by Kim Smejkal
From the corner of her eye, she saw Lyric nod slightly.
“I can prove it. I know her death was peaceful. She died young—not much more than twenty.”
“You could have guessed that from my portraits.”
According to those portraits, Martina had changed her hair and clothing dramatically and often, and Celia would guess that in life, her tenor had changed as well. But in the afterlife, she was stuck with both the pronoun and the clothing she’d died in. The idea sent a wave of sympathy washing over Celia: it wasn’t right that something as fluid as identity was stifled for eternity.
And it was Halcyon’s fault. Not only was he harming everyone else, he was hurting the one he claimed to love most. Celia swallowed her rage. “She was wearing a green dress the color of emeralds, with cream lace here”—she gestured at her wrists—“and here—” she touched her neckline. “She had a belt made of ribbon, and the dress was a unique cut with open splits up the sides, so I think she made it herself—”
“Enough!” Halcyon roared.
And if Celia had thought she’d made him mad before, that was nothing compared to now.
Interlude
The plague doctor lit some Kinallen powder to illuminate the space, casting Zuni and her bag of skulls in a dim, blueish light. Halcyon had tossed them into what looked like a cellar.
“This is more privacy than I ever had with the Rabble Mob,” he said, wondering if Zuni had ever been held in the Asuran dungeon: more rats than people, the smell so strong it wormed in through your nose and settled right behind your eyes, making them water perpetually. This wasn’t nearly as bad. Four walls. A floor. A door with a hatch. The hatch could be opened from both sides, likely to pass food and water through. Zuni rattled it open. “You won’t be able to squeeze through,” she said, examining the size of the opening. “You have”—she arched an eyebrow in his direction—“shoulders.”
The plague doctor took off his coat and mask, then carefully balanced the flame on the ground between them.
“I can’t believe this,” Zuni muttered, putting her head in her hands. “Tossed out of the fight before it even started.”
“Don’t be defeatist,” he said. It was as if Zuni actually believed they were trapped! He felt along the inside of the slim beak of his mask, running his fingers along its length until he found the two metal rods that gave the beak some of its support, no more than two slight bumps. He picked at those little bumps carefully, loosening the ceramic around them. “The inside of my coat will have a few things,” he said to Zuni as he concentrated. No way was he ruining his mask, despite the emergency.
Zuni scooped it up. “Like what? What am I looking for?”
“A small braid on the flip side of the breast pocket. Follow the trail of it through the fabric—do not wreck my coat, Zuni—and you should get to some treasures along the way.” A magnet, money, the braid woven from spun silver, a needle, a small spool of thread, various pockets of Kinallen’s fire powder in an assortment of colors (his trademark might have been blue and purple, but sometimes the last thing you wanted was to leave a trail), two buttons . . . “I don’t remember everything. Just look until you find the pliers.”
“Pliers,” Zuni mumbled, feeling along the length of the braid. “You have pliers sewn into your jacket.”
“Move faster, plague doctor,” Diavala said. “He won’t take kindly to escape plans.”
“Well, we’re actually escaping, so it isn’t a plan,” he muttered. Did no one here appreciate his talents?
“Angeli in heaven, is this a spoon?” Zuni exclaimed, her fingers tracing along a ridge at the bottom of the coat.
“Of course,” he said. “But focus, Zuni.” The clips in the mask were almost out; he’d scratched away most of the clay holding them in place, mourning the state of his mask. From perfect to less than. “I need the pliers.”
“I found a hammer.”
“Is a hammer pliers?” the plague doctor asked, his voice sugary sweet. “But keep it out.” He nodded at their growing pile of supplies. “We might need it.”
With the rods out of the mask and the pliers finally freed from his coat, he bent and flattened the tips to the shape he needed. The lock on the door was an older style, easy enough to pick, if he could get both hands working it. He wasn’t sure of the angle. “I’m glad illusion locks are the same as regular locks,” he said.
He still didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. Maybe he never would.
