Curse the Hell-Bard, for there was no denying the truth in his words. They sang, deep in Safi’s witchery, a soothing, golden pulse beneath the erratic scritch of wrong that surrounded her.
Caden guided Safi up a narrow street that cut between ruins and trees. Muffled music, conversation, and sounds heard only in a whorehouse preceded a blossom-shaped sign that squeaked on the marshy breeze: THE GILDED ROSE.
Caden towed Safi to a stop outside the clapboard building. “There’s an admiral inside whom I need to … interview. And you, Heretic, will be there to ensure she remains truthful.”
“Over my grandmother’s rotting corpse.” Safi snorted. “I will never let you use my magic, Hell-Bard.”
“You have little choice.” He wiggled his dagger. Sunlight bounced off the steel.
“Oh, but you can’t force me.” She batted her lashes, hooking her arms behind her back. “As I believe I’ve mentioned before, I can smile at even the ugliest toad, and not once will he sense a lie.”
Now it was Caden’s turn to snort. “Oh, Heretic, you don’t even know it, do you?” He eased his knife into a hip scabbard. “It wasn’t my Hell-Bard protection that gave you away in Veñaza City. It was you.”
Safi stiffened. Then against her better judgment, she took the bait. “What do you mean?”
“I mean,” he said, closing the space between them, “that you have a tell.”
“I do not.”
“Oh, yes, you do.” He smiled now. A Chiseled Cheater smile that made Safi’s gut boil. Made her heels bounce. “So no matter what this admiral might say to me, I’ll know just by looking at you whether she speaks the truth or not. Now…” He placed his hands calmly on Safi’s shoulders, then twirled her around to face the Gilded Rose’s dilapidated door. “Let’s go inside and get this over with before we join those corpses hanging out to dry.”
TWENTY-ONE
“It’s not right,” Merik muttered as he and Cam journeyed deeper underground by the light of an old torch. Two damp levels below the Cisterns’ entrance, and still the squatters showed no sign of thinning out—nor did the rats, whose eyes glowed. “A man needs to see the sky.”
“Didn’t expect you to be scared, sir.” Cam flung a mischievous smile across her shoulder.
“I’m not scared.” Merik glowered. “There’s no wind here, boy. No air. I feel … suffocated.”
“Well, we’ve barely left the surface, so get used to it. Shite Street is much lower—and much smellier.”
The girl wasn’t exaggerating, and after circling six levels deeper, a stench began gathering in the air. Even as the ceilings lifted higher and the passages spread wider, the smell was soon thick enough to choke and sharp enough to burn.
It sent Cam doubling over, coughing, gagging, and spraying torchlight in all directions. “Shit,” she said, and Merik couldn’t tell if the girl swore at the stench or simply named its source. Either way, he agreed.
Three turns later in the tunnel, they reached the infamous Shite Street. Cam clapped a hand to her mouth, hefting the torch high. Light glistened over a lumpy expanse of bodily fluids (and bodily solids). There was also something oily and dark dripping from a crack between ceiling bricks.
Worse than the sight of it, though, was the ploop! ploop! that each droplet made in the pool—and the bubbles that gurgled to life right after.
“Can’t you fly us across, sir?”
Merik considered this, breathing through the edge of his hood as he did so.
But then he shook his head. “I need to summon winds to fly us. And though I could try, there’s just not enough air to carry us far.”
“S’better to fly halfway than walk through all of it,” Cam pointed out. “The tunnel is almost full, sir! That line”—she pointed to the opposite wall—“is as high as the sewage gets before the floods come through to clean it out. That’s as deep as our knees, sir!”
Merik held his silence while he contemplated just how badly he wanted answers about his sister’s enterprises in the Cisterns. Except … it didn’t matter what he wanted. The city’s people needed his help.
Merik set his jaw. The X on the map was straight ahead, and so straight ahead he had to go.
“Did you hear me?” Cam demanded. “The sewage is almost to our cursed knees, sir! That means…” Somehow, she managed to look even more sick. Her eyes screwed shut. “The floods’ll rush through at any moment.”
