by Heidi Heilig
“How could they miss it?” I cry, suddenly shouting. In the trees above, a pair of pigeons startles, taking flight. “How could they not know, with a man like him?”
“Men like him never tell the truth about what they’re really offering.” Leo’s jaw clenches; he speaks through his teeth. “And even if some of them suspected . . . Jetta. You know what it is to be hungry. And desperate. And to gamble on paying a price later for survival now.”
There is truth in his words, but I don’t want to admit it. So I turn and start toward the cleft in the rock, but Leo reaches out and grabs my arm. “Jetta, wait.”
“What?”
“You’re angry and I don’t know why. I . . .” He takes a deep breath and lets go of my arm, but I don’t try to leave again. “I don’t know if it’s a mood, or something I can fix.”
I stiffen—how casually he mentions my malheur. “It’s not your responsibility to fix me, Leo.”
“I know, but I . . .” He smiles a little, awkwardly, and taps his chest, still bandaged under the shirt Papa gave him. “I’m just trying to pay a debt.”
I hesitate, remembering what else is there under the bandage—his tattoo, his sin. Life. What debt is he truly trying to repay? And all of these stones in the clearing, marked with the same symbol—graves for those whose only sin was being born. My sin too, but I survived. Maybe that’s why I’m cursed. Is there any freedom in bearing your marks? In telling the world?
Or if not the world, then the ones who will listen?
“I know how Maman knew about the passage,” I say at last, nodding to the cleft in the rock. “She lived in Hell’s Court before she met Papa. She escaped during La Victoire. I was newly born at the time.”
Leo takes a deep breath, digesting the words. Overhead, the leaves rustle in a rare breeze. At last he takes the white flower from his pocket and drops it on the grave at his feet. “I’m glad you both got out. So many others didn’t.”
I gape at him. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“Le Trépas is my . . .” I trail off—I don’t want to finish the sentence. But Leo only smiles a little.
“You forget who you’re talking to.”
“Legarde isn’t evil,” I say, and his smile falls away.
“You weren’t the one who found my mother.” Leo sighs. “These men—they are nothing. Your real father—he’s a kind man. A good one. He loves you. You love him.”
“But this . . . thing I’ve inherited.” I clench my fists in the fabric of my sarong, as though I could reach inside my own flesh and pull out the offending parts of me. “It’s his. It must be.”
“Your madness?” Leo quirks an eyebrow—and though that is not what I meant, I cannot correct him. “Madness doesn’t make you good or evil. Actions do. And those are all your own.”
“I know,” I say, but it is small comfort. I cannot stop thinking of my actions—of watching Jian writhe on the ground, of giving Eduard over to the vengeful dead. The way power felt—like sugar on my tongue. But Leo only frowns, and glances through the trees.
“We should go,” he says softly, and something about his tone raises the hair on the back of my neck.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he says, no louder than a whisper. “But it just got very quiet.”
I blink—but he’s right. No longer do the birds call, or the rats rustle. I glance around the clearing, but all I see are little souls drifting. Then I frown. The n’akela is here too, standing at the edge of the trees. Had it followed us across the middens? And if so, what does it want? I wet my lips, recalling Maman’s words. Fallen monks, restless souls. “Let’s go.”
His only reply is a curt nod. Adjusting the pack on my shoulders, I stride toward the rocks. Leo follows close behind, his hand on his gun. Here, the tunnel, where a cold wind sighs between stone lips like Death’s whisper. I slip through, into the dark. Maman had walked out this way at least once.
Had she ever walked back in empty-handed?
“Wait. Jetta.” Behind me, I hear Leo fumbling with the lantern—I had forgotten the pretext of needing light. When he catches up to me, the lamp makes my shadow dance on the rocky wall: a girl and her burden in the shadows. But before I can start off again, he takes my arm. “Stay still.”
“Why?”
“Shh.”
Gritting my teeth, I wait as he listens, but there is only the sound of the wind in the tunnel. As last he shakes his head.
“Nothing.”
He sounds relieved, but it doesn’t ease my fears. Souls make no sound. And is that a light, coming down the tunnel, or just the movement of our shadows? “Come on,” I say, starting off again.
