Page 42 of The Catacomb King
That left two and a half days remaining.
Sixty more hours without food.
When Hades left, I doubled over against the stomach cramps.
Mom has been dying for months, I chided myself.You can manage two and a half more days.
I gridded some parchment as best I could and tried, around the hunger, to calculate how to proceed with constructing a system that would flow between the mountain runoff and the reservoir. I decided we would start at the reservoir and dig a shaft straight toward the mountain, as the crow flew. Hopefully the shaft would stay static, since it was being constructed by the godlings and not by the Monarch. The shaft would open out thecliffside at the closest point to the runoff-waterfall. From there, we’d build a half-pipe and stabilize it with suspension ropes that we would hook to a higher point up the cliff. We’d build the half-pipe out far enough that it intersected with the waterfall. It would carry water all the way down to the reservoir.
Easy. Simple.Waymore straightforward than what I had designed for Calix.
Calix.
My flask of water and my edenica herbs were still sitting in my basket in the corner, surrounded by the remains of the broken chair. Hades had dropped them there this morning after confiscating them from Elke.
I’d have to come and get you.
I wondered if Calix had meant it. If he’d figured out what had happened to me. If he would make it here before I starved. Or before I got fed to a jealous god for failing to build this fucking pipeline.
I was so hungry. Forget it. I knocked back the flask of water. It wet the inside of my mouth and did nothing else. It was sotantalizing. I thought about eating the edenica herbs, but I knew they wouldn’t fill my belly and their painkilling property would just fuck me up.
It had to be nighttime again, I thought. How many meals had I missed?
Did godlings sleep at nighttime?
Well,Idid. And if I wasn’t going to get to eat, then I needed to build up my energy for tomorrow.
I lay down on the bed and squeezed my eyes shut.
Obviously, I did not fall asleep. My mind whirred crazily with plans for the pipeline. Thoughts of Calix. Thoughts of Hades. Terror of the god on the mountain. The glassy Lake, the softly rotating cocoons. Hunger: mine, the god’s.
The door creaked open.
I sat up, expecting Elke. But it was Hades.
“What do you want?” I demanded. “Are we getting started with the building already? Humans need to sleep, you know.”
He didn’t answer. He entered without even looking at me. He lay down on the rug, facing away from me, toward the low-burning fireplace.
I curled my knees into my chest uncertainly. He’d already made it clear he wasn’t going to touch me, so I didn’t feel endangered, but what fresh weirdness was he up to now? “Uh, can I help you?”
“No,” he said, muffled. “Go to sleep. You’ve got to boss around a thousand construction workers tomorrow.”
“A thousand!”
“Something like that.”
I hoped he was exaggerating. Or maybe not. We’d need all the help we could get. “Okay. But in the meantime, what are you doing?”
“I’m going to sleep.”
“On the floor?”
He rolled over. “You’re in the bed. Unless you want to share.”
Heat flared on my cheeks. “Don’t you have your own room?”
“This is my room.” He rolled toward the fireplace again.
