A thick silence settles over us, broken only by the quiet noises filtering in from the rest of the boathouse and the slosh of water beneath our feet.
This can’t really be it. After everything that’s happened, how can this just end with us running away?
Across from me, Rudy is hunched over, rubbing the seal he holds in his hands. It’s the one he and my brother stole, with the unlock rune.
Unlock.
Wait.
I snatch the seal out of his hands.
Rudy blinks at me. “Karis?”
This unlock rune matches the one on Alix’s side. Alix, who was built to be a key for the Scrivolia.
“The magistrate... He’s going to use a seal to unlock the Heart,” I say.
The others all stare at me. Zara’s brow furrows. “What?”
I hold out the bronze seal. It’s all coming together, disparate pieces connecting in my head. “This rune matches Alix’s. At his father’s villa, we learned Alix was built to unlock the Scrivolia. That’s what the magistrate’s trying to do. He’s trying to make a seal, so he can get into the Heart without Alix.”
The color leeches from Rudy’s face. “But if he manages to unlock the Script ink, he’ll gain control over all of the automatons. If that happens...”
He trails off, but he doesn’t need to finish. If the magistrate gains access to the Heart, the Scriptorium will be returned to its former power.
Alix shakes his head. “No. The Heart can’t be unlocked. My father...” His voice cracks. “My father died so the Scriptorium wouldn’t ever have access to it again.”
“Then we have to stop him,” Dane says.
Zara shakes her head. “We can’t. There are people counting on us, people we need to get to safety.”
Safety? What safety could exist after this? I think of the magistrate, of everything he’s done. If he manages to reanimate the automatons, he’ll be unstoppable. And I know the ragtag group around me will be first on his list.
I can’t let that happen.
That resolution shudders through my bones. This whole time, all I wanted was to get my brother and me as far away from all of this as I could. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of standing to the side as others choose to fight. I’m sick of fearing and hating the magistrate’s cruelty and doing nothing to stop it.
“We should strike now.”
Everyone turns and looks at me.
I straighten my spine. Maybe I never wanted this to be my fight, but it is now. Alix is right. We can’t allow the magistrate to gain access to that Script ink. I can’t allow it. And if I’m doing this, I’m going all in. If we flame out, we’ll burn like stars.
“Alix just woke up an automaton,” I say, “which means the Scriptorium will be in chaos right now. Scouring Calantha’s villa for news. Checking on the other automatons. Searching the city for us. Right now, they don’t know what Alix is capable of doing, but we know. If we can get Alix to the Heart, he can destroy it. And then the magistrate won’t ever get the Script ink he needs.”
“She’s right,” Rudy says. His words start out slow, but then come faster. “They won’t be expecting us right now. And if there are lock runes in the way, Alix can get us through them. All the security in the Scriptorium is built to yield to Scriptmasters, which means it should yield to Alix, too.”
“And what about when we get to the Heart?” Zara says. “Alix doesn’t remember how to destroy it. We’ll be risking everything to get there, and he might not even be able to do anything.”
“I’ll figure it out, Captain,” Alix says. “Please. I’m good with runes. You know I am.”
“Do we even know where the Heart is?” Dane asks.
“It’s in the Acropolis,” Alix says. “There was this stairway that spiraled deep into the ground. At the top was a statue, one of the old masters. Master Killia, I believe.”
Zara closes her eyes.
“What is it?” Dane asks.
Zara’s mouth is a grim line. “I’m not sure what was there in your time, Alix, but now that’s the entrance to the Magistrate’s Library.”
The Magistrate’s Library. Where our people were just taken. Where Matthias might be. That information should terrify me. It does terrify me. It’s the last place I want to go.
But it means that maybe I’ll have the chance to stop the magistrate and save my brother, too.
Alix straightens, his hand finding the medallion at his neck. “I have to try.” There’s an undercurrent in his voice, of determination, of desperation, like there was in Master Theodis’s villa. It makes me worried about what Alix is feeling. About what he might do. The look in his eyes is so brittle. “I have to finish what my father started and destroy the Heart, before it falls into that man’s hands.”
Zara drums her fingers on her knee as we all wait in silence for her decision. I can’t imagine what she’s going through, the whole weight of the rebellion suddenly on her shoulders. All of these people looking to her. But we need our captain right now.
She straightens, a familiar fierceness crossing her face. It makes her look more like herself. “Then I guess we’re all in.” One by one she looks at the others. One by one they nod. Finally, she looks at me. It’s a heavy look. I’m sure she remembers what I said to her as we walked through that village. But things were different then. I was different then. And I’ll prove it.
I nod.
“All right,” Zara says. “So, we go now. We save our people. We destroy the Heart. And we deal a blow to the Scriptorium they’ll never recover from.”
She’s right. We can do this. We must do this. There’s too much at stake now if we lose.
We’ll just have to make sure we win.
31
* * *
ALIX
The Acropolis.
