the Watch Captain tolerated my presence as a means to an end.

  I took some petty pleasure in the fact he’d seemed happier to have me alohan one of the others with us. Tagashin, in full Voltar disguised, was singing a merry discordant song whose tune she had to be mangling on purpose. She increased the volume every time Doctor Dawes winext to her, and he seemed to be on the verge of asking me for something to cover his ears.

  I had some, and it would be suffit payment for having asked him to be between Tagashin ahat unishment without any real crime causing it.

  “Are we close?” Doctor Dawes asked Malstein ahead of us, voice raised to try and drown out Tagashin’s singing.

  “Close,” Malstein yelled back, having wisely stuck us, more specifically Tagashin, a good thirty feet behind the main body of Watch. “We should be in a position to take the sed entrance as well by now, and they should have no route to escape from.”

  Should was the operative word, hoping that the octs were still alive. Depended on how long the ger had decided they hem alive.

  I eyed the ceiling, where crafted stone occasionally dripped water onto the floor below. Dwarf work was very fine, but there were still cracks and pces for leaks to occur. And that robably from the cistern, which from what I’d read was a miracle of dwarven engineering. Like all feats of dwarven engineering were, impossibilities for everyone else up until retly when the explosion of steam and are meics had begun to match them.

  Sihe dwarves left, how long sihese tunnels had been maintained properly? We hadn’t had time before ing down here.

  It hadn’t been as simple as heading straight into the underground of course. There’d been talks with the Delver’s Guild, about the locations of moypes that produced Sulfuric Aaturally. They’d given us six back, and four were patrolled far turly by Delvers for the gang to be in that area.

  That left two, both of which had their own reasons for being good spots. The one we were cheg first was deep underground, led underh an old dwarven cistern repurposed for use by the city. There was only one pce rge enough to host a rge group down here, which was better thaentially dozens of pces in the abandoned dwarven town of Kreshern we’d head to . It had been a long trek, nearly four hours underground through winding tunnels, halting to deal with the occasional creature roaming about.

  Most ko stay away from groups this rge, and a volley of pistol fire had sufficed to drive off the rest. More warnings to our enemies. Did Malstein have some trick?

  Ah, he was talking to one of the mages he’d brought along. I hadn’t talked to either, although overheard versation had indicated one was a hydrologist. Smart move given the cistern. Then what was the other-?

  An ear-splitting shriek suddenly echoed across the tunnels. My hands immediately cmped over the clothes c my ears.

  Sound mage. Well, that was ohod of suppressing an enemy you would never catch off-guard.

  Several Watch rushed in, barking orders to drop ons and surrehose stopped almost immediately, no other sounds following till three members of the Watch rushed back out and proceeded to empty their stomachs ounnel floor.

  It didn’t take long for the smell to travel the tunnel’s length to us. The stench of death made my stomach a little but I forced it calm. Damnations.

  Malstein moved forward, muttering angrily to himself. Probably reag the same clusion I had. We’d been too te iing here.

  More Watch funneled out, one moving to Malstein while using a hand on the wall to steady themselves.

  “It’s a fug mess in there, sir,” he whispered to Malstein, not low enough for me to miss even with the sounds of boot on stone as the remaining Watch moved to help their rades. “If someone’s alive, they’re not going to be much longer.”

  I limped past, the pain in my leg a stant dull as I moved past the milling Watch. Malstein was them forward but said nothing to me as I reached the door.

  This had started out as a ste room, barrels of water and dwarven spirits found when Her Majesty decided that she wahe underground. Those had all been removed, and you could see the beds, tables, even an are stove and other amehat had been added when the Pure Bloods made it a base.

  Now it was an abattoir that put my dev of the cows to shame.

  It was hard to tell when one body began and another ended, not just because so many littered the ground but because they’d been so thhly torn apart. Scattered limbs, heads, and corpse parts even smaller were spread across the floor, a small pool of blood an inch deep spanning the entire room. A hundred feet by a hundred, and still it was impossible to find a spot where there wasn’t a piece of someone on the floor.

  I put a handkerchief to my o block the smell as I stepped inside, carefully keeping my hooves away from the body parts. Experience had taught me that getting a bone or k of flesh wedged in there could take hours to get pried out.

  “Probably more thaacked,” I said, raising my voice so the handkerchief wouldn’t muffle it too badly. “Otherwise I imagine some would have made it past the door.”

  That or the ger had ed up afterward, but there would be no purpose to that.

  “Poor bastards didn’t have a ce,” Malstein noted, while Dawes turned his attention ically to a severed arm close by the door. “Hard to tell from how many strewn about the pieces are but they look like they were standing in clusters, except for the groups in the middle. gers probably started at the doors and worked their way inwards.”

  “Radius and Ulna bones have been severed ly,” Dawes noted as he examihe severed arm. “Flesh has been sheared through as well. I’ll need more time to exami, but that’s a very fine bde moving with a lot of force to cut like that. Not at all as I’d expect from those bone ons gers have formed in the past.”

  I frowned. “They did have a cache that included ons in the warehouse. Could be they decided to use some of those.”

  “Or perhaps someone else was responsible for this massacre,” Tagashin said in a faux-dramatie I ig up on as her default for Voltar now that her gmour had worn off. “Perhaps the Bck Fme?”

