by Rae Carson
She buried food in the near-frozen ground, but squirrels dug it up.
She hid some food in a basket beside the hearth, but it rotted, giving off a sour smell that would definitely earn her a cuff if the monster woman noticed.
Finally her eye chanced upon a glass vase on the mantel, one of the few baubles the monster woman hadn’t yet sold. It had a wide base and a narrow neck—too narrow for even a tiny mouse—and a slight amber cast that made it sparkle like fire. She took the vase from the mantel, shoved some pine nuts down that narrow neck, and buried it outside in the snow near the outhouse. Gradually she added bread crumbs, bits of jerky, a twig for brushing her teeth.
It was three days before the monster woman noticed that the vase was missing. Mula was prepared. She had thought up a perfect lie and had practiced it and practiced it.
“Where’s my vase?” the monster woman said. “It used to be right there. Right there.”
“I traded it for ale, my lady,” Mula said. “A few days ago. Remember?” The girl waited, trying her best to look innocent. She was terrible at lying. It put a funny feeling in her belly and a flush on her cheeks.
“Oh . . . yes, I suppose I . . .” The monster woman shrugged. She ate some wheat mash, washed it down with some ale, and passed out on her cot.
Mula stood over her a long moment. The monster woman looked so vulnerable. With her face slack, her lips parted, her hand clutching her blanket, she looked . . . soft, almost sweet. As though kindness could have lived inside her.
The girl remembered her mother’s skinning knife, the way it had slid into the sorcerer’s body like he was nothing, the way it had scraped against his bones.
The next morning, while Mula was chopping a turnip to make a thin stew base, she held the knife up so that it caught firelight from the hearth. She twisted it this way and that, watching the play of light, wondering if she could do it again. Stab someone. Stab them so bad they died.
Her lower lip started to tremble. If she did it, she’d be hateful for true, deserving of all the nasty looks she got.
After setting the stew to simmer, she put the knife back on the mantel and refused to think about it again.
Three weeks later, her hidden vase was full, and her ankle was healed well enough that she could walk long distances. Tonight, she told herself. Tonight, when the monster woman was asleep, she would sneak out of the cottage and flee into the forest. It was a good night for it. Winter was losing its frozen grip on the village. Meltwater tinkled as it dripped from the roof. The earth smelled rich and loamy. Birds were beginning to sing again. This time, she wouldn’t be so cold.
Besides, Mula was smarter now, a more grown-up girl than the last time she’d fled. Instead of running aimlessly, she would go west, to the place where sand stretched across the world like a sea, where the weather was warm and no sorcerers lived.
Mula rehearsed it all in her mind. She would wait for the woman to start snoring. She would quietly slip on her shoes, don her mother’s now-hoodless cloak, grab the knife from the mantel, and slip out the door. She would sneak to the outhouse and unbury her glass vase full of food scraps. Then she would tiptoe westward, away from the village and into the woods. She’d walk as long and far as her sore ankle would allow. By the time the monster woman woke and discovered her missing, she’d be too far away to find.
The girl spent the day in a state of terrified excitement. Her hands wouldn’t stop trembling. Her heart felt like it was going to scamper out of her chest. She dropped the water bucket on her way back from the creek and had to return for a refill. She nicked her forefinger slicing an apple. Their last apple, but Mula hoped that if she stewed it with some sugar and nutmeg, it would put the monster woman in a good mood and help her sleep.
Finally day became night, and the woman came trudging up to the door. She stopped before entering, just stood there quietly on the stoop.
Mula held her breath.
The door creaked open, and Mula knew right away that something was terribly, terribly wrong, because the monster woman’s bright blue eyes shimmered with fire, like sparkle stones about to destroy the winter stores.
The girl’s legs twitched to run, but the woman stood huge and menacing in the doorway. There was nowhere to go.
The girl squeaked out, “Would you like some apple stew, my lady?”
In response, the monster woman lifted something she was holding in her hand. It gleamed amber in the firelight.
