“I’m not sure we get a say in what the bards sing about us,” Alys said, keeping her tone dry. She wasn’t in the mood to be contrary, but Cassa needed the challenge to keep her jest going. Alys could be calculating too, although she was fairly certain Cassa had never learned to appreciate that.
“We’ll get a whole tavern drunk one night and spread the rumor,” Cassa said, turning in her seat to face them. “The legendary tale of the firebrands who felled three citadel guards without ever touching them.”
“You have to start earlier than that for it to be a proper tale,” Evander said. “With the seers foretelling our births.”
“Under auspicious stars,” Newt added. “There are always auspicious stars in those old songs.”
“We don’t need seers in our song,” Cassa insisted. “Only the four of us, making our own way. That’s what we’ll be remembered for.”
Alys opened her mouth with a sarcastic comment about how well their own way was working out for them so far, but then she saw the look in Cassa’s eye, in Newt’s and Evander’s, and she stayed silent. There were certain things that needed to be said—believed—while they rowed ever closer to the distant shore where the unknown awaited them. And certain things that didn’t.
They weren’t really firebrands. At least not anymore. But she couldn’t help but feel sometimes that the weight of all those who had come before them was resting on their shoulders. The rebellion had started nearly a century earlier, so long ago that the first rebels were already immortalized in legend. It wasn’t a glorious start to a glorious revolution though. The rebellion had been birthed in blood and flames.
There had been unrest about the council’s rule for a long time leading up to that grisly night. Bitterness had been brewing in the lower wards for years as the council trotted out prophecy after prophecy that only ever seemed to benefit the city’s elite. When there was a food shortage predicted in the vague future, it was the farmers who had to give up a percentage of their crops to be stored in the upper echelon. When a seer dreamed that the river was rising, the walls to the higher wards were shored up and the gates locked tight, leaving everyone else to fend for themselves. Whenever anyone spoke out against one of the councilors or accused them of a crime, their sentients would somehow never find any evidence to support the claims.
Those injustices were only the tinder. The spark came when the council received a new prophecy, one that painted a disturbing image of an uprising in the lower ward. The council didn’t investigate, didn’t send guards to question citizens or search for stockpiled weapons. Why should they? The seers were almost never wrong.
Half the lower ward was devoured in flames before the night was over. Hundreds of innocent citizens were murdered by citadel guards in the streets, in the taverns, in their beds. The council sought to stop a brutal uprising, but unwittingly they started a rebellion that would burn for generations.
The firebrands were all dead now. Four years ago, their last stand had been crushed by the citadel. But Cassa had never given up, and though Alys wasn’t convinced that any of this was their responsibility, she hadn’t given up either. She wasn’t much of a rebel, but the council had taken everything from her family for no reason other than her parents’ compassion. She’d spent years helping her family get back what they had lost, and now she wanted them to have justice.
The four of them might not be remembered in story and song, but maybe there was still something they could do to honor all that sacrifice.
They reached the shore after a few more minutes of silent rowing. This side of the lake didn’t seem very different from the other, from what she could see. Intricate rock formations reaching from the ground and stretching from the ceiling, gleaming with the moisture that had shaped them so elegantly over centuries. There was a path of sorts, leading away from the lake. The ceiling and the walls grew closer as they walked, until they were once again in a tunnel. Alys stayed by Evander as Cassa forged ahead, holding up the globe as if light was all she needed to protect them. Newt trailed behind, quiet as usual.
“I shouldn’t have read the coins,” she said quietly. “What if we’re going the wrong way?”
Evander glanced at her, his eyes unreadable in the dim light.
“Well, think about it this way,” he said. “Even if we all die a slow, miserable death down here, you’ll at least have the satisfaction of blaming it on Cassa. It’s her fault after all.”
“I heard that,” Cassa called over her shoulder, though she didn’t slow down.
Evander flashed a grin at Alys, but she didn’t find it funny. Didn’t see how he could either. There were certain things about her brother that she’d probably never understand.
“Do you really think we’re going to die down here?” She hadn’t intended to ask it so bluntly, but the question had been building inside of her since the citadel door had first shut behind them.
Evander hesitated, the smile drifting from his face as effortlessly as it had come. And because there were certain things about her brother that Alys understood very well, she knew what he was going to say next.
“Truth or lie?” he asked.
The old game. An answer in itself. Alys barely knew what she wanted.
“Lie,” she said at last. What good would the truth do, when it was too late to turn back?
“I think we’re going to come through this just fine,” he said, the smile curling tentatively at his lips again, “with some exciting stories to tell and a few moral lessons about life and friendship and the virtues of rowboats.”
It wasn’t much of a comfort after all, but Alys accepted it anyway. She would take what she could get, down here.
When the tunnel finally opened into a new cavern, Alys wasn’t prepared for the sight before them. Even Cassa stopped dead in her tracks. There was too much to take in all at once. Fires burned in large bowls set atop white pillars, spaced at regular intervals so that the whole cavern—easily as vast as three Great Halls together—was warm and bright. Raised pathways ran in intricate, almost mazelike patterns, above narrow channels of darkly glimmering water. Along the walls of the cavern were giant statues, carved so that they appeared to be emerging from the stone. Men and women, all with serene visages, all depicted with their eyes closed. The elder seers.
