Back turned to the bed, preparing to haul one hundred eighty pounds of deadweight boss, I noticed the entrance side of the room for the first time.
Scratches covered the door and surrounding wall. Long, chalky scratches that tore away white paper to reveal concrete beneath. Hundreds, thousands of scratches overlapping and intersecting, vertical and diagonal. Some stretched nearly to the ceiling; others picked at the carpet. And I knew—I knew—that although most had been made by adult hands and adult fingernails, they hadn’t all been. Some of the scratches were smaller, the fingers closer together, the marks weaker.
My eyes went to the doorknob. Except there was no doorknob on this side, only a thin veneer of wood torn away from scratched steel. The door had swung nearly shut, balanced against its frame only by the metal latch. If I gave the door a gentle push, it’d click flush with the wall beside it.
The lavender air hung heavy in my throat. I dropped the coverlet and stumbled for the door. My stomach heaved, and my hands trembled so hard that I barely dared move them to the door, lest they betray me and push it closed.
Carefully, carefully, blinking away sweat, I pressed my fingertips against the edge of the door and pulled it toward me, then wrapped my fingers around the steel and swung it further inward so I could wedge my toes in the crack.
I stood there for a minute, hugging the door open, knuckles yellow, gasping, tying down panic. Then I remembered my boss, and my spine straightened. I pushed the door fully open, took off my shoe, and wedged it under the door—the carpet was thin enough for that, just. I arranged my blood-soaked blazer around the door frame, to stop the door if it tried to swing shut.
That was as safe as I could make it, but I would never feel safe in this room.
I unbent myself and looked down the corridor, back the way I had walked here.
It was the same corridor. It had the same wallpaper, the same carpet, the same support beams, the same doors in the same frames. But what a difference angle makes. From this direction, I could see marks where fingers had gripped support beams until they’d been torn away. I could see carpet frayed from dragging feet, the warped edges of ceiling vents.
Some part of my brain said: Odd, that the scratches were created by people dragged in that direction. Wouldn’t people want to go that way, toward the exit?
Or had the proprietress switched the direction of the hallway, as she had manipulated the streets to bring me back here? What a perfect trap that would be: one that ushered the unwary and herded the wary further in, to whatever lay beyond.
Whatever was beyond? One more turn, and we’d be back at the lobby. There was space for two, maybe three more bedrooms, but we’d run out of colors.
Assuming the halls traced a loop, and not an impossible maze.
Vents sighed and electricity hummed and lavender strangled the air.
I toed off my remaining shoe and hooked the heel around the doorframe as an extra precaution before returning to my boss. I looked back to double-check the door remained wedged open. It did.
My boss was as I’d left him, limp and unresponsive. He didn’t protest when I dragged the coverlet after me, or when it—and he—thumped from bed to floor. But the moment we were through the door, he stirred.
I wasn’t gentle. I shook, slapped, and bullied him awake and upright. It didn’t take long, only about a decade, and he grumbled incomprehensibly the whole while.
I hooked my boss’s arm over my shoulder and prodded him onward, pinching his neck when he tried to stagger away and collapse against the wall. “Just a little further,” I coaxed him, and led him with pretty words around the final corner, away from the entrance.
I wasn’t done here.
There weren’t any more bedroom doors in this direction, only an archway leading to an enormous commercial kitchen, beyond which a windowed swinging door led to the small employee area I’d theorized existed behind the reception desk. The lavender receded slightly, overwhelmed by the chemical astringency.
I hadn’t been in a lot of commercial kitchens, but I’d seen enough that this was exactly what I would’ve expected of a hotel resort: a forest of stainless-steel implements hung from the ceiling in one area and pans from another. More stainless steel lined the left wall in the form of ovens, stoves, sink, and a truly gigantic standing mixer. On the right wall, the stainless steel came in the form of doors: a walk-in fridge/ freezer and a pantry. In the center, four cutting boards had been laid out on a long island prep table.
