by Selina Kray
With her fingertips she traced the surface of the right-hand side, searching for the lock. After testing her makeshift pick, Callie crawled back down again. Shahida had managed to get Lillian to her feet, though her shivering hadn’t stopped. She’d wrapped the remains of the petticoat around Lillian—perhaps they could pass her off as the Messiah reborn if any of the Daughters came upon them. She looked so wild and frail Callie rushed toward her... only to be stopped cold by the fear in her eyes.
“Don’t fret, Mama. We’ll have you back home and under a doctor’s care in a tiff.” Callie slowly moved to her left side, slinked an arm around her waist. To her relief, Lillian collapsed her weight against her. “Careful now.”
“What do you think you’re doing?” Shahida demanded.
Callie shot her a glare. “Making an escape. Or would you prefer to remain imprisoned by addle-minded zealots?”
“I’d prefer not to abandon these three ladies behind us to wallow in their own piss and scream themselves dumb.”
On cue, the women began to shriek and whine. Callie shushed them with a raspy whistle.
“The Daughters could return at any moment. We have to go while we still can.”
“And leave them to suffer our boldness? I think not.”
“We’re half-starved. My mother has been tortured. We don’t even know if we’ll make it past the door.” When Shahida made to protest, Callie spoke over her. “We’ll come back for them. For them all, when we’re strong enough.”
“And here’s me half-convinced you have a heart.”
Shahida shoved Lillian onto Callie, sat on the floor. She had no choice but to ease her mother down, the weight and the wriggling too much to bear whilst defending her perspective.
“We don’t know where their loyalties lie. They might give us up.”
Shahida scoffed, pointed at the prone figures of the women.
“What do you think got them sent down here? Too much eyelash-batting Sister Juliet’s way? Memorizing every word Mother Rebecca ever shat out her holy mouth?”
“It would be akin to stealing.”
“Only if you’re of the opinion the Daughters own their babes, which I know you’re not.”
“We don’t have anywhere to put them!”
“Right. Only a stonking big house with a staff that keeps more secrets than my shifty Uncle Rory.”
“Cease your bickering at once and set them free,” Lillian, to the astonishment of all, commanded. “Really, Calliope. Your uncle would be ashamed.”
Callie wanted to whoop—out of joy, out of relief—but instead pecked her on the cheek.
“Yes, Mama.” She hastened to obey. One of the few moments in her life where Callie was proud to play the role of dutiful daughter.
In the midst of finishing the last set of cuffs, they heard the door rattle. As they scrambled back into the shadows, a shaft of light streaked across the floor.
They’d run out of time.
The breeze that susurrated through a crack in the conservatory window, making pillow tassels dance and billowing the diaphanous curtains, was the only thing that stirred as Hiero and Sister Merry entered Castleside. Rocking chairs bobbed back and forth for a phantom knitting circle. Not a clank or sizzle emanated from the kitchen. The infirmary door creaked open to reveal upturned beds, a floor splattered with glass shards, and a crashed-in window, but no patients. The normally busy corridor stretched, wide and empty, toward an unimpeded view of the front entrance.
The oppressive quiet filled Hiero with dread. The women who populated these halls and the precious cargo they carried could be in their rooms or collected in one of the two chapels. Or perhaps they lay butchered in a mass grave under the Tree of Wisdom because a goat whispered a prophecy into Sister Juliet’s ear. The trouble with fanatics was you could never be sure who or what they might choose to believe. The whims of a preacher became their call to arms.
Hiero felt the absence of life keenly. The echo of their footfalls on the wood floor sounded like gongs. Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell, summoning thee to heaven or to hell. How fortunate there was a Shakespeare quote for every occasion, even being led to your death.
Sister Merry’s determined bustle did somewhat temper his suspicions. Too practical to deceive, too humble to fool, he doubted she believed one third of his tale of woe—perhaps only the Mr. Sandringham part—but her goodness ran deep enough she would give him a second chance out of her sense of justice. She threw a wary glance over her shoulder every so often, not to assure herself he followed, but to reassure herself helping him was the right decision. Her tell was how she fiddled with the heavy ring of keys at her belt, pressing their ridged edges into the pad of her thumb as if she could tell them apart that way. Would she lead him to Callie and Shahida, or some other purgatory?