“Shit,” Merik said, and he meant the swear. “Cam, I want you to wait nearby. In a safer tunnel.”
She bristled. “I’m not leaving you. I know I’m moanin’ a lot, but this is my fault, see? I said those times were the floods, but I was thinkin’ it meant when they’d end—not arrive!”
“Don’t blame yourself, boy.” Urgency hardened Merik’s tone. “I’m the one who thought it was a meeting time—and it might still be. But it isn’t safe for you to go any farther.”
“S’not safe for you either,” she retorted. “And besides, if I don’t go with you, you’ll end up doing something stupid.” She pushed out her chest. “You can’t stop me, sir.”
A tense pause. Cam looked so small in this light. So blighted obstinate too.
Fool brother Filip led blind brother Daret
deep into the black cave.
He knew that inside it, the Queen Crab resided
but that didn’t scare him away.
“If you get hurt…” Merik began.
“Won’t happen.”
“… you’ll ruin your new boots.”
“Never did like shoes anyway.”
“Fine,” was all Merik said, and Cam’s teeth flashed in a victorious grin. It marked the end of the argument, though Merik almost wished otherwise, for now there was nothing left to do but trek through human excrement.
Hell-waters claim him, he had never imagined that hiking through underground sewage would one day be his life. Of course, he also hadn’t thought he’d be a dead man on the run from his own family.
When at last a wall came into view—when at last, Cam exclaimed, “The meeting place is up those steps, sir,” Merik almost whooped with relief. Here, a fork in the tunnel sent sewage splitting in two directions, and here a low archway was carved into the wall and lit by pale torchlight. Merik hauled himself onto a waist-high landing before helping Cam scramble from the clutches of Shite Street.
They were both disgusting, coated in muck that was too slimy for Merik to examine without gagging. Though both he and Cam stomped and tried to shake off the dung, it wasn’t much use.
Soon, they crossed under the archway, with a hiss of magic to graze over them, just like when they’d entered the Cisterns.
It would seem, Merik realized, that the spells weren’t simply to keep people out; they also were to keep the floodwaters in.
“Do people get ever get caught in the floods?” he asked.
Cam shrugged one shoulder, finally towing back her hood, “Course they do, sir. Course they do.” Then she jerked her head up the fire-lit stairs, and without waiting to see if Merik followed, she marched off.
* * *
Vivia was crossing through the plum trees of the palace gardens, having just changed into the fresh uniform she always kept tucked behind the blueberries, when a commotion caught her ear.
She slowed, turned back and found the king headed for the queen’s garden. Guards and servants trailed behind, as well as two healers in standard brown.
Now this was odd. The king rarely left his rooms, and he never entered the queen’s garden.
Never.
By the time Vivia had hurried to the ivy-strewn walls, each member of the entourage had taken a spot before the ivy-strewn walls. The king and his chair, pushed by Rat, had rolled inside.
Rat was just scuttling back outside the gate. He avoided Vivia’s gaze while he popped a gruff bow, and she avoided his while she sped inside.
The king faced away from her, seated in his rolling chair before the garden’s pond. The nimbus of his hair barely co
vered his skull, and he still wore his night robe—something Vivia couldn’t believe he did where so many people might see. It was exactly the sort of thing he used to scold her mother for.
Vivia kept her spine mast straight as she approached Serafin. This is normal, she wanted her body to say. I see nothing here to be alarmed by.
A lie. Her body was a lie. Her mind raced, running over every step she’d taken since leaving the underground mere minutes ago. Had she closed the trapdoor all the way? Were the blueberries arranged as they ought to be? And irises, she hadn’t accidentally trampled any, had she?
“Rayet?” came the king’s reedy voice.
“No, Your Majesty,” she called. “It’s Vivia.”
“Oh, a nice surprise.” The king’s head listed sideways, just enough for her to see the edge of a ragged ear. “Help me rise.”
“Sir?” She tumbled forward, praying he wouldn’t attempt to stand on his own. She reached his chair. “Are you sure it’s wise?”
He looked up at her.
