Beneath the Citadel

by Destiny Soria

  Evander knelt down beside Alys at Solan’s ankles, while Newt and Cassa each took an arm. Mira picked up the knife, and Evander swallowed down a surge of nausea at the assault of memories. He thought he’d blocked out the entirety of his own bloodbonding, but unwelcome sensations kept flaring in his mind.

  Mira looked among the four of them.

  “After I make the cut, I have to work quickly,” she said. “If you can’t keep him still, the bonding will fail. Understand?”

  They nodded in unison. A strange expression flashed across Mira’s face, and she opened her mouth but shut it again without speaking. Evander couldn’t help but notice that she’d been very purposefully not looking at Solan. Maybe it was her way of distancing herself. He wondered how many council-approved applicants had died on her father’s table.

  Without ceremony, Mira leaned in beside Cassa and slit a long, deep line into the inside of Solan’s left arm, a mirror to Evander’s own scar. Solan flinched and squeezed his eyes shut but didn’t make a sound. Maybe it was the way the light hit his face, but he seemed younger now, free of wrinkles and his usual gravity. He seemed vulnerable. Evander’s heart wrenched in his chest.

  True to her word, Mira worked quickly. As soon as the cut had been made, she took up the bottle of mirasma and poured it along Solan’s arm, tracing the cut. Solan hissed but made no other movement, and for a moment Evander thought that maybe the pain of the bloodbond came from the molten metals rather than the process itself. Then Solan buckled beneath their hands. Evander pressed his full weight onto Solan’s ankle as he flailed, his cries primal, guttural sounds. Cassa had one hand on his shoulder and the other on his wrist, barely an inch from the trickling mirasma. Her face was screwed tight with determination.

  Mira tossed the bottle aside, her eyes never moving from the shimmering, viscous element mingled now with blood. Solan was gasping, his chest heaving wildly, but Cassa and Newt kept their hold. Mira was lost to the world, her eyes bright, her hands perfectly steady as she held them both over Solan’s arm.

  For a moment, just a moment, Solan calmed. His gasping receded. Then Mira clenched both hands into fists, and his scream echoed through the cavern. Evander flinched, but Mira never wavered. She loosened her right fist, and her hand drifted up his arm, over his shoulder, across his chest. Then she held her left hand over his chest and moved it down to his leg, while her other hand drew a line to his neck.

  She was tracing his arteries, Evander realized, coaxing the element along the pathways of his blood. He looked at Solan’s arm and saw that the amount of mirasma had indeed receded. Cassa was noticing the same thing, and she caught Evander’s eye with undisguised amazement. Solan was shaking uncontrollably, his limbs straining against their grip. He was no longer making any sound, and that was worse than the screams somehow. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and his eyelids fluttered rapidly.

  Mira never stopped her strange motions. Her eyes were shut now, as if she were conducting a symphony only she could hear. A sheen of sweat had risen on her face, and two loose tendrils of hair clung to her cheek. For almost ten minutes, her graceful, silent gesturing and Solan’s agonized struggles were the only movements in the cavern. Evander’s arms and back and knees ached. His vision had tunneled so that all he could see was Mira’s hands. Everything else was the bright blue glare of the ghost light.

  Finally, her hands came back together over his left arm. Almost all trace of the mirasma was gone now, though Solan’s skin was red with blood. Mira’s breathing had quickened. She closed her hands into fists again, but more slowly this time. Her features strained with effort. Evander blinked away sweat that had trickled into his eyes and watched as a thin line of shimmering mirasma rose inside the cut, suturing it closed. A permanent scar. Evander’s own arm itched, and he fought the urge to scratch it.

  Mira sat back on her heels and wiped her hand across her face. Solan had fallen still. His eyes were closed.

  “I don’t think he’s breathing,” Alys whispered.

  Evander’s stomach was in knots. If Solan was dead, they had lost their advantage over the council. He claimed the prophecy of the council’s demise was infallible, but what if it wasn’t? The only way to be sure was to have Solan on their side, alive.