Her glass vase, full of food scraps. Water slipped down the sides and dripped on the floor.
“I found this by the outhouse,” the woman said. “Half buried in melting snow.”
Mula said nothing. The fire crackled. Outside, a chunk of snow dislodged from the roof and plopped onto a drift.
“You were going to run away, weren’t you?”
“No,” the girl whispered.
“You were, you lying mule!” The woman was screaming now. “You were going to leave me! After everything I’ve done for you. How could you?”
“I’ll stay!” Mula said, and tears spilled down her cheeks. “I promise, I’ll stay, I’ll stay, I’ll st—”
The woman threw the vase at her head; Mula ducked. The vase exploded against the fireplace, a crystal sound that spiked deep into her soul. Bread crumbs and nuts and shimmery glass slivers rained down onto the hearth.
“Come with me.” The woman darted forward, grabbed her arm, and dragged her toward the door.
“I need my cloak,” Mula pleaded. Her arm hurt. The woman was squeezing way too tight.
“Shut up,” the woman snapped.
“You’re hurting my arm.”
The woman stopped so suddenly that Mula collided with her hip. The monster woman rounded on her and stared down at the girl, gripping so tightly that Mula feared her arm might fall off.
“Your arm?” the woman said. “Your arm?”
“Y . . . yes?”
The woman crouched before her and speared the girl with her sparkle-stone eyes. With her free hand, she softly caressed Mula’s smarting skin. “Sweet thing,” she said, “this is my arm.”
“I . . . no . . .”
The woman fingered the bit of black hair that had escaped the girl’s braid and hung down her forehead. “This is my soft hair,” she said, so quietly it was almost a whisper.
Mula tried to grab her braid, reclaim it, but the woman batted her hand away.
The woman’s forefinger traced her cheek. “My cheek. My sweet little nose. My chin.”
The girl discovered that she couldn’t breathe.
The woman’s forefinger was so soft on her skin and yet somehow like fire as it traced the line of her neck, swirled down her chest, rested between her not-yet-budded breasts. “Mine. All mine. I own you, Mula. I can do whatever I please with you.”
Mula remembered her dream, when she had looked down to discover a gaping nothingness where her belly ought to be. Maybe it wasn’t a dream. Maybe she was disappearing for true.
The monster woman yanked her out the door. The girl’s bare feet squelched in the melting snow. “Where are you taking—”
“We’re going to teach you a lesson.”
The monster woman dragged her past the glassmaking shed, across the icy creek, around the waterwheel and miller’s cottage. They stopped in front of a small one-room house with a large porch and two windows. Whoever lived here must be very rich, to afford two windows.
The monster woman knocked.
The door opened, and out stepped the blue-fingered man, the one who had tattooed Mula’s feet. He wore a leather apron with pockets filled with his strange, sharp tools. He wiped his hands on a rag—also stained blue.
“What do you want?” he grumbled.
“This slave,” the monster woman said, shoving Mula forward. “She tried to run away. She needs to be taught a lesson.”
“Oh?” The blue-fingered man grinned through his beard.
Mula tried praying. Please, God, make me disappear for true.
The door slammed shut behind her.
The girl doesn’t remember what happened next.
10
Now
WE’RE all so exhausted that we stumble to our bunks in near silence. Almost everyone is asleep before Guardsman Bruno can blow out the lamps.
One of the army recruits near the door snores loudly, and I’m glad. Maybe it will help me stay awake. Faintly, filtered through stone and mortar, comes the cymbal clash of iron and steel. Perhaps the second years are doing a nighttime training maneuver. No, the direction is all wrong for that. It must be the Guard blacksmith, mending weapons well into the night. Everyone is taking the opportunity to catch up on work while the empress is away.
It means that sneaking around at night would be impossible . . . if I didn’t know every corridor and passage so intimately.
