“Do we know where the deepest, darkest part of the dungeon is?” Evander asked, fiddling with the lock. “I imagine that’s where they shoved her.”
“We don’t have a lot of time.” Newt glanced nervously toward the stairwell. “The patrol guard’s shift change is in half an hour.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Evander said.
Alys stared down the long corridor lined with cells. From where she stood, she could tell that farther down it branched into more and more corridors. She wondered, briefly, if any of the rebels from the failed insurrection were still rotting down here, then shook the thought away. If they wanted to survive this, there wasn’t time for mercy missions. She wasn’t even sure there was time for Cassa.
“We should stay together,” she said. “We can’t risk losing each other again. And take the ghost globe. It will last longer than the lanterns.”
Neither Newt nor Evander protested. The globe, which was a little less than a foot in diameter, was suspended from the ceiling of the alcove, netted in thin rope. The swirling, unnatural blue of the Alchemist’s Flame, trapped mid-combustion inside the glass orb, was rumored to be eternal—although of course there was no way to prove that. Evander took a knife from one of the unconscious guards and hopped onto the table. He sliced the rope as high as he could reach, so that they could tie it into a makeshift handle. With the crisp light illuminating their path, they started together into the maze of cells. Alys tried not to linger on the question that kept crawling into her head. If leaving now was the only way to escape, would Cassa want them to go without her?
She didn’t know the answer to that. And she didn’t know what it meant that the thought had even occurred to her at all.
FIVE
CASSA
Rebellion was in Cassa’s blood. She’d been born a rebel, rocked in a cradle while her parents whispered treasonous plans by firelight. Low voices and locked doors were her childhood. She’d learned how to keep a secret before she knew how to spell her own name. She learned loyalty with her letters, lost timidity with her baby teeth. She’d had a fire in her belly for sixteen years, and last night was supposed to be the moment it finally meant something.
The worst part about it was that her plan had worked. The kitchen workers had unknowingly smuggled all four of them into the basement storerooms in barrels of beer that were only half full. Cassa hadn’t minded the journey as much as she’d expected, although if she never took another sip of beer in her life, she would be happy. She’d amused herself by reciting as many of the elder seers’ fifty infallible prophecies as she could remember, over and over again in her head. Her father, who hated the seers as much as any man could, had made her memorize all of them when she was young. He insisted it was the only way she could understand what was missing.
He’d died before he could tell her exactly what that was.
It was Newt who had freed them from the barrels at the muffled clanging of seven bells. He was the only one who could maneuver enough in the wooden confines to kick his lid off. Then he’d used a pry bar to remove the other lids. They’d brought fresh clothes in tightly bundled oilcloth sacks. At that point, Cassa had no reason to think anything was wrong. Even when Vesper had backed out at the last minute, Cassa knew her plan was solid.
Most of the citadel’s inhabitants would be at the monthly council session, where any new prophecies were discussed and the fulfillment of old prophecies was speculated on. Cassa had been to one when she was very young, before her parents had been outed as rebel spies. Mostly what she remembered about it was the incessant droning and how little everyone who was crammed into the massive but stuffy hall had seemed to care about it. The prophecies kept the council in power, but their day-to-day minutiae held little interest for the citadel’s elite—even though they were the ones who benefited most from the seers’ influence.
Cassa didn’t care about the prophecies. She didn’t believe they dictated her life any more than the rebellion had believed they should be able to dictate the city. “If they own your future, then they own you,” her mother had murmured into her ear while the chancellor went on and on. Her lithe fingers brushed through Cassa’s hair softly, a wordless sort of lullaby. “Never let that happen.”
