Beneath the Keep

by Erika Johansen

  He had been meaning to ask Niya for help, had only been waiting for the right opportunity. But he could not do it now, for Niya was unwell. Over the past weeks Christian had watched her face paling, her already-slight frame growing even thinner, the light fading from her eyes. He knew the source of her grief, and whenever he saw Niya staring hopelessly at Elyssa, as though waiting for a miracle, he found himself hating the Princess Regent, hating her with all his heart. Christian had not been in the Keep long enough to know the Princess they had all known, the True Queen who had defied Arla and caused riots in the Circus, but he did not think that Carroll’s description of Elyssa had been exaggerated. Niya’s grief, the grief of the Guard . . . these were too raw for him to doubt.

  A foot scraped above him in the darkness, and Christian paused, tapping silent fingers on the banister. Tennant had left the staircase at the sixth floor, a level mostly reserved for servants’ quarters and linen storehouses. The dim glow of his torch faded, then disappeared, and a few moments later Christian began climbing the stairs again. He exited at the sixth level, following the distant torchlight down a long, narrow tunnel. As the light vanished, Christian struck a match and lit the candle he carried in his belt. He always carried the candle on these expeditions, along with his guard kit, but he left his grey cloak behind. Whatever was going on in these tunnels, Thorne and Tennant were in it together, and so Christian understood the true nature of his purpose here: not guarding, but hunting. The grey cloak could have no part in it.

  The tunnel was even smaller than he’d thought: barely wider than his shoulders, with a low ceiling that brushed the tips of his spiky hair. Behind the walls, Christian could hear the muffled sounds of machinery: the pumps and levers that ran the Keep’s plumbing. The sheer size of this structure still managed to shock him at times, but not as often as it used to. A man could get used to anything; children of the Creche knew that better than anyone.

  He turned the corner and found himself in a dead end.

  Christian halted, staring at the walls. Tennant had certainly gone this way; Christian had seen the glare of his torch down here, not a minute before. He backed up slowly, rounding the corner again to see if he had missed some branching in the dark. But there was nothing. Christian turned one way, then another, running his hands over the walls, seeking whatever hidden door the man had used. But he found none of the tiny laced dots that bespoke the hidden exits in the Queen’s Wing. Tennant had come down here and simply vanished.

  He didn’t vanish, Christian’s mind returned calmly. They’re resourceful, these nonces. You must be resourceful too. Look around.

  Christian took a deep breath, held up his candle, and examined the stone walls around him. A dark smudge drew his eye, and he leaned forward, finding a tiny carving in the stone: the rising sun over water. So the Blue Horizon had even made their way up here. The image made Christian think of the tunnels, where the Blue Horizon had once liked to write their message large . . . but even that memory was dimming, growing distant. Some days he actually forgot, for long stretches, that he had ever been anything but a Queen’s Guard.

  Christian heard something.

  Very faint; the sound of male laughter. It seemed to come from above his head.

  Christian held up the candle, examining the ceiling, pressing here and there, looking for weaknesses as he went. He came back around the corner toward the dead end, still pressing, but he could find nothing, no crevices or other imperfections in the rock.

  It’s here, he told himself firmly. I just have to find it.

  He began to examine the wall of the dead end. Again, nothing, only evenly laid stone. The candle guttered, and Christian blinked, for he had felt no drafts. After a moment’s thought, he held the candle up again, watching it steadily, unblinking. Long seconds passed, and then the candle guttered again, not to the left or right but downward, as though that unseen draft had come from the ceiling. Christian looked up again but saw only stone. Frustration threatened to overwhelm him, but he forced himself to hold still. Another minute passed, and then he felt it: a breath of wind, blowing down onto his forehead. He reached up, feeling the top of the wall, and his hand slipped through the ceiling.

  Christian stared at this phenomenon: his hand, vanished through what appeared to be unbroken stone. Lifting his candle high, he saw that there was an opening there, barely wide enough to fit a man . . . an opening cleverly concealed. For the first time—but not nearly the last—Christian found himself wondering who had built this place.

