Beneath the Citadel

by Destiny Soria

  PRAISE FOR DESTINY SORIA’S

  IRON CAST

  “Energetic and original, this alternative history, fantasy, and mystery mashup with its pair of smart, resourceful, flawed but engaging heroines never disappoints.”

  —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Hand this entrancing historical fantasy to fans of Libba Bray’s Diviners series or anyone who likes their magic on the seamier side.”

  —Booklist, starred review

  “Stories of the diverse cast of flawed and complicated characters striving to do better complement the solid female friendship at the core of this absorbing novel . . . Mystery and fantasy blend well in this witty title filled with twists and fast-paced action.”

  —School Library Journal, starred review

  “Destiny Soria’s debut is without a doubt one of the best of the year.”

  —YA Books Central

  For Isaac and Bryson. If words are weapons, you’re the reason I fight.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Soria, Destiny, author.

  Title: Beneath the citadel / by Destiny Soria.

  Description: New York: Amulet Books, 2018. | Summary: Cassa, the orphaned daughter of rebels, and friends Alys, Evander, and Newt, fight back against the high council of Eldra, which has ruled for centuries based solely on ancient prophesies.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2018001836 | ISBN 9781419731464 (hardcover with jacket) | eISBN 9781683353850

  Subjects: | CYAC: Prophecies—Fiction. | Revolutions—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Fantasy.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.S678 Be 2018 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  Text copyright © 2018 Destiny Soria

  Jacket illustrations copyright © 2018 Bill Elis

  Jacket and book design by Siobhán Gallagher

  Jacket typography by Neil Swaab

  Jacket copyright © 2018 Amulet Books

  Published in 2018 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

  Amulet Books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.

  Amulet Books® is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

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  ONE

  THE CHANCELLOR

  Four people were supposed to die at sunrise. The four members of the council sat in the Judgment Hall, prepared to declare the prisoners’ fate. The high chancellor himself oversaw the proceedings, as was customary in trials for treason. Deep beneath the citadel, the executioner was waiting.

  The chancellor was a very old man. On days like this, he felt it in his bones. The last execution of rebels had been several years ago, but the chancellor hadn’t held his position then. His predecessor had been a younger man, better suited for the rigors of the office. Better suited for the heavily embroidered, smothering ceremonial robes. Better suited for hours of standing on the dais with only a table stacked with documents for support.

  Better suited for realizing how very young the first prisoner was when the two guards led her into the hall. She was of true Teruvian stock, her fine black hair chopped short around her shoulders, her bronze skin muddied from the dungeons and showing faint purple bruising on her arms and under one eye. The gray dress they had put her in hung sacklike on her thin, boyish frame. The chancellor felt momentarily ill. Sixteen years looked different on paper than it did in real life. She was a child.

  A child who had knowingly committed treason. Or attempted to, anyway. Unfortunately, the law didn’t allow for the distinction.

  “Cassandra Valera,” the chancellor read from the paper in front of him, frowning at the surname.

  “Present and accounted for,” she replied. “The name is Cassa though.”

  The chancellor looked at her, surprised at her light tone. The two guards had stepped to the side, leaving her alone in the center of the room. Her stance was relaxed, almost casual. She lifted her manacled hands absently to scratch her cheek as she stared around the room in open curiosity.

  “Do you know why you’re here?” the chancellor asked.

  “I’d be pretty dim if I didn’t,” she said, finally casting her gaze in his direction. “I mean, even more than I was in getting caught.”

  “So you don’t deny your crimes?” The chancellor looked at the other council members, at a loss. They seemed just as perplexed as he was. He’d been expecting terror and pleading or hatred and vitriol. It had never occurred to him to expect this.

  “Why would I deny successfully infiltrating the Central Keep with nothing but some barrels and a pry bar? I’m really quite proud of myself.”

  One of the council members cleared their throat pointedly, and the chancellor looked back at the parchment in front of him. Her name, her age, her crimes. What a strange, inadequate summary of a life.

  “In accordance with the evidence against you—and your own confession—this council will now pronounce its judgment.”

  Each council member stood and spoke their verdict. The prisoner was declared guilty four times over. She didn’t seem overly concerned. She was looking around the Judgment Hall again, squinting at the mosaics of the elder seers on the great domed ceiling.

  The chancellor paused a moment, awkwardly. He took the cue from his fellow councilor and cleared his throat. Still her attention did not return to him. The men and women of the council were starting to fidget.

  “In accordance with the judgment of this council,” the chancellor finally said, “you are found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death in the customary manner.”

  It was the first time he had ever officially sentenced someone to death. He had imagined it would carry more weight, when the time came, but it was hard to take even himself seriously when Cassa Valera was still admiring the decor.

  “Do you think the elder seers saw everything?” she asked, giving no indication that she’d even heard the ruling.