The last time I was there, I locked the Heart, my father was murdered, and I ran, beneath waves and across islands, until at last I staggered to a stop and somehow centuries passed without me waking. I feel as if ever since that time I’ve been running. From the Scriptorium. From the magistrate. From the fragmented pieces of my own past that chased me like shadows.
Until now. I rub my father’s medallion. Calantha was right. We all need to be what the world asks of us. No matter what that is or what it costs us. Perhaps once I do this, I’ll finally be free of the thoughts that won’t let me go. If I’m made for a purpose, then I have to complete it. It’s what my father would have wanted.
First, though, I have a favor to ask.
I skirt through the pallets, looking for Karis. She stands near a stack of crates, uneasily fiddling with the knife on her belt.
She straightens as I step forward. “Are you ready?” she asks. There’s a slight waver in her voice that she can’t quite hide. I’m afraid, too. Of what we’ll find in the Magistrate’s Library. Of what stepping back into that chamber with the Scrivolia, that place of memory, will do to me.
Which is exactly why I have to ask her what I’m about to.
I hold my tome out to her. “Karis, I want you to take this.”
She stares. “What?”
“I can’t leave it here. The distance from the docks to the Acropolis is too far. I don’t dare hide it either, not with so many soldiers scouring the city. Which means it has to come with me.”
“But, Alix, it will be safest with you. You’re the strongest of all of us. Or with Dane or Zara. They’re both better fighters than I am.”
“You don’t understand. I’m not asking you to protect it.” I pause and then force the words out. “Karis, if it looks like there’s any chance it will fall into the hands of the Scriptorium, I need you to destroy it. Stabbing it through the seal should be enough.”
The dawning horror on her face nearly breaks my resolve, but I can’t let it.
“I’d do it myself,” I say, “but I’m not
sure what will happen, so I don’t know if I’d be able to see it through.”
“Alix, no.” Karis backs away from me, shaking her head. “Destroying your tome could kill you.”
“I would rather be dead than be helpless as they force me to do terrible things. You know they will.”
“But at least if you’re alive we could save—”
“If you had the choice between dying or going back to Tallis, where they would clamp a bracelet on your wrist again, only this time you knew you would have to do everything they told you for the rest of your life, what would you choose?”
Karis opens her mouth as if to deny it, but I see the truth in her eyes. I saw it in that cave, when she first woke me up. Her desire for freedom, exactly like my own.
I step closer. “Please, don’t let them take away everything that I am. I’m asking you, as my friend, to do this for me.”
I never thought I would have a friend. But Karis stayed with me through everything. She was never afraid to look at me and truly see me.
Her eyes search my face. She reaches up and touches my cheek. “Alix?” she says. “Are you sure you’re all right? Ever since we went to your father’s house...you’ve been different. It isn’t like you.”
Those words weren’t what I expected, and something sleeping in me twitches, nudged awake. I do feel different. Colder. Perhaps I appreciated that, since it kept some of the grief at bay. Now, though, her words make me doubt. They make me face all those feelings that crashed into me at the villa.
Only, I don’t want to feel those things anymore.
I take her hand and lower it. “This is what I am, Karis. It’s time we both faced that.”
A long silence stretches between us. She stands there, as if waiting for more, but I don’t have any more to give. Then she reaches out and takes my tome.
I nod, trying not to let my uncertainty show, to not focus on my hands, which feel suddenly empty. This is better for everybody. At least now I know that when I go in there, I’ll leave that place of my own free will.
One way or another.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
She mutely nods.
“Karis? Alix?” Zara weaves through the beds toward us. Her eyes go to my tome, now in Karis’s hands, but she doesn’t say anything. I can only hope it’s because she understands. “The rest of us are ready to go.”
I look at Karis and then take her hand and squeeze it. She squeezes back.
We started all of this, her and me, in that cave. Even after everything that’s happened, we’re still standing here together. It’s only fitting that we end this together, too.
* * *
Myself, Karis, Dane, Zara, Rudy, Kocha, and Wreska. It doesn’t seem like enough to take on the Acropolis, but it’s us or no one.
Zara keeps us to the side roads as we head up through the Lower City. As careful as we are, I still catch glimpses of soldiers in Scriptorium uniforms and hear the clatter of the wheels of chariots ferrying Scriptmasters about, the barked commands of the Scriptorium authority. The city pulses with fear and a terrifyingly bright energy, a web trying to ensnare us.
We approach the first gate and Rudy takes the lead. I nervously rub the bracelet on my wrist, the exact color and texture as my metal skin. There are eight soldiers standing there, each holding a naked blade in their hand. One even has a gun holstered at her hip, inscribed with runes of fire and death. The torches anchored to the wall cast a harsh light on their sharp swords and sharper expressions. There’s a crowd waiting to get through, mostly acolytes, a few scribes.
Rudy strides toward them, his demeanor changing from a shy young man in mourning into a proud, successful scholar. The others in the crowd glance at his gleaming seal before scuttling out of his way. Rudy walks up to one of the guards and thrusts the seal at him. “Master Aquitaine sent me to catalog runes on one of the automatons in the Lower City. My assistants and I are back to report.” His voice is steady and brazen. For the first time I realize how well he fits in with this rebellion.
