“I can do stairs,” she reminded him quickly.
“I don’t doubt that. The question is, How fast? We’re running a bit late, and Kai isn’t patient.”
“I noticed,” she said dryly. “I’ll go as fast as I can.”
Mikael led her down another flight of stairs and to the right. A door opened, and they came off the hard flagstones into a dry-feeling hallway with carpet underfoot. They must be back inside the palace again.
“We’re going to go down the grand stair that connects the fortress to the palace,” he said. “There are two landings, one at each third. I’ve never counted the number of steps in this fortress. Fifty-one in Lee.”
There were people watching them—the sentries again, surely, thinking curious thoughts about her. They kept flickering in and out of her awareness, their minds too quiet to be clear, almost like they were ghosts.
Using Mikael’s reactions to judge her placement, Shironne slid her foot up to the edge of the first step. He counted in his head, very loudly, as they walked downward, making it unnecessary for her to count herself. At one point the stone under her slippered feet changed slightly. Mikael paused there, knelt down, and rose again. He was paying his respects to the fortress, she realized, as if it were an elder or a grandparent. Then he put her hand on his arm again and they resumed their trek down the endless steps.
Forty-eight, his thoughts said as they reached the bottom.
“Somehow I’ve always pictured it being hundreds of feet belowground.” She sensed the curiosity of someone nearby—yet another sentry, she supposed.
“Daujom business,” Mikael informed someone, and she heard the distinct sound of writing, as if he was recording that. After a moment, Mikael led her down another hallway, the sound of it far harder than that of the hallways of the palace above. “You’re going to need to put your hand on a wall,” he told her. “Bare hand, I mean. Right side.”
She cringed, unable to help herself. “Do I have to? Touch it, I mean.”
Before she finished her question, she knew from his thoughts that this ritual was necessary. She hadn’t had to do what he did on the steps, but this was required if she wanted to go a step farther. So she tugged off her right glove and held out her hand, sticking the left hand in her pocket and wrapping it around her focus. He took her sleeve and moved her to the right a few inches. Her hand lightly touched a stone surface—no, it wasn’t stone—and she laid her hand flat against it.
Words bloomed into her mind, accompanied with a shock like static, startling her into stepping away. Was that normal?
From a couple of feet away, Mikael thought reassurance at her, apparently alarmed by her reaction. No, apparently that wasn’t normal.
Shironne swallowed and clenched her fingers tighter about her focus. She hadn’t recognized those words. They’d been in an unfamiliar language, not Pedraisi from the sound of it. But she’d understood what the words meant. The fortress had spoken to her, welcoming her home.
“Are you all right?” Mikael asked as she collected her thoughts.
“It spoke to me,” she whispered. “Does it always do that?”
That fascinated him. “What did it say?”
“It spoke in some other language, but it said something like Welcome home, Lucas.”
That surprised him. “That’s amazing. It recognized you as a Lucas. I think that proves you’re a Valaren beyond any doubt.”
“Why would it say Lucas, then, not Valaren?”
“The Valarens and the Lucases have intermarried so many times that all the Valarens have a good amount of Lucas blood. That started with the son of the very first Anvarrid governor, Lucasedrion, the first to marry into the Lucas Family. In fact, Lucas isn’t their original name, but they took Lucas to honor him.”
“Lucasedrion?”
“That’s a history lesson for another day,” he said, hinting there might be another day on which to discuss it. “We need to keep moving.”
She wanted to stay and talk about the wall talking to her. Or perhaps she could just talk with the wall. It wasn’t truly stone, although at first touch she’d mistaken it for that. It felt more like charcoal, only that wasn’t right at all, because charcoal was soft, not hard. The wall had seemed almost to be woven of the stuff, which made no sense at all. Walls couldn’t be woven.
When they’d walked some distance away, Mikael paused, giving her a moment to contemplate their new location. They stood in a vast chamber. Echoes chased themselves past her. There were people in this room, dozens of them, close and far—curious, but trained not to ask about her. A faint breeze brushed her face, startling in this place. If not for the echoes, she could be in Army Square.
“It smells,” she noted. The air in the fortress had an odd tang to it. It wasn’t unpleasant, but not like the outside air either.
“No, it doesn’t,” he said. “The engineers assure us it doesn’t smell. What we think we perceive is a lack of smell.” His mind said that the engineers smelled—clearly for her benefit—and then reflected wryly that they sometimes did. “You won’t notice after a couple of minutes.”
“How is there air moving down here? We’re underground, aren’t we?”
“It’s magic,” he said, as casually as if discussing the wind aboveground. “Imps carry in air from outside and travel through the walls, blowing it about to keep the temperature the same.”
“Imps? Like demons?”
“Not demons,” he said firmly. “Imps. That’s the only word we have for it. When the Anvarrid came, they forbade us to speak our own languages. They replaced our word with imp, so that’s what we have to describe them.”
His mind considered that an obvious thing, like the mysterious Lucasedrion whom she didn’t know about either. The Lucas Family truly lived in a different world.
“Are you impressed?” he asked after a silent moment.
