The statues are draped in night, and milk-white pearls, and the stones of the underworld. They stand guard, faceless, with their courier’s satchels hanging from one shoulder. This one covers its head with rose-colored satin; that one has blue canvas fitted tight against its frame. Beneath their eyeless watch are relics from a bygone age: untailored clothes, unfitted to a specific body, their hues and compositions permanent and unchanging.

Well, except for this dress, which changes its hue depending on where you look, from what angle. And this dress, which Dany swears is blue and Bella swears is yellow. And this, here, where— pass your hand over the sequins— there is one image, and then another. Creativity. Problem-solving. When all that creators had were base, simple materials, and so they had to use tricks to make the most out of what they had available to them.

It sprawls on and on, stairs rising into the glass-partitioned higher levels, and here and there there is a change, something different, something out-of-place: a chamber full of trays containing mechanical cartridges, a display of [i]ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOLLAR[/i] plates and small decorations of the [i]Tunguska[/i], a bubbling fountain, a room full of empty cages.

Once there were lights here, presumably. But they are all gone. It is as heaped in shadows as a Kaeri feast. It is a world of sound, and texture, and outlines provided by Auspexes. It is a world of exploration, of hide-and-seek, of sudden discovery. Not “come look at this,” but “come feel this.” And then, stepping out into the grand corridor, where faint starlight trickles through a high vaulted ceiling, and revealing what was hidden.

(The statues do not look away from their changing. They do not blush at what the girls get up to in this dark, in lace, in a fortress of last defenses. But even they can only debauch so much, these two, when there are more treasures to be found. Is this, then, yet another of the vaults of Hades?)