The first ninety feet down the torn drain was ugly, slow climbing rather than a sheer drop. Where the drill’s collapse had cracked the basin floor, the rushing mineral water had scoured a steep forty-degree chute of stepped limestone shelves, slick with gray clay and warm sulfur scum.
Ashaun went first, hooking her stone left forearm around Kiv’s knotted guide rope to control her slide while her right hand kept a shuttered horn lantern clear of the wet rock. Siv, Tern, and Moth scrambled down a narrower staircase of broken strata along the right wall, their iron-shod claws striking small dull sparks whenever they hit bare flint. Osha came next with her satchel strapped tight across her chest, and Ysabet followed with her left hand on the hemp rope, watching Pip pick its way down the water-cut grooves beside them.
With six legs spread wide and low to the stone, Pip needed no rope. Its stout middle claws wedged neatly into cracks where a human boot would have skidded, and its thin regrown front leg tested every loose slab before it shifted its weight. Twice it paused where the heavy black-stone cage had gouged deep white furrows out of the limestone and sniffed the powdered rock, then shook its head sharply to clear the iron taste from its nostrils.