Cassa had already stepped onto the path, and Alys followed hesitantly. Clearly this direction was leading somewhere—but where? This place felt just as ancient as the crypts, but she’d never heard about it before.
“Why would these fires be lit?” Newt asked.
No one had an answer. Alys stared at the dancing flames, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the voice in her head when she had been reading the coins, so faint and insistent. She hadn’t told the others yet. She wasn’t sure how to explain it. She also didn’t know how to explain the twisting, growing certainty that somehow, they were expected.
TWELVE
CASSA
Cassa was scared. It wasn’t an overwhelming fear, but it was palpable. A weight on her chest, a sick taste in the back of her throat. She tightened her grip on the pistol. There was something wrong with this place. She’d grown up exploring the cave system beneath Aurelia Valley. To her, the world of twisting stone passages, glistening rock formations, and mirror-still pools of water was home. But the deeper they went, the more convinced Cassa was that this wasn’t the world she knew so well. There was something darker here. Something waiting.
Cassa gripped the ghost globe tighter and reminded herself that she wasn’t superstitious and there wasn’t anything dangerous or powerful about the crypts that held the elder seers, whose vivid dreams of the future had carved the city of Eldra’s place in history. That was hundreds upon hundreds of years ago. The crypts held nothing but bones and dust now. These days, true seers were few and far between, guarded jealously by the council. Diviners like Alys were a little more common, the power in their blood weakened through generations until they could read only the near future.
&nbs
p; Cassa had seen the confusion in Alys’s face as she studied the coins, the hesitation when she said they had to go left. Cassa had always assumed that, like most things, Alys was better at divining than she thought. Now she wasn’t so sure. When Vesper had told her about the way out of the crypts, she hadn’t mentioned a lake or this chamber of statues and flame. Then again, there were obviously a lot of things Vesper hadn’t bothered to mention. Like how instead of helping them infiltrate the citadel she was going to warn the council about their plan. Like how after seven years of friendship, after seven years of fighting back, she was willing to just give them up, to let them die down here in the dark.
Cassa pushed away the gnawing, helpless anger that accompanied all thoughts of Vesper. Now wasn’t the time for helplessness. She’d gotten her friends into this, and it was her job to get them out.
They left behind the seers’ chamber and filed into a narrow passage less perfectly hewn than the others. She was just starting to think that maybe they were going to find a dead end after all when ahead she saw a faint but unmistakable golden light.
“Daylight?” Newt asked from behind her, though he didn’t sound particularly hopeful.
“It’s still the middle of the night,” Cassa said. She stared hard at the distant light, but it was stationary, not bobbing like a lantern. They had to be at least a mile underground. The only light that should be down here was their own. This place was all wrong. She glanced back at Alys, whose tight-lipped expression didn’t inspire much confidence that she’d seen any of this in her divination.
Cassa opened her mouth to ask her again exactly what she’d seen, but Evander, as usual, guessed what she was about to say and preempted her.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It’s not like we can go back now.”
If it was something that was going to kill them, something that was responsible for the instinctual dread that had gripped her since they’d gone left, then it most certainly did matter. But Cassa didn’t feel like arguing, and she didn’t feel like running anymore. She kind of felt like shooting something.
“I guess you’re right,” she said, and she forged ahead with Evander hard on her heels.
As she neared, the light resolved itself into a narrow rectangle, almost like a doorway. Fear still burned in the pit of her stomach, but that had never stopped her before. She stepped into the light, pistol leveled, blinking away involuntary tears as her eyes adjusted.
They were standing in a bizarre sanctuary of civilization. A cavern a little larger than a sitting parlor had been painstakingly decorated to look like one. She couldn’t make sense of anything she was seeing. There were two matching armchairs, a sofa, and a fainting couch with elaborately carved wooden legs and hideously florid patterns that had been in fashion decades ago. A brass cart with glass panes held a silver tea service. Ghost globes were strung along the rock formations at the edges of the room, but instead of blue, the swirl of light in them was brightly golden, like a fire in a hearth.
“You can shoot me if you like, but I fear it won’t do any good.” The voice, silk and honey, snapped her out of her reverie. When she saw the man standing in the center of the room, it was like she was seeing him for the first time, but surely he had been standing there all along. His appearance immediately sharpened her dread into a razor’s edge. There was nothing frightening about him, but there wasn’t anything firm about him either. He was an old man with gray hair and a gray beard, his eyes deep-set in wrinkles, but then he also looked young, as young as any of them, with round, waifish eyes and shaggy hair. He wasn’t changing exactly; he just wasn’t staying the same.
Cassa’s head had started to hurt. She didn’t lower the pistol.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t make it,” the man said, his hands raised in innocent surrender. He wore robes that resembled the ceremonial garb of the council, but his were much simpler and threadbare. As he spoke, he glanced briefly over Cassa’s shoulder before meeting her eyes again.
Cassa tried to say something, but no words would come. A rare, uncomfortable phenomenon.
