Creatures of Light, Book 3

by Emily B. Martin

  “They might. My mother’s team hadn’t gotten there yet.”

  “You didn’t tell me that,” he said with a note of surprise.

  “Oh—no, I suppose I didn’t.” I frowned, puzzled. “Wait, then why did you say you wish we’d known about them before Cyprien?”

  He was quiet for several seconds. Then he gave a short, broken little laugh. “Well, because it would have been nice to explore them when you and I weren’t at war with each other.”

  Heat rose under my collar. “Oh.”

  Yes, that would have been nice.

  The silence became awkward, the air thick and stifling. The walls squeezed in dramatically, forcing me to walk in a half-crouch, tilted over to one side. The ceiling was also starting to lower, and the closer it got, the shorter my breath became.

  “Why did you have to do it, Gemma?”

  I banged my hand on a nub of rock as I steadied myself. Perhaps it was the pain, perhaps the anxiety of the constricting tunnel, perhaps just because I’d been carrying the question around with me for six weeks—the words just jumped out. “Why did you have to shoot Lyle Roubideaux?”

  There was half a breath of shocked silence. “I’ve made my statement regarding that event. He was an armed rebel holding you hostage.”

  “We’ve talked about this,” I said, ducking under an outcrop. “He was standing behind me, and the grenades were in his pocket.”

  “So you’ll defend him before you even defend yourself—one of your abductors, the one who was going to use you to bleed Alcoro dry.” I could almost hear him shaking his head. “What was he to you, that you’re willing to put him above your own safety? Above me?”

  “He wasn’t anything to me!” I said sharply. “Not in the way you’re implying. He was brilliant. He’d done incredible research. I liked hearing about his work. You’d have liked hearing about his work.”

  “I have heard about his work,” he said with a touch of venom. “I’ve heard it’s done wonders for our arsenal.”

  I stopped in my tracks. There was no space to turn around without my foot sliding into the calcite, so I simply clutched the rock walls, gritting my teeth.

  “Say what you will about not being changed by the Prophecy,” I said, “but there once was a time you never would have said that.”

  “Spare me the holier-than-thou attitude, Gemma. Forgive me if I haven’t yet gotten over the memory of you bending over him, weeping, just moments before you betrayed your country. Betrayed me.”

  My eyes prickled as I forced myself to move forward again. “Maybe I just appreciated someone listening to me for a change.”

  “But they weren’t listening to you! Those rebels, the Assembly of Six, Queen Mona—they would have leveraged you to take Cyprien from us!”

  “We never had Cyprien!” I said. “We thought we had perfect control there, and we were wrong. They’ve been governing themselves since the annexation fifty-six years ago.”

  “All the more reason we needed that rebel as an informant, and the queens as assets! We could have stamped out the rebellion and the remnants of the Assembly, and secured our position in the waterways for good!”

  This time I did whirl around, calcite be damned. My foot slid within an inch of the crisp white edge. Celeno skidded to keep from running into me, teetering into the sloping cave wall.

  “And then what, Celeno?” I asked.

  He struggled to right himself, sighing in irritation. “And then a thousand possibilities that might have seen the Prophecy fulfilled, Gemma.”

  “What Prophecy?” I asked. “The one our folk have believed in for centuries? Or the one supposedly written on the cave wall?”

  He pushed himself upright, his brow creased in the dim light. “You didn’t know that at the time! You had no idea there was another Prophecy when you threw that grenade!”

  I drew in a deep breath, my fists clenched. “Here’s something I did know, after a week trapped on that little boat, listening to Queen Mona equivocate on Alcoro’s actions, listening to Rou and Lyle discuss Cyprien’s options: we can’t take either of those countries a second time. Cyprien has shown us it’s stronger than a single political system—it will outlast us whether we succeed or fail to uphold the Prophecy. And Queen Mona is in the process of allying the East in a way that hasn’t been seen in centuries. Instead of gaining her friendship, we opened the door for her to rally everyone against us.” I waved my hand. “Rou wouldn’t have given you information—he’d have allowed himself to be killed first. And Queen Mona would have been useless as leverage.”

