Beneath the Citadel

by Destiny Soria

  Her head had started to spin lazily, and she drove her fingernails into her palms until she was back in her parents’ kitchen, standing face-to-face with the high chancellor. Her thoughts stilled, and the maelstrom was quiet, for now.

  “That’s a pity,” said Evander. “We were hoping to be fashionably late, but what can you do.”

  He shrugged and slumped into the empty chair beside their father. Arms crossed, features arranged into an expression of vague boredom, he was the picture of nonchalance. Alys wondered if there was any way the chancellor would be fooled. She certainly wasn’t, but she could read her brother like a book.

  Alys didn’t have any witticisms. She sat down in the chair opposite her brother, careful to keep her chin high and her hands hidden from sight. They had begun to tremble.

  Lenore waited in the doorway, eyeing them with frowning concern. Her mother had never been one for fluttering nerves or anxious energy. Chancellor Dane gestured wordlessly to the seat he had just vacated, and she took it without looking at him.

  “You have a beautiful family,” said Dane, though it wasn’t clear to whom he was speaking. He remained standing at the corner of the table, between Lenore and Evander.

  Alys waited for a threat to follow, but none did.

  “I don’t personally enjoy the cloak-and-dagger act, but it was unfortunately necessary in this case,” he went on, interlacing his fingers over his stomach. “The council will have your children back in custody soon, so I took it upon myself to intercept them first.”

  He was looking between her and Evander now. She was more confused by his expression than anything. Impossibly earnest. His words didn’t make much sense either. None of this did. Why weren’t they being dragged away in chains?

  “I need your help,” said the high chancellor to Alys and Evander. “You and your friends.”

  Alys blinked at him. She looked at Evander, but he was staring at the chancellor, mouth slightly open. Her mother’s lips were pursed, her gaze locked on the tabletop. Her father had dropped his head into his hands.

  “What do you mean?” Alys asked finally. Beneath the table, she gripped handfuls of her skirt in her fists, willing herself to stay calm, to stay present.

  “I’m afraid it’s difficult to explain,” he said, hesitating. “Perhaps it’s best if you fetch your friends first.”

  A spark of hope. Alys met Evander’s eyes across the table, sensing he was thinking the same thing.

  “Maybe you should fetch them yourself,” Evander said. “Unless you don’t know where they are?”

  The chancellor’s lips twitched in a small, sad smile.

  “My niece told me you were a clever lot,” he said. “I suppose I can’t complain. That’s what I’m counting on.”

  Alys had a hundred questions suddenly, but she bit them back. Evander leaned forward in his chair. “We aren’t going to help you,” he said. “We’d rather die.”

  Alys felt a surge of panic at his words, but she was careful to school her features. There were things that had to be said, in moments like these. Her father made a strangled noise and lifted his head. Her mother stiffened.

  “For seers’ sake, son,” pleaded Edric. “Just listen to the man.”

  The chancellor raised his hand gently. “It’s all right,” he said. “I understand this is all very . . . unorthodox.”

  “That’s one word for it,” Evander muttered.

  “Your friends are in the basement of the carpenter’s shop on Wellis Lane,” said the chancellor. His tone was mild. A tone for pleasantries and casual observations about the weather.

  Alys’s heart plummeted. Evander’s eyes flickered toward hers, but she didn’t have any reassurance to give.

  “The rebellion is over,” the chancellor said. “You aren’t firebrands; you’re just children playing with fire. You can all go to your deaths—a wasteful end to your wasted lives—or you can listen to my proposition.”

  It occurred to Alys that the chancellor might already know what their answer would be. With talented enough diviners at his disposal, he could know the most likely course of the entire night. He could have known how they were going to escape before they did. Which, of course, begged the question: Why did he let them?

  “We’ll listen to what you have to say,” Alys said. “That’s all.”

  “But we reserve the right to die wastefully,” Evander added.

  Cassa would have appreciated the remark, but to Alys the levity felt hollow rather than brave. What good was posturing when they were at a perpetual disadvantage? What was the point of everything they had done if their fates were already foretold?