Hiero couldn’t conceive of such a salt of the earth breaking her promise to him. He tended toward a jaundiced view of people’s characters and motivations, but they didn’t come more authentic than Sister Merry. From her back-country bark to her withering gaze, it was a miracle she hadn’t sussed him out the day they first met. Or perhaps she had, and this was the cause of her hesitation.
This assessment of her character—undertaken, it had to be said, to stave off his sense of foreboding—preoccupied Hiero such that he failed to notice the change in the air until they’d rounded a corner.
It began with a pinch between his shoulder blades, then spread out like the veins in a dragonfly’s wings across his back and arms. His pulse fluttered, nervous and tittering. He couldn’t catch his breath. The air buzzed as they approached the short side corridor, grew blurry and thick as they turned left. And Hiero remembered.
The hell door.
Hiero shrank back, anchoring a palm to the wall to keep from fleeing. Hissing voices slithered out the slits in the door frame, coiled around his chest, and squeezed. Sweat broke out on his temples and brow as Hiero fought for air, for control, for clarity of purpose. His eyelids twitched, each blink flicking from the present black door to its twin in his mind. Every step closer flared a memory: the weight of the chains on his arms and legs, the burn of the metal around his wrists, the compression of the straps around his chest, the crack of the whip and the sear of the forge iron. The days without end of staring at the same four blank walls.
The shame he had molted to become the man he was today. A man who would not be daunted by a door.
“Is my Rebecca within?” Hiero asked, choking down his breaths.
“She and her servant.” Sister Merry made a show of checking their surroundings for interlopers. “You’d best not run back through the garden. I can’t say how long the coast will be clear, if you catch my meaning.”
“Where has everyone gone?”
“Don’t dally over things that don’t concern you. Especially if you care to escape.”
Hiero noticed she hesitated before slipping the key in the lock.
“My only regret is leaving your good company. I cannot thank you enough for all you have done for my wife and me.”
“Don’t need thanks for doing what’s right.”
A soft snick indicated she’d turned the lock.
“Amen to that.”
She glanced at him, vigilant, assessing, then eased open the door. A wave of rancid air nearly suffocated him, flashed him back to another time, another dungeon, the same reek of human waste. Hiero cowered back, but Sister Merry shoved him into the dank maw of the cellar, slamming the door behind.
Or so Hiero thought as he tumbled into the blackness. He landed hard on his shoulder, scrabbled for purchase as he banged and thumped his way down a steep flight of steps. He crashed headfirst into the hard earth, legs akimbo until gravity brought them down with a crunch. The dull pound in his head grew to a deafening hammer. Sparks erupted in the red mist behind his eyes. He could not move. He could not think. A permafrost bite sank into his bones, paralyzing him where he lay. Amidst the wretched, the mad, the depraved. Walls smeared with feces,
shackles rusted with blood. And the screams. The incessant soul-withering screams, night and day, muddling time and place and sanity until everything you knew...
Something kicked his leg. His not-broken leg, although Hiero couldn’t vouch for the other bones in his body. A series of smacks to the cheek slapped him into the present. He cracked open an eye to see, among other indignities, Callie craning over him, looking cross. Also oddly disheveled.
“Is this your idea of a rescue attempt?” she demanded at wince-inducing volume.
“‘Idea’ is too solid a word. Rescue notion, perhaps?”
“He’ll live,” came her diagnosis before she grabbed his arm and attempted to tug him to his feet. An attempt his injured, shuddering body resisted, much to his relief.
“Don’t jostle him about like that,” Shahida objected, adding to Hiero’s relief. “He’s just gone arse over teakettle down a flight of stairs.”
“If he’d broken anything, his howling would have brought the Daughters down by now.”