  The chancellor hesitated, looking to the councilors, but again their expressions mirrored his own confusion. He had a feeling he was supposed to order the guards to escort her back to her cell now.

  “What do you mean?” he asked instead.

  “I mean, do you think they saw the entire future, every moment of every decade to come?”

  There was a certain innocence to the question. It reminded him so much of his niece—she was about Cassa’s age—and how she would ask similar questions of philosophy and history, her face screwed up in concentration.

  “The teachings laid down by Teruvia’s forefathers tell us that the elder seers saw every thread of the tapestry that is our present and future.”

  “So a few hundred years ago, some old bearded man somewhere fell asleep and dreamed about a girl standing beneath a hideous mosaic of his face while another old bearded man sentenced her to die?”

  Her tone and expression had not changed at all, but her innocence had melded into mockery. The chancellor’s neck grew warm.

  “The elder seers understood the world differently than we do,” he said. “It
is not something we in the present can comprehend.”

  She nodded slowly.

  “That’s probably for the best. I, for one, would not care to have a vivid dream every time a baby somewhere soiled itself.”

  A low rumbling among the councilors.

  “Do you think it wise to mock our sacred traditions on the eve of your death?” Councilor Barwick snapped, red-faced, even though the chancellor alone was supposed to address the prisoner.

  “I imagine that would be very unwise,” she said. She was still looking at the chancellor. “But I don’t intend to die.”

  A wry chuckle escaped the chancellor before he could catch himself.

  “Ever?” he asked.

  Cassa shrugged. The metal around her wrists jangled softly.

  “Alys keeps telling me I’m not immortal, but that’s never actually been proven, has it?”

  “I suppose tomorrow we’ll see.”

  “I suppose we shall.”

  The chancellor could feel the discontent among the councilors like a thick cloud. He waved at the guards, and they stepped forward to lead the prisoner away. She cast one glance over her shoulder at the threshold, but she didn’t look toward the dais. She was surveying the mosaic dome one last time, a strand of dark hair falling over her dark eyes. The door shut with a reverberating sound.

  The second prisoner was more demure than the first. Newt Dalton stood quite still and stared at his feet while the chancellor read the charges, and he had nothing to say in his own defense. Between the two guards, he seemed a small and fragile thing. He had the white skin of northern ancestry, flushed a rosy, timid pink. Dishwater blond hair curling at the nape of his neck. Narrow shoulders. Bony arms. He was barely fifteen years old.

  The chancellor scanned the parchment in front of him a second time but saw no indication of the boy’s role in the plot, only that he had been apprehended with the others.

  “What is your trade, boy?” the chancellor asked, not unkindly. It was mostly curiosity. The judgment would be passed presently. His fate was all but sealed.

  “My father was a cooper, sir.” His voice was tenuous but respectful.

  “And you learned the trade from him?”

  “I learned a great deal from him, sir.”

  “And how did you get mixed up in this business then, if you’ve a father who loves you enough to teach you a useful skill like barrel-making?”

  The boy’s shoulders hunched slightly, and he ducked his head a little lower. A proper show of shame.

  “Cassa and the others can be very . . . persuasive,” he muttered.

  “I am sorry that you found yourself among such bad company,” the chancellor said, and he truly meant it. The boy was so young. “This council will now pronounce its judgment.”

  The verdict of “guilty” came dutifully from four mouths. Newt didn’t cringe at the word, but he didn’t look up either. His head was still hung when the chancellor spoke his sentence and the guards led him away.

  The third prisoner gave the chancellor a headache before the proceedings were even under way. Evander Sera, sixteen years old. Practically a man by society’s standards, despite his boyish mannerisms. He shifted restlessly from one foot to the other, fingers tapping a staccato rhythm on his iron cuff. His short, dark hair was disheveled and powdered with dust. His skin was the light tawny brown that came from old Teruvian blood, with an odd grayish streak on his right forearm. A scar?

  Evander didn’t stand still long enough for the chancellor to figure it out. He cast his gaze over the assembled councilors but discerned quickly who was in charge and addressed the chancellor directly.

  “Did she say it was my fault?”

  The chancellor, who had still been trying in vain to get a good look at the mark on the prisoner’s arm, blinked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Cassa? Did she say it was my fault?”

  The chancellor frowned and looked down at the parchment before him.

  “You stand here before the high council faced with charges of—”

  “Of course she did! As usual. Do you know that I’m the one who told her that the barrels were a bad idea? But that won’t be the way she tells it.”

  “Charges of high treason and—”

  “Listen to me, Your Chancellorness. If you ever get an offer from a mysterious girl to join a rebellion, do yourself a favor and take up bare-knuckle street fighting instead. It’ll be less painful in the long run. You can have that advice free of charge.”

  The chancellor stared at him for a second, wavering between disbelief and annoyance.

