by Callie Bates
I pass through the rusted iron. The ground evens out. I seem to be alone in the dark. Somewhere, water drips. The sound raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I can hear my own breathing, too loud. I’m flung back to my childhood, to the steps leading down to Madiya’s cave, to waking on the stone table, not knowing what had been taken from me—
But then a soft orange glow blooms over the pockmarked stone some distance from me.
I gulp in a breath. I’m not alone. I see my brother. I hear him. He’s whispering, There is nothing here to see.
Rayka’s persuasion has always been more like marching orders.
I step forward. Even though the old fear still trembles inside me, I’m smiling. He’s here, and he’s safe. Madiya didn’t lure him back to her. “As usual, you’re extremely subtle—”
I stop. The words freeze in my mouth. I’m stuck, unable to move, my limbs frozen in place.
My brother stalks toward me, sighting down the end of a musket. I can’t even widen my eyes to glare at him.
Fortunately he has the foresight to look before he shoots. Then he rolls his eyes, lowering the musket. He looks an utter ruffian—his knee-length coat torn and grimed, his hair matted, a few weaselly wisps of dark beard clinging scruffily to his chin. He’s shorter than me, a little slighter, but I can’t imagine even the street thugs taking him on.
He swaggers toward me. “Enforced stasis,” he pronounces. “Wherein one arrests matter so that it can’t move. Easy to do with an object, hard to do with a living being.” He smirks. “Unless it’s your incompetent brother.”
He snaps his fingers and I’m released.
“Maybe you should’ve done something else, then,” I grumble, flexing my hands to bring feeling back into them. “How did you know it would work, if you didn’t know it was me?”
He shrugs. “Usually it’s enough to make someone lose feeling in a leg, or something. You’d know that, if you could do it.”
We stare at each other for a long moment in the semi-dark. Rayka’s lantern lights him from behind, making him look larger than he is.
“Where have you been?” I demand at last.
He eyes me. “I could ask the same of you. You never even answered when I called for you.”
“When I was in Eren? You said my name once and disappeared! I thought you were captured. Or dead.”
He scoffs. “You never thought I was dead. I’m not stupid.”
Because apparently only stupid people die? I’ve been worried about my brother, desperate to make sure he’s safe, but he’s doing a good job of reminding me why I haven’t really missed him. “I called you and called you—”
“I figured it out. I didn’t need you.”
He can’t slither out of this so easily. “You said my name in a panic. You made me think Madiya had captured you. Something must have happened.”
His gaze shifts around the stone chamber, and he fingers his musket. He must have stolen it—taken it from the military academy when he left, perhaps. It’s obvious he doesn’t want to answer me, but I stare him down.
“I answered her,” he mutters at last. “Madiya. She keeps calling me. Every damned night for the last two months. You’ve heard her?”
I nod.
“I couldn’t stand it anymore.” He swallows. “So I answered. And she went off, you know how she does, how glad she was to hear from me, how we matter more to her than anything. The full works. And then she said we’d all be reunited soon—which made me think—” He stops, a muscle working in his jaw. He mutters, “It made me think she’d caught you.”
I look at him. His shoulders have slumped forward, and his hair is lank. He must have been terrified these last two months, caught between the twin horrors of Madiya and the witch hunters. Terrified, and alone. I want to touch his arm, to reassure him, but I have the feeling he’d swing the musket at me if I tried.
“Well, she didn’t,” I say instead. “Though not for lack of effort.”
One side of his mouth tugs up in a humorless smile.
I glance around at the damp walls. “Have you been scavenging about down here all this time? We could have been working together.”
At that, he puffs up his chest. “Working together? I saved your life! I lit those gunpowder magazines!”
My sympathy snaps. “Which was not my intent—as you might have known if you’d bothered to find me.”
“You’re too soft, Jahan.” But then he says, mulishly, “We were safer apart. So she couldn’t get both of us at once.”
I don’t even try to argue this logic. “I found her, you know. She’s holed up with Bardas Triciphes in the Deos Deorum. And…” And Elanna. But somehow I can’t make myself confess this to my brother, even though he’s the last person whose approval I want. Still, I don’t want him to know how I abandoned El. He’d have real reason to scorn me then. I fold my arms. “That’s why I tracked you down.”
He folds his free arm over the musket, too, mirroring me. “What do you expect me to do?”
“Well, you could stop hiding in the cisterns, for one thing.”
“I’m busy down here,” he says defensively.
I look around. We seem to be in a kind of tunnel sloping toward an opening. Somewhere ahead of us, water still drips. I don’t know how he can stand it. Doesn’t it remind him of Madiya’s cave? But then Rayka has always shoved his feelings aside more easily than me. “You’re busy in the cisterns?”
He shifts. Of course he’s busy: avoiding Madiya and the witch hunters. And me, apparently. The gods alone know why. Maybe being in the cisterns, the closest thing to Madiya’s cave, actually makes him feel safe.
“I’m mapping the tunnels,” he says. “The cisterns are connected. You can use them to cross under half the city—the oldest parts, anyway.”
