‘Empty, whatever it was it’s gone.’
I nodded, and eyed him uncertainly. His broody eyes were so anxious, he could barely look at me.
‘I’m going to check the cells,’ he muttered. ‘Stand well back, Tal, and if anything happens please just get on the griffin and get the hell out. No heroics OK?’ He stroked my cheek tenderly, and it was more than I could bear.
‘What do you care?’ I choked out, brushing away his hand. ‘None of this is about me or my family. It’s about Aelia!’
There was a moment’s silence and then he leaned in, his warm lips brushing mine before he whispered the words that changed everything.
‘Talia, she’s my sister.’
Chapter Nineteen
August turned away before I responded, though I doubt I could have anyway. A million thoughts flew through my head, along with a thousand new questions. Above all, I had a sneaking suspicion I may have been a little foolish. OK, a lot foolish.
Everything made sense now: his hints at a complex past, his sympathy with the Prolet cause, Aelia’s defence of him in Octavia’s suite, her familiarity and their clear bond.
A murky recollection stirred.
My parents … were given the highest recognition in Isca Pantheon, the chance to donate an embryo into Octavia’s most prestigious Order of Knights. They were given an assurance I would never want for anything. And I didn’t … apart from parents of course. Octavia made sure I never met them.
His parents must have gone on to have Aelia, but they’d already paid so highly. I thought of my own unfettered childhood with my brother, and felt a rush of new empathy. If Eli was behind one of those doors, I would stop at nothing to find him.
Without further prompting, I ran to the next cell door and reached up to peer in through the high grille. There was a large creature slumbering towards the back and I dropped back quickly, moving on to the next. I didn’t bother to check if August wanted my help. Time was precious and one thing was certain: Octavia would dispatch a new battalion of soldiers as soon as she could. We checked cell after cell. Some were empty, but more often than not they contained some poor misshapen creature that shrank away as soon as our faces blocked the scant light.
Finally, we reached the last set. August had grown increasingly white-lipped as we passed each row with no success. I could feel his desperation, and when we exhausted the last cell on the stretch, he looked wretched.
‘Is there anywhere else she could be?’ I asked.
‘There’s only one other place in the Flavium,’ he responded curtly. ‘The morgue.’
I swallowed. We had a morgue in Arafel but it was a grass-walled hut that stood alone at the top of our valley, looking down on the forest. It was a place of tranquillity and hope. Somehow I doubted the Flavium morgue was the same.
‘Take me to it and I’ll check.’
He nodded abruptly, and we set off down the dark corridor. I knew we were approaching the right area by the intensifying stench; it was stomach-churning. The griffin backed off a few steps and I couldn’t blame it at all, resolving to hold my breath for as long as possible while I was in there.
‘You wait here. I’ll be as quick as I can,’ I offered when he paused in front of a dank archway.
‘No,’ August forced through gritted teeth, ‘we’ll do it together.’
I didn’t have the strength to argue, and stepped through the thin sheeting that separated the morgue from the rest of the Flavium with August at my side. The first thing to strike me was the absolute lack of order or care. Bodies were heaped everywhere, in varying states of decay. This wasn’t a morgue; it was a dumping ground for life that had been tortured for the entertainment of others. I held my breath and shot a quick darting look around the low-lit stone cavern. I could tell most of the bodies around us had been dead for some time.
As I scanned the darkness, a thick arm hanging listlessly from a low bed caught my attention. Ignoring my pitching stomach, I tiptoed across the cavern floor, exhaling slowly as my suspicion turned out to be correct. It was Unus. He’d been dumped on a narrow bed so awkwardly, his entire Cyclops body appeared misshapen and out of proportion.
His huge eye was only half-closed giving him a sheepish look. A reluctant smile escaped me, he’d been the biggest fake in life and death. Leaning down, I tugged at his heavy limbs in an attempt to straighten them out, and gently closed his eye. He seemed to relax at once, and even though he was gone I threw my arms around his huge neck and took comfort from his strength. He wasn’t completely cold yet, and I could almost believe he had a faint heartbeat.
