Page 34 of The Catacomb King
It meant that if I stayed with him and did as he asked, I’d be saving my mother. And not just her. The whole village.
It was so tempting.
But while I considered, my stomach rumbled again. I almost moaned. I couldfeelmy body hollowing out with hunger. The walls of my stomach grinding against each other, hollering for food.
But it was only three days. Three days of hunger, three days without sun, three days of putting up with this fucking asshole.
IfI could bring myself to believe the Prince.
And if — and I tried to ignore, but couldn’t quite manage it, the smug little voice in the back of my head that reminded me I wasn’t a real engineer, that remembered Calix’s patronizing skepticism when I’d shown him my blueprints — if I could even do it.
The Catacombs
“Fine,” I said. “I’ll do it. I’ll fill your reservoir.”
Hades’s face lit up. Suddenly he was almost young-looking. He shook his hair out of his face. “Really?”
“Calm down. Don’t embarrass yourself. Yeah.” I craned my neck up at the moon-pierced ceiling. Now that I was committed, I could feel the clock ticking. “Is that the direction of the waterfall from the mountain? It can’t be, or you’d just dig straight up. Even you people could figure out how to do that.”
“Ha, ha. No, it’s not. Come on, I’ll show you.”
And Hades took me through the underworld.
First we went through the fabled mushroom fields. There was no light here, not even bioluminescence, and Hades had to scrounge up a lantern to show them to me. The glittering ceiling and walls and floor rippled with latticework, some of it natural, some of it hand-carved, but…
“There are no mushrooms,” I said, disappointed.
“They can’t grow without water,” Hades replied. He sounded sad.
But also resolved. He would do anything to save his people.
Just like I would do anything to save my mother.
I didn’t like recognizing myself in him. I said we should keep moving.
Next, he brought me to the library: a square chamber filled with piles of books and scrolls and literal scraps of paper. I picked up one of the scrolls; the ink was so faded, it was unreadable. Nothing was alphabetized. Nothing was even shelved. “How do you find anything?”
“We don’t, mostly,” Hades admitted.
He showed me a bank, which was stocked with similar piles of coinage and jewels. I picked up a couple of the coins. They had been beaten out of metal by hand, their denominations scratched on them. “The currencies aren’t consistent.”
“That’s because new kings and treasurers often decide we should use a new monetary system.”
“Without turning over the old currency?”
“I suppose so. But you’ll be pleased to hear that the Vizeking has kept the same system for almost two hundred years now. I think. It doesn’t really matter anyway. The jewels are always good, and there are plenty of them.”
“But how does anyone know how much money they have? How do you keep financial records? Do you have a… budget?”
Hades literally laughed.
“How can you be laughing? This place is a mess!”
“At least it’s about to be a mess with a water source.”
I kept goggling as we left the bank, but there was nothing for it. Finally, he led me to the very deepest reaches of his world, through tunnels as tight and winding and crazy as anthills, and then he pulled me out to —
The surface?