By this place? In her mind, it was just a shapeless open field that echoed slightly. “Am I supposed to be?”
“We’re in the main commons, the mess hall. You should be impressed by the size.”
He meant that as a joke, she suddenly grasped. He knew she couldn’t see the room and only had an impression that it was endless. He’d had a blind friend who must have explained how different this place was without sight. “I am suitably amazed, Mr. Lee.”
“It’s what outsiders always comment on when they first see it,” he said with a shrug that she felt through her hand on his arm. “I thought I would give you a chance.”
“Oh. How many people live down here?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know the answer to that. The elders keep track, mostly so that they can ensure there are enough sentries and quarterguards to fulfill the treaty, but they don’t make the number public.”
But she could tell he had a guess in his head, somewhere close to two thousand, a staggering number. She wasn’t sure how much space that many people needed. How did that compare with all the soldiers living in Army Square? She added that to a mental list of things she needed to ask the colonel someday. Then again, many soldiers didn’t live in the barracks there but were dispersed throughout the city with their families. So if she added all those houses to the contents of Army Square, it would be huge.
“You won’t leave me alone here, will you?” she asked, her voice sounding more timid than she liked.
“Not if I can help it,” he promised. “Here, I’ll show you something that will help.”
He thought reassurance at her again. Then he placed a hand over hers on his sleeve and led her to a closed-in space, a hallway heading away from the place they’d entered. To her the hall seemed eerily like the one they’d left before. The floor was smooth underfoot without seam or break. It would be terrifyingly easy to get lost in a place like this. Her heart was beating a little harder than normal, but he kept wishing calm on her.
“I guess I always thought it would be a cave,” she confessed nervously. “You know, wet and dripping and, I don’t know, bats? Don’t caves have bats?”
“This isn’t a cave. It’s a city, only built underground. Here.” He took her now-gloved hand and pressed it against the wall. Under her fingers, two round moldings protruded from the smooth wall at waist height. The upper one had chevrons cut into it, angled away from the direction they’d walked. The chevrons on the lower one pointed in the opposite direction. “On every floor, in every hallway,” he said, “the upper one points the direction back to the stairs that lead up or, if you’re on this level—One Down—they lead to the main door, the way we came in. If you get separated from me, stick to the wall and follow that. Up is always out.”
She ran gloved fingers along the upper molding. “What about the lower one?”
“Those point to the refuge on each level. That’s the place you go if there’s trouble.”
“Trouble?”
“An invasion, for example, or . . . a fire.”
He didn’t think either of those was likely, but history proved that an invasion could happen. Everything about this place had been reinvented after the Anvarrid invasion. They wanted to confuse intruders, so there were no labels or symbols. There were armories at regular intervals. If she pushed harder at his mind, she was sure she could figure out where the nearest was—although what she might do in an armory eluded her. She shook her head to clear away those thoughts. “They made those for someone who couldn’t see?” she asked instead.
“Actually, it was done in case all the lights fail,” he said, leading her on along the hallway. They walked straight ahead for a long time.
Shironne kept one hand on the comforting moldings on the not-stone wall and the other on his arm. “Is it . . . pretty?”
“You aren’t missing anything here,” he said wryly, directing her to the left. “Gray walls. Gray floor. There aren’t any tapestries allowed on the walls, although there are designs painted along their upper third. Here in Lucas, it’s all geometric patterns, black and white and gray.”
That didn’t sound promising. “Gray ceiling?”
“Actually not,” he said. “That’s where the light is.”
“You mean . . . like gaslights?” She didn’t hear any hissing from them.
He paused and puzzled over how to explain it. “No, the whole ceiling is lights. Imps again. They glow, however much you tell them to. I’m sorry, I don’t have the words.” An engineer could explain it to her far better, he thought absently. She caught that without even trying.
“Oh.” Nearby, she heard the clatter of voices, too distantly to tell what they said, and feet. The walls seemed closer, the sounds more confined here.
“We’re coming up on the main stairwells. They’re the primary way down,” he said. “It’s like that in all the fortresses.”
A sudden idea occurred to her. He’s been in more than one. “You’ve seen the others?”
“Four—here, Lee, Halvdan, and Jannsen. They’re all laid out alike, although Jannsen is smaller in scale. I’m very disappointed you aren’t being more effusive in your praise.”
Shironne decided she liked his sense of humor. “Well, the floor is very smooth. Nothing to trip over, I guess.”
“Much better,” Mikael said. “Oh, wait. I’m going to take you past the stairwell to show you something and then we’ll come back.”
Something else meant to reassure her, she could tell. They walked past an area where warm air rose, combined with more echoes. Shironne nearly stumbled when the direction of the chevrons under her fingers changed, but Mikael led her past that point to a spot where her fingers came to a corner and the wall veered off to her left. She did stop then. “Where does it go?”
“There are a lot of hallways that come off the main hallways,” he explained. “This one, to the left and just past the main stair, leads to the infirmary wing. Try walking toward it.”
She could tell from his mind that it was safe, so she took a step that way. Her slipper came down on rough floor, almost like small pebbles under her foot.
