“Oh, figs,” the young woman breathed.

With an old, practiced eye, Chapelle studied the large brick that lifted easily, despite its apparent mass, from its housing; the lever, perhaps a foot long, concealed behind it; and finally, took a single all-encompassing glance around the room entire, as though trying to discern what the mechanism might do.

“Well,” he said eventually, his tone even, “adventure fiction aside, nobody actually builds traps this obvious, just in the hopes that someone may be curious.” Nobody sane, anyway. “All the same, I want everybody to leave the chamber and step back into the hallway. Just in case. Bouniard!”

The young constable snapped to attention. “Sir?”

“I want you waiting in the doorway. If something untoward does happen, I expect some modicum of effort to get me out of it.” The sergeant smiled tightly. “I'm not expecting miracles, of course, since someone gets a promotion if I die in here. But at least make it look good.”

Julien Bouniard smiled faintly. “I'll certainly appear to do my damnedest, sir.”

“That's the spirit! All right, move!”

In moments, the room was emptied of all living inhabitants save the sergeant himself, and the unseen watcher above. A quick glance at young Bouniard-gravely returned with a nod-and Chapelle yanked on the lever.

A low grinding sounded from beneath the bloody tiles; deep, ponderous, as though they were witnessing the gestation and birth of the thunder itself. The room shuddered, sending faint showers of dust spilling from the rafters (and eliciting a second involuntary yelp that, thankfully, went unheard amidst the rumbling). Agitated from beneath, a few dead limbs flailed about in a profane dance.

The center of the floor opened up, revealing a hollow almost ten feet on a side. Several corpses dropped into the gap, landing with a symphony of wet thumps on whatever lay below. Chapelle, his face gone pale, realized that they had just lost the bodies of five or six of the city's elite.