Struggling to reach out of the hatch, making a mental note to add an adhesive to his pockets when he had a chance (if he dropped the rods, they’d be in there a good long time), he angled his hands toward the lock. Just barely reaching it. Just barely able to tickle the metal. With only his arms stretched out, his cheek resting on the inside of the door, he couldn’t see what he was doing, but he’d picked worse locks in worse conditions. As the clinks and clanks of his work rang through the hallway, he winced.
His shoulders felt the strain of the awkward position, and his hands were beginning to sweat. But the lock clicked open, and though he did his best to catch it, it clattered to the floor. The door swung open easily and silently, the fresh air snuffing out the flame.
“Let’s go,” Zuni said, yanking the plague doctor’s arm.
They quickly walked down the long, dark hallway. On either side was a stretch of bare stone wall.
. . . Until they passed their open cell again, the freshly picked lock lying on the ground where they’d left it.
They picked up their pace. Running in a straight line, without making any turns, they passed the cell they’d just left another three times before rearing to a stop, out of breath.
“Should have known it was too easy,” the plague doctor said, surveying the hallway. It was identical in both directions, stretching so far they couldn’t see the end. “Other way, then.”
They ran in the other direction. With Diavala chanting in his head, he was about to scream when Zuni lurched to a stop and he narrowly avoided bowling her over. “Look,” she said, pointing up.
The only difference in the opposite direction was a ladder that began above Zuni’s head and, three rungs later, disappeared into the ceiling. No door, no hatch, no marks on the ceiling or wall, just three rungs of a ladder on the wall, leading nowhere, like an ornament or decoration.
The plague doctor knelt down, propped a knee up, and took Zuni’s hand to help her balance as she stepped up onto his knee as if it were a step stool. Pressing her hands to the ceiling and wall around the ladder rungs, wobbling the whole while as she balanced, she searched for a hidden access.
“Just go up,” the plague doctor said, his leg straining from holding Zuni’s weight. “It’s a ladder. Climb it.”
“I don’t want a concussion, thank you very much!” Zuni said, jumping off. “If it’s so easy to climb through a ceiling, be my guest.”
The plague doctor put his coat and mask on, stuffed every loose item into his pockets, and jumped, grabbing the bottom rung of the ladder. He hung there a moment, closing his eyes, hoping he was right about this. Without looking, he grabbed the second rung, then the third, and scrabbling up the wall, he reached for the fourth.
Then the fifth.
His foot found purchase on the bottom rung. Still not opening his eyes—because some things were better in the dark, including leaps of faith that made no logical sense—he called to Zuni. “Are you able to reach?”
In answer, she jumped, her hands slapping the rung by his feet. “I’m not Celia-short,” she huffed.
Because he’d started the climb with his eyes closed—and that leap of faith had worked—he continued the climb with them tightly shut. All around him was darkness, nothing seeping in, but his other senses became more attuned. He heard Zuni’s breathing below him, the sound of his hands slapping the rungs in a steady pace, the clomp of their boots. He smelled stagnant air with an undertone of dampness, as if they were in the belly of Illinia itself, and the smell became st
ronger the farther they went. Could they be climbing down?
His muscles strained, and Zuni’s breathing became more laborious. The climb (or descent) went on and on. Straight up and down. Forever.
He stopped, wrapping his arms around the ladder rungs to give his hands a rest. Zuni rested her forehead on his lower legs.
“Do you have your eyes open?” he asked her.
“Yes.” Zuni laughed, the movement rustling his pant legs. “You don’t?”
“No.” He couldn’t shake the feeling that it was the only thing holding him there. Locked in his own darkness, forever climbing.
“Well, there’s light coming in from far up, but we definitely don’t seem to be getting closer.”
“What about around us? Have you seen any ledges?” he asked.
“Holy hell, Griffin, if there’d been a ledge, don’t you think I would have mentioned it? No, there’s nothing. We’re in a tube that extends into infinity.”
If they kept going into infinity, their mortal arms would tire. They were close already, shuddering with effort. Once they gave out for good, they would both fall. And if they fell, they would fall far.
