The Hidden Twin

by Adi Rule

  “I chose it because it’s not bulky,” she says, eyeing my mask. “Or sparkly. What did Sunny say?”

  “Sunny is a bit scary.” I follow them into the dark corner of a geometric hedge sculpture. “As is that thing that is accompanying us.”

  Fir reaches over and pulls off the green nightmare’s face to reveal Corvin looking a little sweaty. “I’m supposed to be Ver,” he says.

  I consider him. “Maybe after a hard night in the forest.”

  “Or as a salad,” Fir says, and I snicker.

  “Yes, fine.” Corvin tosses his mask onto the lawn. “So what’s our next move?”

  I lower my voice. “Sunny says there’s a secret passageway in the Commandant’s private garden. So we need to—”

  “‘Snake,’ I said, not ‘lake’!” a voice croaks through the night air. “Ssssssssnake! You know, your lonely mum’s best friend!”

  “Oh, sweet Ver,” Corvin mutters, and I follow his gaze. In front of the palace, amid all the fine carriages, a small person wearing a horrible coat and a paper sack on its head is yelling at one of the palace servants. “How in blazes would you even dress as a lake? You’re going to be in the lake in a minute, buddy—”

  “Hey!” Corvin yells.

  The sack turns toward us at the sound of his voice. “Oh, there they are. Have a nice evening, soldier.” It shuffles over as we try to retreat farther into the shadows of the hedge sculpture.

  “For the love of all that’s on fire,” Fir says. “Take that ridiculous bag off your head.” She snatches the paper sack to reveal the filthy white hair and milky eyes of Teppa the Fowl.

  Corvin sighs. “I thought Nara was going to sneak you in as a cook?”

  Teppa shrugs. “They wouldn’t buy it for some reason. But I found this bag and I improvised. That fathead guard at the gate gave me some lip, but I said, ‘I’m clean, friend! Got my costume on and everything! I got no weapons! Nothing! Strip me down and search all my crevices!’ I meant it, too, got my pants halfway off and everything, and I guess that was good enough for him, because he just escorted me through like a fine lady.” She puts her hands on her hips. “So where are we headed?”

  * * *

  Teppa makes short work of the arched golden doors to the Empress’s private garden. Corvin, Fir, and I stand strategically to hide her from view while she rattles the lock and grumbles, but there are enough people wandering the grounds to make us nervous. Luckily, after a few moments, a smooth click tells us our way is open.

  “I’ll keep watch out here,” Teppa says, looking shifty.

  “I’m sure you’ll keep a close eye on all the free champagne, anyway,” Fir says over her shoulder as we pass through the doors.

  “Free champagne?”

  I close the golden door behind me, and Teppa is already gone.

  Corvin laughs. “We figured we might have to get into a part of the palace that isn’t open to the public. It was always a possibility. So that’s what we paid her for—to get us in.”

  “And now that we’re in, we can just fend for ourselves, is that it?” I say.

  “That’s Teppa.” He shrugs.

  I step onto the path of brass stones, letting my mask fall to the ground. Even in shadow and silence, the Empress’s garden is breathtaking. The colors are different at night. It still feels like a kaleidoscope, but instead of an array of jewel shards in all hues, it is set with a thousand subtly different pieces of one exquisite blue gemstone. I let my eyes travel the path, up the trunks of the slender trees, in and around the untidy shrubs.

  “So where do we look?” Fir asks. Deduction isn’t exactly her strong suit, unless she is solving the mystery of where the sharp end of her saber will go next.

  Corvin takes a few steps and brushes the tip of a stone archer’s arrow with his fingers. “If it’s a secret the Commandant wants kept from the undergardeners and tourists, it won’t be anywhere that requires maintenance or invites scrutiny.”

  I close my eyes. “It will be somewhere unchanging.”

  “Let’s spread out,” Corvin says, and Fir and I nod.

  I follow the path of brass stones to the right, past a dodder bush whose flowers reach high into the air. Around a curve, a stone bench in the shape of a giant feather sits empty amid a riot of gangly morning wisp flowers. Then I head through a little grove of miniature evergreen trees no taller than my head, each one pruned to symmetrical perfection.

