Beneath the Citadel

by Destiny Soria

  Cassa waited until he was inside the threshold before stepping carefully back into the chapel. She kept her footsteps as quiet as possible until she’d reached the carpeted aisle, then she ran the length of the chapel and out the front door. She ran as fast as she could, more to ease the frenetic nerves in her muscles than anything. She rounded the corner into the alley where Vesper still waited, just as the clock tower signaled the first bell. She smiled at the melodic ringing echoing across the citadel.

  “It’s done?” Vesper asked. Cassa nodded, and she let out a sigh of relief. “I can’t believe it.” She leaned her back against the wall and stared upward at the sliver of sky.

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Cassa said, but she couldn’t believe it either. Any minute now Solan would drink the elixir that would be his last. Any minute now it would all be over.

  Vesper straightened up suddenly and faced her.

  “Cassa, I think I need to take the memories. If he suspects anything, Solan might still be able to steal them from you. I can keep them safe.”

  Cassa balked at the suggestion, even though she knew Vesper was right to worry. Just the thought of losing that strand of time, no matter how short, pained her. She could still remember the confusion from the last time Vesper had taken memories from her, the way her mind had grasped emptily for something it didn’t even know it was missing.

  “I’ll give them back,” Vesper promised. “As soon as it’s all over. It’s such a short stretch, you probably won’t even notice the gap.”

  Cassa bit her lip and nodded.

  “Just the past few minutes,” she said. “No rooting around for embarrassing secrets.”

  She was kidding, but Vesper’s eyes were solemn as she rested her fingertips on the side of Cassa’s face.

  “You know I would never,” she said quietly.

  Cassa felt a gentle tugging, like her mind was a ball of string being slowly, carefully unraveled. She blinked as Vesper stepped back.

  Her fingers were shaking, but she told herself it was the chilly air.

  “Where are Alys and Newt?”

  FORTY-EIGHT

  CASSA

  Maybe Solan managed to read something in her face, because he lunged at her suddenly, landing on his knees in front of the sofa. He pushed her roughly aside, his hands shaking violently as he searched. He held up the vial between them. Empty. It was already empty when she entered the crypts, though it had been full when Vesper had given it to her in the alley. The moment she’d taken it out of her pocket and seen that it was empty, she realized what had happened. A gap in time. A memory beyond her reach, beyond Solan’s reach. Three steps ahead. Vesper.

  “You knew it was poisoned?” Solan demanded. “And you drank it anyway?”

  “Of course I knew. And you made it very clear that you wouldn’t drink it unless I did too.” The tightness in her lungs was easing, but only because the pain was traveling rapidly toward her heart. “Did you really think I’d let you loose on the world?”

  “You were going to,” he said desperately, as if convincing her could somehow turn back time. “You helped me get the bloodbond.”

  “Yes, well.” Cassa slouched down on the sofa, closing her eyes and leaning back her head. She felt very heavy all of a sudden. And sleepy. “I never make the same mistake twice.”

  His raspy breathing was the only sound for a long while. Then the sofa creaked and shifted as he pulled himself up. He dropped onto the cushion next to her. She frowned but didn’t open her eyes. She didn’t particularly want to die with him beside her, but she didn’t have the energy to move. She also didn’t want to die down here, in the bowels of the earth, so far from everyone who loved her. But it was too late to do anything about that.

  “So after everything,” said Solan, his voice low and slurred, “this is how you want it to end. With the council free to go on as they always have. Free to quash more rebellions. Free to twist the prophecies to suit their purposes.”

  “With my friends alive.” Her heart was slowing, even as primal panic gripped her. “Free to tell the truth about the prophecies. Free to do everything I couldn’t.”

  “No death rites,” he murmured. “Nothing to ease your passage, ensure your comfort in oblivion.”

  “I wouldn’t want any.” The last spark of fire in her chased the words. “I want to take it all with me. Every memory, every mistake, every perfect moment. It’s all mine. It’s all me.”

