I’m alive, at least, Xiaodan thinks as he finishes dressing. He steps awkwardly into his boots. The Yèkǒng’s dead, or at least it has no idea where I am.

Then again, neither does he. He’s still trapped in here, dependant on the kindness of strangers, and while these people don’t seem to want him dead, apparently some of them are feeling none too friendly.

First things first. He shuffles gingerly across the matting, feeling for the exit.

“Xiaodan,” he says, as she locks the front door.

From the time it took her to shepherd him outside, it struck him as a sizeable house. There was another, more open living space, where the air was warmer and any sound he made took longer to fade away. Xiaodan smelled food – fried vegetables, heavily spiced, and some kind of soup. Distracted, he almost tripped over a low table in the middle of the room. Dishes rattled as he cracked his shin.

She lives alone, as far as he can tell. Whoever those voices he heard through the walls belonged to, nobody’s come out to meet them, and Xiaodan heard nothing to indicate anyone was busy elsewhere in the building. All this space as well as somewhere she can stick an unwitting guest. Does that mean she’s somebody important?

“What?” She’s not really listening.

“Xiaodan,” he says again. “My name is Feng Xiaodan. Since you said we haven’t been –”

“Oh.” She sucks in air through her teeth. “So I did. Duly noted.”

“And it’s… Sain?” he says tentatively.

“Sain.” She says it slower; Sah-een. “Just Sain. Okay? Can we get on with this?”

Their voices are travelling a lot further. This is some kind of larger chamber, another cave, but more complex in shape than the place where he first fell in from the mines. It’s still impressively high; he can see more of those strange dots of orange light far overhead. But there’s no real echo. Other things – buildings or rock formations – are swallowing up the sound.

Xiaodan is picking up background noises, too, somewhere below them. There are people down there. He can hear the rhythmic slap of footfalls shuffling past, the odd snatch of murmured conversation, and feel the smaller, ethereal signs of life his martial training picks up on. Human beings, as far as he can tell.

“Do I…” He tries not to blush, feeling like a child about to confront a crowd of strangers. “Do I hold your hand again, or…?”

“Take a wild guess.” She snorts. “You’ve got some kind of lightness skill, right? What level?”

“Third,” Xiaodan says. “How did you…?” But she disarmed him in the tunnel, he remembers. That suggests some serious martial training.

“Meaning you won’t break something,” Sain says brusquely. “If you take a spill. So no. I think we’ll try and see how you get on by yourself first.”

“What do I do?” For a moment Xiaodan wonders if she wants him to shuffle along like an old man, all the way to wherever they’re headed.

“Just pay attention.” She sighs. “You don’t have to sprint, okay? You can take it slowly. Do you want me to baby you, or something?”

“No,” Xiaodan says hurriedly.

“Okay.” He can hear her turning away. “So come on. We’re a fair distance off the ground right now. There’s a railing at the edge of the balcony, maybe two steps straight ahead. Keep your hand on that and you’ll be fine.”

Sain. It sounds like a Měngqín word. A lot of the herdsmen tribes to the north were Měngqín. When he saw her, back in the caves, fighting the salamander, she had the long ropes of hair, and wore that thick padded jacket. But what’s a nomad doing down here? It seems unlikely they’re keeping horses.

“Stairs,” the young woman says. “Going down. Curving to the left.”

Xiaodan feels a zigzag notch in the guard rail a second later.

“Is everyone here...?” he says, advancing step by step, going as slowly as he dares. “You know –”

The noise of the crowd is growing louder, though it’s still eerily quiet.

“Blind?” Sain prompts him.

“Well.” She makes it sound as if he’s broken some kind of dreadful taboo, but how else is he meant to ask? “Yes. That.”

“Not –” He can hear she’s reached the end of the staircase. “You felt the rail, right? Quite a few of us, sure, but no, not everyone. Most people can see a little bit, if there’s light. It’s just easier like this. But they’ll give you the rundown.”

“So where are ‘they’ –?” he begins.

“Wait.” He can feel her stop him in his tracks with two fingers in the middle of his chest. “Give me a second.”

To do what? Xiaodan wants to ask, but then he hears it; a short sharp click, from somewhere in the back of her throat.

More of them. It’s like the signals she made in the tunnels, but this is longer, a rapid, chattering trill almost like birdsong. Another signal answers her, from somewhere up ahead, then one off to the right, and another, and – what are they? Greetings? Warnings? Both?

“Come on,” Sain says. “Going to be a couple of twists and turns here, but they should stay out of your way.”