I sigh. This is exactly the sort of thing Rayka would do—tell himself he’s accomplishing great things, when in fact he’s simply slithering out of doing the right thing.
Although…we could use the tunnels.
“Do they connect to Solivetos Hill?” I ask. “What about the Frourio?”
He smirks. “I knew you’d be interested.”
My mind is already spinning on ahead. This could change all our plans; it could give us a plan. “But the imperial army—does Captain-General Horatius know the tunnels connect?”
“It doesn’t matter if he does,” Rayka says. He’s smug now. “I’ve been going to each entrance—and there are a lot—and putting a misdirect on it. It’ll confuse people. Mess with their heads. They’ll think they’re going one direction, and they’re really going the opposite. Even if they end up down here, they won’t know which way to go.”
“Unless the magic wears off,” I begin.
“Right. So I’ve been going to the entrances every day and reinforcing the sorcery. I have a pattern. It works.”
It’s clever. If he’s willing to help, it offers us a way to get off Solivetos. A way to stay in communication with Felix and the others—even Bardas, if we wanted to.
“This is good,” I say.
“I knew you’d like it.” He hoists the musket over his shoulder, pleased with himself now, forgetting to be annoyed with me. “Come on. I’ll show you the way to the Frourio.”
I start to protest—I need to return to Solivetos—but he’s already snatched up his lantern and turned to go. Well, I’m not about to let him out of my sight now. And if I go back to Tullea with a plan to save the prisoners, or at least a route to get there, it’s much better than news of my failure with Leontius.
With a sigh, I follow him. We’re in a narrow kind of corridor, the stones cold and slightly damp. I can still hear water dripping nearby. I don’t pretend I like it, but if Rayka can handle the eerie similarity to Madiya’s cave, so can I. I’ve been in the cisterns before, like any university student worth
his salt. Pantoleon and I came down here several times, blundering about with lanterns and rough maps; it seemed like a good place to find the forgotten tombs of sorcerers. And we did find them: a cave full of stacked skeletons brittle with age, covered by inadequate stones. But I’ve never come in this way, or this far. Rayka’s candlelight shines off something sheer and smooth: a patch of quartz in the wall.
It’s been cut—no, not cut; faceted. The stones have been formed into disks and fitted together, like a glittering mosaic. We’ve emerged into a large chamber, where a narrow walkway crosses over a pool of dark water. The ceiling is lost to the darkness, but it’s much higher than the tunnel. Vaulted, if I had to guess.
“Is it a temple?” I wonder aloud.
Rayka shrugs. “Maybe the old Idaeans just liked to get their water out of fancy underground buildings. There are some inscriptions in the old alphabet, over there. I found a tomb hidden behind one of the tunnel walls, too. Lots of bones.”
Part of me wants to find the inscriptions, but that’s not why we’re here. I keep walking. “There are more tombs, near the university side. You walk down directly into them.”
He nods. “Some of the old Idaeans were driven in here after Paladius invaded. They hid down here forever. He never caught them all, because he could never map all the tunnels. There was a cave-in that trapped twenty of his men. They never got out.”
I glance at my brother. “I never heard that.” And I was the one who searched for such stories.
“That’s because you never read Tertius’s Memoirs of the Conquest of Ida. It’s a firsthand account; he talks all about it.”
I manage not to snort at what Rayka considers light reading. “Were they sorcerers?”
“Probably. Tertius thought they were involved in the plot to overthrow Paladius, but he wasn’t sure because he never actually found them.”
We’ve made our way through the quartz-lined chamber, now, and into a hall lined with columns, some collapsed. Water pools in the darkness beyond the columns. The hall ends in a round chamber with several archways; Rayka picks the one directly before us. “I got lost following the others,” he admits. “Most of them end in rubble. I can walk through it, but some of the entrances have fallen in.”
This passage takes us, eventually, to a long tunnel that slopes gradually upward. Rayka swings back to say, “The Frourio’s right above—”
A deep groan cuts him off. We both stagger. Rayka’s lantern swings against the wall, flickering madly. Another resounding thud echoes through the earth. I stumble to one knee. There’s dust in my mouth, and my heart is knifing between my ribs. Mount Angelos must have woken. “Trust you to take us underground during an earthquake,” I gasp at my brother.
Rayka’s staring up the length of the tunnel. Clods of earth rain down from the ceiling above us. The place seems ready to collapse.
“Come on!” Rayka says, decisive. He runs ahead, up the shaking tunnel. I shove myself onto my feet and charge after him.
Behind us, there’s a breathless crash. I stare back at a mound of rubble. The ceiling has collapsed where we just stood.
I sprint after Rayka. There’s no way, after surviving a childhood in Madiya’s cave, I’m about to let myself be smothered to death underground.
Ahead, an ancient, iron-banded door flickers into view. It must be the Frourio entrance. It seems pure madness that we’re running into the prison, and Rayka laughs in front of me, as if he’s just had the same thought. But we both burst through the door without hesitation.
We emerge into a small, cool room filled with sacks and barrels. The cellar. A narrow staircase leads up to another door—and the precious gap of daylight. Another resounding thud shakes the ground. Somewhere beyond the door, someone’s screaming. It doesn’t seem safe to stay down here, though I’m not sure how much safer it is to go up. More dust rains down on us from above.
