“But there’s nothing here,” Dane grits out.
“This Script ink isn’t refined. You won’t be able to see it.” Zara shoves off the wall. “But it can still be affected by the things people do through the Script. The magistrate is messing with things he shouldn’t.”
The thought that this force is surrounding us, hanging in the air, makes my skin grow clammy.
“Are you going to be all right?” I ask Alix.
His face is twisted, but he braces his arm against the wall and hauls himself to his feet. “I’m fine.”
“Alix—”
“I have to do this, Karis.”
He keeps going. I follow, fighting to push down the unease that grows with every step. I can’t explain it, but it feels like something has already gone wrong. Alix’s tome weighs down the satchel resting against my hip, far too heavy for such a small book. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to do what he asked. I don’t know how I’ll be able to refuse.
The distorted Script ink in the air only thickens the farther we go, sloughing at my limbs and making every step forward a challenge. Alix starts humming, the notes sharp and pained. I don’t know if he’s trying to dispel whatever is in the air or only to comfort himself, but it does comfort me.
We reach the bottom of the stairs. There are two torches there, and their weak, guttering light barely illuminates the hall in front of us.
As soon as I see, I wish there was no light at all. Because then I wouldn’t be able to make out the hallway in front of us, bare except for a row of cells on both sides, with gritty iron bars that look like teeth. A scent hangs in the air, so rank I clap my hand over my mouth. I always thought that people saying you could smell fear was just an expression. It isn’t.
I’m taking a step back when Dane says, voice tight, “Is this...?”
At his words, a murmuring comes from the cells. Dark shapes shift inside, the torchlight reflecting eerily off their eyes. It’s the only indication that they’re people. A crushing weight suffocates me. I don’t need to hear the answer to Dane’s question. This is it: the Magistrate’s Library.
I lived out on the streets for years. Slept in some of the dankest, dirtiest places in all of Heretis, where you could hear the scratching of rats all night long. I thought I was ready to face anything. But I wasn’t ready to face this. The terrible, stark reality of it punches a hole through my chest.
“Captain?”
The wavering voice is familiar, but it takes me a too long moment to realize who it belongs to: Aiken, from the Streak. It hasn’t even been a day since he was taken, but he’s already stinking and dirty, and there’s a wild look to his eyes as he slumps behind the bars. How could he not, with the Script ink like this, worming its way into our heads? “Captain, you came for us.”
Zara goes to him, clasping his hands between the bars. “Of course. I always come for my crew.” She raises her voice. It’s strung tight as a whip. “Find the keys.”
Wreska and Kocha separate down the hall as Zara turns to us. “You know the plan?”
I nod. Zara, Wreska, and Kocha will stay here and unlock the cells. Me, Dane, Alix, and Rudy will keep going. Alix will destroy the Heart once and for all. In the ensuing chaos we’ll get everyone out or die trying.
I know that’s the plan, that it’s my plan, that we need to go now. But Matthias could be right here, in any one of these cells, separated only by a few bars and shadows. That knowledge stifles everything else out.
“My brother,” I whisper.
Zara doesn’t look surprised, even though we hadn’t discussed it. But there’s a clear warning in her eyes as she says, “Whatever you do, do it quickly. His isn’t the only life we’ve come to save.”
I hurry away, down the row of cells. My heart hammers against my ribs as I look into each one for the person I crossed an ocean to find.
Faces peer at me through the bars, so gaunt and smudged it’s hard to tell that some are young and others old, some are Eratian and others not. Rudy haunts my steps, and now I’m glad he’s here because I don’t think I could face this on my own. At every cell my heart lifts and crashes down again. We reach the last one.
He isn’t here.
No. I look desperately back up the hallway, as if somehow we missed something—another row of cells, a door. Anything.
“I don’t... I don’t understand,” Rudy says. He presses his hands to his eyes. “This is all my fault. If I’d just reached out and stopped him. If I’d just done something...”