Definitely farther than he’d fallen before, that time he’d died. He’d barely been able to shout out before impact that time. This time, he’d likely have time to recite the entire play. Wonder which option’s worse, he thought.
“The long fall,” Diavala said.
Wasn’t talking to you, Diavala.
“This is the most bored I’ve been in decades, plague doctor. Even your disregard is better than nothing.”
He tilted his head up, trying to sense the light Zuni had mentioned. He didn’t. But as he began climbing again, there was a nagging thought at the back of his mind that he couldn’t quite shake loose.
A few minutes later, he paused again. “This isn’t working.” In the stillness and darkness, he felt himself losing touch with reality with every rung he climbed (or descended). There was a madness in doing the same thing and expecting a different result.
“Okay, Zuni, I’m going to let go.”
“Excuse me . . . pardon me? What?” she panted below him, reaching up to give his shin a swat, as if to knock the idea out of him.
“That kind of excitement wasn’t really what I had in mind,” Diavala said.
“What do people do with ladders?” he called down to Zuni.
“They climb them.”
“Right, they climb them. And where do ladders go?”
“They go up.” Zuni was stretching out her words, long and slow, as if she were answering a child but wanted them to feel heard.
“But are we going up?”
“I don’t think we are, no,” Zuni said. “But that doesn’t mean I want to experiment with forces of gravity.”
The plague doctor shook his head, trying to clear it. “What if the ladder is a decoy?” Tentatively, he reached a hand out and felt around him: the stone was damp and slimy, each brick as similar as the one around it. He went up a rung and tried again, looking for anything other than monotony.
Every illusion had a flaw; you just had to find it, and everything unraveled.
His hand landed on a patch of moss.
“How far away is the light up above? Are we any closer?” he asked. At that point he wasn’t sure why he was being weird about opening his eyes, but given what he was considering, he could handle only so much experimentation.
“It’s still way up there. A pinprick.”
“So there’s no light around us?”
“No. It’s dead black.”
He shuddered at her description.
“Then how can moss grow here?” He pulled his favorite iron hammer from his pocket, hefted it into his palm, reached out, and tapped. Where was the flaw?
The hammer met stone, giving away none of its secrets.
He dropped it.
“Hey!” Zuni exclaimed. The ladder jerked as she hugged closer to it to avoid being hit.
Then they both paused. And listened.
Nothing more than a breath later, it hit the bottom with an echoey thunk . . . somewhere on the wall near Zuni’s head.
“What the hell?” she mumbled. Griffin heard her fumble around, trying to find it, and a moment later she had it in her hand. “It fell sideways.”
“All right, ready? We’re going to fall sideways too. On the count of five, let go.”
“No, Griffin, this is a foolish—”
“One, two, three—”
“If you die here, I have to take Zuni over, Griffin Kay!” Diavala shouted. “Our deal is over! This is the end of your story!”
“Are you mad? We have to figure this out first!” Zuni shouted.
It would work. “Four—”
“If you die, I’ll never forgive you—”
“Five!”
He let go of the ladder.
And fell.
Although it wasn’t the end of his story, it was still a painful landing. His shoulder hit first, rocking a jolt through him that slammed his teeth together, nearly slicing his tongue in half. A loud thump and a twist, and something or someone—Zuni—landed on his legs, smashing them together.
“Dia,” Zuni cursed with a moan. And then, “Holy shit. Holy shit! It actually worked!” She scrambled to untangle herself and, he assumed, stood up.
All he tasted was the blood from the cut on his tongue where his teeth had gone through, the sting of it sharpening every other sensation in his body. His shoulder felt like it had been pulled out of its socket.
He couldn’t tell whether they’d fallen up or down or sideways, but they’d fallen for a moment and then landed hard, and then the tunnel was no longer a tunnel, the ladder no longer a ladder, and in front of them was a door. Cracked open, revealing the light of outside streaming through.
The jolt had made his eyes snap open. Finally. He could see again.