Ducking through the narrow passage, we wind our way into the cool earth. The map trembles in my hand; I read its lines by the light of the dead. The volcanic rock of the tunnel is rounded and rippled, like the great throat of some stone beast. Here and there, patches of obsidian line the walls, black and glassy as water in a midnight pond, catching the dim shades of our reflections. Ahead comes the soft rush of wings: bats, mostly likely. Their souls hang from the top of the tunnel like lamps.
And behind us? Still no sound, and the light from Leo’s lamp makes it hard to tell if anything is coming. “Did you hear something?” he says then, and I tense.
“No, did you?”
“No, but you keep looking back.”
“It’s nothing,” I say, praying it’s the truth. Why would a n’akela follow us? And even if it caught up, what could it do? I brush my fear away—it is only paranoia, the sight of the graves, the dark oppression of the tunnel. I take a deep breath to try to clear my head, but is that a whiff of rot on my tongue? It must be the clinging smell of the middens, nothing more.
Crouching under bulky crags, plashing through milky puddles, we make our way through the earth, but the smell of decay only gets stronger. When we reach the end of the tunnel, I see why. The map has led us to the bottom of a damp well, gouged from the earth by human hands. Stairs circle the side, climbing upward into the gloom. But at their base, lying on the muddy ground, is the graying body of a dead man.
Startled, I whirl, but there is no one else here—no lurking murderer, ready to strike. And by the smell, the body has been here a while. There is no soul attending, no spark in this dank hole aside from the lantern, and the souls of the bats spiraling above.
“What happened to him?” Leo says, his voice muffled. He has brought his sleeve up over his mouth, breathing through the cloth of his jacket. With his other hand, he holds the lantern out, though he stays near the wall, away from the body.
“You check, if you’re so curious.” Still, I can’t help but stare. There is no clear sign of death—no bullet wound, no cut throat—though there is a mark on the man’s forehead. A familiar symbol. The dot and the line. Life.
A chill takes me, deeper than the cold of the tunnel: fallen monks, restless souls—or disciples. How had this man died? Had someone marked him like I had marked Eduard? Were there others like me, who could tuck a wandering soul into a skin?
It is a mystery I have no desire to solve. Gingerly, I step around the body to the coiling stairway ringing the well. Then I curse. It ends in a metal grille, far above. The souls of bats fly through, spiraling into the sky.
Leo follows me, squinting. In the low light of the lamp, can he see the grate? “I don’t think Maman knew about the bars,” I tell him.
He shifts the pack on his shoulders. “Maybe we can find a way to get them open. If all else fails, I can go back and make my way here, aboveground. Try to open it from the outside.”
“If you think I’m staying here overnight, alone with a corpse, you’re the crazy one.” I glance back at him, to give him a look, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a flicker of blue.
The n’akela. It’s followed us all this way. At my gasp, Leo whirls—but how can I explain what I’m seeing? Then, like a shadow, a massive dog appears just b
ehind the soul, and this, we both can see. The smell hits me a moment before the realization does: I recognize it from the dung cart, fly specked and thick shouldered.
“Mon dieu.” Leo’s whisper echoes in the well as the mastiff pulls black lips from yellow teeth. “I thought that thing was dead!”
It was—I’m sure of it—but I cannot tell him so. I can barely comprehend it myself. New life in a dead body? Then again, isn’t that what I do? The difference is I paint the skins first.
A wave of revulsion overtakes me as the dog steps closer. But as Leo fumbles for his gun, I cover his hand with mine. “There might be guards above,” I say, nodding to the grate. Then a low growl rattles like gravel in the dog’s throat. Leo shrugs me off.
“I’m more concerned about what’s down here,” he murmurs through his teeth. But how can you kill what’s already dead? The answer comes after another moment: fire. So before he can shoot, I snatch the lantern from Leo’s other hand and hurl it at the animal.
The glass breaks at the dog’s feet in a shower of burning oil; the creature yelps, wreathed in flame, and flees down the tunnel, the firelight fading as it goes. Only I can see the blue blaze of the n’akela as it crosses to the corpse lying at the stairs and crawls inside as though it is a suit of skin.