  For a few moments, all was quiet. Then he spoke again, so softly, she might have imagined it.

  “I think I was wrong about you . . .” His voice trailed into nothing. His labored breathing had stilled. It was bad luck to witness someone’s last breath. But she didn’t believe in that sort of thing.

  Cassa kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to see this prison that had housed centuries of suffering and bitterness. She wanted to see her friends, her parents, her city. She wanted to see all her memories, everything she was taking with her. Her lungs ached for air that she didn’t have the strength to breathe, but she wasn’t panicked anymore. She felt fine. She felt sleepy. Vaguely, she counted the slowing beats of her heart, until finally it stopped.

  FORTY-NINE

  ALYS

  Alys didn’t know how to grieve. She knew how to mix a tincture for pain and a salve for burns and a potion that made people fall unconscious just from contact. She knew how to solve problems and make contingency plans. She knew how to flip a capsized boat and how to read the near future in almost anything.

  What she didn’t know was how to live in a world where Cassa Valera was dead.

  Alys couldn’t bring herself to believe it. Cassa wasn’t immortal, but she was supposed to be. Never once had Alys actually believed her own admonitions. Never once had Alys thought that Cassa wouldn’t outlive them all.

  She also didn’t know how to grieve. Newt bore it in silence, as she would have expected. His exterior calm was unbreakable as always, but sorrow was etched into every line of his face, into every look and every movement. Vesper cried. Trembling, muffled sobs that she kept rigidly restrained as if they might otherwise rip her apart. And Evander—well, Evander was gone again. He stayed with them the whole time, but Alys could see in his eyes that he wasn’t really there. She’d seen it before in the boy who sold his wit and charm for pennies on the street, in the boy who was ready to die in agony on the Blacksmith’s table if it meant a chance at saving his family.

  Alys was scared that her brother wouldn’t come back this time. She was angry that she and the people she loved had to pay for sins that weren’t theirs, sins that had been thrust on them by generations past. She was frustrated that even after everything, the council was still the council, and nothing had changed at all.

  She was furious at Cassa for finding a way to die like a hero while the rest of them had to go on.

  She hated herself for being scared and angry and frustrated and furious, but not sad. How could she not be sad? Maybe she really was broken.

  Just as Vesper has promised, her parents were in a house in the upper echelon. Seeing them again, exhausted from worry but very much alive, filled Alys with a relief that was almost painful in its intensity. The chancellor offered apologies that no one accepted and assured them that the council had no choice but to honor the pardons he had issued. Alys didn’t have the energy to doubt him.

  Her parents were okay, but nothing else was.

  They held Cassa’s funeral pyre in Aurelia Valley in the dead of night so that the flames might be bright enough for the whole city to witness the passing of Eldra’s last firebrand. Alys, Evander, Newt, and Vesper were the only ones in attendance. The chancellor had asked to pay his respects, but they refused him. Alys appreciated Dane’s consideration. She was certain that Cassa wouldn’t.

  None of them knew what to say when the time came. Normally, even if someone died without death rites, a priest would be on hand to talk about how every person’s greatest honor is to join the Slain God in blissful
oblivion. Candles would be lit and doused at intervals. Sometimes someone would sing a verse from the Slain God’s requiem. There was a way these things were done.

  They didn’t do any of those things. In the end, they didn’t even say anything. Evander and Vesper lit the pyre. Vesper’s eyes glistened in the firelight with brimming tears, but only a few spilled. Alys couldn’t see anything in her brother’s face, even as he stood too close and watched as the flames rose higher and higher. Soon Cassa was gone, lost in the bright, billowing fire. Alys’s eyes stung with smoke as she sat down on the cool grass. Their vigil would last until only embers remained.

  After a couple of hours had passed, when there were only a few licking flames across the smoldering heap, Alys realized that Newt and Vesper had both fallen asleep. It was still pitch-dark, but the pyre gave off some light, and her eyes were adjusted well enough. On her other side, Evander was stretched out on his back, eyes closed, but she knew he was awake.