‘If you move him out of the recovery position you’ll give him cramp, his muscle structure is unique.’ The voice was hoarse, yet unmistakable.
‘Aelia?’ August fired, whirling around in the semi-darkness.
Slowly, a small person shuffled out of the gloom. August gave a yelp of delight and enveloped her in a huge bear hug. And despite our differences, I found myself grinning too.
‘Ow, August! Put me down, I’ve several broken ribs!’ came the objectionable response.
She chuckled through a wince, and August stood back in concern. As she shuffled into better light, the smile died on my lips. She looked terrible. Her face was swollen and bruised, she was dragging her left leg, and each step caused pain she was unable to hide.
The joy on August’s face faded to an ugly scowl.
‘How hurt are you, Aelia?’ he asked roughly, his voice laced with care.
She shrugged. ‘A few bumps and bruises, nothing that won’t mend. Not as bad as my friend here,’ she whispered with a gentleness I’d not witnessed before.
I whirled around to look down at Unus. Dare I hope?
‘He’s not dead,’ she confirmed through a wheeze. ‘He was close, but they underestimated the thickness of a Cyclopean artery. His weak heart is another matter, it’s the reason he was rejected from Pantheon’s Construction Unit in the first place. Still, their loss was our gain, wasn’t it, big man? Luckily for Unus, he has a lower blood pressure than any other living creature in Pantheon, meaning he can appear dead when he is, in fact, only dying.’
I looked up at Aelia as she placed her fingers against Unus’s thick neck, and pushed in hard. For the first time, I noticed how carefully his wounds had been washed and dressed, and I felt new respect for this feisty, unconventional doctor. She was complicated, but there was no doubt she took care of those she loved. Those I loved.
‘Only dying?’ I repeated in a hushed voice. ‘Does that mean he’s not …?’
‘No … but he’s had a narrow escape. It was just lucky Octavia’s soldiers don’t know enough anatomy to understand when an injury is life-threatening or not. After a shift on the wheel, I was able to fake my own death, and stake out in this putrid, rotting hole … Makes home look almost palatial,’ she joked, raising her eyes.
‘The wheel? That’s one of Octavia’s worst torture treatments.’ August scowled. ‘Are you sure your injuries don’t need attention? I know you’re a survivor, but you gave me a real fright!’
He placed his arm around her slight shoulders protectively, and she smiled up at him.
And for once I didn’t mind. Instead I glimpsed a shadowy past, and a story of sacrifice and challenge I hadn’t had to endure.
‘How do we get him out of here?’ I asked, gesticulating to Unus. I could see he was too big for the griffin to carry.
‘If we can get to the tunnel entrance, we could use one of the trailers to push him, but we’d need him to wake. He’s too heavy to carry, even for the three of us,’ Aelia responded.
August snorted. ‘Like you could carry anything right now. You need carrying yourself.’
Fierce annoyance flickered through Aelia’s iris-blues, and privately I wondered how I’d ever failed to see their similarities before.
‘There’s no need for anyone to be carried,’ I interjected. ‘The griffin can pull Unus, and if he’s awake he can make his call to scare the strix off.’
As the others nodded their approval, Unus groaned. I whirled around as the Cyclops’s huge eyelid flickered with consciousness. I wanted nothing else than to see his gentle eye illuminate his pudgy face once again.
‘Lia? Tal?’
The incredulity in his voice was unmistakable, and the grainy lump returned to my throat. He had turned out to be the truest friend anyone could want. I threw my arms around him, and lay my face gently on his rising chest, hoping he could feel what he couldn’t believe.
‘We’re all here Unus.’ Aelia smiled, taking his pulse. ‘Welcome back.’
Five minutes later we were making our way back towards the Flavium waste room. Unus was awake, but his wounds had weakened him and he kept drifting. Everywhere we went, there was silence. I’d expected to hear sounds of pursuit by now, and the eerie void was almost worse. There was no way Octavia would be content to let us go, and she knew there was no way I’d leave without Grandpa.