Cassa had never been sure how to steer clear of prophecies in a city that subsisted on them, but ever since that day, she’d done her best. There had been fewer and fewer prophecies coming out of the citadel in recent years anyway, though not so few that the council’s purpose was in question. The council, headed by the chancellor, had been established several centuries ago by the king and charged with protecting the seers and rooks born in the city of Eldra, as well as the diviners and sentients, whose gifts were weaker but nonetheless important. It was the council’s duty to keep a record of all the seers’ prophetic dreams and to ensure that no rooks ever abused their power to take memories from a person’s mind. The councilors interpreted the prophecies of seers and diviners, using them to give Teruvia advantage over its neighboring countries. They trained sentients and rooks as interrogators, ensuring that criminals’ guilt could never be hidden.
Maybe all those centuries ago the council had actually served the citizens as intended, but that wasn’t the case anymore. Now the prophecies were twisted to justify the council’s seizing land and raising taxes on the lower wards to fund their lifestyles and buy loyalty from the nobles at the expense of ordinary citizens. Diviners were hired to warn the council of impending plots, and sentients were hired to identify dissenters. Rooks administered the council’s justice, devouring the memories of the condemned under the guise of death rites. The executioner, who was rumored to wait beneath the citadel for his victims, was supposedly a rook, though Cassa wasn’t sure how true those rumors were, and she certainly had no intention of meeting the executioner to find out.
What Cassa did know for sure was that the council was hiding something worse than its usual corruption. In the past few months, people who visited the citadel, either to plead some case before the council or to attend one of the open memorial services for the Slain God, were going missing. It had just been gossip at first, but then a well-known baker from the lower ward had gone into the citadel and never come back out. The guards refused access to his family, who wanted to look for him, claiming there was no record that he had ever entered the citadel.
There were other rumors too, of people in the citadel collapsing suddenly, crying out in pain before falling unconscious. Maybe it was some kind of illness. Maybe it was something worse. Either way, the council denied all knowledge, which meant they were somehow complicit. The rebellion might be over, and all the real firebrands might be gone, but Cassa wasn’t ready to just leave the city to its fate—not when her parents had died defending it.
Her plan to break into the citadel was foolproof, though her plan on how they were going to find evidence of what the council was hiding was a little shakier. She knew after they made it past the walls she would figure something out. She always did.
But she never got the chance. They barely made it out of the storeroom before the guards surrounded them. Guards who should have been stationed near the Great Hall to keep eyes on the citizens streaming into the council session. More guards than should ever have been charged with the safety of a storage basement.
The process had been faster than Cassa could have anticipated. They’d been captured, interrogated, and put on trial in less than twenty-four hours. Alys probably approved of the efficiency, but Cassa refused to admit that their plan had been foretold. There was more to it than that. She felt it in her gut.
She jumped to her feet and began to pace the cell, twisting her wrists against the cuffs in absent rhythms, trying to make sense of her own instinct. The bruises on her arms where they’d grabbed her had stopped hurting, but the one under her eye, from insulting the interrogating sentient too many times, still hurt when she blinked. Now that the sentencing was over, she knew that time was running out. She should have come up with a
way to escape the cell by now. She was the one in charge after all.
“A whistle for each guard you take down,” she had whispered to the others right before they were dragged away. “We’ll find each other. We’ll get out.”
It was less a promise and more a directive. There hadn’t been time after their capture to formulate an actual plan. But they knew each other well enough to depend on certain facts. Like that each of them would be able to figure out how many guards were in the dungeons at any given time—four—and that each of them would be able to devise a way out of their cell. But perhaps she had been a little too optimistic on that front.
Cassa also hadn’t considered the possibility that her cell would be so far from the others. She’d heard plenty of cursing and crying and dirty ditties over the past day, but no whistles. Maybe none of them was going to get out of here.
If that was the case, she hoped she didn’t have to see them before she died. She didn’t want to see their faces when they realized she’d let them down. And she certainly didn’t want Alys’s “I told you so” to be the last thing she ever heard.
She’d tried every form of bribery and deceit on the guards, but her usual bag of tricks had failed her. The quelled rebellion was still fresh in the minds of the public. The council wasn’t going to miss a chance to execute dissenters, especially considering who Cassa’s parents were.
