Beneath the Citadel

by Destiny Soria

  She closed her eyes, trying to return her breathing to normal, determined to convince everyone that she could keep up. If she couldn’t, they would have to leave her behind. The guards would find her. The sentient would read the truth in her features. Her friends would be betrayed. Maybe it would be better if she just died before they caught up. Maybe it would be better if she died now. Maybe it would be better. Maybe it would.

  Round and round, the familiar, dizzying maelstrom, tossing her back and forth inside her head. Her lungs were constricting again, her chest aching with a new, sharp pain. She was light-headed. Weightless. The stone against her cheek was gone. She couldn’t feel her fingers. This couldn’t be happening. Not now not now not now not—

  “Alys.” Her brother’s voice. Soft. Steady. “Alys, open your eyes.”

  She was afraid to open her eyes because sometimes in the middle of the maelstrom everything was hazy and dreamlike, and what if one day she couldn’t find her way back to the waking world? But Evander said her name again, softer this time, or maybe she had withdrawn too far into herself to hear him. She didn’t know what else to do. She opened her eyes.

  His face sprang into focus. A little blurry but mostly not. Mostly he was just Evander. Brown eyes, darker than hers, almost black. His jet hair shiny with sweat. His eyebrows drawn together in concern. The ghost light cast shadows across the planes of his face. Sometimes he looked so much like their father, it made her want to cry.

  “Is there any way we survive this?” she asked. Her voice came out sounding hollow and all wrong.

  Evander studied her for a few seconds. His lips quirked slightly.

  “Truth or lie?” he asked.

  She might have smiled if she’d had the strength. The question was a familiar one, stretching back to their early childhood. For a long time it had been a guessing game. One of them would tell a story or state a fact and then ask, “Truth or lie?” Evander was a better liar than she was, but she’d always been better at seeing the truth. Then, after that harrowing night eight years ago, when their family had lost everything, the game had changed. The question meant something different now. What do you need to hear?

  “Truth,” Alys said, even though the word caught in her throat.

  “We’ll find a way,” he told her. “We’re going to make it.”

  Slowly, Alys pressed her fingernails into her palms, harder and harder until finally she could feel the pinpricks of pain. She squeezed until the anxiety faded, until her lungs loosened, until there were purple half-moons embedded in her palms. She took a deep, slow breath and nodded at Evander. He nodded back, the creases in his forehead fading.

  “I almost forgot,” she said to Evander, as she pulled three coins from the pocket in her dress. “Here. I cleaned them off as well as I could. They’re probably safe.”

  “Probably?” Evander echoed, a little dryly. But he was smiling when he took them from her.

  Alys watched the silver roll one by one across his knuckles and disappear. When they were younger, she loved to watch him practice, memorizing the motions, making suggestions when he couldn’t get a trick just right. She loved being a part of the process, sharing in the thrill of success.

  That had been before he went to see the Blacksmith, of course. Alys’s eyes were drawn involuntarily to Evander’s forearm. In the dusky light, the scar was a dull gray. Alys looked away before he noticed.

  “Well, I have good news and bad news,” Cassa said, turning to face them.

  “What’s the bad news?” Evander asked.

  “I don’t actually have any good news.”

  “We’re lost,” Alys said flatly.

  “We’re not lost,” Cassa said. She turned back to stare at the smooth wall and did not offer any alternatives.

  “They’re going to catch up,” Newt said. There was a definite break in his usually calm exterior, though his voice betrayed nothing.

  “They’re not going to catch up,” Cassa said. Again, no justification. Just that baseless, infuriating confidence.

  “We shouldn’t have come,” Alys said. She wasn’t sure if she meant into the crypts or into the citadel in the first place. She knew people had been falling ill and disappearing, and she knew the council was probably involved, but she didn’t think that made it their job to take on the whole citadel by themselves.

