Page 45 of The Catacomb King
I held the ballgown up to myself, too, wishing I could wear it. Even Mrs. Stammerer didn’t have anything as gorgeous as this.. But it was so impractical I couldn’t bring myself to even try it on. I smoothed it out on the coverlet and continued.
The next dress was little more than a pile of rags even more threadbare than the thing I was already wearing.
“Elke, come on. I can’t wear any of these.”
“I’m sorry. They’re the only human clothes we have.”
“How did you even — oh. Oh no.”
Elke looked abashed. But also a little defiant.
I dropped the threadbare dress like it was made of coals. These clothes had belonged to the other tributes. They’d been dragged underground in them, clawing at the earth. Someone had stripped these clothes from them before their naked bodies were drowned in the glassy water. The women who’d once worn these clothes were naked, now, in their cocoons high above the Lake. The sticky spider-silk of the cocoons was pressing against their bare flesh as we spoke.
Suddenly the negligée didn’t seem so luxurious.
“Pants,” I managed. “I’ll be working all day. Don’t you have pants?” I had never worn pants in my life, but my mother had worn my father’s old clothes when she’d gone to work in the fields.
“Girls from your world don’t seem to wear pants,” said Elke doubtfully, but she considered a moment. Then she went away, leaving me with the heap of clothes that had belonged to a bunch of dead women. When she came back, she was carrying a thigh-length tunic and a pair of trousers that billowed before cinching tightly at the ankles. They were as black as the bed’s coverlet. I fingered them. The material was like leather, but thinner and slicker.
“These work,” I decided. “Did they also belong to a tribute?” I was already naked from cleaning my parts with the rag, so I began to slide into the trousers. Gods, the fabric felt good. It occurred to me that I ought to be more uncomfortable changing in front of Elke, but I supposed she was used to this sort of thing, being a maidservant.
I realized that against my better judgment, I had started tolikeElke. I made a mental note to cut it out. These people were my enemies and I could not forget it. This pile of dresses was proof of that.
I strapped myself into the tunic.
“Those clothes used to belong to His Lordship,” said Elke. “He outgrew them.”
I stilled. These were Hades’s clothes?
My fingers slipped over the slick fabric. I tried not to imagine that same fabric clinging to Hades’s skin. “Surely I’m not supposed to wear the Prince’s clothes. Isn’t there, like, a rule?”
Elke’s human mouth twitched. “We don’t do very well with rules here.”
I looked down at myself. Well, what did I care? If the Prince didn’t want me wearing his clothes, he could send me the fuck home.
“You need shoes, too,” Elke added. “I’m sorry I don’t have any. His Lordship’s feet have always been larger than yours, unfortunately. But sometimes people like, um, me, use this.” She fished around in the pile of remaining clothes and drew out what looked like a roll of black bandages. The fabric was similar to that of the tunic and pants, but more rubbery.
“What is it?”
“It’s a wrap,” she explained. “For when we are shedding our carapaces. The soft new skin underneath can be sensitive, so we cover it like this.”
She had me sit on the bed and showed me how to wrap the strips of around my feet as makeshift shoes. I wrapped it around my hands, too. Never mind that Hades had said manual labor was beneath me. Never in my life had anything gotten done unless I did it my own damn self.
I didn’t love the idea of wearing spider-clothes as shoes, but when I stood up, I had to admit that the fabric was thick and comfortable. It melded to my hands and feet. It was certainly better than the alternative of wandering barefoot and having Hades pluck shards of rock from my feet while I writhed around in his lap… in a way.
“Okay,” I said, flexing my fingers. “I’m ready to go.” I picked up my spear.
“Oh,” said Elke, nervously.
“His Lordship says that what I say goes. And I say I’m not walking around this place unarmed.”
She couldn’t argue with that.
We set off. Infuriatingly, I needed Elke to show me how to get to the reservoir. These fucking moving catacombs. But she did express a flicker of surprise when I turned left, right,left at the appropriate moments. “It’s because the earth slopes downward here,” I explained, trying to gesture to show her how all the destinations stayed in the same place and so the reservoir had to bethisway even if the roads had moved. But she didn’t understand.
And then we arrived at the reservoir.
It wasfullof godlings.