At the sound of footsteps in the corridor, she paused. An unwelcome surge of panic rose in her chest. More interrogations? Surely in the time they had spent together, the sentient had laid bare every detail of her past, but maybe the council wanted to be sure. The chancellor wanted quick executions, probably hoping their swift justice would overshadow the fact that rebels had managed to break into the citadel in the first place. But there were several hours until dawn.
A face appeared at the iron grating, indistinct in the shadows. Cassa stood firm, unwilling to back away. Then came the voice.
“Wait a minute, are you telling me that the great and mighty Cassandra Valera was the only one of us who didn’t manage to break herself out?”
The panic bubbling in her chest dissipated so suddenly that she felt dizzy. Cassa had never been more relieved to hear Evander’s voice in her life. Not even when she’d gotten trapped a few years ago for almost two weeks while exploring the caverns under Aurelia Valley and he’d been the one to find her, his lantern a blinding beacon after so much darkness.
Cassa couldn’t help but smile.
“Why would I waste the effort when I knew one of you would be coming along to do it for me?”
“Your quick wit isn’t going to distract us from your laughable incompetence.”
“Just open the damn door.”
The other prisoners in the dungeon had caught on to what was happening and were starting to raise a din. Cassa vaguely considered releasing as many as they could, to slow down the guards, but there was no telling how many of these people were imprisoned for actual crimes. She didn’t fancy being responsible for murderers and rapists being let loose in the city.
She let the others lead the way back to the alcove at the base of the stairs. Her mind was racing almost too fast to keep up. There was no way they could escape through the Central Keep. She knew she needed to mention as much, but there was also something she needed from the alcove where, aside from the table and chairs and padlocked weapons cabinet, there was a small, dusty writing desk, presumably used for record-keeping.
One of the three unconscious guards was stirring, and Evander helped Alys pour some coffee down his throat. Seemed counterproductive, but Cassa was intent on searching the desk. It took her only a few seconds to find what she was looking for. Everyone else would assume the council had foreseen their coming, but Cassa knew otherwise. The real truth was a terrible, wrenching pain in her chest, but she wouldn’t let it go.
“What are you doing?” Newt asked in a nervous whisper.
Cassa smoothed out the scrap of parchment as best she could and shook the ink pen.
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s polite to leave a note when you’re breaking out of someone’s dungeons?” she asked as she wrote.
Newt shook his head. Possibly an answer but more likely an expression of disbelief. It was hard to tell with him sometimes.
A creak and thud at the top of the stairs. The door.
“The shift change,” Newt whispered.
“We have to fight him,” Evander said. “That’s our only way out.”
Cassa finished her note and folded it into her palm.
“If only you knew someone who had another way out of here.” She stooped down to snag one of the unconscious guard’s pistols from his belt. Just in case.
Her friends were all staring at her. Cassa smiled again—she was having fun now—and began to run back the way they’d come. She knew they would follow. They always did.
SIX
THE CHANCELLOR
Four people were supposed to die at sunrise. The council had passed judgment. The high chancellor had looked them each in the eye and informed them of their fate. Beneath the citadel, even deeper than the dungeons, the executioner waited. But by midnight, the only trace of the condemned was four empty cells.
And a single scrap of paper.
The guards had found it in one of the girl’s cells. Cassandra-called-Cassa. The one who thought she was immortal. The chancellor had to admit: She still had not been proven wrong.
High Chancellor Ansel Dane sat down behind the oak desk in his study, which was warmed by a large hearth. He was as far away from the dank despair of the dungeons and the cold justice of the Judgment Hall as he could be. He’d already ordered the stablemaster to prepare his carriage, but he wasn’t in a hurry. It wouldn’t take long to reach his destination. The chancellor was an old man, less suited than his predecessors to the rigors of his office, but he knew how to play the long game. How else did a nobody from the countryside, the son and grandson of farmers, become a high chancellor of Teruvia?
