Chapter 176: The Toll

The light came from a lantern, and the lantern hung from a spear, and the spear was pointed at my throat.

"That’s far enough," said a voice.

It was a man’s voice, hoarse and cracked and very tired. I knew it. I’d heard it on the beach, roaring over a rock with a wolf’s grin. Behind the lantern stood a huge, bald brute with a crescent of scars across his chest, and he looked like he’d aged ten years in two days.

"Dunstan," I said.

"Ghost." His eyes dropped to the girl in my arms, to the black stump of Tamsin’s leg, to Emmet clutching a silk coat, to Kaelen’s cracked axe. He swallowed. "Didn’t think anyone’d make it. Not from the grass."

"Three of us did. The rest found us after."

"Then you’re luckier than anyone on this rock. I’ve been counting for three days."

He lowered the spear a few inches. Behind him, in the flickering light, I saw the tunnel opening out into a long, low cavern. The walls were smooth and faintly pink and *damp,* like the roof of a mouth. The floor was strewn with straw and scraps of cloth. Four people huddled against the far wall around a tiny fire, and every one of them looked at us like animals watching a hawk.

"Come in," Dunstan said. "You’ll be wanting a fire." He licked his lips. "And you’ll be wanting the rules."

---

They had been twelve, once. Dunstan’s whole crew. They’d run from the beach in a pack and been the first to find the tunnel, which had opened for them in the dusk just as it had opened for us.

"It’s a belly," said Dunstan.

He crouched at the fire with a strip of dried meat between his scarred fingers. I tried not to wonder what kind of meat.

"I don’t know what god it is. Never saw it. But I know the shape. It wants to *keep* us. Doors on the outside are closed. Nothing out there can get in. The grass can’t. The sand can’t. The ridge can’t." He gestured at the pink, wet walls. "You’re safe in here. Safest place on the island."

"What’s the catch?" Tamsin asked from the floor. She’d gone grey as ash, and her lips were cracked, but her voice was steady.

"The toll."

Nobody said anything.

"At sundown, the walls ring," said Dunstan. "Like a bell. And a voice says *one.* And then the floor..." He stopped. His hand was shaking. "It opens. A throat, in the middle of the cavern. And it takes one of us. Whoever it wants. We don’t get a say."

"It picks?"

"It picks."

"How many has it taken?"

"Eight," said a thin young man by the fire. His name was Ansel. He had a bandaged hand and a very pale face, and he said it the way a man says the number of days he’s been awake. "Three the first night. It said *one,* and we didn’t pay, so it took three. Then one a night after."

"We don’t *pay,*" Dunstan said hoarsely. "We don’t *choose.* It chooses. Every night, it’s somebody different. And the one it picks, it..." He shut his eyes. "Last night it was Barrow. He was my friend. I’ve known him since the Lanes. It took him by the legs, and he said my *name.*"

The fire popped.

"I’m sorry," I said.

"Don’t be." His eyes opened. They were wet. "Be *ready.* Because I counted what we had. Four of us. Five. Six. It was going to run out." His gaze moved slowly over my group, over Tamsin’s stump, over Emmet’s small shaking hands. "And then you came."

I understood it before he’d finished.

"You *want* it to take one of us."

"I want it to take *someone,*" he said, almost gently. "Before it takes me."

---

Kaelen’s axe was up before I’d finished the thought.

She stood in front of Tamsin and Emmet with her feet apart and her cracked haft raised, and the whole cavern went very quiet. Ansel started to stand. Two others by the fire edged closer to their spears.

"Say it again," Kaelen said, in a low, even voice. "I’m a barbarian. I might have misheard."

"Girl—"

"You’ve brought us in from the dark to *feed* us to the wall."

"I’m not going to *do* anything." He spread his hands. "I’m just telling you the math. We’re twelve minus eight. If it takes four of you tonight, I live. If it takes one of us, we’ve got three days. And that one" — he nodded at Tamsin — "can’t run. And the boy can’t fight. That’s *math.*"

"That’s murder."