  And now every eye in the room was focused on me. Oh joys

  “Doubtful,” I answered. “Unless he’s upgraded the quality of his muscle, ured out how to hide the signs of diabolism, no one Versalicows could have dohis.”

  Summoned devils could have maybe dohis, but there was no smell of sulfur or taint oral. A ghere showed crossing patterns of blood formed into giant webs. This pce would have to be purged before some greater spirits of violearted f out of the massacre, but no signs of diabolism. I limped over to the wall, beginning to tap along the sides as I walked the perimeter.

  “Noticed something?” Malstein said as I cleared a wall, turning to start the sed.

  “Some things you alick up if you live long enough in the gangs,” I said, tappily on the wall. “One of them is you’re ever given something, always make sure it’s not a trap. If that thing is a location, the first thing you do is make it yours.”

  “It’s solid brick,” Malstein noted.

  “So you get creative,” I said. “rust a location till you’ve made it yours. You ever tell when it’s just a trap meant to be sprung ter.”

  Doctor Dawes cleared his throat. “I hope that doesn’t mean you’ve done anything to your room.”

  “I’ve done plenty there,” I muttered as I felt some more of the wall, testing each brick. “I’m hardly going to say what any of it was.”

  In truth, there were three different mixtures just waiting in my b, seemingly in-progress potions that if I was ever in a pinch, I could tip over or smash to unleash one of three pgues on Voltar and Dawes’ property. Fire, poison, and bees. Perhaps the i-attrag pheromones weren’t the best idea but I was still w on something that could carry diabolic rot in it.

  Malstein was right, these walls were quite solid brickwork, but when you could not go to the sides, go up or down. And up was several thousand gallons of water threatening to pour through with the slightest mistake. That left down.

  “If it’s not in here, they might have made a secure little cubby off iunnels,” I mused as I eyed the stonework. Best not to do the same trick I’d done in the warehouse, I doubted the assorted Watch would appreciate me spreading diabolism around.

  I looked at the blood-covered floor, looking for where the blood flowed. Watch members were setting about the grisly work of colleg the shredded and torn-apart corpses, most of them seeming on the verge of being violently ill. Quite a few weren’t even stepping inside.

  Eventually, I found a spot where the blood was draining, and feeling with my finger I felt a gap that the blood through.

  “I have something, but the blood has to be filling it up,” I said. “ we get this ed out of here?”

  It took lohan I’d liked, and the hydrologist seemed quite unhappy about the amount of human ichor that had spilled on her in the process, but it exposed the floor below. Including a quarter-inch thick line separating two of the bricks.

  “Here,” I said. “ someo me a hook? A knife? Something to pry this out?”

  Within a minute I had a dozen tools, only two of which actually helped in prying up the brick. It came out easily enough, but this wasn’t an escape route. They must not had had time to make one. No, this was a hiding spot.

  I pried out more bricks and some of the Watch helped as the hole widened, exposing the yer. Underh was wood, and underh that was the sound of panicked breathing ing up from down below.

  “There’s someone down here,” I said. “Probably not a Pure Blood if they were going to be sealed in there.”

  “Definitely not,” Malstein said, gesturing to a Watch member with a hammer. “Whoever is down there, this is the City Watch! Please stand still, and call out if any blows against the wood above might hurt you?”

  There was no reply, but the breathing slowed a little.

  “She’s calming down a bit,” I said. “You need a hand?”

  “It’s only wood,” Malstein said and raised the hammer.

  “Stop!”

  Faux-Voltar’s voice rang out. Malstein barely stopped in time, the interruption slowing but not stopping the swing of the hammer. It fell from his grip, and I reached out, grabbing it by the head.

  “Ghrrk!” The damhing was heavy. Malstein mao snatch the end of the handle, pulling it back just before the hammerhead drove my hand into the wood pnks.

  “Detective?” he asked Tagashin while I winced and examined my hand. Nothing had broken, thankfully.

  “The third board from the top,” Tagashin said. “It bends slightly in the middle, almost as if there’s more weight on it thahers.”

  Looking at it, it did, a tiny, almost imperceptible bend. I had no idea how the Kitsune had spotted that, or if she’d detected it some other way and sized on the board’s bend to preserve her disguise.

  “Might not be a trap,” Malstein noted, eyeing the board. “Probably best not to risk it. Explosive of some kind?”

  “Probably,” I answered, rubbing my hand with the other as I moved back from the hole. “We could tunnel around it. Did aher t a pick?”

  ***

  Someone had bothered t a pick, several in fact, and they were traded frequently as breastptes were taken off and people traded shifts on the mining. Apparently, whech wore breastptes they wore uniforms that were much thinner and more form-fitting, which I wouldn’t pin about in the slightest.

  My broken leg meant I couldn’t help, so instead I stood by the hole they’d dug watg, bemoaning the fact I was not helping. Defihat and nothing else.

  “You may want to close your mouth some,” Tagashin whispered to me.

  It was one patempt to shut my mouth ter that I realized it was already shut and gred at the kitsuhey were almost through down there, and I moved over to the wooden boards as they broke through.

  “There’s an Infernal in here!” one of them yelled. “Chests, papers, some blood that's fallen through. Nothing got damaged. you speak?”

  A barking cough was the answer, and then a raspy voice asking for water. My ears perked up. Raspy thought it was, I reized it immediately.

  So, this is where Kasyp has ended up. It would be iing to hear exactly how.

  Saithorthepyro