by Heidi Heilig
On the dock, the terrified crowd surges away from the general’s body, from Le Trépas, from the Prix de Guerre. But in the streets behind the cordon, more uniformed men appear, and these have been dead much longer.
Their skin sags in the humid heat, their eyes are sunken in their sockets. Some have bloodstains on their uniforms, or crusted around their ears. The bodies are clearly weeks old—likely from the battle at the temple—but with the general fallen, LE TRÉPAS has given up on pretense.
Guns crack and men scream as the dead soldiers push even the living armée toward the ship. Underneath the noise, the word is like a melody: nécromancy. Now the Aquitans fall back, fleeing from the dead men, and the ship is the only place to go. Scrambling up the gangplank, some Aquitans lose their footing, tumbling into the water as crocodiles approach.
On the dock, a gunshot rings out—then another. Desperate to escape, AUDRINNE has clambered up to his own carriage seat, firing not at the soldiers, but into the crowd.
AUDRINNE: Make way! Make way, damn you!
His horses stamp and snort as he tries to turn his carriage around, but one of his compatriots returns fire. AUDRINNE clutches at his chest as a red wound blooms on his uniform. In the carriage, his son begins to cry.
Taking the reins in bloody hands, AUDRINNE snaps them as hard as he can. Smelling death, the horses need no more encouragement; they careen across the dock, not toward the cordon of revenants blocking the city, but toward the blackened sea.
In the dark, they don’t even hesitate at the edge of the pier. The splash throws water onto the dock, and the horses panic as the carriage fills with water, pulling them inexorably down. As the lamp winks out, the boy inside pounds on the window, but the door is locked. AUDRINNE closes his eyes, leaning back against the driver’s seat as the water surges over his son’s head and the epaulets of his old uniform.
Chapter Sixteen
The king’s footsteps fade up the stairs, followed by the distant drum of the heavy door as he shuts me into the salon with the rest of his marvels.
I count another five heartbeats, to make sure he’s far enough away. Only then do I scream, the sound shaking the souls of bats from their perches on the vaulted ceiling.
Le Roi Fou has taken Theodora, he has taken our avion. For practical purposes, he has taken my freedom, offering it back in exchange for a show. Not that I could leave without Theodora, even if I did have a ship. And how long would a journey by ship take? A week at least. What would happen to the Prix de Guerre—and to Leo?
Rage burns in my belly—was the elixir really worth this? I rip the flask from my pocket and heave it across the room. It crashes into the shelf, denting the old wood and tumbling into the fantouches with the unmistakable tinkle of breaking glass.
The sound jolts me, turning anger into fear. Despite the dust coating the embarrassment of riches in the room, I have a feeling Le Roi Fou would know instantly if something were destroyed. What had I broken? I go to the shelf to retrieve my flask. There is something dark on the corner—I try to brush it away, but it smears on my fingers like ink.
Cursing, I shove the elixir into my pocket, then scrub my hand on the inside hem of my dress. Pulling out the rest of the fantouches, I check for stains. The tiger I’d seen earlier is still pristine, as is the dragon beneath it. I set it aside on the carpet, then pull out a fantouche of the King of Death, and a second dragon, even more impressive than the first.
I am relieved when I find not so much as a stray spot on any of them. But the fantouche at the back of the shelf is not so lucky. The limbs clack gently as I lift it out. It is not fashioned out of leather, but wood, painted brightly and inlaid with chipped gems and nacre. This puppet is not for shadow plays—it’s meant to be seen without a scrim. It’s cleverly made, with a head that spins to show different faces: an old man, a beautiful youth, a fierce warrior, a young girl. With a start, I realize it’s the Keeper, made to perform the story of the Keeper and the Liar—the same story I’d seen carved on the stairs at the temple. The ink had come from a tiny glass bottle hanging from a string beneath the puppet.