"That’s *how it is.*" His voice cracked. "You think I like it? You think any of us *like* it?"

"Dunstan," Ansel whispered. "Please. Stop."

"I need to *live,* Ansel!"

"I know." The young man was crying silently, with his bandaged hand pressed to his mouth. "I know. But I’d rather it took me."

I stood between the two of them with a sleeping girl in my arms, and I realized something, slowly and with great weariness. I wasn’t angry at Dunstan. That was the worst part. I’d seen the face he was wearing before. I’d *worn* it, in my last life, in a dark room full of people with a sentence hanging over them.

"Nobody’s paying," I said.

"You don’t get a *say.*"

"I know." I met his eyes. "But nobody’s paying. I’ll find another way."

"There *isn’t* one."

"There is. There always is." My voice was steadier than I felt. "Every rule on this island has a flaw in it. The beach. The grass. The ridge. We just have to find it before dark."

Dunstan stared at me for a very long moment.

"You’ve got until the bell," he said finally. "Whatever happens. After that, I can’t promise a thing."

---

I laid the girl down on a pile of straw near the fire and sat beside her, and I looked at the pink wet walls, and I *thought.*

It takes one. Whoever it wants. It rings at sundown. The door on the outside is closed.

*Valerian,* Aurelix whispered, from the hollow of my collar. *It’s not a belly. A belly digests. This place is shaped like a* mouth. *Look at the ceiling.*

I looked.

Long ridges ran across it, evenly spaced, like the roof of a throat. The floor sloped gently down toward the center of the cavern, where a round, dark stain marked the place the floor opened. And every few feet along the walls, set deep in the damp pink stone, I could see tiny, rounded, ivory-colored shapes.

Teeth.

*It isn’t a god,* Aurelix breathed. *It’s a* tongue. *It’s the Ridge’s, the same one that opened its eye. We didn’t escape it. We went* in.

I sat very still.

"Then the ridge has been hunting us the whole time," I said, very softly.

*No. It’s been* waiting. *The rule is "don’t rest." The belly is where you rest. That’s the trick.* A thin, cold pause. *It never needed to chase us. It only needed us to stop.*

Beside me, in the straw, the girl stirred.

---

The bell rang.

It wasn’t a bell. It was a low, deep, wet *thrum,* a single note, felt in the teeth. It rolled through the cavern and into the walls and out the other side, and every head in the room snapped up.

"*Sundown,*" Ansel whispered.

"Everybody *down!*" Dunstan barked. "On your faces, hands over your heads. Don’t make eye contact with the throat—"

"*One,*" said the walls.

It was a hundred voices at once. Men and women and children, a whole choir of the dead, murmuring in perfect unison. The floor in the center of the cavern shivered. A dark, wet, circular hole yawned open in the stone, ringed with soft white ridges, and a long pink tongue as thick as a mast began to slide slowly up out of it, tasting the air.

I was on my feet. Kaelen had her axe up. Tamsin had struggled to one elbow, and her face, gone grey, was set. Emmet had thrown himself in front of her, a silk coat held up like a shield.

The tongue turned.

It moved over the cavern like a blind man’s hand. It brushed Dunstan’s boots, and he went rigid. It brushed Ansel, who closed his eyes. It slid past Kaelen’s axe, past Tamsin, past Emmet, and I stood in front of it with my heart going like a hammer, and it came to a stop, an inch from my face.

It hesitated.

And then, very slowly, it turned toward the straw.

"No," I whispered.

Behind me, with a soft rustle, the girl sat up.

She was awake. Her silver eyes were wide and unfocused, her pale hair hanging in her face, one hand pressed to the silver scar between her ribs. She looked at the tongue. The tongue looked back, as much as a tongue can.

And all around us, in the damp pink walls, a hundred voices dropped to a hush, and spoke again, low and soft and reverent, like a congregation greeting a saint.

"*Welcome home, little heart.*"