I tried to ignore the icy claws digging into the walls of my stomach. Firstly, we had to concentrate on getting Unus and Aelia home.
When the familiar scratching of the strix started echoing down the tunnel, I was almost relieved. Unus groaned obligingly every few seconds, which had the guaranteed effect of scattering the vulturous birds for a while. Even so, I was aware of their watchful yellow eyes, and tried not to wonder whether they could sense Unus was not in fighting form. He was a heavy creature to pull, but the griffin was strong and seemed to understand our predicament.
Aelia lit Unus’s torch and we stumbled on, following his directions when tunnel forks appeared out of the gloom. I tried to calculate the time that had passed. It had to be approaching evening again, which meant we’d gone a whole day without food. Thankfully, Aelia had a small water bottle that we shared, but it didn’t stop our stomachs growling with hunger.
Finally, we reached the fork Unus and I had left that morning. Empty laundry trolleys lined the tunnels and I gazed at the stark choice. One pathway led to the Prolet underworld, where we would have some level of protection but no resolution; the other led to Pantheon – and certain death. We hadn’t discussed precisely what would happen, but I’d formulated a plan of my own. August and Aelia would take Unus back to the Prolet underworld, while I took the griffin and found Grandpa. There was no other choice to be made.
As we paused, a scraping noise echoed partway down the black tunnel leading to Pantheon. It was unfamiliar, and the griffin started to back off nervously. This part of the tunnel was oddly quiet and we were treading cautiously. I was aware Cerberus was still unaccounted for, and could see Unus was thinking the same.
‘Unus, do you think you would be able to stir up a few strix if we need them?’ I whispered.
A frown passed across Unus’s broad face, and he nodded slowly. ‘Unus know.’
August held a finger to his mouth to silence us, and taking the torch, shone it ahead. Something scuffled backwards immediately and my heart plummeted into my leather-clad feet. I grabbed my Diasord and crept forward in front of Aelia and Unus.
Suddenly there was a loud shout, a loud human shout – accompanied by the sound of heavy running boots. It was an ambush! Cursing, August and I sprinted back and, catching hold of Unus’s trolley, pushed with all our might. August extinguished the light. We couldn’t see, and the soldiers were advancing quickly. Something scraped down my arm hard, piercing the skin. I lashed out with my free arm and felt a hairless, beaked head pull back sharply. It released an ugly call that made the hairs strain on the back of my cold, damp neck.
‘Unus, the strix raid – do the call!’ I urged frantically.
We were surrounded by them anyway, we might as well enlist their strength against Octavia’s army. Unus lifted his large head with some effort, and the air was filled with the same strange call I’d heard him make only once before. It filled me with foreboding and a terrifying silence hung in the air, before it was replaced with the sound of hundreds of cold hard claws scraping the tunnel walls.
‘Get back everyone, get back,’ I screamed, stumbling across the tunnel and helping August push Unus with all my remaining strength.
There was a beating of dank air, and then they were everywhere. I could feel their vulturous beaks and claws all around, raking the ground, the walls, and the ceiling. The stench of stinking, rotten feathers combined with putrid, decaying faeces filled the confined space, and I turned my head away to stop myself from gagging. Another hard beak dug into my arm and I couldn’t help letting out a cry of pain.
At once Unus growled and hauled himself to his feet. I pressed myself into his protective warmth as he let out one of his deep belly rumbles that had the rush of carnivorous birds pass us by, straight into the path of the oncoming soldiers.
The echo of that gruesome collision will always stay with me. The strix were in full feeding frenzy and the soldiers no adversary, despite their armour and Diasords. I thought the terrified screaming and sound of hard, calcified beaks meeting soft flesh and bone would never end; but finally there was only the echo of a few running footsteps pursued by a flock of claws. The battle was over, for now.
‘Everyone goes this way,’ August commanded, dragging the terrified griffin down the Prolet tunnel. I didn’t protest. I had no desire to meet a pack of strix returning from a feast.
