‘Oh, you won’t find any locals willing to go into a noble family’s crypts,’ I told him lightly. ‘Not with the curses.’

‘You don’t believe that’ – nothing but a growl deep in Roven’s throat.

‘Oh, we’re all civilized sorts from the Spiderlands,’ I said. ‘Still, makes you think, doesn’t it?’

‘Come on down,’ came Skessi’s distant call, and we did so, the Wasps lowering themselves on spread wings, and me edging hand-over-hand down the wall. The gaslamps threw guttering shadows across walls made of irregular stones that still fit into each other so tight you’d not get a blade in.

‘This is never just for the dead,’ Roven spat. ‘Too much work. Burn ’em or bury ’em, but not all this digging and masonry.’

‘Reckon they took their dead seriously, back then,’ I put in. Fael and Skessi were already ahead, but it was so pitchy down there that even they had so stay within the edge of the lantern light. I began to wonder then whether this wasn’t just some kind of grain store. Fael was leading strong, but it wouldn’t have done to show we weren’t sure, so I was as much in the dark as Roven right then.

I’d have been able to pacify the Wasps, I think, had we turned up nothing but a few jars of rice that first day, but some kind of luck was with us, good or bad, you decide, because Fael found some gold.

It was in some niches in the wall, and there wasn’t much of it, but it was enough to make us look good. No bodies, mind, just a little trinketry: brooches, rings. I caught Fael’s eye, because of the two plans we were running right then, the first one, the get-rich one, had turned out sunny. That stuff we’d read, in that other old castle, looked to have been true after all, just like I told Roven. Of course, the second plan, the new one, would need a bit of work.

Roven and Merric confiscated all that glittered, although I’d bet Skessi pocketed a handful as well, and then there was nothing for it but for Fael to press on. Every so often there was a niche, and sometimes there was a piece of loot there, and sometimes there wasn’t. Then Fael had yelled out, his wings taking him up so fast he bounced off the ceiling and ended up scrabbling away on his backside as something reared up over him. The Wasps’ stings flashed, blinding bright down here, and then things went quiet. I helped Fael get to his feet, and he looked shaken. It had been a centipede, and living proof of how well you can live eating roaches and pillbugs and silverfish: ten feet long if it was an inch. Not a man-eater, but the poison in those fangs would have finished Fael off surely and, anyway, centipedes are bad luck in the Commonweal, because of old history.

We went on a bit slower after that. The roof was lower, for a start, and the walls had become oddly slick and nasty to the touch. The floor was slippery, and sloping too, and the lanterns didn’t seem to be giving out enough light even for me. I could hear the two Wasps breathing harsh and hoarse in my ear, and a lot of other little scuttlings and scrabblings as well. Nobody was much looking forward to stepping on the next centipede, or whatever other venomous residents we might disturb. You didn’t get scorpions so much in the Commonweal, but my little spider brothers certainly put in an appearance, and I didn’t have the Art to warn them off. Skessi was sticking close to the light, now. He might not have the fear of the dark that the Wasps had, but he was now somewhere he couldn’t make much use of his wings. In the Lowlands the Fly-kinden love little tunnels. Their warrens are mazes of chambers and narrow vertical drops and the like that make it impossible for any bigger kinden to get around. I think Imperial Fly-kinden don’t like being enclosed so much. Certainly Skessi wasn’t at all fond of it.

Then came the bad news. The whole thing led to a wall: a dead end.

We argued then, or at least the Wasps threw accusations and we tried to defend ourselves. The loot we’d found already might as well not have been there. They wanted the big haul, worth absconding from the army for. Harsh words were exchanged, a free and frank exchange of views, until Merric got free and frank enough to shoot at Fael. His sting went wide, from poor light and Fael throwing himself flat, but it knocked a chunk out of that wall, a chunk the size of your hand.

I won’t swear something moved beyond that gap, but Skessi was shouting that it had, and then a great deal was moving all at once because the tunnel saw fit to collapse.

Not all of it, and not all at once, but Fael just pitched forward into what was suddenly quite a big hole, though too many stones and stuff in the air to use his wings. I felt the earth beneath me shift, and I scrabbled back and back, Art-clinging from stone to stone, and feeling each one move as I trusted it. One of the lanterns smashed and the other one went out, and it was all suddenly very black, and everyone was shouting.

We got to a stage when the only noise was us, though, and all the loose stone that was going anywhere had gone. Roven had somehow shielded his dead lantern with his body to save the glass, and now he coaxed a little light from it. The place had undergone severe redecoration. We counted the two Wasps and me, and Skessi had got clear, of course, because his kind always do.

‘Fael?’ I called. I had no idea what shape the plan was in just then, but the plan needed Fael, for starters.

‘Here,’ came a weak voice, and then, with extreme urgency, ‘Down here, quick!’

I started forward, and Roven came with me, lantern out. The first thing we saw was that the place was crawling with critters. There were little centipedes, finger-length, and worms and slugs and some kind of palm-wide albino cricket that just looked as if it would be bad to touch. The tunnel we were in had just gone, a few feet ahead, but it had gone into a lower level that none of us had guessed at. Roven tried to get some light down there, and the first thing we saw were the bodies.

I hadn’t thought Fael was telling the truth, perhaps he hadn’t either. There hadn’t been bodies in the other place, just a little loot and the writing that put us onto this one. There were bodies here though. Before the stones had fallen on them, they had been standing up in armour, and one of them was still on its feet, propped up in an alcove with its bony hands about a sword hilt. The rest were in pieces, and the dried skulls seemed to leer and scream out at us when the lantern light hit them. There was plenty else to catch the light, though, and it was mostly gold. Fael was lying there surrounded by a Monarch’s ransom in gold: the armour the corpses had been wearing was all precious metals and enamel and gems, and there were other pieces: jewellery, masks, inscribed tablets, and all of it enough for any two of us to live on till the end of our days. No coins, of course, because even these days the Commonweal runs off barter and goodwill, but all the same there were lots of these little ingots of gold that I’d never seen before. There were weapons, too, fine ones, and some pieces of gilded armour that were big enough for one of the giant Mole Cricket-kinden to wear, and were surely just for show. There were spread quivers of white-shafted arrows with elegant pearl-hafted bows, and dragon swords with inscribed blades.

‘Start passing it all up,’ Roven snapped, a barbarian at heart, and signalled for Merric to go down to help. Merric was having none of it, though. He was staying well back from the edge. Something had spooked him. At the time I thought it was just the danger of another collapse.

‘I don’t think I can fly, not carrying any weight,’ Fael said. He was sitting up, and I couldn’t see any obvious hurt. I got it: this was part of the plan.

‘I’ll go down and help,’ I said, but Roven pushed me back, grabbing Skessi by the collar before the fly could scoot away.