  “Oh no, you don’t,” Cassa said. “Not after all we’ve been through.”

  And she slammed her fist into Solan’s chest, over his heart. She did it twice more, despite Alys’s protests that it wouldn’t do any good. Then Solan heaved in a massive breath, and his eyes flew open. He floundered briefly, but Newt kept a hold on his shoulder. His face was chaos, a dizzying array of looping time. Impossibly young and impossibly ancient. He’d never looked so inhuman.

  He tried to sit up, but Mira put a hand on his shoulder and gestured toward Cassa.

  “Don’t let him move,” she said. “He needs to stay still.”

  Cassa pressed down again on his arm, keeping him down as he gasped in ragged breaths. Evander could scarcely believe it had worked. If the bloodbond could free Solan from his prison, then maybe the prophecy could come to pass. Maybe Solan really could help save their parents. Maybe the council really would fall. Evander was light-headed with the implications of what they might have just accomplished. Four years ago, a century of rebellion had ended in utter defeat, and now, in the forgotten caverns beneath the citadel, they had salvaged one last chance at victory.

  Mira was still staring down at Solan, her expression working its way from disbelief into something sharper and then into something bleaker altogether. Her shoulders were trembling. Before Evander could decide whether it was relief or despair, Mira picked up her knife from the ground. Its edge still gleamed darkly with blood. She pressed it against Solan’s throat.

  “I’ve held up my end,” she said to him, her voice low and lethal. “Now do as you promised. Give me my father back.”

  THE DAY THE CHANCELLOR MET THE EXECUTIONER

  The labyrinthine crypts looked different through the chancellor’s eyes. He knew the entire history of this place. He knew from his studies that when the first of the elder seers had been laid to rest, all Teruvia had mourned. He knew that when the last of the elder seers finally passed, only the city of Eldra mourned her death. Teruvia had left the citadel and its dead god behind. He knew from different, dustier tomes that the world beneath the citadel was always supposed to be a place of rest and peace. It was never supposed to be a place of spilled blood and devoured memories, and it was never supposed to become a prison.

  All these things permeated the chancellor’s memory of the long, lonely walk through the crypts, and so Cassa knew them too. The memory was hers now after all.

  Ansel Dane wasn’t the chancellor then. Just a council member, listening to reports of the ever-strengthening rebellion with unease until finally he’d made a decision. The then-chancellor and the other three council members never spoke of the man kept locked below the citadel. They provided the mirasma and took the prophecies he gave, but they never spoke of him directly.

  Ansel brought only one guard with him, a trembling young man—a boy, really—who nonetheless put on a brave face. At the shore of the lake, Ansel told him to wait. The relief shone clearly in the boy’s eyes as he helped launch the boat. Ansel wasn’t much younger then, but he was stronger. His muscles didn’t shirk from the grind of the oars. He’d never seen the lake before, and he marveled at its beauty, at its strangeness. He knew from his studies that there was something much older and much hungrier than fish lurking in its crystalline depths.

  The chamber with the seer statues had been built as a temple to the Slain God. It was there that the first death rites had been performed. The ritual had begun as a way to give seers and rooks peace in their final moments, to strip away all their prophecies and memories, both wonderful and terrible, so that they might meet their end without the weight of the past and future on their weary souls. The maze of pathways was a symbol, an initiation. Acolytes had to learn to navigate the paths by memo
ry alone. Death rites were given in complete darkness, to ease the passage into oblivion.

  Ansel tread carefully on the stone. The fires atop the pillars were lit. He wasn’t surprised that the executioner knew he was coming, but it still worried him. When he entered the smaller illuminated chamber, Solan Tavish was seated in a chair, his back straight, his hands gripping the armrests as if this was his throne. The moment that Ansel met his eyes, he knew deeply and without doubt that whatever part of this creature had once been Solan Tavish had long since died away.

  “Greetings, Chancellor.” His voice was charred and crumbling.

  “I’m not the chancellor,” said Ansel.

  The rook only smiled. But he wasn’t just a rook. A sentient as well. A diviner. A seer. The workings of his mind must have been laid bare, because Solan’s smile widened.