  “Evander?”

  A beat.

  “Yeah.”

  “It wasn’t your fault. There wasn’t anything any of us could have done.” She pressed her fingers into the grass in front of her until she reached the crumbling soil below. “You know that, right?”

  He frowned without opening his eyes.

  “Are you trying to use logic to convince me not to be sad?”

  A particularly sharp stalk of grass jammed under her fingernail, and she flinched.

  “No.” She wiped her hand on her knee. “Maybe. Not on purpose.”

  After a few seconds he huffed something resembling a laugh and propped himself onto his elbows to look at her.

  “Logically speaking,” he said, “there was a lot we could have done differently. A lot of ways we could have changed the course of the night. Do you really believe there wasn’t?”

  His voice held a challenge. A dare.

  “Truth or lie?” she asked.

  Evander raised an eyebrow, studying her face. He was more still than she’d ever remembered him being. No twitching fingers. No orbiting coins.

  “Truth.” His voice was quiet, the challenge lost.

  “Logically speaking,” she said, “Cassa never once in her entire life did something other than exactly what she pleased. She wouldn’t even let an infallible prophecy tell her what to do, so no, I don’t think we could have changed a single thing.”

  Evander stared at her. The shadows played heavily on his face, and she couldn’t decide if he looked younger or older. He always just looked like Evander.

  “I don’t like when you’re right,” he said at last. “It’s annoying.”

  “I’m always right.”

  “And you’re always annoying.”

  Alys swatted his arm and dropped down beside him in the grass. Smoke drifted overhead, reaching lazily toward the stars. Chill bumps rose on her arms as a cold night breeze stirred the air around them.

  “Alys?” Evander plucked a blade of grass and let the breeze carry it from his fingers.

  “Yes?”

  “She really cared about you, you know.” Another blade of grass whirled away into the darkness. “She thought you were smug and condescending, but she always used to talk about the day you two met, at the Dream Merchant’s shop. She told me you were fearless.”

  “I was terrified.”

  “She said no one with any decent sense would have followed her that day, but you did, and that’s what she liked about you.”

  Alys thought about the two of them, dripping wet and gasping in a boat in the middle of a forgotten lake. You always know the right thing to do. An unfamiliar ache bloomed in her chest. She knew what loss felt like. She’d once lost everything she owned to the same regime that Cassa had just died saving. This was different. This was deeper and hungrier, a gaping pit inside her that she hadn’t felt until now.

  “It’s not fair.” Each word came out a jagged shard.

  “What?”

  “The council took everything from her. She hated them so much, but she died for them anyway—and for what? They’ll never admit to what they did or what they let Solan do. They’ll never acknowledge what she did for them. We’re the only ones who will ever know, and it’s not fair. It’s not right.”

  Her impassioned speech, which had risen in volume with every word, had woken Vesper and Newt, though neither of them said anything. For a long time the only sound in the world was the crackling embers of Cassa’s funeral pyre.

  “She didn’t do it for them.” Evander’s voice was as soft as the breeze. “She did it for us.”

  The sky above blurred with her tears, but Alys didn’t wipe them away. She let them fall while she let herself feel the new hollowness inside her. A gaping hole, filled only with fear and anger and frustration and fury. As the last of the pyre crumbled into charred wood and ash, Alys closed her eyes and grieved.

  FIFTY

  VESPER

  It had been almost three months since Vesper set foot in a chapel of the Slain God. It had been almost as long since she last set foot in the citadel. She’d been staying with her family in the upper echelon, playing parlor games with her younger siblings, putting on a fake smile for her parents, and pretending everything was fine, everything was normal. Other than the letter asking her to meet him here today, Uncle Ansel hadn’t contacted her. He hadn’t mentioned that since she was still being paid as a clerk, she had no right to just vanish for months. He hadn’t mentioned that he could really use her help navigating the treacherous waters stirred up by Solan’s death. He hadn’t mentioned that the rest of Eldra still didn’t know what had been sacrificed that early morning three months ago, and if the council had its way, they never would.