“Sorry to disturb you,” Evander said with an impossibly casual air. He had stepped up beside her. “We’re a bit lost. If you’d be kind enough to point us in the direction of the nearest exit, we’ll be on our way.”
The man might have smiled, but it was hard to tell with his wavering features.
“I’ve known for a while that you would be coming.” He held out a hand. Cupped in his palm were what looked like tiny white stones, all different shapes and marked with black symbols. “I saw it in the runes.”
Bone runes, Cassa realized, and shuddered. Another diviner.
“Who are you?” Alys’s voice was strained and thin.
His hands were still lifted, and he frowned in thought, like the question perplexed him.
“My name, when I had one, was Solan Tavish. It doesn’t get much use down here though.” He took a step back and gestured toward the couch and chairs. “Won’t you take a seat? I promise, the guards won’t find you here.”
Cassa stiffened.
“How did you—” But her eyes were drawn again to the runes in his hand. “What else do you know about us?”
This time there was no mistaking the smile on his face. It was a sad smile though. Heartbreakingly so.
“Everything,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you a very long time.”
Cassa just stared at him. The rest of the caverns felt faraway and fading, and the world above hadn’t felt real for a long time. Was that her own mind playing tricks, or was there something in the air down here? Finally, because she couldn’t think of any other options, she moved to sit gingerly in one of the armchairs. It smelled terrible. When she looked a little closer, she saw that the furniture and dishware had not fared well in the dank depths of the cavern. The upholstery was mildewed, the wood rotting, the silver tarnished almost to black. How long had all this been down here?
Alys, Newt, and Evander followed her lead and sat on the sofa, each of their faces drawn tight with caution and uncertainty. The man—Solan—went to the little cart and started to pour the tea. Everything had taken on a surreal tinge. Not long ago they had been running for their lives from the citadel guards. Now a strange man was serving them tea in an underground parlor.
When everyone had a steaming cup, Solan sat down in the armchair beside Cassa. He was so close that she could feel his shifting, unnatural presence. It made her feel seasick. What was wrong with him?
“I’m aware you must have some questions.” He took a sip of tea. No one else did.
“What do you mean, you’ve been waiting for us?” Cassa asked.
“You’re down here for the same reason I am. You want the council to be held accountable for their crimes.”
“Not an answer,” Evander said.
“You broke into the citadel because you knew they were hiding something. You’ve been hearing rumors of a sickness that strikes people suddenly, and within minutes they’ve lost all speech and thought, drained of everything they are until they are merely shells. I can assure you, they aren’t just rumors.”
Cassa’s breath caught in her throat. She’d known the council was somehow responsible, that there had to be some truth to the gossip. Too many people who went inside the citadel walls had never come back out again. That’s how it had been a few years ago, in the final days of the rebellion, when the council was closing in and no one knew whom to trust. One day someone would be there, and the next day they’d be gone without a trace. Cassa’s parents hadn’t been able to stand idly by, and neither could she.
“What do you know?” she asked Solan. The unsettling mystery of this place and this man no longer seemed important. Not when there were finally answers to be had.
“Their memories are being stolen.” He leaned back in his chair, swirling the dark liquid in his cup.
“By who?” Evander asked.
“By me.”
Silence. Cassa had forgotten how truly sile
nt the world below could be, when there were no heaving breaths and racing hearts and pounding feet to fill the void.
“You’re the executioner.” Newt’s voice was quiet, a bare ripple in the stillness.
Solan nodded. Cassa’s fingers tightened instinctively on the pistol, though she left it in her lap. The executioner was something of a legend in the city, shrouded in secrecy and fear. Though she was Teruvian born and raised, Cassa didn’t know much about the Slain God’s religion. It was the oldest in the country but had begun to fall into obscurity just as the elder seers’ bloodline started to fade out. To most citizens nowadays, the death rites were a tradition based more on familiarity than on faith. Her own parents hadn’t subscribed to it at all. She did know that the devouring of memories was meant to be a cleansing of sorts, a final penitence in honor of the Slain God. Not that Cassa believed in that sort of thing.
Traditional rites were a peaceful affair. Supposedly the offering of death rites to prisoners was evidence of the council’s mercy, but to Cassa there was something horrifying about the thought of every part of yourself being ripped away before you were executed, alone in the dark, so far away from everyone you knew and loved. That wasn’t how her parents had died, and sometimes despite the tangle of fury and grief that lived in her heart, she managed to feel grateful for that at least.
“You said you were a diviner,” Alys said. “How can you be the executioner?”
“I am a diviner,” Solan said. “But that’s not all I am.”
“You’re a rook too?” Newt asked. His face was screwed up in confusion.
Cassa had heard of people being born with more than one skill, though it was rare. Diviners were descendants of seers—their ability to read small fortunes and near futures was a trickle-down effect through weakening bloodlines. Rooks were almost as rare as seers and could give and take memories with a touch. Sentients descended from rook bloodlines and were able to read the past—and sometimes thoughts—in people’s faces. It was possible, if someone had rook and seer blood in them, for a person to manifest with more than one skill.
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