  SEVENTEEN

  CASSA

  The high chancellor didn’t look evil enough to be the villain that Cassa knew he was. He looked like someone’s grandfather. He insisted on helping Lenore with the tea and spread of cold meats, cheese, and apples she was laying out on the table. When Evander had come to fetch her and Newt, Cassa had been certain that the chancellor’s tale about needing their help was just a way to lure them into a trap, but the guards stayed peculiarly unobtrusive as she and the others devoured the food and two pots of tea. She kept one eye on the chancellor though. He was sitting in an extra chair someone had brought in, hands folded in his lap. Occasionally he would check his pocket watch and nod to himself.

  As she finished her third cup of tea, Cassa couldn’t tell if the uneasiness in the pit of her stomach was dread or indigestion. Possibly both.

  Once all the food was gone, Chancellor Dane quietly asked Lenore and Edric to give them a few moments of privacy. They obeyed, but with the citadel guards hovering in the doorway, they didn’t really have a choice.

  Dane checked his watch again, then stood. He paced slowly, ponderously, from one end of the kitchen to the other. His gaze flickered around the table, considering each of the teens in turn. Cassa felt hemmed in, trapped. It made her blood surge hot in her veins.

  When the chancellor finally spoke, his voice was measured and careful.

  “Before we go any further, I need to know how you made it out of the crypts.”

  “Easily,” Cassa said.

  The chancellor frowned faintly at her, unamused, though not nearly as irritated as Cassa would have liked.

  “We followed the arrows,” Evander said, shrugging away the glare Cassa shot him. “If you wanted a difficult maze, maybe don’t mark the way out.”

  “The arrows only lead halfway,” said Dane. “How did you navigate the rest of the tunnels?” There was something shrewd in his gaze, like he was fishing for an answer to a question he wasn’t asking.

  Cassa caught Evander’s eye across the table and saw that he was intuiting the same thing. The chancellor was less concerned with how they escaped the crypts and more concerned with whom they might have met while down there. She glanced at the others, willing them to stay silent about their not-so-chance encounter in the caverns. Newt was staring into his teacup, lips pursed tightly. Alys was watching Dane closely, as if she could unpack all his secrets.

  “I used Evander’s coins to divine,” Alys said. “That’s how we knew the way.”

  The chancellor stopped his pacing to consider her answer. Cassa’s breath caught in her throat, but Alys was unflinching under Dane’s scrutiny. Finally he nodded and clasped his hands behind his back.

  “Here is the deal I am willing to make. Your lives in exchange for one task.” He took a long breath, as if the offer was a physical strain. “There is a monster beneath the citadel. I need you to kill it.”

  Cassa’s hands twitched, and she dropped them into her lap. If you go into the city tonight, you’ll discover the truth of all I’ve told you. Was this what Solan meant? Was this what he had foreseen?

  “What are you talking about?” she managed.

  “Just what I said.” The chancellor resumed his pacing. “The monster has been imprisoned in the crypts beneath the citadel for a long time. The council has reason to keep him—it—alive, but I know that if
we don’t act soon, then Eldra will suffer dearly for it. More than it already has.”

  He clamped his lips tightly over the last words, as if he’d said more than he intended. Cassa wasn’t sure anyone else noticed. She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but Alys spoke suddenly.

  “You’re talking about the executioner.”

  Cassa bit her lip, but the chancellor just nodded. The existence of the executioner wasn’t exactly a secret after all.

  A chill danced along Cassa’s spine. The truth. Could Solan have possibly been telling the truth? Could the council’s demise really be within their grasp?

  “You want us to kill him?” Evander asked, his brow furrowed slightly.

  The chancellor nodded again but, infuriatingly, he did not offer further explanation.

  “Why us?” Newt’s gaze moved tentatively to the chancellor.

  “The last prisoner to escape the dungeons also used the tunnels,” Dane said. “It was before my time. They found his wasted body three weeks later in the depths of the caverns. The poor wretch had gotten lost.”

