Page 36 of The Catacomb King
“I’ll consider it if I get my map.”
“Thebitterness, as you so politely call it, is because I wouldloveto have a map for you, but I’m the only one here who feels that way. Just as, apparently, I’m the only one who wants to source water for the thirsting masses.”
“What’s the deal with that, anyway? Can’t the King do something?”
“No one has seen the King in six years,” Hades said shortly.
“What, like he doesn’t do public events? What if someone needs to petition him for something?”
“I do not mean he does not do public events. I mean no one has seen him in six years. Now. Let us consider. What will be the first step for the pipeline if you do not have a map?”
But I was still trying to wrap my head around the King thing. “Haveyouseen him?”
Hades closed his eyes. He took a deep breath through his nose. After a beat, he repeated, “No — one — has — seen — the — King — for — six — years.”
“But isn’t he your father?”
“For Monarch’s sake. Do youeverquit?”
“Trust me.” I tapped the shitty blank parchment. “You don’t want someone who quits working on this job.”
“No, I haven’t seen him. I don’t know what to tell you. Now please,please, focus on the Monarch-damned pipeline.”
“I can’t,” I insisted. “I need a map.”
“You can’t have one. The tunnels move.”
The tunnels. Of course. Damn this crazy place. I wracked my brain. Thetunnelsmoved… but did that mean everything else moved, too? “Are the tunnels manmade? I mean, godling-made? Or are they natural formations?”
Hades seemed surprised by the question. “Neither, I don’t think. Hold on.” He got up and started rummaging around in the piles of scrolls and books. I leaned back with satisfaction and watched his blood pressure skyrocket as he hunted fruitlessly for whatever he was looking for. “IknowI have a copy of this back in my room… Aha!”
He came up with a book bound in what appeared to be a discarded spider-husk.
“Um,” I said. “Is that bound in spider-skin? Isn’t that the same as someone from my world binding a book in human flesh?”
“Probably. What’s the problem?” He was flipping through the book. He lit up as he found the page he was looking for. “Here we go. The tunnels aren’t naturalorgodling-made. They, like the Lake, are a gift from the Monarch. Or not a gift exactly, but.” He wrestled with his own tongue. “I don’t know howto translate this word for you. A boon? A bonus? An add-on, something extra.
“The gift is the Lake. That’s the thing that ties us to Him. But the land around the Lake — the whole Gestörbunlund, the tunnels — was thrown in, I guess you would say, to make it possible for us to… take advantage, of His bounty. He made the Lake, and then He made this home for us.” Hades flipped the book so I could see it.
I gasped. “I’ve seen this book! Ihavethis book!”
“What?”
“At home! From one of the farmhands. But my copy is different.” I seized the book from him and flipped through it.
As I turned the pages, though, I deflated a little. My book at home wasalmostthe same, but not quite. Mine was printed on normal paper, for one thing, and it was written in Iernian — the language that Hades and Elke and everyone else here seemed to speak, but that clearly wasn’t their only tongue and certainly wasn’t the language of this book. The book’s letters were blockier than I was used to and full of diacritics. Also, whoever had written them had awful handwriting.
Most importantly, though, the illustrations in this book were slightly different than the illustrations in mine.
I landed on a watercolor painting of a razed forest surrounding a mountain. I frowned.
“What’s wrong?” Hades asked.
I wished I had my copy to compare. “This looks almost exactly like a drawing in my version. Except these” — I pointed to the thousand razed trees — “are living trees in mine. And the mountain is different in this one. Bigger. And shaped differently — more lumpy.” This mountain looked almost humanoid, in fact. “And the mountain is moved over a little. In my version, the mountain is further over here, closer to the sun.” I pointed to the orange egg-yolk painting of the sun.
“I always liked that painting,” Hades remarked. “I like that it shows night and day at the same time.”
I scowled. I, too, had spent a long time staring at this painting in my book, and I did not like having this in common with the Prince of Darkness. The egg-yolk sun was on the right-hand side of the mountain and the stars were on the left, and as a child, I had liked to map the constellations in the book to the real constellations my father had showed me before he died.