I stare into the last cell, disbelief ringing through my head. He’s not here. After all this, he isn’t here.
How can he not be here?
Horrible, stifling silence stretches out until Dane speaks softly into the quiet. “Karis, Rudy. I’m sorry, but we have to go.”
I numbly look at Dane, whose expression is steady even now. My heart aches as if there’s a hook in it, slowly tearing it in two. But I promised to do this. I told myself I would do this. If I can’t save Matthias, I’m going to save everyone else.
It’s what he would have done.
There’s only one way to go, farther into the library, so that’s where we head. There are no more cells here, but bare hallway. Another intersects ours, and when I glance down it, I see a door at the end. I don’t want to think about what lies behind it. There are no lights, yet the shadows around that door seem thicker than they should be, as if they have weight.
One of the shadows twitches.
I jerk, my heartbeat rocketing up. I’m sure I must have imagined it, until Alix speaks.
“Did that...” His voice is weak. “Did that shadow just move?”
Dane grips his blade, even though there’s nothing to attack. He swallows and I pretend not to notice the fear in his eyes. “Let’s keep moving.”
We hurry down the hall and now there’s no mistaking the way the shadows move, twitching and spasming against the walls. Zara had said the magistrate was working with things he shouldn’t. I see the proof all around us of what she meant.
The hallway abruptly ends, at a stairway that spirals down a rocky shaft.
We stop at the landing, none of us quite ready.
“Is this it?” I whisper.
Alix nods, and for once I have no idea what’s going on behind his expression. It’s locked down into a place I can’t understand.
“This is it,” he says.
He steps forward down the stairs. Dane has the only lamp and it shines at our backs, throwing our wavering, elongated shadows in front of us. At least the distorted Script ink in the air has slackened down here, giving me more room to think. I peer over the edge of the stairway, and a flash of gold catches in the torchlight. The Scrivolia.
We reach the last step and I get my first true look at the Heart. It sits in the center of a large, circular crypt, the edges of the space bordered by rough archways that lead to more darkness. I wasn’t sure how big the Scrivolia would be, but it stands twice as tall as I do. Its entire surface is covered with gold polished so brightly it shines even now when I know the Script ink inside of it has been locked.
Then I notice its runes, gliding and swirling into one another, as if they’re caught in a dance. I’ve seen so much Eratian Scriptwork in my life, carved into automaton metal or inscribed in ledgers. It’s always been clunky. Brash. But on the Scrivolia it’s beautiful, with an elegance to the lines that reminds me of Alix. They’re all connected, dozens upon dozens of smaller runes flowing into one another. I thought the Scriptwork I saw on Alix’s arm was the most intricate I would ever lay eyes on, but it is nothing like this. The entire surface of the Heart is one massive rune.
“This is the Scrivolia?” Rudy asks.
“Yes,” Alix whispers.
This Heart once held the Script ink. It once gave our nation the power to create and control automatons. Even though that h
as only ever caused me pain, there is still something awe-inspiring about standing before it. This vessel was created so long ago, no one even remembers when or how it was made. It’s a piece of history that few know about and even fewer understand.
A piece of history we’ve come all this way to destroy. I turn to Alix. “Finish what your father started. For all of us.”
His eyes meet my own and they hold loss, too. And I see that he understands. He nods, squaring his shoulders, and moves toward the Heart.
“So, you made it after all.”
The voice is cool, crisp, and I know it with gut-wrenching certainty.
The magistrate steps out from the shadows at the end of the room. He’s dressed just like the last time I saw him, but down here the white of his robe and the gold of his seal seem smudged, as if the shadows cling to him. He claps his hands, and the sound is so sharp in the quiet crypts, it makes me flinch. “I wasn’t sure if you would show.”
“Magistrate Agathon,” I whisper.