  Reaching higher into the opening, Christian found it: a protruding lip of stone, the first rung of a ladder. Christian doused his candle, tucked it back into his kit, and grasped the rung, pulling himself up into the hidden opening. It was tricky; he had to haul himself up, scrabbling against the wall for purchase, and he wondered how the slight arms of Lord Tennant had managed the trick. Perhaps there was some other structural help here, something Christian couldn’t see. As he boosted himself up through the opening, he felt it for certain: a breeze, cool and dry against his sweaty brow.

  He did not know whether it was his own eagerness, or the true span of time, that made that climb seem to last forever. The stone ladder might have had thirty rungs, or a thousand. Nothing seemed real, as though, rather than climbing through a hole in the ceiling, Christian had climbed through a hole in the top of the world, into a darkness so complete that there would never be any more light. But eventually the feeling disappeared, as Christian realized that he could see again, the clear outline of each stone in front of him. Somewhere above, there was torchlight, filtering down.

  Cautiously, he climbed through a final opening and found himself in a long, broad corridor, lit with torches, which ended in either a corner or another dead end. The corridor was empty, so Christian pushed himself off the ladder and straightened, then winced as he saw the wall, where an enormous mural had been painted: a picture of a group of children at play, sitting on a floor among balls and jacks and dice. Above this pretty picture were three words. Christian could not read them, but he did not like the look of the script: swirling and sinister, painted in red.

  He pulled his mace from his belt and began down the hallway, moving on tiptoe. As he neared the bend, he passed a pile of swords and cloaks, all of them thrown carelessly at the base of the wall that held the mural. Christian counted the swords carefully, found nine.

  Laughter echoed again. Christian gritted his teeth, for the sound reminded him of the ring, where men went to drink and enjoy the thrill of combat from the cheap seats. Christian was high above the tunnels now, hundreds of feet in the air, but he smelled the Creche all over this place, a stink like nothing else on earth. He tightened his grip on his mace, squeezing it until his fingers felt as though they might shatter, and peeked around the bend.

  For a moment, he was blinded by light. Glass and crystal seemed to sparkle everywhere, wineglasses and mirrors and even an enormous contraption hanging from the ceiling, innumerable candles strewn about its sides. Carroll had told him the name of such devices, though Christian could not remember it now. They were designed to light large rooms, and the room before him seemed nearly the size of the Queen’s ballroom.

  Everywhere Christian looked, he seemed to see children.

  They were there, sitting on sofas and small cushions and men’s laps. Some of the girls wore dresses, as grown women did: silks and satins in bright colors. Some of the boys were dressed as well, like pages or even knights. One small boy wore a miniature suit of armor. None of them were older than seven. Some of the littlest ones still wore nappies, and they walked or toddled freely around the floor.

  Christian did not know how long he stood there, staring at the scene, trying to come to terms with it, to make it real inside his head. The men were all drinking, he saw; empty glasses seemed to sit on every available surface. Looking around for Tennant, Christian found him at a low bar on the left side of the room, pouring hims
elf a whiskey. A naked boy toddled across the room, clutching a toy horse, and as he passed the group of men, one of them reached out and grabbed the boy, fondling his genitals for a moment before the child moved out of reach. Casual, this gesture, languid; the man touched the boy the same way another man might reach for his pint of beer. Across the room, a bearded man dressed in bright green velvet had his cock out of his trousers, and he leaned back in the cushions, a glass of wine in one hand and the other stroking himself. His eyes were fixed on a tiny girl who sat on the floor, playing with a doll.

  It’s a club, Latimer had said, that night down on the third level. A club, for lords. Latimer had not been ashamed, Christian remembered that quite clearly. He had not thought that he was doing anything wrong; his only concern had been in secrecy, and Christian suddenly understood how secrecy had allowed this little club to continue, to flourish, just as secrecy protected the Creche. The children in this room didn’t look like Creche babies; they were too clean, for one thing, and all of them had fine, straight teeth. But then Christian heard Arliss’s graveled voice in his mind—straight teeth and unblemished skin—and understood: these were Creche babies, handpicked by Thorne for this purpose. Christian recalled the mural he had seen in the tunnel, its paint cracked and desiccated with years. How long had this “club” been here?