  The garden, while magnificent, is not enormous, and I can hear the rustles and crunches of Corvin making his way around the other side and Fir cutting across the middle. I stop when I reach the waterfall that streams down the dome into a brass pool. The wide sheet of water against the glass forms vast, ever-changing images of light and dark that hold me spellbound.

  I stare into the brass pool, where the water keeps pouring but never overflows, disappearing into a wide grate. Despite its simple appearance, with no complex carving or precious materials, this is perhaps the most impressive fountain in Caldaras City. Outside, on a wild, moonlit meadow behind the garden dome, I see a little stream that winds back into an old grove of trees. So much planning, so much effort, for this vision of beauty.

  “Lovely,” a voice at my shoulder says.

  I spin around. “Nara?”

  She stands, a hand on her hip, gazing at the waterfall. “Not so secret a passageway, is it?”

  “I—” I start, and then I realize she is right. The grate at the bottom of the brass pool is more than big enough to allow a person to pass through.

  “Nara!” Corvin hurries down the path. Fir appears a moment later.

  “Now, how to turn off the water so we can get down?” Nara says.

  Fir’s expression is hard to read, but she seems a little more guarded than usual. “What are you doing here?”

  Nara regards her from beneath perfectly curled eyelashes. “You didn’t think I’d want to be there when the redwing saves us all?” She surveys the waterfall again. “So where’s the switch?”

  I lift my eyes, examining the top of the waterfall. An unassuming pipe fits invisibly into the seam between the large glass panels of the dome, and I follow it until it disappears behind the vegetation. “Is there a maintenance room below this one?” I ask.

  “Not to my knowledge,” Nara says. “Though I’m not very familiar with this garden.”

  “No,” Fir says. “I’ve been all over this island. On bad tips from Nara’s agents.”

  “Then I think”— I push aside the branches of some low, fat shrubs to find a valve set in the wall—“I think this is what we’re looking for.” The valve complains a bit, but I turn it until the waterfall trickles away to nothing.

  Nara nods. “Well done!” She stands at the edge of the brass pool, watching the water recede.

  “One of us should wait here and keep watch,” Fir says, exchanging a look with Corvin.

  “Fir, you stay.” Nara waves a hand. “Corvin, help me get this grate up.”

  We step into the slick, empty pool. The bars of the grate are still hot when Corvin grabs them, and he recoils, cursing.

  “Let me,” I say. “I may bleed as easily as humans, but hot water doesn’t bother me.” I grasp the scalding bars and pull the grate up, revealing a black hole. “I’ll go first.”

  “I’ll put the grate back over you,” Fir says as I dangle my feet over the edge of the hole. “I can kick it into place.”

  “Just don’t turn the valve on,” Corvin says. “I can’t swim even in cool water.”

  I lower myself into the gloom, my feet brushing the slippery wall. I look up into the pleasant garden one more time. “Be careful, Fir. If the Onyx Staff and his followers come, let them. Don’t take them on by yourself.”

  She skews her shoulders, combative. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  I sigh. “Whatever you want it to, I suppose.” And I drop down into darkness.

  The drop is farther than I expect, although I have no reason to expect any specific distance. I
t could be a hundred feet, for all I know. Still, after a brief lurch in my belly, I land hard but safely. The moonlight drifts down from above, weakly illuminating a wide tunnel, its sloping walls sleek with algae.

  “How far down is it?” the silhouette of Corvin’s head calls from above.

  “Maybe ten feet?” I hazard.

  He lands with an “Oof!”

  “Or fifteen?”

  Nara drops silently next to us and rolls. Then she stands, wiping muck off her well-tailored suit. I hear the scratch of a matchstick, and a lantern flares to life. “Well,” she says. “Let’s see where this goes, shall we?”

  The tunnel continues for some ways, sloping ever downward. I begin to suspect it may lead us to the shore of Lake Azure Wave, just another wastewater drain. After we have walked for several minutes, the tunnel begins to narrow, and another hundred yards or so later, we are forced to squeeze through the muck on our stomachs, one by one.

  I take the lantern and go first, spilling out the other side of the opening into a wide, flat depression—it must be a pool, I realize, when the water is flowing here. I raise the lantern above my head, but turn its light down after a moment and peer into the large space beyond the pool. There is moonlight coming from above. We are not so far underground as I had imagined.