“Let’s go.” Rayka starts for the steps.
I grab the back of his filthy coat. “We’ll be seen!”
He snorts. “What kind of sorcerer are you? Come on. I’ll make sure nobody spots you.”
The condescending brat. I want to shake him, but I’m too desperate for open air. And he’s already started up the stairs.
I follow. At the top, he pauses and puts a finger to his lips. I nod. We both listen. The building trembles around us. Thud, thud, thud. Outside, a man shouts.
It doesn’t sound like an earthquake. It sounds more like cannons—thousands of them, so many they’re shaking the old fortress down to its foundations. But that can’t be right.
Rayka’s heard it, too. We exchange a mystified glance.
Carefully, he lets himself through the fabric of the door. I do the same. We’re in a cavernous, deserted kitchen. No one hides under the table at the center, as they would during an earthquake. Shouts echo from outside. Another rumble shakes the floor, and overhead the beams creak, as if the building is moving—as if we might be crushed. I sprint for the nearest exit, an open doorway leading to a wide courtyard. Rayka’s behind me.
But in the doorway, I stop. My brother runs into me with a curse, but I can’t even move.
A group of people—servants and guards—cluster together in the center of the courtyard. A large, square tower dominates the wall opposite us. To the left and right, two additional towers surmount the walls and battlements. Faces press against the upper windows. Prisoners. They’re screaming. Hands reach out past the bars.
Because the walls—the ones to the right and left—are moving. Clambering outward through the earth, slow and sluggish, as if they’re trying to walk. The ground trembles with each movement, and stones fall from the battlements, crashing down with a thunder like cannons. Bodies in imperial livery are strewn on the ground, crushed.
“It’s sorcery,” Rayka says.
I nod stupidly. There’s nothing else it could be. But who’s doing it? None of our people have this power. Any captive sorcerers would be overwhelmed by bells and stones.
The walls inch outward, and with a shaking gasp one splits apart. Daylight pours through the gap. In the towers, people are screaming. “Help! Help!”
“Those are the outside walls,” Rayka’s saying. “The exits for this courtyard. Some idiot must be trying to free everyone—”
“—by making the prison walk?” I finish.
We stare at each other. This isn’t going to save anyone. We both lunge forward, by unspoken agreement, reaching for the walls on either side, grasping for power—
But it’s too late. The right-hand wall stumbles. As we stare, helpless, every stone breaks apart. The wall collapses outward with a deafening roar, red blood scattering among the bricks. The men and women clustered in the middle of the courtyard are screaming, running toward the opposite wall.
Except it, too, is collapsing. It seems to shatter, breaking apart into a heap on the ground, the bodies of the prisoners tangled up in it.
In the sudden silence, my ears ring.
Pantoleon. Pantoleon was in here. He might have been in one of those towers. He might be dead.
Him, and the gods alone know how many others.
I’m clutching Rayka’s arm. He’s grabbing onto me. He seems to have lost his lantern, but he’s clutching the musket to his chest. The early-morning light reveals him: wan and terrified. In the courtyard, people are shouting. Weeping. No one moves in either pile of bricks. Across from us, a few petrified faces peer down from the windows of the remaining tower, the one that never moved.
Some of the prisoners are still alive.
I start toward them instinctively. But just then a door at the base of the tower bursts open, and a dozen witch hunters run out into the courtyard, swinging bells.
“You’re too late!” one of the surviving guards shouts at them.
“Cowards!” a servant screams.
The
witch hunters must have run when the tremors started—to safety, perhaps, on the other side of the remaining tower. Now they’re back. And they’re blocking us from the prisoners.
“Jahan.” Rayka’s shaking my arm, whispering furiously. “We have to go.”
“People are still in there!”
“I know, but we can’t get to them now. We need a plan. We’ll come back.”
I hesitate, but one of the witch hunters has seen us. He’s pointing. We’ve both forgotten to work persuasion.
My brother grabs the back of my coat and drags me into the kitchen. I want to protest, but he’s right. We need a plan. We need a way to get the remaining prisoners away safely, not simply lead them into greater danger.
All the gods, was Pantoleon in one of those towers? How many more?
“Hurry!” Rayka heads for the cellar.
“But the ceiling collapsed in the tunnel.”
He rolls his eyes. “You can walk through any matter, can’t you? Come on!”
I cast a glance back at the ruined courtyard. Two witch hunters are striding toward us, pushing through the distraught crowd. Rayka’s right. If we try to save them now, we’ll only create further chaos. But it still burns. Reluctantly, I follow my brother back down into the cisterns, away from the disaster in the courtyard, and the prisoners crushed by fallen bricks.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I walk, numb, through the tunnels, Rayka leading the way. If the walls moved by sorcery, who did it? I don’t know anyone with that much power—much less the motivation for such an act.
We emerge after several hours into a wide, echoing room, the ground littered with debris. Rayka crosses a narrow platform above a pool, to a large hole in the wall. He swings back to look for me. “Solivetos.” He points at the hole.