The bottle is smashed now. Such a fragile thing: the gift of a deity. Still—there are a dozen plays about the Keeper. Unless you knew the puppet was made to tell that particular story, you might not notice the bottle of ink was missing. Taking my little knife, I cut away the string holding the bottle, setting the broken glass carefully on the shelf. Once the ink dries, I’ll slip it into my pocket and dispose of it outside.
Gently, I return the fantouche to its place at the back of the shelf. The nacre eyes shine in the shadows there. The Keeper’s look is accusing. What am I doing? I had come here for the book, not to destroy the king’s fantouches, and certainly not to have a temper tantrum in the bowels of the old cathedral. Akra was right; I have a role to play. But I don’t know my lines—or even what performance I am meant to give.
Save Theodora. Save Leo. Bring back the elixir, bring back the book. A ship for a show, the Mad King says, impressing me with the treasury, threatening me with the sanatorium.
My thoughts are racing again. Was that the king’s goal? Was he trying to keep me off balance, to destabilize me? I can’t let it happen. I take a deep breath, the way I do before any show, when my mind starts burning like the flames in the fire bowl and the lines threaten to trip over each other on their way past my tongue. If I am to play my role, I have to do it one beat at a time. So what first—what now?
The Book of Knowledge, of course. Theodora wouldn’t have it any other way.
It is nestled between a gilded glass vase and a scrimshaw tusk. Seeing it here, surrounded by so much glittering treasure, I can see why the king thought so little of it. The book is much plainer than I expected, bound in undyed leather, with no gilt or title. But if it is the Keeper’s book, it might just be the most valuable thing in the room. After all, knowledge is power, isn’t it? Or so the stories go.
Reverently, I pick it up. A thin layer of dust swirls away, glittering with the souls of dust mites. I have worked with leather all my life, making fantouches, but I have never seen a grain so fine. Is this really the body of a deity? Suddenly, my hands are trembling.
I sit cross-legged on one of the soft carpets covering the stone floor, setting the book on my lap so as not to drop it. But when I turn to the first page, it is blank, just as the king had said.
Determined, I flip through, looking carefully for anything—a sign, a symbol, a mark—but there is nothing, not even on the covers. Were we mistaken to think this was anything more than an empty book? Perhaps it was foolish to believe that Le Trépas would give the king a holy relic—but why would he give the king a book at all?
Maybe there was a secret to it . . . a way to reveal the writing. Le Trépas must have known it, or guessed. His powers and mine take blood to summon. Wouldn’t the Keeper’s work the same way?
With my little knife, I prick my fingertip and mark the book on the first page—not with the symbol of life, but the symbol of knowledge. To my surprise, the blood soaks into the page, then vanishes.
Nothing else happens.
But the symbol usually has an accent, doesn’t it? Know yourself, know your enemy—my thoughts are racing again. I take another deep breath, but my hand shakes as I press the knife against my palm. The air hisses out through my teeth; the cut is deeper this time. But as the blood wells up, I use it to write both symbols.
Nothing.
I try “life” instead, then “death,” but the symbols only sink into the paper and fade the same way. Frustrated, I shut the book and toss it on the carpet beside me. But why would my blood work? I should be trying the blood of someone who serves the Keeper—like the monk at the temple at Kwai Goo. But even if her blood would have illuminated the writing, she is dead, and we burned her body. I wrinkle my nose as the acrid smell of burning hair returns—a memory, a hallucination. Trying to focus, I shut my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose, but now all I can smell is the iron tang of blood.<
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My own power comes through my lineage—the blood Le Trépas and I share. But he killed all of my siblings. Was the blood gone for good? Death begets life, he had told me once. What begets knowledge?
Perhaps the Keeper’s monks would know, if we could find them. If we could bring the book back to Chakrana. If we could get back ourselves.
The monk’s taunting smile swims in the dark behind my eyelids. Frustrated, I open my eyes, staring at my hands, bloody, scarred, and stained with ink.
The ink . . . the Keeper’s gift.
Slowly I turn back to the book on the carpet. Could it be that simple?