He turns to me, and my breath lodges in my throat. His eyes. Up in the gardens I thought I’d seen a flicker of shadows in them. Down here it’s as if they’re dead light, all the life sucked out, and I can make out shadows twining in their depths. He is as wrong as the place he stands in.
That’s when I know exactly how deeply in trouble we are. Because he doesn’t look surprised to see me, not at all.
“Ah, little Demetria. Or should I call you Karis now? My little runaway, come back to me.”
The possession in his voice steals away my breath. How much did he know back in that garden? How could I ever have thought he didn’t know?
He turns to look over my friends. “Then there’s Dane, the soldier who all his masters had such high hopes for, now nothing more than a common rebel.” Dane twitches. “Rudy, one of the greatest scholarly minds to come through our halls in a generation, wasted.” Rudy juts out his chin, but it trembles.
“And you.” The magistrate looks at Alix and something finally comes into his eyes: hunger. Hunger that could swallow a hundred nations. “The automaton with the mind. Master Theodis’s little monster. What a remarkable creature you are.”
Alix flinches, and in that moment he’s the scared, lonely automaton I first woke up.
I stumble forward, placing myself in between them. “Alix isn’t the monster,” I spit. “You are.”
The magistrate just smiles like he did in the garden. “A monster? No. I already told you, Karis, I’m simply a man who is willing to do whatever it takes to protect what I care about. I would have thought we had that in common.”
I jerk back and he laughs. “I’ve read your records, Karis. Do you think your masters didn’t notice your single-minded obsession with finding your brother? No, that was something I admired about you.”
I am nothing like this cruel man. But the cold of his words creeps in, making me doubt every choice I’ve ever made. All the decisions that were only meant to get my brother back, even if it left the rest of the world to burn.
Decisions that led me right here.
“In the end, though, you were as predictable as anyone. As predictable as your new friends. As predictable as Calantha. I knew you would come to Valitia searching for your brother, that Calantha would find you and want to use you. Then it was simply a matter of slipping you the right clues.”
He looks pointedly at Rudy, who goes ashen.
Rudy shakes his head. “No, the seal, you—”
“I started a rumor, knowing Calantha wouldn’t be able to resist. But you, Rudy, I truly thought perhaps you might be smart enough to see through it. That you would realize no single seal could possibly unlock the Scrivolia. Maybe your masters thought too highly of you.” The magistrate clasps his hands behind his back and looks up at the Heart. “No, there is only one thing in the entire world that can unlock the Heart.” He turns back around. “And now it’s standing in front of me.”
Alix takes one faltering step back, right as soldiers pour out from between the other archways. Six, ten, fifteen, twenty, spilling around the magistrate’s form, surrounding us. It only takes a moment and we’re hopelessly, desperately outnumbered. My head spins.
“Karis.” Alix’s voice is a whisper, but I hear. He looks at me, and I know what he wants.
My numb fingers slip inside the satchel and brush the cover of his tome. I pull it out, my other hand finding the dagger at my belt even as a dozen thoughts spill into my head, screaming for attention.
I have to do this, for Alix. I promised. Promised him I wouldn’t ever let anyone control him again. If I don’t do this now, the magistrate will get his tome and he’ll be trapped forever. But I can’t do this to my friend. I can’t make the fire leave his eyes, turning him back into dead metal. My breathing rasps in my ears and I can’t make it stop. I can’t make any of this stop.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the magistrate says.
I look at him, wary.
He snaps his fingers, and two soldiers step out from behind the others. They throw who they’re holding to the ground.
Time rocks to a standstill. My brother. Matthias. That same high forehead that looks back at me from the mirror. That same tousled hair he’s had since he was a boy. His lip is puffed up and there’s a gash in his forehead, still seeping red. His arms are bound behind his back, and as he struggles to his knees, I see his shirt is in tatters, showing the bruises and cuts and inked lines that cover his skin.
“Matti.”