  “The route is supposed to be marked.” Cassa ran a hand through her shoulder-length hair, leaving streaks of grime. “Vesper said—”

  She cut herself off. Alys closed her eyes for a few seconds, trying to keep her focus. Their group felt off-balance without Vesper here, like a house with a cracked foundation. She was the only one who could keep Cassa in check, the only one who always made Alys feel like she was a necessary part of the team rather than a hindrance or someone who needed to be saved. She’d made Alys feel that way from the very first day they met. “Between the two of us,” she’d said, with a conspiratorial smile, “we might just manage to keep Cassa alive.” Those words had been more than a welcome; they were a promise. We meant together. We meant friends.

  But Vesper was gone now. They were alone down here. She didn’t want to believe that Vesper had betrayed them to the council—surely it made more sense that a diviner in the citadel had foreseen their plot. But from the moment that Vesper had backed out of their plan, there had been a seed of doubt in the pit of Alys’s stomach. Now when she looked at Cassa’s face, she knew that she wasn’t the only one.

  “We could split up,” Newt said softly. “See where each path leads and meet back here.”

  “The guards will catch up by then.” Evander climbed begrudgingly to his feet. “We need to pick a path and take our chances, together.”

  “We could always flip a coin,” Alys said, her voice dripping with more disdain than she’d intended. Her exhaustion and looming mortality were wearing down her self-control.

  “Actually . . .” Cassa began.

  “Cassa, no.” They all three spoke at once.

  Cassa blinked at them, then rolled her eyes. “I was going to say, there’s a way to know for sure.” She looked pointedly at Alys.

  Alys stared back at her, uncomprehending. Then she realized.

  “No,” she said, scrambling to her feet. “You know I don’t read the coins anymore.”

  “It can’t hurt anything,” Cassa insisted.

  “It can if I read them wrong and we—and we—” The words caught in her throat. Red-hot iron. Searing screams. She’d seen it all, and she hadn’t stopped it.

  “Alys, you have to try.”

  “She doesn’t have to do anything,” Evander said, stepping up beside her.

  “It’s either that or flip a coin,” Cassa said, crossing her arms, though the severity of her expression had begun to soften. “What’s the use of being a diviner if she never even tries to see the future?”

  “She said no.”

  “Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” Alys snapped. She could feel the familiar tightness in her chest, the dizzying spin of her thoughts. Not now, not now, not now. There was a sharp light at the edges of her vision, colorless and painful. They were trapped down here, surrounded by bones and stone. Trapped unless she read the coins. Trapped because she couldn’t read the coins. Stone and bones and iron and screams. They were all watching her, and that only made the maelstrom in her mind worse. Not now, not now, not now.

  “Give me the coins,” she said. It came out more like a gasp. Her lungs felt clenched like fists. Her heart was thudding in her ears.

  “Alys,” Evander began. Why did he always look at her like she were about to shatter into a thousand pieces? Why did he always act like it was his job to protect her, when he was her younger brother, when it should have been the other way around? “You don’t have to—”

  “Give them to me.” Alys held out her hand. She knew it was shaking. Let it shake. She wouldn’t be the reason they died down here among the bones and stones.

  Evander hesitated, then dropped th
e coins into her palm. They were warm from his pocket. For some reason she thought of the first coins she’d ever earned from helping the rebels, the day she had met Cassa—how accomplished she had felt. How unstoppable.

  That was a long time ago now. Alys dropped to her knees, clutching the silver in her hand. Her breaths still came short and sharp, but the spiral of her thoughts was slowing. Maybe she was trapped and helpless, but she had the blood of the elder seers in her veins. That had to count for something.

  She opened her hand and let the coins fall to the ground.

  The future felt like a half-remembered poem, like glimpsing someone else’s foggy memories. Diviners could never see farther than a week or two, a month at most. The far-flung future was only for the seers to know. Alys’s mother had begun to teach her the moment it became evident she had the gift. There weren’t a lot of diviners and sentients born outside the citadel and upper echelon, and rooks and seers were almost nonexistent in the lower wards—not because the gifts had anything to do with nobility, but because across generations the council had brought as many rooks, seers, sentients, and diviners into their employ as possible. The gift ran through bloodlines, though it wasn’t unusual for it to skip a generation or even several.