  “I already know why you’ve come,” he said.

  “Then perhaps you can save us both time and give me your answer.”

  A laugh, if that’s what it could be called. Like sharp rocks crashing from great heights.

  “Thanks to your cowardly predecessors, I have nothing but time,” said Solan. He leaned forward and rested a forearm on his knee. “I want to hear you ask, Chancellor. I want you to beg.”

  Some unnamed instinct in Ansel recoiled, but he stood his ground. He had made the decision after all. He had to see it through.

  “How can we end this rebellion,” he asked, “without tearing Eldra apart?”

  “And why should I tell you that?” Solan cocked his head slightly. There was still a ghost of a grin on his preternatural features. “Maybe I want Eldra torn apart. What has Eldra ever done for me?”

  “If the council falls, so will you.” Ansel’s temper flared behind his words.

  Solan straightened and raised his hands in a brief, lazy gesture of indifference.

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps I already know how this ends. Perhaps I’ve already seen the death of everyone you know and love, Chancellor. Perhaps I’ve already seen your death as well. Would you care to know?”

  He was practically crooning now. That same unnamed instinct in Ansel’s chest demanded that he take something sharp and drive it through the executioner’s heart. It wouldn’t kill him though. Nothing would kill him. There were those who had tried before, to their detriment. The mirasma kept Solan tethered, but if they withheld it, he would only become more dangerous as his powerful mind ripped apart at the seams.

  “It was your prophecy that began this rebellion in the first place,” he said. “I know your wicked appetites have been well-satiated by the executions.”

  Solan chuckled.

  “Wicked appetites,” he echoed. “What a strange way of describing the duty that your pathetic religion demands of me.”

  “There has to be a way to end this.”

  “Of course there is,” Solan replied. “But why would I tell you, when—as you just said—it is serving my wicked appetites so well?”

  He’s toying with me, Ansel realized.

  “Very good, Chancellor,” murmured Solan. “And what a pleasure it has been.”

  Ansel’s heart thrummed in his ears. He’d known better than to expect help from this quarter, but still a part of him had hoped. He turned to leave.

  “Seeing as you’re the first councilor in a century who has been brave enough to venture down here, perhaps I will help you after all.” Solan’s voice had an air of nonchalance, but something in it slithered.

  Instinct now begged him to run. Ansel held his breath and turned back to the executioner.

  “In exchange for what?” he asked.

  “My freedom.” Solan’s smile was more like a grimace now. “I will tell you what you want to know, and when the rebellion has ended, you will free me from this prison.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You’ll find a way. I’ve paid for my crimes a hundred times over, and I won’t be used any longer.”

  Ansel stared at him. He was dangerous. Too dangerous to Eldra to ever be freed—yet if the war continued much longer, the city would fall to ruin anyway.

  “Agreed,” he said, though the word hurt to speak.

  Solan studied his face closely, and finally he nodded.

  “The last stand of the rebels is very near.” He steepled his fingertips and stared over them at Ansel. “Soon they will kill your chancellor, and after his death they will amass their forces and strike. That will be your time, Ansel Dane. That will be your only chance.”

  “My chance to do what?” Ansel’s voice hitched in his throat.

  Solan shrugged.

  “That is up to you. I imagine you’ll figure it out when the time comes. A man like you doesn’t come into a position like yours without some measure of cunning.” He chuckled.

  “What’s so funny?” Ansel asked, before he could stop himself. His mind was churning over and over a single thought. A seer was calling him chancellor.

  A grin. Hazy in his shifting face but undeniably lethal.

  “Now that you know the future, you must stand back and let your chancellor die. If you don’t—if he lives—the rebellion will indeed tear Eldra apart.”

  Ansel’s heart stopped for a moment, and when it started again, its every beat ached with the realization.

  “You bastard,” he breathed.

  “It’s time you got your hands dirty.” Solan’s grin was gone, replaced by a snarl. “Or rather, it’s time you understood they were never clean to begin with. You accepted the legacy your predecessors gave you, and now you must count the cost.”