My hands shake as I pick up the broken bottle, trying desperately not to spill the last drops. I dip my fingertip into the remaining ink and open the book, marking the first blank page with the Keeper’s symbol: knowledge. Just as the blood did, the ink sinks down and disappears. But this time, it floats back up, swirling like a black storm on the page, and settling into new words:
What would you like to know?
THE KEEPER AND THE LIAR
Part 2
In the days when our ancestors were young, stories began to fill the world, but the Keeper still did not know how the first story ended.
So the Keeper watched and waited until they found the soul of the liar in her next life. She was still full of stories, but now she had no time to tell them.
Instead, she woke at dawn to care for her youngest daughter, and stayed up late with her eldest son. And as the sun crossed the sky, she tended to her parents, and her husband, and their humble house and their tiny farm, and she cleaned the soot from the fire after cooking meals and wiped the sweat from her brow after washing clothes. When she fell into bed at night, she was too tired to tell stories, even in her dreams, for work of the mind is a luxury to those who work so hard with their hands.
But art and truth have their own power, even over the gods, and so the Keeper came to the liar’s door, and when she opened it, they gave her three gifts.
The first gift was ink, mixed from the soot of her fire and the sweat of her brow.
The second was a secret that only the Keeper knew, about a rich man with no heirs who had buried his wealth under a tree.
The third was a shovel.
Chapter Seventeen
In the Room of Wonders, with the Book of Knowledge open on my lap, I stare at the Keeper’s question on the page. How exactly does one speak to a deity? Though I have prayed at times, this is much different: never before had I expected an answer.
Would they tell me anything? Everything? But what did I want to know? What had Le Trépas asked—and did I want the answer?
“Is Le Trépas really immortal?”
I am out of ink, so I speak the question aloud, hoping the Keeper can hear me. Seconds pass like hours as I wait. Then the ink seeps back into the page, rising up in new words. “He is.”
“How?”
“Forbidden magic.” The answer comes in dark swathes of ink. “Stolen blood.”
My hand goes to the scar at the crook of my arm. “Mine?”
“This was long before you were born,” the Keeper replies. “The blood came from the last servant of the Maiden. One of your previous incarnations,” they add, and my heart flips in my chest. “It is good to see your soul again.”
I reread the words twice before they fade. More questions bubble up in my own mind. I had wondered, as we all have wondered, what other lives our souls have led, though speculation had become an Aquitan parlor game: Madame Audrinne herself had been half convinced she’d lived a past life as a famed princess. I have a feeling that the Keeper would tell me my own distant past if I asked, but do I want to know how that girl lived? I can guess how she died. “Le Trépas killed her.”
“Only her heart’s blood could cast a spell that would outlive her.”
I shiver, and not from the chill air in the Salon des Merveilles. “What spell was it, then?”
“Life, death, and knowledge.” The symbols sweep across the page, lighter now. “With her blood, and mine, and his, Le Trépas drew his own soul from his body and put it somewhere else for safekeeping. The magic is forbidden for a reason,” the Keeper adds quickly, as though worried I will try it. “He is something less than human.”
“I don’t want to use the spell.” My lip curls at the thought. “I just want to know how to kill him.”
“A man without a soul cannot be killed,” the Keeper replies. “You must find where his soul is hidden, and return it to his body.”
“Where is his soul?”
“I don’t know.”
I blink at the page. “You’re the Keeper of Knowledge,” I remind them.
“I keep knowledge that souls give me.” The words grow fainter still; I can barely read them. Lifting the book, I tilt it toward the light. “I have not seen Le Trépas’s soul in a long time. And unless you free it from wherever he put it, I won’t for ages yet.”
“Do you have any clues?” I say, my desperation growing. The soul could be hidden in anything, anywhere. “Anyone who saw him do the spell?”
“There aren’t many souls who can reach me here, on a dusty shelf in Aquitan,” the Keeper replies, but the last words fade into nothingness.
“What if I bring you back to Chakrana?” No reply comes. I pick up the broken pot of ink and scrape at the bottom with my fingernail, but the dregs flake away like dried blood. Sitting back on my heels, I stare at the blank page. Now I know why Le Trépas left the book in Aquitan. Not only to hide the deity from the rest of us, but to hide knowledge from the deity themself. The armée needed entire battalions to disassemble the temples and erase the old ways, but Le Trépas had silenced a god with his own two hands.