I got my boss to the solid end of the prep table. He slid down it to the smooth gray tiles and slumped over his knees, wheezing, barely aware of me. I crouched beside him, hands steadying him until I was sure he wouldn’t keel over. Then, arms prickling, I stood and looked back the way we’d come.
From this direction, the gleaming, spotless kitchen looked . . . exactly the same. There were no nail marks, no scuffs. Even the ceiling had been scrubbed free of dust, stains, and spider webs.
I didn’t understand. Everywhere else in the auction house had been different out than in, and I felt so sure this was the heart of it. What had I missed?
My eyes settled on the doors next to me—first on the walk-in fridge/freezer and then on the pantry.
My knees creaked as I stood. I didn’t want to see what was in there. I pulled the door open.
The pantry interior was concrete also, but all the bleach in the world couldn’t have erased its bloodstains. Dark brown smears and spatters coated the walls, floor, and ceiling, layers deep. The room itself was half full of stainless steel shelving on which rested the larger bones: femurs, ribs, skulls. Smaller bones were in piles on the floor or in yellow bins. Fingers especially. Messy, incompletely stripped of flesh. And the smell—
It was the smell that got me. Metallic, sickly sweet, sour. It overwhelmed my brain, slammed the door shut between us even as I fell to my knees, retching.
My boss tried to say something to me, but I ignored him. I had to know. I didn’t want to know, but I couldn’t stop myself. I lurched upright, teeth bared, and unlatched the door of the walk-in fridge.
The interior was spacious, the organization as meticulous here as it had been slapdash in the pantry. Everything was labeled: eyes, noses, livers, hearts. You could find any fleshy part you liked. The variety in the red room upstairs was nothing in comparison to the choices down here.
I closed the fridge door. I didn’t need to see the freezer; I had become frozen enough.
My hands no longer trembled. I had been right: this was an evil place. And I would not allow it to stand.
The stove was modern, heavy duty, and fully functional. I turned a burner on high and dropped an oven mitt halfway across it. In twenty seconds, the thick cloth was smoking; in twenty more, the end burst into flame.
My boss blinked and tried to focus on what I was doing. “Stay here,” I told him—as if he could walk on his own. “I’ll be back.”
The white coverlet was some sort of cotton mix. I dropped the oven mitt on it and dragged it down the hall and around the corner, back to the green room. By the time I got there, the coverlet burned with a sputtering but fierce fire, gray-and-white smoke choking out the lavender. I waited for the carpet to smolder and then began dragging the burning coverlet back the way I’d come, opening bedroom doors as I went.
There was varnish on the support beams. It went up like anything.
I dropped the burning coverlet on the carpet outside the white room and went back for my boss. He was on his feet when I reentered the kitchen, supporting himself on the prep table. “Mercedes,” he said, “what’s going on?”
“We’re getting out of here.”
“There is smoke—”
“There’s a fire,” I said. “Let’s go.”
The air was already thick and acrid in the hotel lobby when we arrived. We coughed our way up the stairs and into the main auction house lobby. I propped my boss against the stair door long enough to lock the hinge open, to let all that lovely oxygen down. The
n I shoved him toward the front entrance.
The clerks were still behind their protective barrier, but their eyes were open, and they watched me. “You’d better get out of here,” I said. “There’s a fire.”
They didn’t move. They didn’t blink. I shoved my boss out the front door and went to tap their barrier. “Come on,” I said. “Get out.”
Smoke gusted up the stairs, charcoal black. Not enough of it to be harmful, not yet, but I didn’t want to stick around.
“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll make you a deal: you leave this auction house, and in return, you won’t burn to death.”
As one, the clerks sagged and then came alive. I held the door open for them and pushed them ahead of me, out the glass doors to the parking lot. They stared at me, dull and confused, awaiting further instruction. “Go home,” I told them. “There’s nothing more for you here.”