He unfolded the paper carefully. The parchment was ragged and stained with what he hoped was mud. The ink was blotchy and smeared, penned in a rush, but each word was legible.
Vesper—
I know it was you. I should have let you burn.
Ansel stared in silence for a long while, listening to the crackle and hiss of the fireplace. Finally he stood up, his bones creaking with the effort. He shuffled to the hearth, rested one hand on the mantel to steady himself, and fed the paper to the flames.
SEVEN
VESPER
The darkness in the chapel was absolute. Vesper knew her head was supposed to be bowed in reverence, but since no one could see her anyway, she kept her eyes wide open, straining instinctively for a glimpse of light. She’d been attending memorials for the Slain God since she’d been old enough to not cry in the darkness, but every service still felt new. Because she was staring forward, where the ornate marble altar sat atop the dais, she saw the first tiny flame spark to life. A pinprick of gold in a sea of black.
The choir began to sing a gentle, haunting requiem in Teruvia’s dead language. The tale of the god who had once cradled Teruvia, protecting it from those who, in envy and greed, would do her harm. As the disembodied voices rose and fell, two more candles were lit on either side of the first. These seemed brighter. The song built in a slow fury, reaching its crescendo. The tale of the god’s brothers and sisters, equal in power but racked with jealousy over Teruvia’s devotion. Three rows of candles sprang to life in quick succession, like a river of fire running across the altar.
The voices rose to a terrible height, fierce and staccato. The tale of their god, set upon by his own kin and the devastating monsters they’d created for the gruesome purpose. The tale of a battle that rocked the heavens and the earth and all that lay below. The candles that lined the walls of the apse were lit all at once. Vesper blinked at the influx of light and stared upward at the mirrors built into the shadowy recesses of the ceiling, which ref
racted the new light in a thousand directions. Mirrors lined the walls as well, creating endless echoes of flame. For the space of a breath she was eleven years old again, trapped in a chapel just like this one while fire danced in her vision and smoke filled her lungs.
Vesper forced the memory away with practiced ease. With a final, roaring note, the choir cut off. For a split second, all was glorious light and breathless silence. Then the lights went out. The suddenness caught in Vesper’s throat, though she knew it was coming. She’d never managed to discover the mechanics behind the theatrics. Maybe she would ask Alys for her opinion.
The thought was accompanied by a pang in her chest, the biting truth of what she’d done. She’d made the only choice she could, but her friends wouldn’t understand. She might not even have a chance to explain herself. She might never see them again. This memory wasn’t one she could so easily push away.
Her thoughts were thankfully interrupted by a single, lovely voice lifting in the new darkness. The aria was plaintive and elegiac. The tale of their dying god, who used the last of his strength to scatter his omniscience across Teruvia, a gift for the chosen devout few. The ability to see the boundless future in dreams, to take and give memories with a touch. Gifts to be passed down through the bloodlines for centuries, fading eventually to the skill of divining the near future in objects and reading the past in faces.
Vesper had heard the requiem for the Slain God so many times that it felt like a part of her. She couldn’t believe the story with the same unquestioning innocence she had in her youth, but the weight of tradition felt so enormous, it brought tears to her eyes all the same. As the lonely voice’s last echoes died away, a single candle on the altar flickered to life once more, a guiding star in the perfect dark.
Then came the screaming.
At first Vesper thought it was a frightened child, but after a few seconds she realized it wasn’t a child’s cry. People were murmuring and shifting in their seats. Someone called for light. Slowly the chapel came into hazy view as acolytes in dark robes scurried along the walls, igniting the gaslights. Vesper stepped into the aisle and saw the huddle of figures near the last row. Through the staggering motion of the crowd, she saw a woman on her back—the source of the screams. A man clutched her tightly, desperately, crying out for help as the woman flailed against him, clutching her head. Her shrieks were almost inhuman.
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