The hypocrisy enrages me, but as much as I want him dead, the monk’s soul might have to wait. If I can bring the Keeper back to Chakrana, they may gather more information as souls come their way. Of course I have to convince Le Roi to let me keep the book first.
Did I have anything left to bargain with? Anything I would be willing to give up? But the king had already taken everything he could. What if I were to offer a second show? An encore performance? The thought is daunting: how long would I have to stay in Aquitan to earn a ship and the book as well?
Then again, if I could find another way home, I could tell Le Roi the ship was unnecessary. But how? How? My thoughts are racing again, leaping from topic to topic like a spark in a room full of kindling. Frustrated, I flop back onto the pile of fantouches, trying to breath, to focus. Overhead, the souls flit along the vaulted ceiling and through the hollow bones of the griffin. Such a strange creature, part cat . . . part bird.
As I stare at the broad wings, laughter bubbles up from my belly until it echoes to the stone arches. Of course I have a way home—I only have to climb up to take it. I cast about for something to stand on, but even the tallest chair in the room is not enough. But why use a chair at all?
I had heard another story once—a foreign story, from the Lion Lands—about a green silk carpet dyed with magic to make it fly. I don’t have dye, but I do have blood, so I coax down one of the souls of the bats clustered along the ceiling and draw it into the rug beneath me. It wobbles and flutters as it rises, but it’s steady enough to bring me safely alongside the pale bones of the enormous beast. When I make the symbol of life on its back, I make sure to pull a bird’s soul inside.
As she settles into the body, the bones creak and groan. Then the whole skeleton twists, swinging wildly on the thin ropes that hold it to the ceiling. If the beast flexed its wings, I’m certain the strings would snap. For a moment, my mind is aflame with the image: bursting into the light on the back of the griffin, with the book in one hand and the elixir in my pocket, leaving the king to curse the empty sky behind me.
The thought delights me—the joy and the power in it. It is only with great difficulty I push the image from my head. That may be the final act, but there is one more beat to play. Theodora is still at Les Chanceux, locked away
in the sanatorium, and Le Roi will not release her as long as he thinks she can give him the secret to flight.
Of course, that secret is not his to take. I need to show him that. No . . . not only him. I need to show all the Aquitans. Theodora had the right idea the night we’d arrived, when she’d made the avion circle above the palais until the audience had grown. The king relies on public opinion—the rebellion in Chakrana is proof of that. And I will have an audience, won’t I? At the Royal Opera House tomorrow night.
Gently, I stroke the bony spine of the griffin. “Be patient,” I whisper, and she stills just as I hear the heavy scrape of the door opening above.
Has the king returned already? Frantically, I push the carpet back to the floor as his footsteps echo down the winding stairs. Squeezing the last bit of blood from my palm, I yank the bat’s soul out of the silk threads. Then I straighten up, my heart pounding, my cheeks flushed, but the carpet is flat on the floor, and the bat’s golden soul hangs off the motionless skeleton of the griffin.
“Good afternoon,” Le Roi calls as he reaches the bottom of the stair. Then he narrows his eyes. Can he see how flustered I am? “Have you chosen what show you’ll perform?”
“Of course,” I say, almost before the answer comes to me. The Keeper and the Liar is the obvious choice. A reliable standby—every troupe has a version—and though I’m sure the king has seen it before, I can make it new again. But my thoughts keep churning as I follow Le Roi’s eager gaze to the fantouches still scattered on the floor. The King of Death is there, holding his lamp, beside the tiger, with its long tail draped gracefully across the stone.
The Keeper and the Liar is about truth in art. The king needs to know the truth about power. A new idea flickers across my mind’s eye, painted on a scrim in shades of black and gold, dark and light. Then I jump when the king speaks: his question seems to echo off the stone walls. “What show will it be?”