The monastery bells ring twelve times. In an hour, I’ll wake Iván, allowing us plenty of time to make the journey. I have no idea how I’ll keep myself from falling asleep until then. My thighs burn, my shoulders ache, my eyelids are as heavy as millstones, and I want nothing more than to sink into this thin, poking mattress and drift into oblivion.
Thinking of the poking mattress gives me an idea. I slip open the bedside drawer, grab my golden baby rattle, and shove it beneath the middle part of my back. It’s extraordinarily painful.
My back is deeply bruised by the time the bells ring once, sharp and startling, and something shoots through my blood that’s part relief, part exhilaration. It’s one advantage of having the soldier sickness, Hector says. I can be ready to flee or fight faster than just about anyone.
The bunk creaks as I slip off the mattress. I freeze a moment, listening, but no one stirs. I tiptoe to Iván’s bed and gently shake him awake.
He lurches up, banging his head against the top bunk. “Ow,” he says.
I shush him. “Get your shoes on,” I whisper. “Time to go.”
“Already on,” he says, slipping his booted feet from beneath his blanket and placing them on the floor. “Let’s get this over with.”
Together we creep toward the entrance to the bunk room. Someone flips over in their bed, muttering, and we go still. One of the recruits is sleeping with his arm hanging over the side of the bed, his knuckles resting on the floor. Next to him, the Arturos from Basajuan have climbed into the same cot together; they sleep with their arms wrapped around each other, one’s forehead snugged beneath the other’s chin.
When no one stirs, we continue our agonizingly slow journey, past the snoring army recruit, through the archway, and into the hall glowing with torchlight.
“You have a letter with the imperial seal,” Iván whispers. “Surely we can just . . . go wherever we want? Flash that seal to gain entry?”
“The prince’s orders are to let no one see us.”
He frowns. “How are we supposed to avoid all the patrols?”
“Just follow me. I’m going to move fast, so keep up.”
“But where are we—”
“Please stop talking.”
The exit from the barracks is sure to have a sentry or two. So instead of leaving that way, I usher Iván into the latrine.
“Is this an elaborate prank to humiliate me?” he whispers. “Lure me into the latrine, ambush—”
I can’t have him doubting me the whole way; I don’t have time for it. I shove Rosario’s letter in his face. “Go ahead. Read it.”
He does. His mouth forms an O. “That’s the prince’s writing,” he observes.
I say, “I don’t care enough about you to devise an elaborate prank, and I have no idea why the prince wants you to come along. But we have orders from our liege, and we must obey. Now will you please be quiet and follow me?”
Iván nods, handing the letter back, which I shove into my pocket. He makes a gesture as if to say, “Lead the way.”
It occurs to me to ask him how he knows what Rosario’s handwriting looks like, but I’d so much rather not talk to him.
Three torches line the back wall, just above the row of privies. I move toward the one on the right, step up onto the privy seat, and remove the torch.
The empty sconce is brass like the others, but a careful look reveals that it’s placed in the stone wall a little differently, jutting out farther, with a more pronounced outline around its mortar setting.
I give the sconce a firm twist to the left.
A section of wall pulls back into darkness and slides silently to the side.
“Holy God,” Iván says. “How did you know—”
“Let’s go. Hurry!” Still holding the torch, I step into darkness.
I sense Iván at my back. Once we are both well inside, I push down on a brass lever, and the stone door slides closed.
Finally it’s safe to whisper. “I’m going to show you a lot of things tonight, Iván. Secret things. And if you tell anyone about them—”
“You’ll tattle to your empress?”
I round on him; he towers over me. “No. I’ll kill you.”
He opens his mouth. Closes it. The torchlight makes hollows of his cheeks. After a moment, a mocking grin spreads across his face. “Do you really think—”
“I’m not being dramatic. Very few know about the passageways I’m going to show you. Even among the Royal Guard, only those in Elisa’s inner circle know them all. Her safety depends on keeping it that way. So if you tell anyone, I. Will. Kill. You.”
His eyes narrow as if in thought. He’d have beautiful eyes if they weren’t so darkly veiled and quick to anger. He says, “Actually, that sounds fair.”