My boss had made it to the car while I’d dithered, and waited for me to unlock it. As we drove away, flames burst from the auction house’s foundation. They devoured the building so eagerly, I thought they must’ve waited a long time for the chance.
Interlude
Prefect Lindo demonstrated her usual flair for competent efficiency by arriving the precisely proper eighteen minutes early. Neither the guards outside nor her escort to the reception room saw any spark of her famous temper. Then again, they did nothing to incite it—and it wouldn’t have been tolerated at court.
A page brought King Emil news of Lindo’s arrival, but it was not in his power to join her before the allotted time. He was closeted with his councilors, enduring exaggerated complaints about the problems of their individual prefectures and dire warnings about the neighboring countries of Vela and Akter. The councilors kept pushing him, making demands, stabbing fingers of iron, wood, and obsidian against the table. He flinched whenever one of them did this too close, and wished he could leave to consult his seidkonur in private. Her seidr would reveal what was true and when it was time to act. He would speak with her again this evening, preferably when his chaplain wasn’t around to disapprove.
It was a relief when the hour struck and Emil felt able to call on the chancellor to gather any remaining complaints and make a report for him. He hurried away before his councilors could insist on anything further and headed for the reception room. In his mind, Prefect Lindo most closely resembled a dull gray hedgehog: soft or prickly, depending on which way you stroked her. Her dead sister’s temperament had, naturally, been perfect.
“Prefect Lindo,” he said, entering. “Welcome.”
Lindo rose and bowed, prickles tucked in tight. “Your Majesty.” She had dressed neatly and properly in her prefecture’s turquoise and charcoal, and someone had provided her with lemonade. Emil traced out her features, searching for those that reminded him of her sister. Lindo had none of Zita’s raving beauty, and age had deepened the angry lines on her forehead. However, she remained fit and upright, and the intelligence he recalled brightening her eyes brightened them still.
Emil shifted under those eyes, deeply aware of the delicacy of glass. He knew he would not survive a serious attack despite the cushioning velvet of his suit, which had only last week been sewn from his finest purple velvet curtains. Maybe it had been a mistake, insisting on meeting Lindo informally and alone.
“Walk with me,” he said, joining his hands behind his back so that she could not perceive this as offering his arm. “You have not—I believe you have not seen the rose garden.”
The date was late in March, which in Carina meant autumn, and in the capital meant rain. Rain gushed in great sloshing buckets that day, translating the world into colorblind shades. Outside, bus wipers swished on their highest settings, unlucky walkers dashed across the streets with newspapers over their heads and got drenched despite their slickers, and great whirlpools swirled around insufficient drains.
In the outer ring of the royal palace, one could see the rain through the many-paneled reinforced windows, but an overhang guarded the glass from any but the most determined gusts. Inside the rose greenhouse, with its glass exposed on two sides and above, the rain gave Emil and Lindo a world of their own, guarded from eavesdroppers by the constant noise, and from spies by the distortion of running water.
Emil led her through the paths of the greenhouse, keeping up a running commentary on the minutiae of roses, which were his specialty. Only when he found himself for the third time explaining how he’d had this-and-this thornless rose specially imported did he stop, reset, and switch to, “But you did not come to hear me talk about flowers.”
“I came because Your Majesty desired it,” Lindo pointed out. “If that is to talk about flowers, then so be it.”
“You must have been surprised at the summons.”
“I haven’t had a chance to sit down all week. Everything is constantly going wrong, and I’m the only one who can deal with any of it. Why should I be surprised to have even more suddenly on my plate?”
Emil regarded her placidly, noting the irritation in her voice. He had never heard it before, though he had certainly heard her temper described often enough. He wondered that she dared express it in front of him. Conscious of how hedgehogs could scratch glass, he said, “Does your prefecture weigh heavily upon you?”