  If they’d wanted to, Alys or her mother could have gone to the citadel, been confirmed as diviners, and received lifelong employment. The possibility had never been tempting before, when the family apothecary shop had been thriving, but then her parents were caught helping a dying rebel and branded traitors. Red-hot iron, searing screams, and the possibility was lost. Alys didn’t really care about the missed opportunity. The thought of working for the council turned her stomach, not that she was any good at divining anyway. Alys had never been slow to learn anything, but her gift proved to be difficult for her. She was used to precise measurements and structured formulas, not the haphazard scattering of coins or runes. The hazy, shifting future was not something she could dissect and study, and so she was always a little afraid of it.

  She felt she had a right to be. If she were a better diviner, she might have saved her parents from the council’s punishment.

  Those memories wouldn’t help her now though. She cleared her mind as best she could and concentrated on the coins. Some diviners worked better with more natural markers, like rune stones or tea leaves. She’d met a woman once who could read flower petals as they were plucked. For Alys the coins were the easiest. They were practical and uniform, and Evander always had some in his pocket. The future took shape for her in their distinct pattern and in the number that fell with the citadel’s seal face up. The discrete, minute details all served as markers, and in her mind’s eye she could see them all connecting like puzzle pieces. There was never just one future though; there were dozens, sometimes hundreds, and the longer she studied the coins, the more the variations began to crowd her mind. Her mother had told her to think of every future as a piece of thin paper, and when they were all stacked together and held to the light, the patterns that overlapped the most, that were bolder than the rest, formed the most likely future. Nothing was certain in divination, and the future could always change, but a talented and experienced diviner could be accurate more often than not.

  Alys was neither talented nor experienced, but as she read the coins, she thought she could pick out some clear patterns. Water. A boat. A bargain. Moonlight. Before she could make sense of them, the images began to fall away from her, as if they were being pulled. She focused harder, but every time she thought she saw something, she lost it. Was she falling into another maelstrom?

  No, it wasn’t that. Her mind felt quiet, but it also felt like a sieve.

  And then, so faint and so delicate that she knew she was just imagining it, there was a voice, coming from nowhere and everywhere.

  Left. Go left.

  She started and whipped her head around. There was only stillness beyond the ghost globe’s steady blue glow. The others were staring at her in confusion. They hadn’t heard the voice. She wasn’t even sure she had heard the voice. She wasn’t an expert diviner—she was barely even a novice diviner. Could the future manifest as a whisper? She looked back down at the coins, but she’d lost whatever she’d seen in them. Water and a boat. That didn’t mean anything. Moonlight might mean the way out, but by itself the image was useless. They were still trapped down here. They were still going to die down here, and it was her fault, because she couldn’t read the coins. Not again, not again, not again. Not now, not now, not—Now. Go left. They’re coming.

  She stood up so fast, she felt dizzy. She didn’t know what was happening. She just knew that she couldn’t bear to fail again.

  “We have to go left,” she said. “Hurry. I think the guards are coming.”

  Evander flicked his wrist, and the coins spun into the air and slipped one by one into his pocket. Cassa was eyeing her, not like she didn’t believe her but like she could tell there was more going on in Alys’s head than a simple divination. Before she could say anything, there was a faint, echoing sound. Footsteps.

  “I guess we go left,” Cassa said, sprinting into the tunnel. Newt and Evander went after her, and Alys followed them, driving her nails into her palms, trying to anchor herself to the stinging pain.

  The footsteps weren’t close yet, but they were getting closer. The citadel guards would know the maze well. They had led countless condemned souls through these crypts to meet their fate at the hands of the executioner.