  Something in his eyes shifted. “I think you underestimate the effects a personal relationship has on political action.”

  He said it pointedly, each word weighted with meaning—that he had mobilized Alcoro’s entire presence in Cyprien to hunt for me, to bring me back safely from the hands of the River-folk. Because of that, we’d lost the harbor in Lilou, allowing our ships to abandon it to press inward, up the channels to Bellemere and Dismal Green. Because of me, we’d lost our most strategic holds on the country. Where we might have salvaged our control of the industry and infrastructure, instead we were battling open rebellion.

  He wasn’t wrong . . . except that none of that was my fault.

  Or necessarily a bad thing.

  A stilted silence passed between us, and then I turned back around, ducking under a protruding nub of rock. “I don’t underestimate it at all. But I’m different from Mona, and Colm is different from you.”

  “Who?”

  “Colm Alastaire, Mona’s brother. She mentioned him in conversation.” I scanned my memory to recall what the topic had been. “Star bands, I think. He was researching the history of star bands.”

  “So what?”

  “So nothing. He’s different from you, is all, and he was acting as regent in Mona’s absence. There’s no telling whether he’d have treated with us at all if we tried to use Mona as leverage. He was probably under orders not to.”

  “And Queen Ellamae?” he asked. “If we could have broken the truce between Lumen Lake and the Silverwood, things might look very different for us.”

  “I don’t know anything about King Valien or what actions he would have taken,” I said, “but I do know that their truce was not casually won and wouldn’t have been easily undone.”

  His pack scraped the ceiling as he continued on after me, so his following mutter was almost lost. “I wouldn’t have minded seeing her locked up in Callais, even if nothing came of it.”

  I braced my hands on the slanting wall, trying to keep my breathing regular. “Why?”

  “Great Light, she’s the reason we’re in any of this mess in the first place. She led Queen Mona back to the lake. She misled our soldiers to let the Lake-folk stage their uprising.” He sighed in aggravation. “If only our informants could have been just a few days quicker getting us the news of spotting her in Rusher’s Junction, we might have made it to the lake before they did. Ow.” There was a thud as he knocked his head on the ceiling. “How much farther does this blazing hole go? Shouldn’t we be close?”

  “Yes,” I said, my voice high from my own dread. “Yes, we should be very close.” Please let us be close. The distance had looked like nothing on the map, just a short walk down the River of Milk and into the side passage to the petroglyphs. I hadn’t reckoned on it shrinking so dramatically. My whole body clenched in on itself, my heart, lungs, head, and stomach all tangling and twisting together.

  I had to keep talking. For my own sanity, I had to keep talking.

  “Samna,” I squeaked.

  “What about Samna?”

  It was the first thing that had popped into my mind, but I followed it. “The university. The winter pamphlet should be out.”

  There was a long pause. An errant drip of water splashed on my head and trickled down the back of my neck.

  “Yes,” he said. “It probably is out.”

  “You haven’t read it yet?”

  “Great Ligh
t no, Gemma.”

  I bit back my anticipated questions about the content of the pamphlet, the new academic articles and philosophical speculation by the university scholars. We used to dive into those pamphlets the moment they arrived on our shore, fantasizing for hours on end about making the trip across the sea ourselves.

  “It came the day we got back to Callais,” he said, his voice oddly strained. “I watched them take you away to the Retreat, and then I went into our rooms to find it lying on my desk. I don’t think I’ve missed reading one since I was eight, but I couldn’t bring myself to open it. Not then. Not after . . .”

  A hundred things jumbled together in my head—the need to move quickly, the urgency of distracting myself from this tunnel, the rising panic of entrapment, the web of emotion stemming from thinking about those university pamphlets and how they had been a lifeline for the both of us. How he’d brought them to me on the nights I felt the most frightened and alone, sneaking out to the Prism’s star courtyard to examine them by moonlight. How we’d pored over them together while sprawled along the canyon rim, our bodies carelessly draped across each other. How I’d read them aloud when he was sick in bed, his shadowed eyes closed as he listened.

