Newt and Alys stood up on either side of him, and the tense muscles in his shoulders relaxed at their silent support.
“Right,” Cassa said, her calculating gaze sweeping across them. She climbed to her feet. “We’ll think about it.”
“I will say this.” Solan’s voice was even and unhurried. “If you go into the city tonight, you’ll discover the truth of all I’ve told you, but once you do, there will be no turning back.”
Evander wanted to demand why he was being so damn cryptic, but he also didn’t want to be here another second. Apparently the others were in agreement. Cassa still had the ghost globe, so she went first, unhesitatingly, into the blackness. Evander let Alys and Newt go ahead of him. Before he could follow, Solan stuck out a hand across his chest, stalling him and fixing him with a somber gaze. His eyes weren’t a real color—not blue or green or brown or gray. Like the rest of him, they were inexplicable.
“I’ve seen something else,” he said softly. “There’s a way to save your parents, but it’s not by giving in to the chancellor’s demands.”
“What’s that supposed to mean? Save my parents from what?” The words had rattled him, but he kept his voice steady.
Solan was still watching him with those strange, keen eyes. He dropped his hand to let Evander pass. He bowed his head.
“Divining is rarely clear and never exact,” he murmured. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to tell you.”
Evander opened his mouth to reply, but Alys was calling for him farther down the tunnel. Once again, they were running out of time. Evander left the warm glow of Solan’s prison and followed the others. He could worry about cryptic prophecies later. The future didn’t matter if they couldn’t make it out of here alive.
FOURTEEN
NEWT
As Solan Tavish had promised, the tunnel led them away from the citadel and into the vaulted caverns beneath Aurelia Valley. From there, Cassa knew the way. Newt had no idea how Cassa could tell where they were exactly, but he trusted her. She knew the Aurelia caverns better than anyone. These clear, rippling pools and strange rock formations, glistening in the light like white cathedrals, were her home away from home.
Newt had never really felt the need to explore the caves. He didn’t like the darkness and the damp air and the tingling certainty that the narrow tunnels were slowly closing in around him. It reminded him too much of the crawl space beneath his father’s house. He felt more at home in the grasslands just over their heads. Aurelia Valley stretched for miles on the eastern edge of Eldra. The land was owned by the high council and had been kept vacant for centuries, as it featured heavily in one of the elder seers’ fifty infallible prophecies.
Newt had never managed to learn all the prophecies, but he liked the valley the way it was. An ocean of swaying grass, brushed purple in the summer with blooming heather. When he was a child, he would creep into the field while his father was away and watch the passing clouds. Those were the days he learned how to hide his passage through the grass, how to lie so still that the rabbits forgot he was there, and how to leave the world exactly how he had found it, as if he had never been there at all. He’d met Evander for the first time on one of those days.
When they were finally free and in the blessed night air, he let himself begin to hope that they might actually make it to safety. As Solan had promised, there was still no sign of the guards pursuing them. Newt knew better than to hope this would last though.
Once they were aboveground, they took a few precious moments to breathe, sheltered by the massive boulders that broke the earth around the cavern entrance. Newt sat on a flat slab of stone and tried to examine the state of his bare feet in the mingled glow of the moon and the ghost globe. The thin trousers they had given him were too long, and the hems were nearly shredded. He couldn’t tell if the wetness on his soles was mud or blood. Thanks to the night’s escapades, his joints had begun to wobble with a familiar ache. The guards who arrested them had stripped him of the adhesive bandages he used to brace his knees, wrists, and ankles.
“You okay?” Evander dropped down next to him on the slab, stretching out his long legs. His trousers were a little too short.
“I’ll live,” Newt said, then bit his lip. The joke seemed in poor taste at the moment.