Slowly Xiaodan follows the young woman’s directions; keep going. Right turn in... ten more steps. Okay, turn. Move to your left. Keep going, and on, and on, all in the same faintly sardonic, grudging murmur.

He realises, much to his amazement, this is a city.

Not on the scale of somewhere like Gāozhū, of course. But there are people passing him to the left and right every few seconds, and low, muted conversations audible all around.

Yet Sain hasn’t once raised her voice, and Xiaodan can’t hear anybody nearby speaking above a whisper. They keep making those clicks, too, like a sounding weight into the darkness. And there’s another noise at one point, a deep, resonant chime, as of a bell, high up and a long way off, but nobody comments on it.

Other than that it’s surprisingly normal, in many respects; porters carrying their loads, tradesmen bartering, friends swapping pleasantries... children playing a game of some sort, though he can’t work out what this entails, beyond falling from a great height and a lot of stifled giggling. Are they blind, too?

“Stop,” Sain says abruptly. “Steps up, to your right. Going inside a building. This is where you’re headed.”

“Are you coming?” It sounds needier than he intended.

“Okay, where we’re headed.” She makes a noise not unlike a weary horse. “It’s just a few questions. You can handle a few questions, right?”

Tried to join the Hēi Yīng, right? Xiaodan remembers Zhong’s airy dismissal, the memory that bubbled up from the depths of his psyche in that brief moment of delirium after he fell into the caves. Hired a Southlander to tutor you, and you still failed the exams.

He tries not to think about how drastically his life changed the last time he sat down for 'a few questions'.

Inside, the building thrums like a drowsy beehive. It reminds Xiaodan a little of the archives, an echoing enclosed space through which footsteps are forever hurrying on the way to somewhere else. But the whispered conversations here are far more weighty, a solemn back-and-forth through wisps of incense smelling faintly of jasmine.

He can’t hear writing. Do these people write? But this is obviously somewhere people decide what happens to the city, and whoever lives in it. He catches mention of births and deaths, of new arrivals... is that where he comes in? Of food and water, of goods and services – but this sort of thing wasn’t his purview as an archivist, so he can’t follow along.

Finally Sain indicates he can sit down. The chair is hard and uncomfortable, and the person assigned to give the orientation is a functionary with a paper-thin husk of a voice. He sounds vaguely offended Xiaodan had the effrontery to accidentally stumble across this place without an appointment.

He’s not going into a whole lot of detail, either; a religious splinter group, condemned for propagating heresy, chased far to the north… it’s not something Xiaodan ever read much about. He can hear Sain drumming her heels on the floor just behind him. It’s reassuring, in a way, to think she’s finding this just as tedious as he is.

“Hang on.” Xiaodan sits up. “Say that again. ‘The orthodox leaders’. Please?”

“The orthodox leaders of the original Jīngguò sect began the migration underground,” the functionary says patiently, “after Emperor Shen Chang redoubled his efforts to persecute what was widely perceived as –”

“That was…” His head swims.

That was three hundred years ago.

The functionary says nothing for a moment, and the silence feels like a brief note of sympathy.

“You mentioned you had enemies in pursuit,” the man says at last. “Would you be willing to supply any more details about…” He coughs. “Who you are, and the danger you were facing?”

It occurs to Xiaodan that technically he’s their enemy. He’s duty bound to follow the orders of a government whose ancestors considered these people dangerous heretics. How closely do they stick to their original mission statement? Nobody’s mentioned the war. Would they consider him a refugee, if he explained?

“We need an answer,” the functionary says. “Of some kind –”

“I promise I’m not a threat.” It sounds even more half-hearted than he feared. “If you’re worried I’m. You know. A danger, then I can just… be on my way –”

“I can vouch for him,” Sain says.

The sudden show of support is so unexpected Xiaodan actually turns round to gawp, before remembering neither of them can see him in the dark.

“It would take time,” the functionary says. He seems just as surprised. Who is this woman, if her word counts for that much? “To be fully satisfied. That all the rules were being complied with. Your father would –”

“I know what my father would,” Sain mutters. She shifts in her chair. “But I’ll vouch for him. Until he’s ready to go. If that’s what he wants.”

“There are a few more things to cover. Ah –” The functionary lets out a hesitant grumbling sound, as if to say look, I still have to stick to the procedures. “It shouldn’t take too much more of your time –”

Xiaodan sinks back into his seat, but his mind is only half-focused on the lecture. His position seems a lot more secure now that Sain’s decided to trust him, but for all he could do with an ally in this strange, lightless place, that’s not what sticks with him.

How is it these people have been down here for more than three centuries? And –

If that’s what he wants. Sain sounded, of all things, disappointed. Why? What was she expecting?