  “So you need our excellent sense of direction?” Cassa asked dryly.

  “I need people who succeed where others fail.” He’d crossed his arms, bony fingers tapping on his sleeve. “There are more dangers than getting lost in those crypts.”

  The simple way he said it, not like he wanted to scare them but as if he was stating a fact, made Cassa wonder whether Chancellor Dane had ever been below the citadel or if he’d just been told secrets of the crypts. It was strange to imagine him down there in that world of shadows and sweating stone. He might scuff his perfectly polished shoes.

  “If he’s so dangerous, why has the council kept him alive?” Cassa asked.

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” Dane said. He eyed them for a moment, then checked his watch and nodded again. “I’ll give you the short version. A long time ago, before I was even born, there was a man of noble birth named Solan Tavish. A rook and an alchemist, and very skilled at both. He was also a member of the council, until they discovered that he was stealing memories. He had grown so powerful that he didn’t even have to touch a person to take their memories. Just being in the same room with them was enough. The council sought to punish him for his transgressions, but because he hadn’t killed anyone, they spared his life—perhaps to their detriment. He was imprisoned in the catacombs, there to suffer the burden of the death rites for the rest of his days.”

  It was mostly the same story that Solan had told, minus the fact that he was also a seer and plus the claim that he had been an alchemist and a member of the council. If all of it was true, then Solan Tavish had been a very busy man. It took a moment for the most salient detail of the chancellor’s story to sink in. Alys was the first one to notice, of course.

  “I don’t understand,” Alys said. “If he was on the council before you were born, then how is he possibly still alive today?”

  If the chancellor recognized the insinuation about his advanced years, he didn’t show it.

  “I told you he was a skilled alchemist,” he said. “Before he was caught stealing memories, he did some sort of experiment on himself. He achieved something . . . impossible.”

  “Are you trying to say he uncovered the secret to eternal life?” Alys asked, skepticism bleeding through her tone.

  “No man can judge eternity,” he said lightly. “But I have laid eyes on him myself, and though he does not eat, does not drink, and has not seen the sun in nearly two hundred years, he is still very much living.”

  The room fell silent. Cassa could hear the restless thrumming of Evander’s fingers on the table and the creaking leather of the guard’s holster as he shifted in the doorway.

  “You called him a monster,” Newt said at last, his voice quiet but not faint.

  “The years have warped him,” said Dane. “He is no longer a man. It is his duty to devour the sins of the condemned, to send them pure to their deaths while he carries their entire existence inside of him. How could that not drive a person out of their humanity?”

  Cassa checked her breathing. She couldn’t help but remember the way that Solan’s features had shifted perpetually between young and old. The sense of dread that suffused the air beneath the citadel. She didn’t trust the chancellor, but she couldn’t help but think he was right about Solan Tavish no longer being entirely human.

  “So you’ve created a monster, and now you want us to slay it for you?” she asked. Her pulse drummed in her ears.

  The chancellor looked at her but said nothing.

  “How’s he supposed to be dangerous?” Evander asked. “He’s been down there this long without anyone being the wiser.”

  “He’s growing stronger,” Dane said. He averted his gaze. “I think it’s the influx of memories he’s been fed in the past decade.”

  Cassa’s heart began to pound more vigorously. He was talking about all the rebels who had been executed. All those lives. An influx.

  “You didn’t really answer the question,” Alys said, pushing a strand of hair behind her ear. Cassa caught sight of the red indents in her palm where her nails had been digging in. “Why are you so desperate to kill him now, after so many years?”

  The chancellor sighed, a slow, sad sound.

  “Solan is stealing people’s memories again—all their memories. So far, it seems he can only reach the citadel, but there have been three victims in the past week alone. Every moment we delay, people are at risk.”

  Cassa’s breath caught in her throat. Finally, an admission, and with it, a kind of vindication. She’d been right to lead the others into the citadel. She’d been right to think the council was hiding something deadly.