  “This is where the water collects,” Nara says, startling me once again. Corvin has emerged from the tunnel, as well, and makes his way along the edge of the empty pool. Nara lifts herself up. “What is this place?”

  My eyes adjust while I stand at the edge of the depression, the slick wall as high as my chest. Round, black mouths of pipes dot the sides of the pool, waiting to carry water away to where it is needed. I look up, examining the shapes and shades of the darkness. “Water and light,” I say.

  I hoist myself out of the empty pool and turn up the lantern’s light again. Corvin follows. “It’s a garden,” he says with astonishment.

  It is a garden. I swing the lantern in an arc, entranced by all the strange plants, and move farther in among them. Tall and tiny, willowy and chunky, there is something familiar about some of them, but there is nothing growing in this odd underground room that I keep in the Dome. Still, these plants are not entirely unknown to me. I study the shapes of the leaves, the posture of the unusual flowers.

  Then the realization hits me. I nearly drop the lantern.

  Nara bends over to touch the fuzzy leaves of a squat little shrub.

  “Nara, no!”

  She retracts her hand and straightens up, looking at me quizzically.

  “Don’t touch anything!” I say. “Don’t touch any of these plants!”

  Corvin freezes. “What do you mean?”

  I move among the plants, holding the lantern high. “This is a poison garden.” Nara and Corvin step back toward the lip of the pool. The names are coming to me now, dusty and shadowed, plants I’ve held in my mind but never seen. Icevein, Ver’s tears, and anydeath, the more potent cousin of Corvin’s handy sleep powder. This garden is a maze of thorns, leaves, and flowers waiting to do harm. Or kill.

  “Well, is it dangerous even to breathe?” Nara asks, gesturing impatiently. “Or should we just not be plucking our salad greens here?”

  I survey the tangle of plants before us. “It’s difficult to say.” I point. “That spiky fellow over there, for instance, that’s a jib jab. His thorns are deadly poison. Even just a scratch will paralyze your blood in minutes.”

  “Good to know,” Corvin says grimly.

  I look around. “But that one, that’s known as raptorchoke—or raptorchoker. I don’t remember. He looks just as scary as the jib jab, but his thorns are harmless, other than the fact that they’ll prick you. No, the way he gets you is with his spores. They hang around him in a cloud, and if you breathe them, your bones will turn to liquid.”

  Nara nods. “A clever way to protect whatever is on the other side of this room, don’t you think? I don’t suppose we could get Fir to hack her way through?”

  “No.” I lower the lantern. “Some of these plants defend themselves by releasing poison into the air if they are cut.”

  “Bandannas,” Corvin says. “Keep out the bad air.”

  “You couldn’t,” I explain. “You could wear a suit of iron from head to toe, cover your mouth with the finest linen, but if the smallest puff touched your skin, or if one spore made it through a joint in your armor…”

  Corvin shakes his head. “So some plants are deadly to touch, some are deadly to breathe, and some are deadly to break.”

  Nara puts her fingers to her lips. “Which means,” she says slowly, “that some are not deadly to touch, breathe, or break.”

  “Well, yes,” I say.

  “So there may very well be a safe path through, if we can only find it.” Nara steps closer to the edge of the poison garden again. She turns to me, businesslike. “Can you lead us?”

  Corvin has moved next to me, and places a warm hand on my back that I’m fairly certain Nara can’t see in the gloom.

  “I…” I start. I scan the wide snarl of a garden again. “The problem is I don’t know all these plants. I know some of them, but in a garden like this, just one mistake could be deadly.”

  “Then it will also be deadly for the Beautiful Ones,” Corvin says. “Nara, the Onyx Staff cannot navigate this poison garden any more than we can. The only way through is to kill the garden entirely—cut off its water and let it dry up—and that would take more time than they have. In a few short hours, Crepuscule will be over. I say we gather all the Fog Walkers here—send Fir after them—and stand guard.”

  “No!” Nara snaps. She marches over to us, leans into Corvin’s face. “You would wager the whole of Caldaras City on our ability to fend off an army of cultists? The Fog Walkers are skilled, but we will be outnumbered.”