  It doesn’t matter, his mind whispered. The words were firm and certain, rational as an advocate’s, but lined with murder, cold murder like a fine layer of red silk. Thorne wasn’t here, Maura wasn’t here, but those facts didn’t matter either. Deep in his mind, Christian heard his own voice, speaking to Barty on that long-ago day of his test: I’m tired of fighting for no reason. I would like to have some purpose behind it. And Barty had believed him, never truly knowing what he had taken into the Guard. Christian killed; it was what he did, what he was good at, and for much of his life, that had been justification enough. But here, here, was purpose.

  Reason.

  The naked little boy saw Christian first; he dropped the toy horse and began to scream. That was good, for the rest of the children began to scream as well, jumping to their feet and fleeing, toward a broad doorway at the far end of the room. They would not see this, and a distant part of Christian’s mind was pleased at that fact. As the children fled, the group of lords sprang to their feet, dropping their glasses. One of them began to say something, but Christian did not wait to hear it. He had not killed anyone in months, and at the sight of the group of men, their faces wide with horror—but not guilt; no, never that—something seemed to stretch and breathe inside him, some set of muscles long unused. He smiled wide, then began killing.

  * * *

  He saved Tennant for last. The oily lord showed more rudimentary sense than the others, hiding behind the bar while Christian rampaged across the room, chasing shrieking lords into the corners. Several of them tried to reach the doorway, the pile of swords that lay in the corridor, but Christian was there before them, laughing and snarling, swinging his mace at one head after another, and each impact traveled through his chest like fire, turning everything inside him to light.

  Only when all the rest were dead did Christian regain some bare sense of himself, enough to turn his attention to the balding man crouched behind the bar. Tennant squealed like a rat when Christian hauled him to his feet. As he picked Tennant up and threw him on the bar, the man’s silken shirt tore down both arms.

  “Please,” Tennant begged. “We didn’t harm him. Or her. Whoever you’re here for.”

  Christian nearly laughed; the filthy nonce thought he was an outraged father!

  “Please! I have money. I can give you ten thousand pounds. Just let me go.”

  “Ten thousand,” Christian murmured, leaning over him. “Perhaps. If you give me some information.”

  “Anything.”

  “Maura. Where is she?”

  “Who?”

  He hauled Tennant up and threw him across the room. Tennant landed on the floor with a crunch, howling as his shoulder popped neatly out of joint.

  “Maura. The girl you nonces pulled from the Creche. The one with the pretty blonde hair. She’s too old for your little stable here, so where is she?”

  “Blonde hair,” Tennant repeated, his gaze sharpening through the pain. “But she had no relatives, no one to come looking. Thorne assured us—”

  Christian punched him square, breaking his nose.

  “Please!” Tennant shrieked. “We didn’t take her! We needed someone, but it was Thorne who found her! He found her and brought her here! We didn’t even have to pay the fee for the club; Thorne said he would take care of that, so long as we remembered later—”

  “Remembered what?”

  “Debt, man! It’s all Thorne wants, to collect noble markers and be able to call them in! He’s piled up favors like a hoard—”

  Christian bent down, wrapping his hands around Tennant’s throat.

  “For the last time,” he said softly. “Where is Maura?”

  “In the back!” Tennant replied, his voice a hoarse wheeze. He threw an arm toward the back of the chamber, the doorway that opened into another room. “Back there! We didn’t harm her, I swear—”

  But Christian had heard enough of the harm these men had not done. He tightened his grip on Tennant’s throat, unmoved by the sounds the man made, the gasps and gulps that echoed throughout the silent chamber. When it was done, Christian turned and followed the direction indicated by Tennant’s outflung hand.