“Guideline,” Mikael offered. “You can use that to find . . .”
“The wall on the far side of the hallway,” she finished for him. It must be another modification for when there was no light, to keep Family from wandering off course accidentally.
“And if it helps to know,” he added, “hallways, stairs, and aisles are always kept clear. Less to worry about for you. Now we’re going to tackle more stairwells, twelve of them to be exact.”
He guided her back in the direction of the stairwell. Shironne heard people coming toward them. She felt an occasional twinge of interest as someone passed silently. The minds in the fortress were carefully controlled, a strangely comfortable dampening of emotion.
“First stair,” Mikael announced, and placed her hand on a rail.
She thanked the true god for the rails, which made everything easier. She felt for the step with her toes and started down. They reversed on the very wide landing and headed down a second set of steps. It went on forever, one well after another, until he announced they’d reached Seven Down. When they reached the bottom she wanted to sit and rest for a time, but Kai waited nearby.
“I was getting ready to come find you. What took so long?” Kai asked with absolute sincerity, as if Shironne could have jogged blithely down a thousand stairs. It was evidently a rhetorical question anyway, since Kai moved away without giving them the chance to answer.
“Are you all right?” Mikael asked. A wave of his concern washed over her.
“I’m just not accustomed to that many stairs,” she admitted.
Mikael wrapped up his concern and hid it away, making himself quiet. He led her in the direction Kai had gone, leaning down to whisper next to her ear, “Wait until we go back up.”
“God help me.” She sighed. “So, where are we?”
“Seven Down, main hallway. Most of this floor belongs to the engineers. They keep the fortress running properly. The cold rooms are near the end of this hall, so it’s another long walk, I’m afraid.”
Walking the square on Antrija Street didn’t compare to this. It was a good thing she’d worn her sturdiest pair of slippers today. “What are the cold rooms?”
He began to slow his pace, and she decided they’d neared their destination. “The Six Families aren’t known for imaginative names, Miss Anjir.”
“You mean they’re . . . cold?”
“Very clever,” he said, his voice amused.
“Thank you. I’m not generally this witty,” she admitted, “so you must be rubbing off on me.”
The arm under her fingers stiffened. His hand, which had rested over her gloved one, slipped away. Her sense of him faded, taking his humor with it and leaving her feeling as if someone had scrubbed off a layer of her skin.
Shironne stopped where she stood, in the middle of nowhere far below the ground. “What did I say?”
“I didn’t mean to push you.” His voice, without her perception of emotional response, seemed flat. It was still a nice tenor voice, with a faint northern accent—pleasant to listen to, but devoid of any undertone.
She hated being shut away. “I don’t understand.”
“Who are you,” he asked in that odd voice, “when you’re alone?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The words echoed down the abandoned hallway, a strange sort of accusation. “Who are you when you’re alone?”
The question rattled around in Shironne’s mind. Who was she? She was Savelle Anjir’s daughter, and Melanna’s big sister. Perrin’s sister, although that didn’t matter nearly as much. She worked for the army. But those all defined her relative to others. Who was she without that? When she sat in her room in the early morning hours? “I’m waiting for something to happen, I guess, for some
reason to be . . . useful.”
Mikael took a half step away from her. Shironne thought he might be looking at her, but she couldn’t tell. His mind hid his response to her words. Then, slowly, she felt him relax. Her sense of him came creeping back like fog, and she held it around herself, a warm feeling of belonging to someone in this huge unknown place. He wasn’t angry, but worry still lurked in his mind.
“What did I say to upset you?” she asked again.
“I don’t mean to influence you.” His voice sounded warmer, with an undertone of apology in it.
The way he said it, influence meant coercion. “You didn’t do anything to me.”
“Are you certain of that?” His hand took hers again and laid it on his arm, not waiting for an answer. He wanted her to think about it, not respond.
“Do you intend to take all day?” Kai’s voice echoed down the hallway, annoyed and not too distant.
Mikael led her to the voice. She could feel cold pouring from the open doorway in which Kai stood, his warm anger and pain silhouetted in her mind by the emotionless tinge of frost around him. Kai backed into the room, allowing them inside.
Shironne let the cold run through her. She could smell the woman’s body, but only just. “How cold is it in here?”
“Cold enough,” Kai answered.
Worry ran off him, but she couldn’t judge its source.
“Where’s Elisabet?” Mikael asked.
Kai’s quiet shadow was missing. Shironne hadn’t noticed, since the woman seemed no more than a reflection of him.
“I’ve sent her to my quarters to wait for me,” Kai said. “I don’t need a guard in Below, and she doesn’t need to see this. We both trained Iselin.”
Kai’s tone discouraged further questions. Mikael had misgivings, thinking loudly that Elisabet didn’t need to be protected from the sight of death, that Kai overreacted and that he forgot again who guarded whom.
“Where is the body?” Shironne asked, hoping to head off strife between the two.
“On the table,” Kai said. “Deborah will come down to examine the body later, although Jakob has already rendered his judgment.”
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