Gil rolls his eyes. Now she’s just being silly.

Gil hasn’t ever actu­ally used such a device, but he knows some­thing about the mag­i­cal prin­ci­ples behind its func­tion. The trick is sim­ply get­ting the angle right through trial and error. So Gil holds the card out in front of door, sweep­ing it up and down and back and forth. He twists and turns the card as he moves it through the air.

Gil stills his arm. He twists the card just slightly. Surely enough, the stone door jit­ters again, and emits a low, barely audi­ble puls­ing sound: wohm-wohm. He brings his hand straight up, slowly but surely—and in the same motion, the door slides up too, stone grat­ing loudly against stone.

The door catches and seems to hold. There’s barely enough space for them to duck under­neath. Before Gil can hes­i­tate, Kiddu tugs his arm and pulls him down and under­neath and into the Grand Cir­cus.

Behind them, the door SLAMS shut, rais­ing a cloud of dust from the ground. Gil is sure that the sol­diers on the Divid­ing Wall must have heard it.

Kiddu darts down the open-air pas­sage and around the cor­ner. A waft of excre­ment assaults Gil’s nos­trils.

Gil fol­lows her into an open ante­room with two big, hinged wooden gates on the other side that pre­sum­ably lead into the main sand­pit arena. A grooved stone track runs along the dusty floor of the ante­room and past the two gates.

Attached to the track with a greasy stone bear­ing is a large chain of neatly-cut pearl­stone. It’s wound par­tially around a pole stick­ing out from the wall.

Attached to the pearl­stone chain is a thick pearl­stone col­lar.

Attached to the collar—a mass of fur and feath­ered wings and claws and horns—lies a slum­ber­ing lamashu.