A flash of soullight, and the dead man opens his milky eyes. I gasp, the scent of death sour in my throat.
“What is it?” Leo says, his own eyes wide as he casts about in the sudden blackness. What can I say? Never show, never tell. But I am still reeling. I have never seen a soul take a body without my help—my blood. Now I know why Maman was not assuaged by the thought that all Le Trépas’s monks had been killed in La Victoire.
Had they leaped from body to body for the last sixteen years? There is no shortage of bodies in Chakrana. I clear my throat, trying to steady my voice. “Up the stairs, Leo. Check the grate.”
But in the dark, the dead man laughs. “Light or no, I can smell your blood, my sister.”
At the word, I go cold. Sister? But Leo jerks his gun toward the sound—the muzzle weaves in the air like a snake’s head. “Who is that?”
“I guard the path.” The body pushes itself to its feet, and turns to me. “Welcome home.”
“What do you want?” I whisper.
The corpse grins—bruised lips, white teeth . . . and bright blue eyes. “You should be dead.”
“Get behind me, Jetta!” Leo cocks his weapon. His hand is trembling, but the dead man does not flinch.
“Just go, Leo!” I say, pushing him up the stairs.
“Not without you!” Blindly, he reaches for my arm. The dead man does too.
Wrenching away from the both of them, I make a fist, smashing my knuckles against the rough stone wall. Then I drop to my knees at the corpse’s feet. All around me, crawling souls creep closer—grubs and bugs and creatures that burrow in the earth. As the dead man’s gray fingers twine in my hair, I draw a worm into his shoe. “Down,” I whisper, and the vana pulls his foot into the muddy earth.
Thrown off-balance, the corpse lurches sideways. I wrench free of his grasp and scramble back toward the stairs.
“Jetta?” Leo’s eyes are wide in the dark. When I take his hand, he hauls me up. But as we race up the slippery stone steps, a rasping rattle of laughter follows. It flies like the souls of the bats, up to the grate—where Leo and I stop. He puts his shoulder against the iron and heaves, but though the bars shake, they don’t open.
“It’s locked,” Leo says, but I push him aside.
“Move.” Slipping my hand through the bars, I feel along the rusted rim of the grate. My hands close around the lock: solid, heavy. Crooking my finger, I trace the symbol with my bloody knuckle. I do not see what soul slips inside, just the small flash, and I whisper, “Open.”
The metal groans; the tumblers turn. I pull the lock away and toss it to the ground. Air hisses through Leo’s teeth as I heave the grate wide on rusty hinges, but he says nothing as we climb up into the light. Looking back into the well, I see the dead man gazing back at me.
Before it can follow, I shut the gate behind us, and though I do not know if it will help, I lock it up tight.
Chapter Nineteen
Leo and I have emerged from the earth into an overgrown garden. Ragged palms litter the scrubby grass with dried leaves; huge patches of elephant ears ripple in the breeze. Limes rot at the base of a tangled old tree, and green ponds lined with stones dot the grounds.
It must have been beautiful once, this meditation garden nestled behind the hulking stone temple: Hell’s Court, they called it. Death’s Palace. Now it is a prison: a dark heap of stone squatting behind the line of palms, the walls carved with demons, the openings laced with iron bars. I shudder looking at it—but it is not the legend that scares me. It is the darkness. Every other temple I’ve seen has glowed with the light of spirits. Hell’s Court is lit only by torches.
Then again, after meeting the dead man at the bottom of the well, I can see why the other souls have abandoned this place.
Crouched behind an overgrown fall of morning glory, Leo stands so close to me I can feel him shaking. “They were dead, weren’t they?” he says, his face pale. But it’s not a question. I swallow.
“You saw him.”
“I smelled him! Mon dieu, Jetta!” Leo runs his hands through his hair. “But he stood. He spoke! It was one of the old monks, wasn’t it? Le Trépas’s followers.”
“Shh!” His voice is too loud and the name is a curse—I see it now. The stone walls of the prison would never be thick enough to hold a soul. Neither would the grate that covers the well, if it came to that. Uneasy, I reach for Leo’s hand, to pull him away through the gardens, but though he wraps his fingers around mine, he won’t budge. “What is it?”