  “We have Lin,” Corvin says.

  “The redwing is not enough. We must be certain.” Her expression is hard. But when I imagine that great wave of lava, unrelenting, swallowing Roet Island and Sweetrose Avenue and even our house on Saltball Street, I understand.

  “Stand back, all right?” I step toward the edge of the garden. “I’ll try to walk a safe path. I’ll tell you when to follow.” Heart thumping, I move along the first row of plants, trying to put a name to each one as I approach it.

  When I have inched several paces, I notice a strange orange light. Feeble, but distinct. I extinguish the lantern.

  “I trust you know what you’re doing,” Nara says stonily.

  The orange light is coming from the edge of the garden, a few paces farther along. I move toward it. And as I get closer, the light grows stronger. When I finally reach it, the light is so bright, it stretches to the high ceiling.

  “Ver’s ass,” Corvin says.

  I stare at the source of the light—a broad-leafed bush, low and drab. If it weren’t for the light, I would say this was a boat-leaf, a common scrubland bush whose roots cause the teeth of anyone who chews them to turn pink and fall out. I bend down—surely this is a boat-leaf? Holding my breath, I grasp one of the wide leaves to examine it more closely.

  And underneath, hidden by the leaves of the bush, I see the real source of the strange orange light.

  This bonescorch orchis is not broken or weak. It is not confined to a pot. It flourishes, its fiery, feathery leaves shining bright through the gaps between the leaves and stems of the plants around it. But if I had not moved the boat-leaf’s branch, I would never have seen it.

  I straighten my spine and see another orange glow several paces away to my left.

  “What’s happening?” Nara says. “What’s that glow?”

  I face them. “It’s a bonescorch. It’s glowing because I’m a—a—”

  “A Lin,” Corvin says, and I can’t help a smile that prickles me to my toes.

  “A redwing,” Nara says without emotion. “So what does that mean?”

  I inhale deeply. “I think there must be several bonescorches hidden in this gar
den. And that their purpose is to show us—me—the way through. That would explain why only a redwing can find the Heart.” I bite my lip. “Of course, if I’m wrong, we could all die.”

  Nara shakes her head. “I don’t think you’re wrong. And it’s our only shot, in any case.”

  “I’m in if you’re in,” Corvin says.

  “Very well. Come and stand behind me. Move only where I move.” I fix my gaze on the next faint orange glow. There is a straightish path between the two bonescorches, but it is crowded on both sides with plants of every size and description. As we move, we will brush them and breathe them. There is no avoiding it.

  I take a step. A patch of tall, bony grass to my right scratches at my shoulders. Another step, and twisted shrub to my left slices my pants with its leaves. I keep moving.

  “Ouch!” Corvin cries out. “That bush just cut me!”

  “It’s all right,” I say over my shoulder. “That’s razorwood. All it can do is cut you.”

  “Great,” he mutters.

  We soon reach the second bonescorch, now blazing vibrantly. This time it’s Nara who spots the next orchis, closer this time, its feeble gleam about two dozen paces in front of us. Aside from a few minor pricks and bitter odors that burn our stomachs, we reach it without incident.

  It must take us close to an hour to cross the entire poison garden. Some orchises are so far away, we can barely see them at first, while some are less than ten paces. Always the deadly plants crowd us, caressing us with hairy leaves, jabbing us with sharp sticks, or choking us with hostile pollen. But we don’t die. We don’t collapse. We reach the other side.

  I hand the lantern to Corvin, who strikes a match and illuminates our new surroundings.

  “Well done,” Nara says, smoothing her jacket and looking critically at the root-lined walls. “We can’t be far from the Heart now.”

  The only way forward is a low, dirt passageway on one side of the long room. Corvin goes first this time, arms outstretched, wriggling through behind the lantern like an earthworm. Nara follows, and I squeeze in behind her, feeling my way through almost total darkness.

  The passage is not long, barely more than the length of my own body. It ends in a large dirt room, at the center of which is a mass of black tendrils streaked with brilliant red. They sit curled and spiraling, sprawling over the floor, piled in the middle of the room like discarded ribbons. I watch, fascinated. They do not move, but there is something alive about them.