She barely swallowed her gasp. In the darkness of the royal wing, she’d missed how sallow the king’s skin had grown. How sunken his eyes.
“I wish to sit on Jana’s bench,” he explained. But when Vivia made no move to help, he snarled, “Now.” His body might be ailing, but his mind still held the Nihar rage.
Vivia slipped a hand behind him. He hissed with pain, eyes thinning. A skeleton, Vivia thought. Her fingers gripped nothing but bone.
Fresh shame fired through her. The answer to healing her father might be directly below them. She couldn’t withhold that from him.
She would tell him about the lake. Of course, she would tell him.
Four uneven steps later, they reached the bench. It was filthy, but when Vivia tried to brush away dirt and pollen and seeds, Serafin murmured for her to leave it.
Once he was seated, though, she caught sight of his expression. Of his lips curling back, nostrils fluttering.
At first, Vivia thought the bench was still too dirty. Then she realized his eyes were rooted on her navy jacket. “Still no admiral’s coat?”
“I haven’t had time,” she murmured. “I’ll find a gray coat tonight.”
“Oh, I do not mind.” He lifted a sharp shoulder. “I only worry for you, Vivia. The vizers will call you grubby, and the staff will say you look like your mother. We would not want that, would we?”
“No,” Vivia agreed, though she couldn’t help but think that he was the one who looked truly grubby—and he was the one who looked slightly deranged.
“Any word on Merik’s death?” he asked, finally bending his gaze away from Vivia, toward the pond. “Surely it is not so difficult for our spies to find out who killed him.”
Vivia had received news, but it had been a jumbled mess that had led right back to Nubrevna. To a culprit tucked somewhere in their midst, and she wasn’t ready to share that information with her father.
Not yet, at least.
So all she said was, “No new leads, Your Majesty, though it does sound as if the Empress of Marstok was killed in the same way.”
“Now there was a strong leader. Vaness, as well as her mother before her.”
Vivia gulped. I can be strong.
“Jana was always too gentle. Too meek.” Serafin motioned for Vivia to sit beside him. “Not like us.”
Vivia sat, though she couldn’t keep her hands from shaking. She had to ball them into fists atop her thighs. Sitting still is a quick path to madness, she reminded herself—as if this might explain the trembling.
However, the more her father criticized and nitpicked at Jana, the more Vivia wondered if perhaps it was something else that sent heat slicing down her shoulders.
Oh, Vivia was used to the insults against others by now. Normally, she could even revel in the fact that although Serafin hated everyone, he still seemed to love her. Today, though, she was finding it harder to smile and laugh.
“Idiots,” he said, and it took Vivia a moment to sort out whom he currently railed against. The healers, she realized soon enough.
“They do tell me I am doing better, though.” Serafin smiled. “It is the Nihar blood, you know. You are lucky to have such strength running in your veins.”
“I know,” she replied, yet her gaze lingered on his skin, fragile as a snake’s shed scales.
“The royal line sorely needed the Nihars in it,” Serafin continued, warming to the subject. “Until I came along, Jana had no respect. Not from the civilians, not from the Forces, and especially not from the Council. I earned that for her, you know.”
“I know,” Vivia repeated.
“And I will earn it for you too.” He smiled tenderly, his watery eyes disappearing in the folds of his skin. “Once I am well again, I will march into that Council and tell them to put that crown upon your head.”
“Thank you.” She smiled tenderly back—and it was real, for Noden only knew what Vivia would do without her father by her side. Or without that Nihar blood in her veins.
Join her mother, she supposed.
“I only want what’s best for you, Vivia.” The breeze kicked at his wispy hair. “And I know you only want what’s best for me.”
Vivia stiffened, the shame roiling hotter. Her father was so frail. No matter what the healers might say, he was on the verge of death.
So of course she would try to heal him. Of course she would tell him about the underground lake. Yes, something spidered down her spine at the thought of it—and yes, her mother had said to keep it secret, but that was before Jana had leaped to her death and left Vivia all alone. It was before she’d decided her own melancholy meant more than her daughter.
