Main chronicle · Passage 4
The Ship Beneath the City
Following the compass below Veyr, Ilyra discovers a ship buried beneath the city — and hears someone knocking from inside its sealed hull.
The compass led them inland.
They passed through the fish market, the courthouse and the oldest quarter, where streets had been built over one another so many times that doors opened onto other people’s ceilings. At the centre of the city, the needle pointed straight down.
They found the entrance beneath the Hall of Measures, behind a cabinet containing three hundred years of corrected maps. The stairway descended through brick, then stone, then something warm and faintly breathing.
At the bottom lay a ship.
Its hull was black, its masts folded against the underground ceiling. Blue light leaked through the seams. It was far too large to fit beneath Veyr, yet there it rested, embedded in the earth as though the city had grown around it.
Someone knocked from inside. Three slow blows. A pause. Then three more.
Sere pressed his hand to the hull. “Do not answer,” he said.
From within the ship, a woman’s voice spoke Ilyra’s name.