“That’d be one way to get them to open the door.” Shahida guided him into a seated position. “How about some howling, Mr. Bash? I’ve heard you’re one for the opera.”
“Theater. And no.”
The pun he was about to make died on his lips when Hiero finally opened his eyes. In an instant he took in the mattresses, the shackles, the tomblike room, the ghost-eyed women, the scold’s bridles...
When he came back to himself, he’d crawled halfway up the stairs, screaming, “Out! Let me out!”
Callie hugged him from behind, eased him back down into the abyss. He shucked her off as soon as they hit firm ground, planting himself on the bottom step, from which he could see a thin line of light under the door. Hiero tucked his hands under his arms, an involuntary gesture learned in a place he forced his mind away from, though everything here reminded him of the years he’d wasted there. Callie disappeared—he knew not where, would not look—then returned with a bedraggled figure who hummed a lullaby to herself.
“Lillian.” Despite their circumstances, Hiero flashed a smile as she sat down beside him. “At last.”
“What a dreadful state you’ve kept the place in, Hieronymus,” she huffed, curling around his arm like a cat left out in the rain. He drew her against him, comforted even by her unpredictable presence. At least they’d managed to solve one mystery, though it had led them to ruin.
“I couldn’t agree more.”
“Have you brought tea?”
“No, but now that you mention it, I could do with a cup.” He shot a quizzical look Callie’s way. “Shall we retire from here?”
“Only if you promise to sing me to sleep.”
“Of course, dear Lillian. Once we’re home, you’ll have anything you desire.” He still could not bring himself to glance about, so he was glad when Callie knelt in front of him. “Have you devised a way out?”
“I have. Through the door.”
“Innovative. How do you mean to open it?”
She proudly displayed a long white stick that had been whittled into a pick at the end.
“Girl after my own heart,” Hiero complimented.
“You’d think you never taught me anything, to hear you.”
“Lesson learned.” Hiero continued as if oblivious to the three pregnant women Shahida gathered around them. “Though if you think about it, in a roundabout way, I have come to your rescue.”
He pretended not to notice her sigh.
“What sort of trouble awaits us upstairs?”
“Not a creature was stirring. Not even a Kip.” At her dubious expression, he elaborated. “In high conference with the Daughters, and the rest confined to their rooms.”
“Who let you in?”
“Sister Merry, traitoress. Escorted me from the garden, to which she most likely returned.”
Callie nodded. “Then we haven’t a moment to lose.” She rose to her feet with a decisive hop. “Shahida, prepare them to move, swift and silent. At my signal we walk in pairs to the front door. Don’t stop. Don’t look back. You’ll lead while Hiero, Mama, and I will bring up the rear.”
Callie patted him on the shoulder before she scaled the steps. Feeling more centered, Hiero cast his eyes away from the small chamber to the shadowy passage that appeared to lead deeper underground. Toward the garden, if the map was accurate. He shivered, grateful this hadn’t proved their only means of escape.
At the click of the lock above, he readied himself for flight, only to panic anew at Callie’s whispered “Hide!” Lillian yanked him into a dingy corner before Hiero knew what he was about. The door above creaked open, a hulking figure filling the frame...
Who let out a familiar snort-cough.
“Here you are, then,” Han greeted.
Hiero didn’t miss Callie’s soft whimper of relief.
“We found Mama,” she informed him.
“As I knew you would. Hurry now. I think their business is concluding.”
Shahida led the women up the stairs in pairs, as planned. Callie zipped back down to grab her mother from Hiero. He almost tripped over himself in his haste to reach the stability of the main floor. Once in the corridor, he staggered into Han as he had all those years ago, the tether of his supportive arm just as strong and comforting.
“Where is he?”
“In the side chapel. Come—”
“Alone?”
“We must away. We’ll rendezvous afterward, compare notes.” Han urged him toward the main hall in the women’s wake.
“But if the Daughters discover us gone after he’s struck a bargain...”