Serafin had stuck by Vivia through everything. He was a good father, even if Vivia was not worthy of it.
She sucked in a breath, ready to point out the blueberries and the trapdoor, when a bell began to clang.
The palace alarm.
Instantly Vivia was on her feet—and instantly she was hollering for the guards to gather around the king. Then, with nothing more than a breathy warning for her father to remain calm, Vivia sprinted out of the queen’s garden. Halfway down the row of zucchini vines, she encountered Stix.
“What is it?” Vivia shouted over the alarm, trying not to notice how disheveled and puffy-faced Stix was. As if the girl had spent the entire night out.
“The storerooms,” Stix hollered back, waving for Vivia to follow her. “Someone’s gotten in there—and, sir, I think it might be the Fury.”
* * *
After the deafening churn of the floods, the silence of the rising tunnel was unsettling. How so little rock could muffle the thunder below, Merik didn’t know. Especially when he still felt the quake in his feet, in his lungs.
The smell here was only marginally better, for though Merik and Cam had abandoned Shite Street, they carried the shite with them.
Forty-four steps passed, with Cam counting softly the entire way, before Merik and the girl reached a brick wall with a jagged crack slicing down. The rift looked accidental.
It also looked recent, the edges sharp. The rubble fresh.
But clearly this was what Merik and Cam had come for, so they slipped through the crack. Merik went first, only to end up behind a shelf of damp cedar. A shuffle sideways and he found himself in a cellar.
The royal storerooms. They looked exactly as Merik remembered: uneven shelves filled with boxes and sacks and blankets and bottles—any supply that might be needed for running the palace.
For several long breaths, Merik waited, listening. Feeling for breaths in the stale air, squinting for figures in the weak light that flickered from magicked lamps.
Merik heard no one; Merik saw no one. The only sound was water dripping into a puddle nearby. Condensation off the weeping granite walls, and perhaps a leak in the foundation too.
“We’re on the lowest level of the royal storerooms,” Merik murmured to Cam at last.
Her breath kicked out with surprise. “Wel
l, that was easy to get in.”
Merik agreed, and he couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps the X on the map hadn’t indicated a meeting at all—but rather a hole in the Cisterns that needed repair.
Here they were, though, and Merik intended to look around. Particularly since this was the first time he had ever seen supplies on the lowest level. The upper two floors were usually well stocked, but the lower four were always empty. Always.
Merik had entered these storerooms two months before. He’d descended to level two, seen nothing but mice, and gone straight to his father to request a trade envoy be sent to Veñaza City before the Truce Summit.
Serafin had agreed.
Then Serafin had appointed Merik to that task—and not just the task of reopening trade but also of representing Nubrevna as Admiral of the Royal Navy at the Truce Summit.
The holiest always have the farthest to fall.
“Come.” Merik cocked his chin, beckoning Cam onward. The storeroom’s shelves crisscrossed toward a central intersection where a stone staircase circled upward six levels.
Row after row they passed, each shelf crammed full of supplies.
“What’s that say?” Cam whispered, pointing to a fat sack. They were halfway to the room’s center, and supplies were thinning out. “It doesn’t look like Nubrevnan letters.”
“Because it’s not,” Merik answered. He toyed with his filthy sleeves. “Those are Dalmotti words. That one says wheat. The other says barley.” He motioned to a crate with red paint on the side. “That crate has dried dates in it from Marstok. That one of over there says walnuts in Cartorran.”
Cam’s lips pinched sideways. “But, sir … what are foreign foods doing here? I thought no one would trade with us.”
Merik was wondering the same, though he could make a guess. One that conjured Marstoki weapons, miniature ships, and violence at sea.
Heat spindled down Merik’s arms.
The amount of stores here was far more than two weeks of piracy could provide though. Vivia must have started the Foxes months ago—long before she’d betrayed Merik at sea and left him to die.
Merik’s certainty of that grew, as did his rage, the closer he and Cam came to the cellar’s heart, where the stairwell waited. Here, all shelves were empty, as if whoever had stocked this space wanted the wares to be hidden.
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