  The doorway at the rear opened onto another cavernous room, but this room was as different from the room of light as could be. The walls were lined with small beds. Not cheap beds, Christian noted; the mattresses were thick, the covers made of soft wool. On one wall was a basin and a long flat piece of furniture that Christian recognized as a changing table; he had seen one in the Queen’s Wing, in the enormous chamber adjoining Elyssa’s, which was now being prepared as a nursery. A drawn curtain to his left indicated a toilet. Christian noted all of this in a quick glance, then forgot it, for the children had gathered around a tall girl in the center of the room, a girl with a wasted face and long, gleaming, white-blonde hair. She clutched the children close, staring fearfully at Christian, and an impassive part of him—the guard part—noted that she looked at least ten years older than when he had last seen her. Then her face softened in recognition, and she looked younger . . . almost like her old self.

  “Christian?”

  “Maura. You’re alive.”

  She smiled. Christian lowered his mace, meaning to move toward her, but in that moment his nostrils registered the bittersweet smell in the air: morphia cooking. He stopped, looking around the room again, seeing it anew, an almost ghastly mirror of the enormous chamber being prepared downstairs for the royal heir. The floor was covered with soft toys. At Christian’s feet lay a box of whittled animals. There were even a few hand-bound books sitting on a low shelf.

  “This is where Thorne took you,” he said flatly. “This place.”

  “It’s a club. For nobles. It’s—”

  Maura stopped talking, a sudden flush spreading over her face. And now Christian saw the worst thing, the very worst thing: one of the thick, comfortable beds was much bigger than the others, not made for children at all, and on the nightstand beside the bed was a tiny crucible, a twisted spoon.

  “They brought me here,” Maura said, her voice rising in alarm at the look on Christian’s face. “To care for the children.”

  “Care for them,” Christian repeated, thinking of the way the dead men had stared at the children as they sipped their drinks. Anger began to coil inside him now, anger so black that he could not begin to imagine how to keep it in check. “I see.”

  “I do care for them!” Maura snapped. “Are you to sit in judgment on me now? You, Lazarus?”

  Christian stared at her for a long moment, then asked, “The words on the wa
ll outside. What do they say?”

  “I can’t read any more than you can!”

  “But you know what the wall says.”

  Maura glanced in both directions, trapped.

  “What does it say?”

  “The Devil’s Club. All right? The Devil’s Club, that’s what they call themselves.”

  “I see,” Christian repeated, his voice deadly soft now. He stared at her, as intently as ever, but for the first time he did not see the girl he had loved since childhood, or even the tiny scrap of child who had taken his hand on the block.

  He saw Mrs. Evans.

  “I do them no harm!” Maura wailed. “I clean them! I put them to bed at night! I tell them stories!”

  “You whore them out!” Christian shouted, so furious that he found himself backing away as well, lest he break every bone in her face with a single blow. Images flashed through his head, beyond his power to check: Mrs. Evans, her mouth smiling while her dead eyes rung up coin. Maura’s shivering, naked body on the auction block. And then he looked down and saw the group of small children standing there, watching them, a terrible lack of wonder on their faces. They were beautiful, these children; a distant part of Christian’s mind reckoned that they must have cost Thorne a fortune.

  “I make it better,” Maura whispered brokenly. “Afterward. I sing to them. I cuddle them. I remember how it was. I make it better.”

  Christian rubbed his temples, feeling his fingers slick with blood, wishing that he had never come to this place, wishing that he had fled the city, fled across the Almont, perished in the Dry Lands, anything else.

  “You’re a pimp,” he told Maura, his voice flat and brutal. “You trade children for poppy. You’re nothing.”

  He turned and strode away, leaving them all standing there, wanting no part of this, no responsibility. He had done enough. But he got no more than five feet before he saw it: a small symbol carved into the wall beside the double doors. Another sun rising over water, but this one was much more crudely drawn. The Blue Horizon had never been in this room; Maura, or perhaps one of the older children, had etched the picture, not knowing what it was.