Not the response I was expecting, but I’ll take it. “It’s safe to whisper in most of these passages,” I tell him. “When the stone walls give way to wood, though, we must be quiet like mice.”
“Understood.”
The passage is narrow and dusty, though not as dusty as it once was. The empress has been keeping these routes in better condition than previous monarchs, and the torchlight reveals lighter patches of fresh mortar, where either Royal Guards or the spymaster’s people have completed maintenance. We turn right once, then left, ignoring a branching corridor. The ceiling becomes lower; Iván must duck his head to continue.
“Do you think someone will notice the missing torch in the latrine?” he whispers.
“Maybe, but all torches in the palace are free to use.”
“Oh. That’s good.” After a moment, he adds, “Have you killed anyone before?”
I guide us down a short set of stairs. The walls close in so tight they nearly brush my shoulders. “Yes.”
“Who?”
“None of your business.”
Our passage ends at a large wooden panel. I slide it aside, revealing a small storage closet. We slip into the closet, shut the panel, and snuff out the torch. Light filters in from the hallway. Chests are stacked shoulder-high against the walls, and a few burlap bags spill into the center, leaving us little room to maneuver. Iván’s body invades my space; like me, he smells of manure and sun-warmed straw.
“This is the awkward part,” I say to his chest. “We have an open hallway to travel, which will take us to the entrance to the catacombs. There’s always a Royal Guard on duty there, and absolutely no way past him. We’ll have to walk right up and show him the prince’s seal.”
“The prince said we shouldn’t be seen.”
“You have a better idea? Fortunately, the catacomb guard is always someone Elisa trusts completely, so we can count on him to be discreet.”
“What about a distraction?”
“The guard will never desert his post. Not for anything. The last one who did that was executed by Luz-Manuel, the former General.”
“Whatever is down there must be extremely important.”
&n
bsp; “Yes. Now hush. I have to listen.”
I put my ear to the door of the storage closet and listen for footsteps. Nothing. Quietly, gradually, I crack the door open and peek outside. The corridor is clear.
“Now let’s go,” I say. “Quickly.”
We dart from the storage closet and close the door softly behind us. This corridor is one of the oldest in the palace, made of bulging river rock set into mortar three fingers thick. The cobblestones are worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. Flickering torchlight turns the floor from iron gray to soft orange.
The corridor dead-ends at the entrance to the catacombs, and sure enough, a tall, broad-shouldered man stands guard, dressed in his formal breastplate, armed with both sword and bow.
“Hello, Fernando,” I say.
“Lady Red,” he acknowledges.
“Just Recruit Red, now. I thought you’d be with Elisa.”
He gives me a wry grin. “Alas, a very few of us are stuck here. There’s still a prince to protect, you see.” Fernando lowers his voice. “I hear you made quite an impression on your first day.”
I frown, and Fernando gives me a sympathetic smile. “The prince said to expect you. Hurry inside before someone sees.” With that, he opens the door and gestures for us to enter.
Fernando shuts the door behind us. We’re in a narrow, dark tunnel, but an orange glow testifies to something ahead.
“Stay close,” I order.
“Are you always this bossy and disagreeable?” Iván asks.
“I’m usually laughing and inquisitive. Must be the company.”
“Huh. I’ve heard that Inviernos don’t understand sarcasm, but you wield it with ease.”
“I’m Joyan, you daft dung beetle.”
“But your skin . . . those golden eyes . . .”
“Don’t confuse my ancestry with my nationality. Joya d’Arena is my home, and I’d give my life for it.”
“So you admit you have Invierno blood—” Iván’s thought dies on his lips, for we have reached the Hall of Skulls.
It’s a cathedral of bones, with archways made of human ribs and walls made of human skulls. Thousands of people must have died to create this space because there are so many bones, layered atop one another, pressing down. In the desert, bones are always white, bleached by the relentless sun. Here, they are as gray as stone.