Evander just nodded absently and yawned. If they rested here any longer, he’d probably flop down and go straight to sleep—an uncanny ability of his that Newt had never understood. Carefully, Newt rolled both his aching ankles, trying to decide how much further he could push himself. Evander was side-eyeing him as he massaged his wrists. The others had noticed, of course, that he usually bandaged his joints. They probably thought it was precautionary, since he tended to be the one scaling walls and wriggling into tight places. He’d never told them about the alarming frequency of sprains when he didn’t use the braces, that while he could bend his body in fantastic fashion, it came at a price. He’d never told them that one day he might finally break, irrevocably, and that this thought haunted his nightmares.
“Where do we go from here?” Alys asked, her voice heavy with exhaustion. She hadn’t said much since they’d left Solan, since she’d admitted it was Solan and not her divination that had led them down the other tunnel. As unsettling as the idea was, Newt couldn’t really blame her. He had barely a layman’s knowledge of what divination entailed, and in her place, if a mysterious voice had started giving him advice, he had a feeling he probably would have listened too. Neither she nor Evander talked much about the night their parents were branded as traitors, but Newt knew that she blamed herself for not seeing it coming.
“The forest might be a good place to hide,” Newt said, when no one else replied. He glanced south, toward the sprawling silhouette of Eldrin Wood in the distance. “I know it pretty well.”
“Maybe,” Cassa said, but she was staring west, where Eldra’s walls abutted the night sky. “We might stand a better chance in the city. They won’t expect us to go back.”
“Please tell me you’re not serious.” Alys glared at Cassa from where she was slumped on the ground, her back against a boulder. Cassa paced between them but didn’t say more.
“You think Solan was telling the truth,” Evander said flatly.
“I don’t know if he was or not.” Cassa didn’t quite meet his eyes. “But he said in the city we’d find the truth.”
“He also said there would be no turning back.”
“And why should we?” Cassa demanded, whirling to face them. “We broke into the citadel to find out why people were getting sick and disappearing, and now that we have an answer, you want to run? You want to let the council get away with it?”
“Solan is the one stealing the memories.” Alys climbed to her feet, wincing with the effort. “He said so himself.”
“Because the council is forcing him.”
“So he says.”
“At least in the city there’s a chance we can know for sure.”
“There’s a bigger chance we’ll be arrested and executed,” Evander said. “I doubt your half-assed escape plan would work a second time.”
“It was my escape plan,” Alys muttered.
“Cassa is right,” Newt said. He was caught off guard by his own conviction. “If we run now, we can never stop running. Everything we did will be for nothing.”
For the second time tonight, they were all staring at him with mild shock. Cassa most of all. He and Cassa had never been close. It was difficult for them to find common ground, when her parents had been two of the most famous heroes of the rebellion and his father one of the most infamous traitors.
“Exactly.” Cassa couldn’t disguise the wariness in her voice, as if she suspected this might be some sort of trap.
“Do you really think this is a good idea?” Evander tilted his head toward Newt. The light from the ghost globe flecked his dark eyes with silver.
“I think it’s a terrible idea,” Newt said, ignoring the erratic rhythm of his heart, “bu
t I don’t want to spend the rest of my life on the run. I’d rather stay and fight.”
Evander’s eyebrows twitched, and he searched Newt’s face for a few, interminable seconds. Then he shrugged.
“Fine.” He stood and stretched his arms over his head, suppressing another yawn. “Let’s go back to the city.”
Alys made a few more protests in the name of logic, but they were half-hearted. She was outnumbered, and she followed them without further complaint as they started the long walk across the valley to the Merchants’ Bridge. The six beacon lights burning on its spires were like stars against the black sky. To avoid drawing unnecessary attention, they had to leave the ghost globe behind, hidden inside the cave mouth.
No one spoke as they crept across the broad, cobblestone bridge toward the city gates. During the day, Merchants’ Bridge was pure chaos, with people entering and leaving the city and bargaining with the vendors who set up shop along its full length. At this late hour, the only signs of movement were the canvas flaps of market stalls stirring in the breeze. Newt knew of several ways to get into the city without using a gate, but he doubted the others would be as comfortable as he was scaling stone walls or worming through drainage pipes barely three feet in diameter. The bridge was much faster anyway. The sooner they could disappear into the anonymity of Eldra, the better.
