Grifford went forward as his sister slowly lifted one leg, then the other, over the sill and stepped into the bright blue light beyond. Her Engineer friend was standing in front of the open door, but as he went to push by her, she stumbled clumsily forward, out of his way.

As she stepped through the door, she looked to her right, over Tahlia's shoulder, and her hand clamped itself over her mouth, her eyes widening in fear. Grifford looked around the door's edge to see what had scared the wretched girl.

A body lay on the floor a short distance down the tunnel. It was on its back with its feet towards them, but he could not see the man's face because it was blocked from view by the huge ponderousness of his belly. A belly with the uniform of a fortress clerk stretched tightly across it.

"Jerrus!" his sister hissed as she crawled up to him in a half crouch.

Grifford drew his sword, and followed after her, but the Engineer girl stayed frozen at the open door.

"Why is he laid out on a carpet?" she said, alarm making her voice shrill.

Tahlia knelt beside the clerk's feet.

"It is not a carpet!" she whispered, reaching out a hand to touch whatever it was that covered the floor from one side of the corridor to the other. It looked purple in the strange blue light.

"What is it?" asked the Engineer.

Grifford knew. He had noticed a smell when he had entered the tunnels, and now he realised why it was recognisable. It was the smell of the abattoir-shed at the Enclosures. A smell he associated with death and fresh killed meat, and...

"Blood!" said Tahlia lifting her hand to show him her fingers. He could see that the stuff coating their tips had not dried, but was thick and glutinous. "It's cold." 

Grifford went to stand beside the clerk's feet, while Tahlia crept alongside their owner's vast bulk, her dress trailing along the bloody floor. She knelt by his head, which was tilted back so that his beard, with scraps of cake crumbs caught in it, jutted towards the ceiling. His eyes were wide with pain and fear.

"He was always so jolly," she said, in an uncharacteristically sad voice.

"What happed to him?" asked Dak.

"Somebody killed him," said Grifford, who was still staring at the clerk's dead face.

"Something killed him," said Tahlia. She pulled his beard away from his neck, and in the harsh blue light of the corridor it was easy to see the four small wounds in his neck, clear against the whiteness of his skin. "And you remember what Master Hepskil said about the poison on its blades?"

"What?" said Grifford, trying to remember.

"About how it stops a wound from healing, so that its victim dies no matter what."

Grifford looked down at Jerrus, and now he could see the rent in the man's side, the material of his tunic around the wound still glossy with blood.

"What are you talking about?" asked Dak.

Tahlia looked up at the sound of her voice.

"The nadidge did this."

The girl gave another strangled gasp.

Grifford edged along the side of the corpse, and crouched down beside the clerk's head, opposite his sister, the slaughter shed smell thick in his nostrils.

"Well, sister. Do you still want to go looking for whoever has taken our brother?"

"Yes. Why? Are you scared?"

Grifford stood and turned to Dak.

"Close that door."

The girl looked at the heavy door that still stood open behind her.

"But..."

"I said, close the door," growled Grifford.

The girl grasped the door's heavy handle and pulled it closed. It made barely a sound as it set itself in its frame, but there was a dull click from within, the winding of gears, and then another deep definitive thud as it locked itself in place.

"Should we not be telling someone now though?" she said when the door was closed. "Someone has been killed."

"And my brother is down here with the creature that did the killing," said Grifford. "It is my duty to find him."

The girl turned to Tahlia, a stupid pleading look in her eyes.

His sister stood, reached into the pouch at her belt, and took out her mother's hunting knife. She pulled it from its sheath and held it up in the blue light, where it showed a dried smear of something black.

"This knife has already cut the creature once," she said. "Next time it will lose more than just the end of its tail."

The Engineer turned her eyes up to the ceiling.

"Yeltov conserve us," she whispered.

Grifford turned to her.

"You can show us the way."

"But..."

"Do you know how we get to the old part?" asked Tahlia, a little less harshly.

The girl looked up and down the corridor.

"Well, if we are making for the waste reservoir, then it lies near the very centre of the fortress, deep in the hill. All the pipes will lead there, so if we are following them and keep going down, then I am supposing that we will find it."

"Good," said Grifford. "You lead the way."

She looked up and down the corridor uncertainly, and then pointed past the body of the dead clerk.

"That is the way."

"Come on, then," said Grifford, and walked on past Jerrus' body. He turned to see that his boots had left a trail of bloody prints, back to the corpse where his sister still knelt. "Are you coming, or not?"

Tahlia placed her hand over Jerrus' eyes and closed them, shutting their fear forever, then she stood and followed him, her own bare feet leaving a smaller bloody trail.

"Come on, Dak!"

* * *

Dak, with so many different emotions beating at her insides, moved forward cautiously to edge past the body. She would have liked to avoid the blood, but because there was so much of it, and it touched both of the walls, that desire was impractical. Instead, she attempted to pass quickly in a few long strides on her toes, so she would touch as little of it as possible. The blood was slick on the metal floor, and on her second clumsy step her foot slipped from beneath her and she fell heavily onto the clerk's' body. There must have been some air left inside him, for the force of her landing forced it out of him with a horrible wet wheezing sound.

She shrieked and scrambled inelegantly off the corpse, crawling through the cold blood that had flowed from it, and threw herself against the tunnel wall. She sat there, her bloodied hands and forearms clasped tightly around her equally bloodied knees, and she pulled her legs protectively up into her chest. She breathed rapidly through her open mouth and stared unseeing at the opposite wall.

She heard Grifford sigh, but Tahlia came and knelt beside her.

"Calm down," she said. "You are all right."

"I cannot be doing this," stuttered Dak between breaths.

Her previous determination, which had been the cause of the decision to open the moon lock, had completely vanished.

"Of course you can," said Tahlia.

"This was not the sort of thing I was expecting to be doing when I left my house this morning."

"Neither was I," said Tahlia. "But we are here."

"Come on, get her up," said Grifford from behind her, but Tahlia ignored him.

"Listen," she said to Dak. "My brother is in danger, and we need to find him. Only you can help us do that."

Dak looked up into her friend's eyes, which had a look of sincerity she had never seen in them before.

"I do not want to die," she said earnestly.

"None of us will die today," said Tahlia. "I promise you that."

"What are you knowing about promises, Tahlia! You do not know anything of them, and you have already caused me to break one that I have made! Breaking it is putting my life in danger, and has already forced me to feel a dead man's breath on my face and to crawl through his blood."

She looked pleadingly into Tahlia's face, but she found no pity for her there.

"We need you, Dak," said Tahlia. "Please!"

In the end, it was such an unfamiliar word on Tahlia's lips that prompted Dak into action. She took a final shuddering breath, then stood. Feeling faint, she kept her balance against the metal wall with an outstretched hand, and walked on down the corridor.

"We must follow the tunnels' downward slopes," she said, focusing on the task ahead of her.

If she were going to do this, then she would do it as well as she could. It was the only way she would be getting out of the place that she was in.

The other two followed behind her in silence, and they continued down the tunnel, leaving Jerrus' cold bloodless body behind.