The old house was lit by candles: tall, yellow columns of dragonfly-wax harvested from the roofs of the city and moulded into shape by the ciresters. The narrow hallway that Ramayon walked down after locking the door behind him held two, both floor-standing and as tall as mid-chest on him. Each wick was finger-thick and burned white with a faintly lavender edge. Shadows wavered on the walls in front of him as he moved and his eyes tracked them alertly. The house was safe, he was sure of that, but in Quyani you lived longest by not taking chances. There was a smell too, something papery and dry; the ciresters said it came from the wax and Ramayon, who would never dare to climb the roofs and harvest wax, chose to believe them. The smell wasn’t unpleasant, but after a short while it was like being in a musty, unaired library and he then felt an urge to escape to fresh air.
At the end of the hallway was another door. It had no lock and pushed outwards easily when he laid a hand on it. He walked through, letting the door swing shut by itself, and now he was a in an antechamber of sorts. There were doors in each of the other three walls, and in the centre of the room was a flight of wooden stairs leading downwards. The staircase was surrounded by wooden bannisters except where the top stair made contact with the floor and, unsurprisingly, the stairs themselves vanished into darkness. Between the doors were frescos in what looked like an untutored hand; colour was applied boldly but seemingly without much thought, and the lines of the people and animals depicted were bold but crude. Ramayon paused for a moment, looking at the frescos. They were mostly hunting scenes and were supposedly older than the house, painted onto the walls of caves before Quyani had been quarried around them. Personally he thought that some of the people who lived here and never left had drawn them when they were bored and had made the story up to justify them.
The door to his left opened and a woman stepped out. She was slightly shorter than him, wearing a blue shirt and grey trousers and had auburn hair tied back from her face in a pony-tail. She hesitated for a moment, then recognised him.
“Ramayon,” she said. She didn’t sound precisely hostile, but he knew she didn’t like him and, though the ballots were secret, he suspected that she had voted against his joining their society. “Have you been lurking here long?”
“I just arrived,” he said. “Do people often lurk in here, then?”
She pursed her lips for a moment, disliking that he’d picked up on her choice of verb. “A slip of the tongue,” she said, waving one hand dismissively. “Some people have been known to study the paintings. I would… I would not have thought you were one of them.”
Ramayon decided to ignore the implied slight. “I am sure they have amazing qualities,” he said, walking towards the door she was standing in front of. “But I was asked to come here by Ellesbrith and you know as well as I that she does not like to be kept waiting.”
“She is impatient already,” said the woman. She stepped aside. “I would recommend being apologetic.”
“We are not the same, though,” murmured Ramayon as he passed through the doorway.
This room had been hewn out of the rock itself; the floor, the walls and the ceiling were all pale-grey stone. The floor had veins of colour, mostly brown and red, running through it while the walls were more uniform. The ceiling was hard to judge as stalactites descended from it in several places and the rest was so rough that it might have been entirely natural. In the centre of the room was a helix of metal that spiralled upwards and eventually made contact with a stalactite. There was a cold draught coming from somewhere up near the ceiling and Ramayon shivered.
Ellesbrith was standing by the helix doing something to it with a rubber-handled tool that seemed to consist of eight prongs connected together at a central point. As he approached she looked over her shoulder at him.
“I said midnight,” she said sharply. Her voice echoed around the cavern, which was a better descriptor than room in Ramayon’s opinion. “Are you deaf, stupid, or inconvenienced?”
“I am late,” said Ramayon, who knew that Ellesbrith hated anything she could describe as an excuse. “I passed Natalie on my way in.”
He waited. Ellesbrith tapped the helix and seemed very interested in the noises that her tool made. After thirty seconds or so she looked over her shoulder again and she looked less annoyed.
“Natalie overran her time,” she said. “Not that that’s any of your concern, and since you couldn’t have known she would you couldn’t have allowed for that in your arrival.”
“True,” said Ramayon. “But the circumstances are that I am only late in absolute terms; relatively speaking I am exactly when you needed me.”
“One day,” said Ellesbrith, “one day you won’t have a smart answer. Then what will you do?”
“I’ll cross that bridge when it needs burning,” said Ramayon. Ellesbirth snorted, but it might have been laughter.
“Fine,” she said. “Be like that. Now come and look at this. If I’m not mistaken, the dance of shadows is getting longer, and I think we’re in danger of seeing a prophecy fulfilled.”
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