The breath of a word barely escapes my lips, but he still looks in my direction, eyes searching and confused. I know he can see basically nothing at this distance, yet somehow, he finds me.
I take a staggering step forward and instantly one of the soldiers holds a knife against Matthias’s throat. He winces, and I stop.
“It’s me,” I say. “It’s Karis.”
“Karis?” There’s a note of wonder in his voice. It’s the voice that comforted me a dozen times when we were cold and exhausted and hungry. It’s the voice that threatens to push me over the edge. My brother is right in front of me, his life in the hands of a man who breathes cruelty like air.
“I’m here, too,” Rudy says. “I’m right here.”
“Rud?” Matthias’s voice tears. “Why did you come back?”
“I had to.”
The magistrate sighs. “This is all very touching, but it isn’t why I brought him.”
I force out the words. “What do you want?”
“We both know you’re quite intelligent, Karis, so don’t pretend. You already know what I want. I want the Scrivolia unlocked again and you want your brother back. A simple trade.”
Bile rises in my throat. A simple trade that isn’t simple at all, with everyone I love on one side and everything I promised to do on the other.
“Karis,” Matthias says. “Don’t do—”
The soldier on his left hits him hard with the pommel of his dagger. I let out a cry as Matthias slumps, dazed and blinking, to the ground.
“No,” Rudy runs forward, voice strangled, but Dane grabs his arm, struggling to hold the larger man back.
“Or I could kill him,” the magistrate says with a shrug. “And you can watch.”
Kill him.
I turn to Alix. “Alix.”
His expression twists with pain. And beneath the pain, a plea. “Karis, I can’t. You know what he’ll do if he gets the Script ink.”
“This is my brother’s life!”
“Karis,” Matthias says. “It’s all right.” He’s barely able to get the words out before a punch in the gut doubles him over.
Icy panic is taking me over, swallowing me whole. It’s not all right. I meant what I said to the others. The magistrate needs to be stopped. We need to stop him before he gains power that can’t be undone. Maybe somewhere in the back of my head, I even
thought there might be a cost to it. But not this. Not the cost of watching my brother be murdered in front of me. Not the cost of stabbing the seal that keeps Alix alive and having to watch the light leave his eyes. Zara had said I was scared of caring, and in this moment, I know that’s true. Because everyone I’ve ever cared about has been taken from me. My parents. My brother. Now Alix. I’m always being left behind.
I can’t do this again.
“Well, what’s your choice?” The magistrate looks at his soldier who presses a knife into Matthias’s cheek. A trail of blood traces down his jawline. Matthias grimaces. But he doesn’t look afraid. Doesn’t look regretful. He’s willing to die, to die and leave me like everyone else.
I look down at the tome, still clenched tight in my hand.
The tome that could change everything.
I don’t know where that thought comes from, but as soon as I have it, it sinks its fingers into my skull. Even if it’s a betrayal. Even if it makes Alix hate me. The idea burns like a flame in my mind and I can’t turn away from its haunting light. If I can just make Alix unlock the Heart, the magistrate will let my brother go, and then all of us can get out of here. Whatever happens with the Script ink and the magistrate, we can fix. I’ll find a way to get Alix back to the Heart so he can lock it. But I can’t fix both of them dying. I can’t fix them being taken to a place I’m unable to follow.
With shaking fingers, I pull a piece of charcoal from my belt pouch. I flip open Alix’s tome and before the doubts can consume me, I write a rune on the page.
33
* * *
ALIX
My legs pull me forward. I whip my head around, sure a soldier grabbed Karis while we were all distracted. Only she’s alone, my tome open before her, her hand holding charcoal over it.
“Karis,” I whisper, my whole body numb. Sure I must be missing something.
Then she looks at me, the guilt torturing her before she turns back to the page.
Betrayal washes over me, so sharp and sudden I don’t have a moment to brace myself before I’m drowning in it. Karis. My first friend. The person who has been with me through all of this. She’s doing this to me.
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