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“I’ll go first,” Remi said, then slipped feet first into the hatch and started down “Okay,” she called “The ladder seems sturdy”

Sam climbed down and crouched beside her This tunnel was narrower still: three feet wide and four feet tall Stretching down the centerline was hatch after hatch after hatch, each one a steel-barred black square that seeht beams

“God alhty,” Sam whispered

“How many, do you think?” Remi asked

“If this tunnel is as long as the ones aboveForty or fifty”

Re it took for soo insane down here”

“Depends on the person, but after a day or two youron itself No sense of time, no points of reference, no outside stiet this over with What was the last line of the riddle?”

“ ‘Frootten’ ”

Careful of their footing, they walked down the wall to the third hatch Under the beaes and latch had been removed and the bars were scabrous with corrosion He touched one; flakes sloughed off and floated down into the oubliette He gripped the bars, lifted the grate free, and set it aside

The oubliette lay at the botto shaft, while the cell itself was four feet to a side and three feet deep—neither wide enough for a prisoner to lie fully prone, nor tall enough to stand without being bent at the waist “I better go,” Remi said “I’m smaller and I couldn’t pull you back up”

Sam frowned, but nodded “Okay” From his waistband he pulled the miniature crowbar She took off her coat and laid it aside, then tucked the crowbar into her belt and let Sa the last couple feet on her own On hands and knees she clicked on her light, stuck it between her teeth, and began exa the stone walls and floor After twoaround she suddenly murmured, “There you are”

“Spittlebug?”

“Yep, in all its glory It’s carved into the corner of this block There’s a good-sized gap hereHang on”

Reap, then the other, inching the block away frorunt, she pulled it free and shoved it aside, then dropped to her belly and shined the light into the hollow “It goes back a couple feetDamn”

“What?”