The smell of fresh blood pervaded the dank tunnel, pushing us through the last stretch of darkness rapidly. But, finally it opened out into the Prolet marketplace and I filled my lungs with the fresher, piped air. A strange hush fell across the busy market as we emerged, and I was filled with a sense of how bizarre we must look, even for this world. We were bloodied, stained, and weary, a troop straight from the battlefield.
A brief smile crossed my face, which quickly turned into a hysterical chuckle, and then I was laughing, laughing so hard that I had to clutch my aching stomach. Within seconds August had joined in, his deep chuckle intermingling with Unus’s great belly rumbles. My eyes met Aelia’s and finally, her face lit up with a real smile.
Minutes later we were being escorted to the medical unit by two obliging satyrs. It was approaching early evening so the Prolet underworld was quieter than I remembered. Our less-urgent wounds were cleaned and bandaged, while Unus and Aelia for taken for surgery. This time I handed the patients over to Tullius without any qualms.
We sat in the waiting area eating our first meal in a day, under the beady eye of the cat woman.
‘I can’t stay here long,’ I said in a hushed tone, not daring to look at August. ‘Grandpa …’
‘I know.’
He closed his battle-scarred hand over mine. ‘When I was a child,’ he whispered, ‘I would dream of life outside, yearn to taste the fresh air I only read about in books. Now I know how sweet it is.’
A pain, like a blow dart, pierced my chest. Only this dart had come from the inside. I swallowed to try to ease the throb. ‘Come to Arafel?’ I whispered. ‘It doesn’t have to be a choice. Come to Arafel and speak with Art, tell him why Octavia wants Thomas’s research. Working with the Prolet rebel alliance, we can take her down once and for all. We can destroy the Voynich, close down her Biotechnology Programme, and open the doors to this prison! No one needs to live on the inside any more.’
He looked down at me, his bright eyes burning with the same vulnerability I’d noticed outside the Flavium. It felt as though the dart had dug itself right into the softest tissues of my heart, and I struggled to keep my voice even. All I wanted to do was to turn the picture around, to make him see he could belong to the outside too.
‘It wouldn’t be as straightforward as that though,’ he responded gently. ‘On the outside, everyone is used to freedom, but Pantheon has a population that has only known the opposite. Human beings become … institutionalized. We would have to handle the transition so carefully … and what if the rebels weren’t successful?’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked, frowning.
‘Octavia is one of the coldest and most calculating
human beings I’ve ever known. You can assume she has a plan for every eventuality, following today. She won’t give Isca Pantheon up without a war. And while she’s at large, Arafel is in grim danger. Your village will need me to stay here, to try to take her down from the inside. She always had a … soft spot for me.’
He picked his words carefully, and I clenched my hands.
‘And think of all the life she has created right here. What of that? Do we dispose of them? Or, just set all the creatures free? How do you think life out there would integrate with the creatures in here? There would be chaos, some forest species would most likely be wiped out entirely.
‘There are so many possible recriminations: people who won’t welcome the change, those who will hold us – you – responsible for every good and bad consequence. We have to face facts. It might just be that the safest thing I can do is to leave Arafel, and the outside … alone.’ He finished softly, his gaze intense and testing.
‘This is about the Voynich, isn’t it?’ My question was unsteady. It was clear the manuscript had a cursed hold over everyone in Pantheon. Could he be deceiving me still, deceiving himself?
He grasped my hands in his, his face only centimetres from mine. ‘Talia, if I had my way, I would build a pyre out of the abomination, put Octavia on top, and light the thing myself!’
The steely glint was back, the one that wanted me to stay in the forest in the first place, the one that started everything.
But doing what he suggested meant giving everything up. There was a pregnant pause, when I could do little more than eye him with unspeakable frustration.
‘So, you mean for everyone to just stay here, including you?’ I scathed.
‘It’s the only realistic option – Octavia would never accept my disappearance. She would hunt me down first, then you, and then the entire village. Whether you like it or not, Talia, I’m the biggest threat to you, and Arafel’s continued existence.’
I stared into his bruised, earnest face and finally felt my cup spill over.
Book of Fire Page 25
