He turned to find a young woman with the coloring of a Dunmer staring at him in apparent horror. She wore a broad-brimmed hat, knee-length pants, and a loose shirt. Her feet were bare.

She took a step back.

“I mean you no harm,” Mere-Glim said in his softest voice. “I was just exploring the tree.”

“You surprised me,” the woman said. “I’ve never seen anyone who looks like you.”

“I work in the sump,” he said.

“Oh. That explains it. I’ve never met anyone from there.” She paused. “Do you like it, the sump?”

“I do,” Glim replied. “I like the water and the things that live in it. And it’s interesting, helping people be born.” He glanced around. “But this—this is beautiful, too. You must like it here.”

“It’s funny you should ask that,” she said. “Because I never thought about that until—well, until all of that appeared below us.” She gestured toward Black Marsh.

“What was there before?”

“Well—nothing. The elder tree-tenders say that there was a time before when there was a sky, and land beneath—some even say that long ago Umbriel didn’t fly, that it was planted like those moss-oats there. Isn’t that a funny notion? To live planted?”

“It’s how I’ve always lived until lately,” Glim told her.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m from down there,” he said, gesturing at Black Marsh.

As the words left his mouth, he wished he could suck them back in. If she told anyone, word would get around that he’d been here. He hadn’t exactly been forbidden to come here, but lack of explicit permission to do something usually amounted to forbid-dance on Umbriel.

“Down there?” she said. “That’s amazing. What’s it like? How did you get here?”

“I flew here,” he said. “I thought everyone on Umbriel must know about that. Everyone in the kitchens seemed to.”

“You were in the kitchens?” A little tremor ran through her.

“Yes. Why?”

“Was it horrible? I’ve heard terrible things. My friend Kalmo takes grain to five of them, and he said—”

“Do you know how to reach the kitchens from here?” he interrupted.

“No, but I can always ask Kalmo.”

“Could you do that?”

“Now? I’m not sure where he is.”

“No, just ask him next time you see him. I have a friend that works there I’d like to talk to.”

“But then how will I tell you?”

“I’ll come back,” he said. “You can tell me when you’re usually here, and I’ll meet you.”

“Okay,” she said. “But—you have to do something for me.”

“What’s that?”

“Orchid shrimp. We almost never get to have them—our kitchen doesn’t use them much. Please?”

“I can do that,” he assured her.

“And you have to tell me about down there.”

“Next time,” he promised. “Right now I need to go.”

“Next time, then,” she said. “You can find me here every day about this time.”

“Good.” He paused uncomfortably. “And would you mind, ah, not mentioning me to anyone? I’m not sure I’m supposed to be up here.”

“Who would I mention? You haven’t told me your name.”

“Mere-Glim.”

“That’s a strange name. But then it would be, wouldn’t it? My name is Fhena.”

Glim nodded, not knowing what else to say, so he turned and reluctantly retraced his steps back down the tree, through the tunnel, and into the sump again.

But now he had a way out. If he could find Annaïg, if she had reproduced her flying potion.

There were still many ifs.

He went back down the Drop, but none of the sacs had changed color in the few hours he’d been gone, so he went quickly back to the shallows, because Wert had asked him to collect a few singe anemones—Wert was really supposed to do it, but the stingers couldn’t get through Glim’s scales, so the skraw had asked him to do it.

He went to the place in the shallows where they grew thickest, and found that area particularly messy with bodies. He tried to ignore them, as he usually did, but a familiar face caught his eye.

It was the woman from the kitchen, the one who had Annaïg. Qijne. Even in death her gaze was terrifying.

Suddenly frantic, he began searching through the corpses. They all wore the tattered remnants of the same uniform. What happened to kill them all? Some sort of accident? A mass execution?

He continued, each time fearing the next lifeless face would be Annaïg’s, but even after he went over them twice, she wasn’t there. But that didn’t mean anything. A carrion scorp or any of several large bottom feeders could have dragged her off.

He was about to begin a third search when a gleam caught his eyes, something in the sand.

He reached down and pulled it up—Annaïg’s magic locket.

He felt like something hot was vibrating in him when he got back to the skraw warrens. When he took Wert the anemones, he found him with Eryob, their overseer.

“You’re late,” Eryob said. His gaze moved to the anemones. Then to Wert. “Did you send him to do your work?”

“Wert does his job, and more,” Mere-Glim bristled. “I was just helping him out. Everything got done.”

Eryob’s bushy red eyebrows sank so low they nearly covered his eyes. “That’s not the point, skraw.”

“Well, enlighten me,” Glim snapped. “What is the point? And who are you to make it? You don’t inhale the vapors. You don’t pick around corpses or bring anyone up to be born. What does the sump need with you? Just leave us alone and everything will get done. In fact—”

He didn’t get to finish. Eryob lifted his fist and uncurled it, and black pain exploded in Glim’s head. His limbs spasmed and he toppled to the floor. It went on for a long time.

TWO

Heat woke her, suffocating heat wrapped around her body, burned into her lungs. She gasped and flailed; the air seemed incredibly heavy and murky. She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling only slick, wet skin.

She heard a whimper and then a strangled shriek. She made out a silhouette a few feet from her, revealed in the dim illumination from four fuzzy-looking globes of a dark amber color, one in each direction, all above her.

“Slyr?”

“Yes,” the frantic voice answered. “What’s happening? We’re being burned alive!”

Annaïg swung her feet down and found the floor, wincing at the heat of the stone against her soles. The air hurt to move through, too, especially when she found the vent in the floor it was coming out of. She jumped back with a shriek.

“It’s steam,” she said.

“Why? What are they doing to us?”

Annaïg recalled the battle, and Toel’s blue eyes. Then he had touched her lips. That was all she remembered.

She found a wall and began working down it and soon discovered a seam that might be a door.

Slyr had joined her in exploring now, panting hoarsely.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” Annaïg said. “But I … I think this isn’t meant to kill us. It’s hot, but not that hot. And I don’t think it’s getting worse.”

“Right,” Slyr said. “You must be right. Why would he go through the trouble of capturing us only to kill us? He wouldn’t do that, would he?” She sounded as if she were trying to convince herself.

“I don’t know Toel,” Annaïg said. “I don’t know anything about him.”

“Why do you think I do?” Slyr snapped.

There was something strange about her tone.

“I didn’t say you did,” Annaïg replied.

Slyr was silent for a moment.

“Well, I do know a bit,” she finally offered. “He—” She stopped, then laughed softly. She folded back down on her bench.

“What?”

“I think they’re cleaning us,” she replied. “I’ve heard they use steam to draw the impurities from the body.”

“I’ve heard of that,” Annaïg remembered. “In Skyrim they do it, and it’s come and gone as a fashion in Cyrodiil. Black Marsh is already a steaming jungle and Argonians don’t sweat, so it never caught on there.”

Her breathing slowed as panic faded. Now that the surprise and fear were gone, the pervasive heat actually felt pretty nice.