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Cast with iolden torsos were draped in robes so finely detailed Sa On each woman’s head rested a laurel wreath; each stem and leaf and bud was a work of art unto itself

“Who moved them?” Remi said “Laurent? How could he have done it by himself?”

“That,” Sam replied, then pointed

Lying beside the as ashields Made of lacquered wicker and leather, each shield was a five-foot-tall hourglass They were bound together hat looked like catgut to form a shallow canoe shape

“We saw one of these at Bondaruk’s estate,” Saine it: Laurent, in here working alone for days, building his sled, then dragging each Karyatid across that bridgeA”

“But why leave them here?”

“I don’t know We know there’s a gap in his biography a few years before he hired Arienne and the Faucon Maybe Napoleon ordered hiet the columns out Maybe Laurent realized he couldn’t do it without help, so he left the he’d return”

“Saht”

He looked up Re beside a shoulder-wide crack in the wall The interior had collapsed and was choked with rock A pencil-sized shaft of sunlight showed at the far end

“Napoleon and Laurent ht have coet out”

“Tiet reinforcements”

They found another opening, this one barely larger than the slit they’d coh earlier At the other end was an alcove and another side tunnel, this one leading back in the general direction of theuntil finally they reached an intersection To the left they heard the sound of rushing water

“The waterfall,” Remi said

They crept down the tunnel to thea few feet short Directly across froon’s-teeth curtain; to the left, the platforlow o

f Saht on the wall behind the barrel stalactite