“Not my prefecture—the conference. It’s been one thing after another for weeks. I haven’t been able to take a breath or a break, and I won’t be able to until it’s over. Not that I expect I’ll get a break then—the conference always just causes me more and more trouble!” She cut herself off with a sharp breath, killing her momentum. When she spoke again, her tone was restrained. “So you can understand that I am a little stressed.”
Emil accepted this with a nod. “Is the conference so difficult to host? I always assumed it was simple: having your servants change sheets and wash towels and so on—the sort of things they do daily anyway.”
He had offended her. The emotion was suppressed in a flash, but the echo of it remained in her stiff shoulders and tense jaw. “If only my fellow prefects were as reasonable as Your Majesty.” She dusted flat palms on the turquoise skirt of her suit. “Actually,” she said, her tone abruptly cheerful, “my manor needed repairs anyway, and this is a great excuse for them. Whichever of my predecessors decided to build along the coast had a great eye for a view but no sense whatsoever. The sea air is brutal when it comes to wear and tear—as I’m sure Your Majesty knows.”
It had been many years since Emil’s stint in the navy, and looking back now, he was horrified at the risk he had taken. He felt a rush of gratitude toward Lindo for reinforcing her manor to protect him from those winds—and was glad he had not before known what danger her manor posed.
That gratitude opened before him, and he knew it was time. He brushed his fingers over the petals of a yellow rose. “Prefect,” he said. “Graça. It has been nearly four years, and we have never discussed Zita.”
Lindo’s nostrils flared. “My sister—”
“My fiancée,” he reminded her.
“You barely knew her,” she retorted. “I loved her. If you had—”
“Yes, I know,” Emil interrupted. “But do not for a moment believe that you are the only one who mourns her untimely death.”
“Her suicide,” Lindo corrected, though saying the word hurt her far more than it hurt her companion.
“I could not have known of her previous attachment.”
A sarcastic muscle pulled at one side of Lindo’s mouth. “And if you had known? Would you have given her up? Shamed yourself by losing your fiancée to a lesser man? Put aside a beautiful, charming wife? Found another with such flawless family connections? And let’s not forget that your first wife was as fair as snow and ice, and the king must keep his children mixed.”
Emil inclined his head, acknowledging this point as one acknowledged the weather. This was one of the duties of Carina’s monarch: to marry as would best support his nation. In times of conflict, this meant joining his house to
a powerful ally or erstwhile enemy. In times of peace, it meant mixing his blood—which had the dual benefits of preventing inbreeding and of setting a good example for his people.
“Are you angry at me?” he asked Lindo.
Ever stable as a seesaw, Lindo replied staidly, “You are the king. You may do as you wish.”
“As I am the king,” said Emil, “I may seldom do as I wish but only as I must.”
“I stand corrected,” said Lindo, with no more emotion than before.
Emil glanced quickly at her and then away. He could not reproach the correctness of her response, but it did not satisfy him. He reached out again to stroke the rose, but stopped his hand short, fingers curling. Nervous habits had been worn out of him from a young age. He stared at Lindo’s square-toed shoes, and could not help hearing the fragility in his voice when he asked, “Is Graça angry with Emil?”
Lindo took so long to respond that Emil nearly raised his eyes. When she did respond, her words were quiet, measured. “For a long time, I was,” she said. “Hardly anyone understood why. Hardly anyone understands me or why I get so upset. My emotions are so much stronger than other people’s, you see, and others don’t understand what it’s like to really feel things.”
Emil smiled slightly, thinking of how clearly he saw the world through his eyes and mind of glass. Yes, he knew what it was to be more—more present, more real than those around him.
“If you’re asking whether I ever let the anger get the better of me,” Lindo went on, “the answer is no. You are my king, and I am and ever have been your loyal subject.”
“I am glad to hear it,” Emil said. He was glad, fervently glad, if this would get the chancellor off his back. “You once made a formal oath, when you became prefect. Will you make one again, before the chaplain and witnesses of my choice?”
“Of course, Your Majesty,” Lindo said, bowing. “It would be my honor.”
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