When they neared the front gate, a man with a lantern came out of the guardhouse, yawning loudly. Without a word, Evander flicked three coins into the air, and their descent, while too slow to be natural, was just slow enough for the guard to catch on and extend his palm. He examined the silver in the light of his lantern and then unbarred the door. He went back into the guardhouse without giving them a second glance.
“We have to stay in the lower ward until morning,” Cassa said. “We can’t risk more guards seeing our faces.”
“You’re the one who insisted we come here,” Alys said. “Where do you suggest we go?”
“I got us this far,” Cassa said, throwing out her arms in exasperation. “Isn’t it someone else’s turn?”
Alys began to rub her temples but didn’t argue further. She must really be exhausted, Newt thought. Of course she was. They all were. It felt strange, standing in the city where they had all been born and raised and having nowhere to go. The council had all their papers. They would know that Alys and Evander lived with their parents above their apothecary shop, only a five-minute walk from the main gate. They would know that Newt lived with his father in the third ward, as near to the citadel as anyone could without having been born into wealth and favor. They would know that Cassa didn’t have a real home, not since her parents had been killed and their house seized as property of the council.
“I know where we can go,” Newt said. “At least for the night.”
No one had the strength to even ask him where. Newt led the way west along the thoroughfare. The stalls for the meat vendors and beer sellers were shuttered tightly, and the only sounds were the scratching of stray animals and occasional raucous laughter from taverns. The lower ward was short on refinement and proper sewer drainage, but there had always been plenty of taverns.
A figure in the street ahead made Newt’s heart skip a few beats, until he realized it was just a statue. The woman, cast in copper and just a little larger than life, was depicted in a flowing ceremonial robe, her hair twisted at the nape of her neck. In the moonlight it was hard to make out details, but Newt knew the statue had taken on a greenish hue over the years and that the woman’s eyes were shut. The elder seers were always shown with closed eyes, to represent their prophetic dreams.
As they passed, he caught a glimpse of the inscription in the base of the statue. In the year of the storm, the grassland tribes will prevail. The first of the fifty infallible prophecies. Almost a hundred years ago, in the same year that a hurricane devastated the southern coast, the horsemen who ruled the grasslands of a distant northern country claimed victory after years of bitter conflict with a neighboring kingdom. Newt didn’t even know the name of the kingdom or the tribes. They were too far away to have any real effect on Teruvia. The fifty infallible prophecies weren’t important because they impacted the country or even the citadel—most of them didn’t. They were important because all of them had come to pass, specific enough to be indisputable proof of the elder seers’ ancient gifts. Other prophecies were vague and didn’t always come to pass. Circumstances could shift. People could change their minds. Infallible prophecies were different. They were clear and detailed, and they always happened exactly as the seer predicted. A seer with an infallible prophecy had absolute knowledge of the absolute future.
The citadel’s power in Teruvia had been rooted in those prophecies for centuries. Though Teruvia’s capital city was much farther south, the high council ruled Eldra with almost complete autonomy, free to nurture the gifts of the remaining seers. The statues had been gifted to the city by the king himself, several hundred years ago. The statues were scattered throughout the city and within the walls of the citadel in the city’s heart. One for every infallible prophecy. Of course, that show of the king’s favor had been before the seer bloodline began to weaken, before the last infallible prophecy passed and the citadel lost all relevance to the rest of Teruvia. In some ways, it was comforting to know that the current queen didn’t care what happened in the secluded city in the northern reaches of her domain. It meant that if the council was ever overthrown, there might not be an army of royal soldiers sent to help them.
