Martin gives them directions.

"When you say to beware these traps is it just a matter of looking for and going around them or is it more complicated than that."

"Remove only the posts you must, replace all the posts you can?? What's the deal with these posts?

Also how flooded are the flooded catacombs."

"Given all of the traps and the flooded tunnels do we maybe want to... revise this plan... such that we don't have to worry about blades dropping from the ceiling."

"There's kind of a lot of nectar?"

"If you know the trap is there it's not that hard to avoid."

Martin feels that the traps are less scary than the men with guns. Traps behave predictably.

"It's flooded with Nectar??"

"Uh. Nectar-seawater mix?"

"But yeah the Mouth produces a lot of Nectar."

"We are going to have to swim through Nectar."

"When you say flooded how deep are we talking. Is this wading through the stuff or would we be better off, I don't know, bringing a raft."

"Just wading."

"Didn't Anita get dosed by skin contact, this seems like a terrible plan."

"Some got in her mouth," says Oswald, who was there and definitely tracking what Nectar was going where that night because it was terrifying. "--Zoe did get burned by Nectar. Probably that was a. special variant. and not what's in these tunnels."

"I haven't been burned by it."

"I have no idea if what that one Mouth spat at me was Nectar. Is everything that comes out of them Nectar?"

Martin shrugs.

"So the traps aren't intended to catch people who... know they're there?"

"Right but knowing that there is a trap is not the same as knowing... what it looks like, what triggers it, how fast it goes once it's triggered, how it moves, all that stuff?"

"Like, okay. In this part you wrote 'blade drops from ceiling'. What kind of blade? Does it drop straight down, or move in an arc? What makes it drop?"

Martin SKETCHES OUT MORE TRAP INFORMATION

"Thank you, that gives me a much better idea how to avoid them."

Mordred feels that he has spent years doing crimes in broad daylight by walking in the front door and is very reluctant to set aside years of front-door-walking expertise in favor of wading through Nectar and avoiding blade traps.

He will grudgingly concede that they do in fact have reasons to not want to walk in the front door this time but like. Come on.

Oswald got away with all his crimes mostly by sitting at a desk in an out-of-the-way office doing numbers and never interacting with anyone. He for one is glad of a plan that does not involve interacting with anyone. (Not like it's much more deadly than all of their other plans, he tells himself, even though this is a much more tangible danger than usual.)

When it's time, Martin gives them a little wave and says "good luck!", like a person who is not going to have to face ANY blade traps.

OKAY. Trap filled dungeon here we come! The first thing on this list of instructions is to GO STRAIGHT. Zoe strides down the hall ahead and keeps an eye out for Maltese crosses.

The catacombs are cramped and dark and wet. A low arched ceiling traps torch smoke, and uneven stones cause flashlights to throw off weird shadows. The place smells of mud and wet rat. Many of the grave beds carved into the walls are empty or haphazardly filled now with loose bones. Still, browned bones are everywhere. Skulls stare out from the walls.

Painted plaster adornments and inset stone decorations are everywhere, making it a little difficult to identify just the right crosses and symbols necessary to follow Martin's directions.

Awesome. Wow. This was a great idea. Mordred has no regrets whatsoever.

About a hundred feet inside, they come to an intersection decorated with a Maltese cross carved from stone. This is obviously the site of the first trap, because it’s been sprung already. A rotten body lies not-quite beheaded on the ground, amid the much-older bones. A once-fine blade juts from the wall at the end of a rotted post, a snapped cord dangling from it.