  More wrenching, useless panic. Maybe Vesper had been right to abandon them. Maybe none of this mattered anyway. Maybe the future was already decided, and they were never meant to make it out of here alive.

  The thought was vaguely comforting, and that terrified her.

  TEN

  NEWT

  As they raced breakneck through the passage, Newt did not feel nearly as alarmed as he would have expected. Fear tightened his chest as he struggled to breathe, but it was muted. Alys knew what she was doing. She insisted she was a terrible diviner, but for as long as Newt had known her, Alys had never been truly terrible at anything.

  As if in answer to his optimism, the tunnel widened, ending in an archway carved with the elaborate symbols of a long-forgotten language. Beyond the archway was a vast, empty darkness that the four of them hurtled into without hesitating. The cavern beyond the crypts felt boundless. Cassa held the ghost globe over her head, but the light still didn’t dispel the shadows above. As they walked, rows of stalagmites came into view, gleaming wetly around them. Some were only a couple of feet tall; others were twice as tall as Evander. A strange stone forest interwoven with a natural path. They hadn’t walked for very long when suddenly the cavern opened up, and the light reflected across smooth water.

  It took Newt a few seconds to understand what he was looking at. A lake. He could glimpse only a fraction of it, but it was the most bizarrely beautiful thing that he had ever seen. The clear water glowed blue in the light, so still that it might have been glass. A forgotten enchantment amid the forgotten dead.

  A few seconds later, he realized what else the lake was. A dead end.

  Cassa turned to Alys, but before she could say a word, Alys snapped, “I don’t know. I told you I didn’t want to read the coins.”

  “Did you see this?” Cassa waved a hand toward the lake, which could have extended past the edge of the light a few feet or a few thousand feet.

  “I—maybe. It’s not that simple. It’s not like reading a book.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Evander said to his sister, shooting Cassa a glare that Cassa very pointedly ignored.

  “I’m not saying it’s her fault,” she said. “I’m just trying to figure out what she saw.”

  “I—I thought we were supposed to go left,” Alys said. Her consternation was clear, even with her face half obscured in shadow.

  Newt left them to their discussion and wandered down the edge of the shore. The archway they had just come through hadn’t ended up there by accident. The sh
eer time and effort that must have gone into its architecture felt like a sign that they hadn’t reached the end of the path.

  Behind him, Alys and Cassa’s argument increased in heat and volume while Evander tried in vain to mediate. Without Vesper here to buffer, Alys and Cassa’s relationship was less like a good-natured contest of wills and more like a powder keg. Newt ignored them and looked down. The floor of the cavern was relatively smooth and a dull charcoal gray, except for some odd pale streaks that extended toward the shadowy recesses of the cave wall. Newt toed one of the lines thoughtfully, then returned to the others.

  “Let me have the light,” he said to Cassa, interrupting what was probably going to be a very long diatribe about how she was the one who’d figured out how to get them into the citadel and out of the dungeons, so shouldn’t someone else take a turn?

  Cassa blinked at him but handed him the globe. He headed back toward the scuff marks he’d seen on the ground. They were concentrated in a narrow area from the lake’s edge to the wall.

  “What is it?” Evander’s voice, suddenly close, made Newt jump.

  “It doesn’t make any sense to build an elaborate archway to a lake that can’t be crossed,” he said, pleased at the evenness of his tone. As if escaping ancient tunnels while death closed in behind them was a regular pastime of his. As if being this close to Evander didn’t send his heart into a thundering stampede.

  “I’ll be damned,” Evander said, as the light spilled over wood. A rowboat with two oars stacked inside was tucked beneath a rocky outcropping.

  Newt set the globe into the boat, curled his fingers over the bow, and tugged. It wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but the strain still registered in his shoulders. A dull, familiar ache held the threat of something worse than sore muscles. He ignored it and pulled harder. The boat slid out a few inches, scraping loudly on the stone.

  Beside him, Evander grabbed the edge, and together they dragged it the rest of the way to the shore.