  “So the rumors are true,” Cassa said, “and the council hasn’t done anything to stop him.”

  “The council needs the executioner,” Dane said. “They’ll do anything to make sure no one finds out. That’s why I need you.”

  “Why do they need him so badly?” Evander asked. “Any rook could do the death rites.” His voice was mild, but Cassa could see the contempt darkening his eyes. That same contempt was unfurling in her chest, thorny and creeping.

  Dane’s lips wavered as if he couldn’t decide on the right words. Cassa was almost amused at how carefully he was shaping his story, with no idea that they already knew everything he wasn’t telling them. The council didn’t need a rook under their control as badly as they needed a seer. Solan’s ability to assassinate their enemies with only his mind was just an added bonus to the prophecies he fed them.

  “It doesn’t matter why,” the chancellor said finally. “What matters is that we stop him.”

  “Sorry, I’m confused about where the ‘we’ comes into this.” Evander glared up at the chancellor. The only movement about him was his right pointer finger, which tapped a steady, driving rhythm on the tabletop.

  “You’d all be dead by now if it weren’t for me,” said Dane. The control in his tone never wavered, but Cassa suspected they’d finally rattled him.

  “Your backstabbing niece is the only reason we were caught in the first place,” she said.

  He flinched at that, and she smiled tightly. Dane stared at her for a few seconds, his keen eyes unreadable. He didn’t disagree.

  “For a century, the rebels tried to bring down the council,” he said softly. “For a century, they claimed to fight for Eldra, for its people. If you truly want to follow in their footsteps, then protect the city now. The executioner will only get stronger, and his reach will only grow.”

  Something inside her stirred at his words, but she tamped it down. He wasn’t offering them a chance to save the city, a chance to make all these years of struggle mean something. He wasn’t offering them a choice at all. They were pawns to be sacrificed in whatever power game he was playing with the council.

  “You can save the inspirational speeches,” she told him. “You aren’t fooling anyone.”

  The chancellor met her eyes
. She wondered if he could feel the hate dripping off her, viscous and acidic. If he could, it didn’t show in his calm features.

  “How do you expect us to kill him anyway,” Newt asked, “if he really is immortal?”

  The chancellor retrieved something from inside his jacket and set it on the table. A vial of liquid, black as ink but glimmering with strange iridescence. “It took my alchemists a year to make this poison. It’s all we have, but they think it’s strong enough to kill him.”

  “Are we supposed to just . . . ask him if he’d like a nice poisoned cup of tea?” Evander asked, bewildered.

  “Frankly, for a master plan this sounds a little weak,” Cassa said.

  “You’ll enter the caverns through the valley and retrace your steps to the fork in the tunnels where the arrows ended. Take the other route, and you’ll find a lake and a boat. Solan lives on the other side.”

  “Does he observe teatime?” Cassa asked. She tried to reconstruct a map of the crypts in her head. The way Dane was talking, there was another way out of the caverns—one they would have found if they’d gone right instead of left. One that led straight to freedom instead of into the lair of a man who may or may not also be a monster. She considered being annoyed at Alys again but found that she couldn’t. Solan’s words were a spark in her heart. He had been waiting for them. He had seen the council’s downfall.

  Chancellor Dane went on as if she hadn’t spoken.

  “Because of all the memories he’s consumed over the decades, he has to drink an elixir of mirasma every four hours. If you leave tomorrow, you can reach him before he receives the dose at the fifth evening bell.”

  “Wouldn’t it be easier to poison the elixir before it’s given to him?” Evander asked with an earnestness that made Cassa’s stomach clench. Surely he wasn’t actually considering going along with Dane’s scheme.

  “I’ve tried.” The chancellor shook his head. “The council’s alchemists formulate the mirasma just before each dose, and then it’s guarded closely until the moment it’s lowered into the cavern. The council chooses their lackeys well. They can’t be bribed or threatened. This is the only way to succeed without the council knowing I’m involved.”