Halfway down the steps, Kali caught her bag on a projection of stone. She gave the strap a tug and nearly sent the whole thing over the edge. The buckle had parted cleanly down the middle.
She examined the cut. There was nothing sharp on the wall. There was, however, a narrow groove running across it at the height of her hip. The groove continued across the empty space beside the stair and reappeared on a pillar several yards away.
Kali eased the loose end of the strap toward it. A finger's width of cloth fell away without so much as stirring the air.
"So that's what became of the cup."
It was one thing to see a drawing in an archive. It was quite another to discover that she had come within an inch of sharing that unfortunate surveyor's fate. She gathered the bag against her chest and kept to the inside of the stair.