  “I thought someday we would go,” he said quietly.

  I didn’t know how to reply—didn’t know how to have this conversation that we used to have day after day, full of hope and eager anticipation, the possibility not yet extinguished. But my reply never came, because at the next forward shuffle, my hand slid into empty air. I stumbled a little in surprise—the passage had opened unexpectedly around a slight bulge of rock. I heard Celeno wobble behind me as he came to his own abrupt stop.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “We’re here,” I said. “The side passage.”

  “Oh, good,” he said. “Is it bigger?”

  The tangles of dread in my body tightened into knots of pure terror. “No,” I said. “It’s not bigger.”

  “How can it be any smaller and still be a passage?”

  “It’s taller,” I said, edging forward so he could see. “But it’s narrower.” So, so narrow—the walls swept in toward the ground, leaving only a narrow crevice to set feet in, but that was hardly the worst of it. From shoulder-height to the ground, the passable space was hardly wider than the twin span of my splayed fingers. The ceiling buckled and dipped just a half a foot above our heads. I thought back to my mother’s description of her colleague who had mapped these tunnels—she’d equated him to a cockroach.

  I hadn’t fully grasped what such a title insinuated.

  “We’re going to have to take off our backpacks,” Celeno said. “You’re sure this is the right passage?”

  “The double X,” I said, pointing to the white paint on the wall. “It’s the blaze to the petroglyphs.”

  “And then how far?”

  “Not far, less than a hundred yards.”

  “Sure seems far when it’s no wider than an open flue.” He grimaced and slid his pack from his shoulders. “Let’s get it over with, I guess.”

  How could he be so calm? How could he be so ready to put his body into this tiny space? I could barely keep control of my limbs—they alternated between hollow and shaky to heavy as a ship’s anchor. Why hadn’t my mother warned me about this passage?

  “Come on,” Celeno said, a little impatiently. “I want to see these things and get out of here.”

  Slowly I slid my arms out of my pack straps and lowered it to the ground. Taking a breath—my last deep one?—I turned my body sideways, clutching the lantern in my leading hand and my pack in the other, and shuffled a few steps into the tunnel.

  The rock walls were damp and squeezed my breasts and stomach unforgivingly, and it occurred too late that I should have unbuttoned my bolero to avoid popping the clasps off. But Celeno was already moving next to me, and if I withdrew from this place, I wasn’t sure I’d have the courage to try a second time. So I edged sideways, unable to see my feet or legs or anything beyond the red glint of wet rock just inches from my eyes.

  There was no point in talking. Even if I had the breath to spare for it—the tight space was forcing me to take short sips of air—my brain was too blank to think. What had we been talking about before? The winter pamphlet . . . Lyle Roubideaux . . . star bands? I felt my own band slide a little as I ducked under a bulge of rock. Why had we been talking about star bands? Had we been talking about star bands?

  Mona. We’d been talking about Mona.

  No, we’d been talking about her brother, Colm. Dizzy and drifting, my mind latched onto that like a kind of buoy. Colm Alastaire, Mona’s brother. One of two brothers. A scholar of cultural history. Doing research on the evolution of Alcoran ladies’ traditional hair ornaments—among other topics. Reading the documents we’d left behind after he and his sister and an impossible host of others had driven Alcoro out of Lumen Lake.

  History in Alcoro wasn’t considered quite as prestigious a pursuit as the hard sciences and mathematics, practiced mostly by hobbyists and harmless eccentrics. The kind of religious bickering my mother used to engage in—still does engage in, I reminded myself—was the most common form of public history debate. But, as my mother could attest, delving too deep resulted in inquiries, fines, and, occasionally, jail time. Perhaps this was what had led to the general consensus that history was the realm of the Prelacy. Alcoro’s history, after all, had always been coupled with the Prophecy. The words of the Prism were our country’s past, present, and future—what else was there to study?

  Certainly not the cultural practices of other countries.