  “I’m trying to protect the city.”

  “Yes, that’s what they all said.” The executioner leaned his head back and closed his eyes. For half a second, his features stilled, and Ansel caught a glimpse of the Solan Tavish who once was. “But believing the lies you tell yourself doesn’t make them any truer.”

  Ansel left without another word and tried to convince himself the whole way back to the lake that he wasn’t fleeing. The return trip felt longer and more taxing, and by the time he dragged the boat onto the crushed-shale shore, his muscles burned steadily. At first, there was no sign of the guard who’d accompanied him. Perhaps his nerves had bested him, and he’d retreated back to the citadel.

  Then Ansel saw the light from the guard’s lantern, gleaming just beyond the rock formations. He called out, but there was no reply. More than just his muscles ached as he walked toward the light. The boy was crumpled on the ground, perfectly still. Without moving any closer, Ansel already knew he was gone.

  When you kill all the rebels, I shall be forced to find other means to satisfy my wicked appetites.

  Solan’s voice in his head was strained and distant, but he heard every word.

  That was the last thing that Cassa remembered, except for a single stab of feeling. A shame that was fresher than the memory itself. The chancellor couldn’t remember the boy’s name.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  CASSA

  Cassa’s head hurt so badly that for a moment she thought she was dying. Then the pain dissipated in aching degrees, and finally she felt capable of opening her eyes. The blue of the ghost light stung her vision, and she immediately squeezed them shut again. Everything was quiet, so quiet. Her mind spun in the silence. The bloodbonding had worked. Solan was alive. Mira had a knife.

  Cassa sat up so quickly that her head lurched, and she almost retched onto the stone floor. She blinked rapidly, trying to find her bearings. Mira had held the knife to Solan’s throat. She’d said something about her father. And then—then Cassa had blacked out.

  There was movement in the corner of her eye, and she whipped her head around. Solan was standing at the tunnel’s entrance, the golden glow from his chamber casting him in soft silhouette. Above Cassa, the statue of the elder seer loomed. A few feet away, Evander was lying on the ground, unmoving. Her heart clenched, and she dragged herself on hands and knees to his side.

  “He’s alive,” said Solan, jus
t as Cassa laid her hand on Evander’s chest to feel its steady rise and fall. “Your friends are all fine.”

  Cassa ignored him and crawled to Alys and then Newt. Her chest didn’t loosen until she’d checked them both. She stood on shaky legs, and her vision dipped dangerously.

  “What did you do?” she asked Solan as she searched the murky shadows for Mira.

  “I’m sorry,” Solan said. “I was trying to stop the Blacksmith, but my control is shaky after the bloodbonding. They should wake soon.”

  Now that she could see him more clearly, Solan’s weakened state was obvious. Tremors flitted through his body, and his complexion was sickly pale. Evander had told them the bloodbond would take effect in about six hours. After that, Solan would no longer be dependent on the council’s elixir—assuming his theory about the bloodbond with mirasma was right. He would be free.

  “How does Mira know you?” Cassa asked. “Why did she—”

  “Cassandra, we’re running out of time. There’s something I haven’t told you.”

  There were many things he hadn’t told her, judging from the memories Vesper had funneled into her mind. But she didn’t want to think about that right now.

  “What?” she asked, hugging herself against the chill. The caverns were perpetually mild, but her clothes and boots were still damp.

  “The prophecy. Before the council falls, the chancellor must die. Tonight.”

  “When we know for sure the bloodbond worked, we’ll take you up to the surface,” Cassa said. “You won’t need the mirasma from them anymore. You can—”

  “Not me,” Solan said. “I’ve seen the chancellor’s death, and it’s not at my hand.”

  He pulled an object from some hidden pocket in his robe and offered it her. The steel of the gun glinted in the light of the ghost globe. The pistol she had left behind.

  “Me?” Her voice stuck in the back of her throat.

  Solan nodded. Cassa didn’t move.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted?” He took a step forward. Though his face sagged wearily, his eyes were bright.