They waited for his reaction, hard, lupine.

“Where do I—”

One man stepped forward, swinging an open palm. Aton automatically caught the blow on a raised forearm. He was a hair late, and the hand hit the side of his face hard enough to make his head ring. He backed a step. “What the—?”

“Mind your business. We don’t warn twice.”

Aton fell back, angry. For a moment he toyed with the idea of repaying the advice in kind. That would mean fighting all three, probably at once. Was that what they wanted? But behind his mounting temper he realized that the suggestion was good. Don’t make trouble—at least until you know your way around. There was no point in beginning his sojourn here as a combatant. Time enough for that later. He nodded.

“Good,” the man said. He laughed. “Remember—we all got to die together!”

The others guffawed and went to pick up the crates. Aton would remember them.

“Advice,” one said as he passed, not unkindly. “Strip. Like us. Hot.”

They tramped off, leaving him alone. Were they typical? He knew there were women in Chthon, but in a prison without guards or any other exposure to the world, conventions must long since have bowed to the stifling heat. Abnormal mores were bound to prevail—unless he was being set up for some further joke.

Aton looked about him. The room was rounded, the walls irregular but not rough. Stone, coated with glow. Long ago some scouting party must have explored these caverns, or at least enough of them to locate the garnets and determine that there was no feasible exit. He wondered whether the air was natural or somehow piped in; its presence seemed too provident to be coincidence.