  My stomach, already a mess, squirmed further. A little itch tickled my brain, the same kind of spark that had flared back when I first started wondering if the cicada really was what scientists always said it was.

  This is odd.

  This is flawed.

  What if . . .

  What if, hypothetically speaking, our relegation of history and culture as hobbyists’ pursuits had somehow altered our international relations? What if—hypothetically—devoting ourselves to one singular History—the history made and forecast by the Prophecy—blinded us to those quietly carrying on around us, unconcerned with the interminable current of the Seventh King?

  Moon and stars, I had only been trying to focus on something to take my mind off this horrendous squeeze, not found an entire thesis proposal. How had I gotten here?

  Colm Alastaire.

  A scholar of cultural history.

  So what? So nothing.

  My feet tripped underneath me, catching on a swell in the floor, but the passage was too tight for me to fall. I sagged, my knees cracking on the rock. The lantern banged against the wall, sending shadows tilting and spinning around us.

  “You okay?” Celeno said behind me, his voice muffled.

  “Fine,” I said breathlessly, though I was far from it. “The floor rises a little.”

  “Can you get through?”

  “Yes, it’s . . . it’s not bad.” Swallowing, I twisted my foot at an awkward angle and slithered through the cramped space. My pack scraped along behind me. Sideways, sideways. I took another few steps, forced up on tiptoes by the narrow slice of passable ground.

  Celeno puffed out a breath. “Good thing we haven’t had more to eat than a few biscuits and jerky, or this would be really hard.”

  If it was a joke, I couldn’t laugh. Devoid of my mental anchor from a moment before, I was too caught up in memories of closed doors, of tight walls, of bruised knees and elbows and the sense that nothing, ever, was going to change—there was no moving air, no sun, no open space. Only darkness and my own breath washing over my face . . .

  With a shock like a plunge, I stumbled into empty space. I wobbled at the new freedom of movement, my body trying to reassess its surroundings. The ceiling remained the height it was—less than a foot above my head, but the walls swept away to form a small, irregular room, no bigger than the footprint of the bed we used to share.
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  “Woah!” Celeno staggered out of the squeeze after me. “Well, that’s a relief. Are we here?”

  I wiped a trembling hand over my brow. “I’m not sure.” I lifted the lantern and shone it on the wall before us. It was ridged and striped with minerals, and it took me several seconds to realize there were no human-made carvings among the rippled stone. I turned to the next wall, and the next, running my hand over the wet rock, squinting at every divot and shadow, searching for the familiar lines and curves of the ancient script. But nothing jumped out—no fragment, no whisper.

  “I don’t understand,” Celeno said, peering at a streak of orange mineral. “Where are they?”

  I turned back to the wall opposite the little squeeze we’d just wedged ourselves through, my confusion rippling with the first drop of alarm. No, this couldn’t be . . . my mother had said . . . I’d followed the blazes, we’d come all this way . . . but, but, but . . .

  I tilted the lantern for better light, and that’s when my gaze dropped down near our feet, to the black line I’d assumed was a shadow.

  It wasn’t a shadow. It was an opening under the rock, perhaps ten inches high.

  Painted above it, bold and shimmery in the light, were two white Xs.

  “Oh, damn,” Celeno said, following my gaze. “Do we have to go under that?”

  No, no. No, that couldn’t be right. I cast the lantern around the little chamber again, but the walls remained solid and immobile. There were no other passages or openings. Slowly I looked back at the little gap.

  No. This couldn’t be right. My mother would have told me. Why hadn’t my mother told me? The lantern swung as my hand shook. The crevice remained unchanging in the dancing light, a solid yawn of darkness. I took an involuntary step backwards just as Celeno crouched down to peer into it.

  “Hand me the light,” he said, stretching out his hand. “I don’t think it goes very far.”

  Numbly I passed it to him, and he held it to the opening.

  “I think I can see where it rises,” he said. “I’d say it’s seven, eight feet, maybe a little more. We’ll have to slide.”

  “I can’t,” I whispered.