  “Is that all?” he asked after a few seconds of silence.

  “I can tell your fortune too, if you like,” said Evander. “Costs a silver to read the silver though.” He raised his bound hands. A shiny coin flashed between his slender fingers.

  Several of the councilors recoiled as if he’d just pulled a weapon. From their reactions, the chancellor realized suddenly what the mark on Evander’s arm must be and felt foolish. Of course that’s what it was. The words were scrawled just beneath his name on the document, a caution: Bloodbond. Silver.

  “Guards,” he snapped, but the guards had already raced forward, grabbing at the prisoner’s hands.

  Evander gave up the coin without a fight, smiling serenely at the pistols pointed in his direction. Satisfied that the threat was in hand, the chancellor took a deep breath and glared between the two guards.

  “How did he get that past you?”

  The two men exchanged a nervous look, caught in a silent battle of wills as to who would reply.

  “I don’t know, sir,” said the apparent loser, his voice cracking.

  “Don’t blame them,” said Evander. “Silver’s such a tricky metal, when it’s in the right hands.”

  As he spoke, there was another flash between his fingers. The second coin rolled across his knuckles, inciting uproar as it went. The guards practically tackled him in an effort to wrench it away. The council members were demanding that the chancellor do something. A couple stood up to leave. Coins might seem harmless, but the chancellor had seen people with bloodbonds cause damage with less. With a bloodbond’s complete control over a particular metal, any number of everyday items could become weapons—and there was no telling what other silver implements the boy had managed to smuggle past the guards.

  “Take him back to the dungeon,” the chancellor shouted over the panicked din. “Evander Sera, you are found guilty of high treason and are sentenced to death in the customary manner.”

  Perhaps the prisoner did not hear his fate, because he was laughing as the guards dragged him out of the chamber.

  The fourth prisoner didn’t look much like her brother. Alys Sera was shorter and quieter than Evander. Fat with a heart-shaped face and big bright eyes. Only the nose was the same, straight and sharp. Unlike her brother and other companions, she hardly looked worse for wear, with a clean face and black, silky hair in a perfect braid over her left shoulder. Her brows arched when the chancellor asked her if she had anything to say in her defense.

  “Just pass your judgment and be done with it,” she said, a touch of irritation in her tone. “I’ve got better things to do than stand around watching old people hem and haw over my choices.”

  The chancellor’s first urge was to ask her what better things she had to do, considering the rest of her short life would be spent in a cell. But she was staring at him with such unblinking, uncompromising displeasure that the words died in his throat.

  “This council will now pronounce its judgment,” he said.

  She eyed each council member in turn as they spoke, and then her gaze swiveled back to the chancellor expectantly. He cleared his throat. Why did he feel like a schoolboy again? For seers’ sake, she was only seventeen.

  “In accordance with the judgment of this council, you are found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death in the customary manner.”

  Alys sighed, and it sounded absurdly like re
lief.

  “Finally,” she said. “Maybe in the future you should consider a more efficient means of sentencing people to death. Surely there are better uses of the council’s time than all this pomp and circumstance.”

  Before the chancellor could say another word, she had turned on her heel to go. The guards rushed to her side in a vain attempt to make it seem that they were escorting her and not the other way around.

  TWO

  EVANDER

  Evander hated the dark. He wasn’t exactly scared of it. He just hated the uncertainty it brought. The fumbling blindness. The chaos of his other senses trying to compensate.

  A few years ago, he’d started having nightmares about being lost in a dark cavern. The tunnels twisting and endless. The stone slick beneath his fingers, giving him nothing to grasp. A pit with no bottom, jagged rocks on all sides like teeth in a gaping maw. Sometimes he fell, sometimes he didn’t.

  His sister, only a year older but always decades wiser, had told him that nightmares were the mind’s way of exploring subconscious fears. He knew that a clinical explanation was Alys’s idea of comfort. As long as he could remember, she’d been collecting facts and assembling logic like armor and weaponry. She told him that the reason she never used her skill at divining was that the future was shifting and unreliable. Logic never was. Evander knew that wasn’t the real reason, but he’d never told her that.

  The future wasn’t his area of expertise anyway. He couldn’t even manage a simple divination, to his mother’s mostly well-hidden dismay. Evander had found ways around his lack of gifts during the last days of the rebellion, when his family was daily on the brink of starvation. People were happy to pay silver to a charming street diviner. They liked his tricks with the coins, and they liked being told what they wanted to hear—whether or not it would really come to pass. And then of course there had been the Blacksmith. But Evander didn’t remember much about that day beyond the events leading up to it: the sudden, forceful decision and that long, dusty road outside the city. Knocking on the front door. Being afraid that he wouldn’t be able to go through with it. Being afraid of what might happen to his family if he didn’t. After that, his memory was only a bright spot of impossible pain.