The heavy clay shards skittered across the flat stone slabs, their sharp edges clicking against the mortar joints as the dark puddle of chicory spread across the threshold of the hoist.
The double didn’t flinch, blink, or curse. As the pottery shattered against the iron, its boots seemed to lose all traction with the stone, sliding backward into the pitch-black recess of the upright shaft with the smooth, terrifying speed of an uncoiling spring. The shadows beneath the timber framing swallowed it whole. It folded over its brown coat until only the faint, oily glint of its brass postal clasp was visible in the gloom.
“Don’t play with it, Len!” Doma shouted, her voice cutting through the ringing aftermath of the impact with the force of an iron skillet hitting a stove. “It’s testing you! It wants you to shout so it can map the deep ring of this basement!”
Len lowered his sounding pole, his chest heaving, his left forearm burning as though a hot coal had been pressed against the linen wrap. The double was gone from the floor, but the room was not empty. Overhead, inside the box-shaped zinc duct that carried stale air from the kitchens to the upper platform, a dry, rhythmic scratching echoed through the sheet metal. The sound of boot soles moving with impossible, zero-drag speed through a space barely eighteen inches wide.