“Jetta . . .” Leo swallows, the muscles in his throat working. The leaves rustle in a sultry breeze; a mosquito whines past my ear. He takes another breath. “He called you sister.”
Despite the humid air in the garden, a chill settles over me. I want to explain the words away: a mockery, twisting a term of endearment. But I know it was more than that.
All my life, I’d thought Akra was my only brother. Who else should I have been praying for?
Welcome home, the corpse had said. Such an ugly thing—an evil spirit in corrupt flesh. But the n’akela had taken the dead body as easily as any of the souls I’ve ever commanded. No wonder Maman hated what I could do.
Leo turns to me, his face pale in the moonlight. “Are you . . .” Then he stops—shakes his head. But I can’t let it go.
“Am I what? Dead? Alive? One of them?” Before he can answer, I take his fingers and press them to my throat, where my pulse pounds. Even faster now, at the warmth of his hand. He is close enough for me to hear his breath hitch.
“Are you all right, I was going to say.”
“Liar.”
He only shrugs. But his eyes are boring deep into mine, and he brings his thumb up to brush my chin with a touch like a feather. I barely suppress a shiver. “You saw something following us through the middens,” he says.
I blink at him, releasing his hand, but he doesn’t let it fall. “A premonition.”
“And how did you open the lock on the grate?” he murmurs. “You had no key.”
“It must have been rusted out.”
Only now does he pull his hand back, but he doesn’t drop his eyes. “I can’t make you answer me, I know that. But we’ve come an awful long way since that night in Luda, when you marked Eduard’s hand with your blood.”
At his words, I stiffen. I want to shove my bloody hands in the folds of my sarong. Instead, I clench them into fists. “And we still have farther to go. Which way to the inn?”
For a moment, I think he will argue—but he only shakes his head. “Come on, then.”
Ducking through a tangle of bougainvillea, we skirt one of the ponds. Carved stone statues seem to watch us from the tangled greenery. At the edge of the garden, a crum
bled wall. Leo makes a stirrup of his hands to help me climb over, following a moment later. As we emerge from the shadows, we go from a sneak to a stroll, leaving the temple grounds behind.
There on the main road, Leo pauses to orient himself. Though we can’t linger on the street, I can’t help but stare.
When we used to do the circuit—was that only last year?—one of our regular stops was Monsieur Audrinne’s plantation. His wife was young and beautiful and hailed from Lephare, the capital of Aquitan, the land of gold and glamour. Monsieur, on the other hand, was old and rich and lived in a back valley in Chakrana—paradise for some, but not to Madame. Naturally, she expected very fine things in return for joining him so far from what she deemed “civilization,” so much of her husband’s wealth went to bring civilization to her.
Players and poets, musicians and singers, all came to perform in Madame’s parlor. She hosted a circus troupe from the Lion Lands on her great lawn, including a live elephant with tusks trimmed in silver leaf. Her mansion held a vast collection of paintings from artists all over the world, each canvas framed in gold.
Even before I learned about the spring’s healing properties, my favorite had always been one that depicted Les Chanceux: a group of pale, languid women bathing in a hazy pool. But the biggest painting, given pride of place over the enormous mantle, was of Lephare itself, the Light of the West: steepled stone roofs and copper spires, gables and windows going on and on into the far distance, and all washed in a lovely golden dawn.
Nokhor Khat must be almost as big.
At first, all is wonder—glitter and glow. Past the rundown sector near the temple, we move through an empty market. The colorful stalls are shuttered for the day, but the square is lit with slender glass lamps and lined with grand buildings twice as tall as the tallest I’ve seen in Luda. The windows, also glassed, gleam with light: a clear, clean glow that must be electricity. I’ve heard of that strange fire without fuel, but I’ve never seen it before tonight.
It lights the fine buildings: upturned roofs lapped with curved tiles of blue copper in old Chakran style, entrances lined with carved scrollwork, massive doors gilded and decorated with bronze knockers in the shape of dragons—the king’s symbol, here in his capital. The streets are straight and wide and so clean, patrolled by sweepers and their carts.