  He didn’t have to mention any of those things, because Vesper already knew. Still she stayed away. Until the letter. I need you, he’d written. Vesper didn’t know how to ignore that. She didn’t think she could.

  She came early to sit through a service for the Slain God. The priest recited the usual string of litanies and exhortations. The young acolytes tripped up and down the steps to the altar in their overlong robes, lighting and dousing ceremonial candles. The gentlemen and ladies in attendance hid jaw-cracking yawns behind fans and hats. Yet when the final recitation was complete—an admonition to serve the memory of the Slain God with respect and humility—and the last candle was doused, Vesper burst into tears.

  Her whole body shook with the sobs. She knew everyone in the tiny chapel could hear her. Since she was near the front, most of them could see her as well. She didn’t want to make a spectacle of herself, but she couldn’t stop. No one tried to comfort her, and slowly the chapel emptied. The priest stayed the longest, hovering awkwardly at her periphery before finally murmuring a benediction and slipping away. At that, her tears gave way to hiccuping laughter. She could almost hear Cassa’s wry tone. What’s the point of a benediction if the divinity you’re invoking is dead?

  When her breathless laughter finally dwindled, she felt better. Not fine. Not normal. But better. She dried her eyes on her sleeve and waited for her uncle to arrive. After a few minutes, the door creaked open. Vesper twisted in her seat. It wasn’t her uncle coming down the main aisle but Evander. He was only slightly less haggard than the last time she’d seen him. He peered around the chapel’s interior with a cross between suspicion and amusement. Alys was right behind him, wearing the frown she reserved for when her brother said something exasperating. Newt came last. He gazed around the nave with more reverence than Evander, though no less suspicion.

  Vesper stared past them at the closed door. She realized with a pang that some part of her was waiting for Cassa to stride in behind them with some inappropriate remark or another. When she met Evander’s eye, she wondered if he knew what she was feeling, because his mouth twisted into a grim half smile.

  “What are you doing here?” Vesper stood and stepped into the aisle to meet them.

  “We were hoping you’d be able to tell us that,” Alys said. She picked ner
vously at the end of her braid.

  “We tried to politely decline the chancellor’s invitation.” Evander shoved his hands into his pockets and wandered toward the altar. “But then his carriage showed up right in the middle of the lower ward, and we didn’t really have a choice.”

  Vesper watched his back, trying to figure out what was different about him, other than his neatly pressed shirt and trousers, which were nicer than the lower ward’s typical everyday attire. Newt and Alys were dressed in similar fashion, though the sleeves of Alys’s green frock were stained in several places. Casualties of her father’s workshop, no doubt. Vesper felt a strange twinge of envy. The ink stains on her own fingers, which had once been a constant part of her fine, normal life, had faded a long time ago.

  “I don’t know,” Vesper said. “He asked me to meet him here today. He didn’t say why.”

  “We haven’t seen you in a while.” Newt was watching her in his steady, careful way. “How are you doing?”

  Vesper had an odd urge to hug him. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed his gentle sincerity. She hadn’t realized how much she’d missed all of them. One absence had eclipsed everything else for the past months, and she had focused all her energy on ignoring it.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  Evander snorted, turning to face them again.

  “Right,” he said. “So are we.”

  The coins. That’s what was different about him. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him without at least one silver coin in sight, either flipping over his knuckles or defying the laws of physics. He was stiller than she remembered too. No fidgeting, no excess energy. He just stood there, hands in his pockets, regarding her with a slightly arched eyebrow.

  She glanced at Alys, who was looking at her brother, a softer frown marring her features. Vesper opened her mouth to say something—she wasn’t sure what—when the door opened again. This time it was her uncle, wearing his ceremonial robes over his trim black suit and black tie. He found Vesper’s eyes first and gave her a small, warm smile before directing his attention to the others.