Alice had been the first of the mature students to edge a tentative way over the void. The fact somebody had been here before and left the ropeway behind was, she considered, a pleasant surprise. The Compte de Yoyo, supervising the group, held his peace. Alice, with increasing confidence, had drainholed her way along the convenient rope until she was twenty feet out, too far away to leap back to the walkway again.
The too-convenient ropeway.
The piton slid out as if it had been deliberately loosened and greased. Which it probably had been, she thought, later.
The momentum of her falling jerked two more out, and served to steady her fall as she barrel-rolled and hit the almost-water feet-first, remembering to take a deep breath as she went in. The same momentum carried her under, and her feet hit bottom. Forcing calm, she waited for the same momentum to start carrying her up. Nothing happened.
With mounting horror, she realized her boots were stuck in what she hoped was the mud and silt at the bottom of the Cloaca. She tried to jerk them loose. She was stuck fast.
Knowledge dispels fear.
She recalled her knee-boots were zipped, not laced. Forcing calm, she tried to crouch and force the zips down…then wiggled her feet in suddenly-loose footwear. Lungs screaming for breath, she forced herself upwards and her head broke the surface of the almost-water. She took a deep elated breath and wished she hadn't. Things bobbed past her face.
From above, a rope-sling descended. She caught it, and was hauled up to the platform, where she helplessly vomited over the side, adding a little to the miasma of the waters below.
De Yoyo languidly stepped forward.
"Who would like to comment on Miss Band's little demonstration? Anyone? Very well. "
He paused.
"Overconfidence. The first enemy of the Assassin. What did she do wrong? Mr Rogers?"
Derek Rogers, a former banker who had taken a very personal attitude towards fraud and robbery, coughed nervously.
"She trusted the ropes, sir? Ropes she had not installed and made safe herself?"
"Correct!" the Compte boomed. "Never assume a convenient rope leading in the direction in which you wish to travel is there for your benefit! You will always create a new way of your own!"
He paused, and added:
"But that was a very creditable Emergency Drop, Miss Band. Very creditable. Just a shame you had to put yourself in a position where it became necessary! Incidentally, ladies and gentlemen, had Miss Band been wearing lace-up boots, she would have been very much more certain of death by drowning just then. These new zippers offer a faster release when you are stuck in mud at the bottom of a body of water."
Alice watched Joan Sanderson and Emmanuelle looking down at their laced-up boots and blanching.
De Yoyo supervised the class in setting up a new roped and pitoned crossway over the gap. Alice looked down gloomily at her grimy bare feet, contemplating the cost of new boots. Something tapped her on the shoulder.
"Oh…hello!" she said. A filth-smothered Gnoll said in its hissing voice "Y'r bu'ts, Lady!" and passed them over.
Alice could have kissed it. Gnolls. Filthy bottom-dwellers that had colonized the lower reaches of the city. Of course they'd forage down here. The city gnolls were peaceful enough, unlike their wild counterparts.
"Have you… somewhere to keep money?" she asked, offering the scavenger an assortment of coin, which she knew included several dollar coins.
It touched what she hoped it thought was its forelock.
"thnk's, Lady! 'Ssassins alw's tip w'll!"
"Noblesse oblige, and all that" she murmured, putting the feared-lost boots back on.