Zuni rolled her shoulders and helped him stand. In the dim light, he could see her grinning, and he thought for a moment they’d landed in some upside-down world, where gloomy Zunis smiled and happy plague doctors winced.
“I can feel the ink close,” Diavala said.
“Follow me,” the plague doctor whispered. They were still in Halcyon’s house somewhere; the garish parquet flooring was the same. The door in one direction—the way the plague doctor would have gone, given a choice—was the same as all the others. But Diavala instructed him to go the other way, through an archway, around a corner and into a long kitchen, through a dining area, and then into a back storage area. If the main hallway was the heart of the house, this was more like the appendix. The afterthought.
“It’s in there, plague doctor.”
And Diavala was right. They opened the creaky door, and the plague doctor saw a copy of the chest he’d seen smashed in Asura, glinting out from behind stacks of flour and canned goods. Among Lyric’s food stores was the chest that Diavala mourned for.
Zuni pushed past the plague doctor and scooped it up in her arms. “Let’s get it to the door.”
That was going to be difficult. Not only did they not know their way around (and couldn’t count on Diavala sniffing out two things they needed), but when they swiveled to go back the way they came, they heard a shout so loud it rattled the walls.
No, it was the walls.
“Don’t you dare!” Halcyon’s house yelled at them.
Chapter 29
The image of Halcyon’s furious face was imprinted in Celia’s mind. His eyes had widened, and he’d roared a warning—“Don’t you dare!”—before everything around her changed. Yet the warning hadn’t been for her—he’d been reacting to something else.
His strategy of dividing them had backfired, and he was now fighting on two fronts.
Celia was on a narrow road, like any she’d traveled in the Illinian countryside, muddy with deep ruts from wagon wheels. The darkness became sky, overcast and moist, arched over by long-limbed, naked trees deep in the sleep of winter. The road extende
d only a dozen steps before curving into the depths of a forest.
She was about to unravel the illusion , knowing it was only meant to distract her, when from around the bend came a voice Celia recognized, her shout long and drawn out. “Ceceee!”
When Anya appeared at the edge of the path ahead and reared to a stop, Celia took a step forward. Then another. It was Anya: long black hair, pale skin, wearing her favorite midnight-blue top hat and a fierce frown. They’d said their goodbyes, so this was particularly cruel.
“You!” Anya roared it, the angry version of her exploding in a flash of movement, running toward Celia as Celia ran toward her. Anya’s hands, in tight fists, slammed into Celia’s stomach, her jaw, as they met. The greeting Celia truly deserved. “I’m dead because of you!”
They tumbled backwards together, a tangle of limbs on the ground. Anya controlled her fists after the first two shots, but she scrambled to pin Celia down. Her hand pressed on Celia’s jaw, forcing her face sideways into the mud, but from the corner of her eye Celia couldn’t escape the anger and betrayal on Anya’s face. She couldn’t apologize.
It was part of Celia’s biggest nightmare realized. The part where Anya tells her it was a mistake, the biggest mistake, that Celia had misunderstood everything.
Instead of fighting her off, Celia sank under her weight, taking it.
Anya leaned down and whispered hoarse words into Celia’s ear, pinning Celia with her entire body. “What did you gain, Cece? What did you win when you convinced everyone their god was dead?” She leaned away enough that Celia could see the sneer on her face, her familiar ocean-blue eyes swimming with hate and pain. “I always put too much faith in you, didn’t I? You spent years showing me what kind of person you were, and I ignored every sign.” She shook her head slowly. “I loved you too hard for too long, hoping that love would smooth your rough edges. But that’s impossible, isn’t it? That was my mistake. You’re nothing but rough edges, Celia Sand. You’re sharpened spikes, jagged rocks, nails and thorns and poison, every inch of you designed to hurt anyone who comes close.” Anya pressed closer again, her mouth right at Celia’s ear as she whispered, “It should have been you on that stage with two gashes in your neck, bleeding out, dying, dying, dead. It should have been you .”