“If they meant to do an exchange, Callie and Miss Kala would already be with them.” To Hiero’s aghast expression, Han answered, “He knew the risks. We have to fly.”
“No.”
“We have what we came for.”
Just as Hiero snarled a reply, a side door burst open. Han pulled him into an alcove moments before a group of Daughters carried in a weak, wheezing, half-conscious Kip, Sister Zanna leading the charge. A line of blood flowed across the floor from a wound at his calf, through which his lank feet dragged.
“Faster!” Sister Zanna cried. “We’re losing time!”
Only once they disappeared into the infirmary did Hiero realize he’d battered himself against Han’s bulkier frame. He wrestled with his longtime friend, but Han doubled him in strength and determination.
“Let... me... go!”
“You heard her. Whatever it is, he can’t be moved.”
“Kip!” Hiero bellowed.
“Shut your fool mouth, or we’ll draw their attention.” He seized Hiero by the shoulders and shook him. “Would you have us all captured?!”
“I’m not leaving him in a nest of asps!”
He stomped on Han’s foot, forgetting his steel-toed boot. Han clapped a hand over his mouth to smother the resulting howl. Taking cruel advantage of Hiero’s agony, Han threw him on his shoulder and raced for the front door. He battered his fists on Han’s back and kicked at his stomach as they made for the gate, only to be shoved into an overpopulated carriage. Han hung from the frame, half-in, half-out the open door as they sped away. It took everything in Hiero not to push him into the street.
“Stop this instant! Let me go to him!”
“To what? Watch him die?” Han shouted over him.
“What’s happened?” Callie asked.
Hiero coughed over a bleat of upset, his anger waning. The buck and sway of the carriage turned his stomach. He leaned over, hands to his knees.
“At least I’d be with him.”
“If they let you near him. If they didn’t target you as well. Which would be a mercy. Do you want to go back to that cellar?”
The very thought stole the breath from Hiero’s throat.
“We get these women to safety. We rest, we regroup. We share information, and we plan an attack. That’s the only thing that will save him.”
“Don’t sacrifice yourself to an impossi
ble situation,” Callie seconded. “From what I’ve observed of Sister Zanna, she will do everything in her power to preserve his life.”
“What life remains to be preserved.”
Hiero buried his face in his hands, succumbing to his weakness, if not to his grief.
Chapter 18
Callie hugged her arms around the bedpost, pressing her cheek to the ridged wood as she watched Shahida tuck the coverlet around a babbling Lillian. The doctor, just gone, had given her something to help her sleep; Callie wondered at the dosage. But then it wouldn’t be the first time her mother had defied the odds.
Shahida sat with Lillian, petting her hand with rhythmic strokes. Callie hugged the post tighter, feeling an intruder but determined to do right by her mother in what little way she could. Her illness had was an invisible wall between them. Only now Callie wondered if the wall had been there at all. If it was a barrier of her making, meant to insulate her from her family’s troubles. A barrier she still didn’t know how to breach.
She knew something of her mother’s suffering at the hands of her father, both when he was at home and Lillian’s longing for him when he was at sea, but these were a child’s mythic, impressionistic notions of the war between godlike parents. Her mother had never spoken, and she had never asked, about the reality. Her girlish cares had consumed her. Everything was forbidden when her father was alive, then, once her Uncle Apollo inherited them, everything became available to her. To seek adventure instead of scorn was forgivable at eight. It was less admirable a quality come eighteen.
When she felt her eyelids drooping, Callie relinquished the bedpost and slipped out of the bedroom. Not wanting to disturb Shahida’s efforts, she eased the door shut behind her. She eyed the poky-cushioned chesterfield with mild contempt, a small step above her straw mattress in the Daughters’ cellar. Her mother had always had questionable taste in furniture; “Comfort tempts complacency” was one of her fondest dictums. Perhaps they could collaborate in renovating the attic sitting room? Shahida had made a good start with the greenery by the window, a miniature garden for Lillian to putter around in on rainy days. Perhaps in creating a space for herself here, she and Mama could find common ground.