Solan had told them he’d seen the council’s downfall in an infallible prophecy. He’d said they were the ones responsible for it. Newt had been very careful not to think too hard about the night’s events, careful not to let hope creep in where there was none, but the thought of their destiny being assured—everything they’d worked toward for years—was tantalizing. He couldn’t blame Cassa for the glimmer of excitement in her eyes when Solan had laid out their part.
Past the statue, they took a street headed north that narrowed as the shops became actual brick buildings, stacked so tall that when Newt tilted his head back, he felt certain they were leaning inward, just a strong breeze away from crushing them all. The sliver of sky between the eaves was coal black, studded with stars behind thin wisps of clouds.
Newt turned into a winding alley between buildings, which felt more incidental than planned. His father had moved them to the comfort of the third ward a long time ago, after he’d struck his treacherous deal with the council, but Newt still knew the lower ward like the back of his hand. This was where the rebellion had sparked a hundred years ago, and it was here that Cassa kept the embers burning for the rest of them.
Newt’s feet were so cold and sore that he barely felt the cobblestones and the murky puddles of what he hoped was rainwater. They were in the last days of winter, and the warmth of spring had only barely begun to take hold. He pushed aside some rotting crates stacked against the rear of a brick building, revealing a small wooden door.
“It’s the basement of the carpenter’s shop,” he explained as he yanked the door open on protesting hinges. “He knows my father. He lets me sleep here sometimes when I’m too late coming back into the city.”
“Oh, good,” said Evander. “I was hoping we’d get to spend more time belowground tonight.”
“I’m sorry.” Newt felt his cheeks flush, and he rubbed the back of his head.
“Don’t apologize to him.” Alys gave Evander a light shove toward the doorway.
“I was just kidding,” Evander protested as he stooped to enter.
Alys and Cassa followed, but Newt waited a little longer, casting a few final glances down the alleyway, searching for prying eyes. Everything was still and quiet. Maybe they could finally have some peace.
FIFTEEN
EVANDER
The carpenter’s basement was dry and cool and pitch-black, and for a few heart-stuttering moments Evander was back in the dungeons, iron on his wrists, reminding himself that he wasn’t afra
id of the dark. Not really.
There was the scrape of a match, then the features of the basement leapt into sharp relief, bathed in a golden glow. The space was cramped with various half-finished pieces of furniture and stacks of wood. Newt fiddled with the lantern for a few seconds, then left it hanging by the steps that led up to the shop. He glanced over his shoulder at Evander, the light glinting on his sweat-damp curls, in the blue of his eyes.
Alys and Cassa came down the steps behind him, and Evander flopped onto the uneven wood floor, lying on his back with his arms under his head. Newt was dragging a cot from a corner.
“This is what I sleep on when I’m here,” he said. “Sorry, there aren’t any blankets.”
Cassa had already dropped onto her stomach beside Evander, burying her face in the crook of her elbow. Newt gestured wordlessly to Alys, who took the cot without argument. She wasn’t one to be polite for form’s sake. Evander eyed her when he was certain she wasn’t looking. Other than her obvious exhaustion, she seemed fine. Hands loose, face lax. None of the telltale signs of a panic attack.
She’d been experiencing the episodes since they were kids, triggered by moments of high stress or sometimes by things that Evander couldn’t understand. He’d learned to recognize the onset of what Alys called her “maelstroms,” even though he wasn’t always sure how to help.
“You don’t need to help,” Alys had told him once. “Just be there.”
It still didn’t feel like enough, but he tried.
Once they were settled, Newt retrieved the lantern from the wall and doused it. Evander blinked against the sudden darkness, listening to the small, comforting noises of his friends and his sister. The cot creaked and shifted as Alys tried to get comfortable. Cassa’s breaths had already evened. It felt strange being this close to her but decidedly apart. They had broken off their romance six months ago. It had been a mutual decision and very amicable, but you don’t just forget almost a year of your life being so closely intertwined with another person’s.
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