The guard looks at the seal and then over at us. I stare down at the ground, sure they’ll see the glow of my eyes, or a patch of oddly textured skin I forgot to cover. The moment stretches out, too long and tense.
“Go on ahead.”
We slip through the gate. Beside me, Karis lets out a breath of relief.
“One down,” Rudy mutters. “Three to go.”
We head up through the Scribe’s Quarters, every street packed with bodies and nervous whispers. Then the tier we fled only a short day ago, where the crowds thin and the villas stare down at us, seemingly every window lit. Two hundred years ago, I ran this path. At that time, I was going the other way, fleeing from my failure. Now, finally, I have the chance to make it right. To do what I’m meant to do.
We reach the Acropolis tier. The Colossus stands in front of us, so tall that up close I can’t crane my neck far enough back to see its full height. Our heads barely pass the top of its ankles. All its runes are out of reach, but I’m sure each one is at least as tall as I am. The lines flare, and I’m struck with the sudden dread that we’re too late and that the magistrate has already unlocked the Heart, but it’s merely a trick of the torchlight.
Behind the Colossus, the Acropolis shines pale in the moonlight. I’d forgotten how magnificent it looks. Seven stories of pure marble reach to the Colossus’s waist. A set of broad steps, edged with gold, lead to imposing wooden doors that stretch far above our heads. The pillars surrounding all four sides of the building are carved to look like automatons holding the roof up, accurate down to the runes in their skin.
Looking at it now, it’s more than a building. It represents all the hurt Agathon has caused within its walls. We somehow have to conquer that.
Rudy leads us to the side of the building, where there’s a smaller door. It has a lock rune, but I place my hand on it and immediately catch its song. One mental twist and it yields.
We slip inside.
As soon as Wreska closes the door behind us, the noises from outside disappear. My father’s home had been grand and elegant. So is Calantha’s villa. They’re nothing like this. We stand in a sheltered alcove at the edge of a large room, a great arched roof soaring over our heads held up by pillars crowned in gold. Reclining couches and low tables are scattered about, the wood ornately carved and the cushions crafted from silk. It’s deserted.
Rudy beckons us forward down a side hallway. I can make out the tread of feet, but it’s quiet, far off.
We wind through the halls, slowly, carefully. The only sounds are our footsteps padding across the ground, the slightly erratic draw of the others’ breaths. As we move farther, I begin to see things I remember: that mosaic of a Scriptmaster holding a tome; that window looking out at the Colossus; that carved nook with the vaulted ceiling. I was on this path before. I don’t remember if it was when I came in with my father or when I ran out of here alone, but I’ve walked these steps once already.
We turn a corner. The statue stands in a great atrium, slits in the roof sending moonlight shafting down. Master Killia’s stone robes flare out around her legs, caught in a moment of movement, and she stares down at an open ledger.
We gather around the statue and I take in the determined expressions of Zara and the other pirates. Some of them have been in this place, and they aren’t turning back.
“Anyone who’s down there who we aren’t here to save, kill,” Zara says, her voice deathly dark. “Because the people in this place don’t deserve to live.”
Kocha and Dane pull out their daggers. Wreska slips her ledger from her pocket, and with a dash of charcoal across the page, one of her bracelets unfurls into a thin knife. There’s a prickling at the back of my head that tells me to shy away from this violence because, like Karis said, it isn’t me, but it’s too late for that. If this is what I was made to do, then I will do it.
And then... I don’t know what I’m supposed to do then.
Zara gestures to me. I remember where the lock rune is even as I step forward, my fingers finding it hidden in the fold of Killia’s cloak. The melody that spills into my head is discordant. Chilling. As if even the rune, even the song, knows what kind of place it’s guarding.
I hum a few notes, gritting my teeth against its severity. Golden light shoots out from the rune, framing a large marble tile on the floor. The lines of light connect together and there’s a soft chink as a marble square rises slightly. Kocha grabs its edge and swings it up, showing a rough staircase descending into the dark.
Zara nods at us all, and one by one we slip down, down, down, until we’re swallowed by the shadows.
32
* * *
KARIS
Wreska, Dane, and Kocha hold the lamps, the swaying light throwing erratic shadows against the rough stone floor and walls. But the dark is so thick even the lamplight isn’t strong enough to keep back the shadows that bite at its edges. A slow shiver crawls over my skin, prickling out goose bumps. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s something in the black, watching us. Waiting.
And then, between one step and the next, something changes. Like we’ve stepped into an invisible fog, even though there’s nothing there but the dark. Its nails raking through my head, a sudden burst of pain that makes me gasp. In front of me Alix stumbles and falls to his knees, his face contorted.
“Alix.” I stagger over to him, pressing my hand to his shoulder. He shakes beneath my touch.
“What is that?” he forces out.
Zara looks back, her pained face ghoulish in the weak lantern’s light. Her hand, braced against the wall, trembles. “That’s what happens when you try to turn Script ink into something it’s not. When you twist it.”
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