Path of Night

by Sarah Rees Brennan

  The Marche d’Ailleurs meant the Market Besides, magical stalls existing side by side with the markets of mortals. Hung about with illusion, this market wove around the other markets like a crimson silk thread through white wool. There were goblin fruits of pearl and scarlet on golden dishes, nestled among stalls of humble mortal tomatoes and carrots. Skirting around a Frenchwoman with a woven straw bag went a shadow with a long rat’s tail. An unwary mortal might stumble across these wares and buy dancing shoes to make them dance a thousand years.

  “No need for such a lovely lady as yourself to come buy,” whispered a man with a cat’s face and hairy human hands. “Try a bite. The nectar of this fruit is more luscious than wine.”

  “I really wouldn’t, Prudence,” Ambrose warned.

  Prudence selected a golden fruit and took an enormous bite. Nectar gushed down her chin.

  “The goblins’ fruit removes inhibitions,” Ambrose said anxiously.

  “So it does, ma belle.” The goblin fastened a hand around Prudence’s wrist. “Is your head whirling? Is your blood racing? It grows dangerous in these streets so quickly.”

  Prudence unsheathed her swords. An instant later the goblin’s cat-faced head, removed from his shoulders, was rolling among the cabbages in a nearby stall striped with white and green. The mortals screamed.

  “Very dangerous,” murmured Prudence.

  Between a stall selling round white cheeses and another selling truffles, Ambrose saw purple and pink blossoms waving. Clary sage, for clear sight.

  “Adore your enthusiasm for decapitation, but I think we’ve found Urbain Grandier.”

  Prudence cast the goblin fruit aside and strolled through the curtain of flowers. The cloying, bewildering scent of the blossoms surrounded them until the petals fell from Ambrose’s sight and they stood in a wine cellar with stone walls. Almost a cave, if not for bustling Paris without and the dusty wine bottles within.

  A thin-faced, dark-haired warlock in a white tunic was lolling in a golden chair, apparently asleep. Ambrose coughed.

  “Ambrose Spellman and Prudence Blackwood.” The warlock Grandier didn’t open his eyes. “Come to my city on a mission of revenge. This market offers every treat, including dishes best served cold. You two are the most attractive guests I have received in many a year.”

  “I get that all the time,” said Ambrose.

  Prudence advanced, her sword at the ready, blade slick with goblin blood. “You can’t even see us.”

  Urbain Grandier’s eyes snapped open. They were black, with whirling stars in their depths.

  “My dear. I’m a Grandier, the blood of oracles. We saw the light of witch burnings a century before they happened. I saw you coming.”

  Quick as lightning in a little black dress, Prudence laid her sword against his throat.

  “Have you seen my father?”

  Urbain Grandier arched an eyebrow. “Like me, he saw you coming. He put himself outside time and space to hide from you, child. Time’s never on your side, is it? Time’s never on anyone’s side.”

  “He couldn’t enchant time on his own,” Prudence spat. “Who’s helping him?”

  “Clever as she is beautiful, isn’t she?” Urbain asked Ambrose.

  “That’s how I like them,” said Ambrose. “Clever, beautiful, and bloodthirsty. They named her Prudence, not Patience, so I urge you not to be enigmatic. Blackwood kept in touch with several of his past pupils. Which one is it?”

  Urbain righted his chair. “You’re no slouch yourself, are you?”

  Ambrose grinned. “Clever as the devil, and five times as pretty.”

  “Funny you should mention the devil,” said Urbain. “You and your family will have the devil to pay soon enough. First, I’ll want payment myself.”

  Prudence purred: “Does sparing your life count?”

  “Forgive Prudence,” said Ambrose. “She ate goblin fruit recently. She’d normally wait, oh, a good five minutes before threatening to cut your throat. What’s your price?”

  “An oracle gets so lonely, waiting in his cave, just him and the truth. I’ve been looking forward to a delightful hour with an alluring companion.”

  Ah, Paris. Ambrose leaned against Prudence and smiled.

  “Which of us?”

  “You,” said Grandier. “She’s a little terrifying with her swords.”

  “Isn’t she, though,” murmured Ambrose, proud.

  He winked at Grandier, then turned to give Prudence a kiss. Prudence’s mouth was unyielding under his, but she allowed the display to show Ambrose had a partner he intended to return to.

  They’d agreed to pass themselves off as a young magic couple romancing and ensorceling their way across the world. It wasn’t true. Not yet. But Ambrose could hope. Unlike most things, hope was free.

  “Amuse yourself at the market, my little cabbage,” said Ambrose. “I’ll be …”

  “A rather exciting forty-six minutes,” supplied Urbain Grandier.

  “Forty-six minutes. Go buy me some sparkly jewelry. Think of me while we’re apart.”

  “I most certainly will not.”

  Prudence disappeared through the curtain of flowers. Ambrose turned back to Grandier with a lazy shrug.

  “L’amour,” he remarked. “La belle dame, totally sans merci. What can you do? Anyway, carnal delights in exchange for information? Or were you simply hoping to get the less dangerous one alone so you could kill me, because you’re actually in Blackwood’s pay?”

  Urbain Grandier blinked. Ambrose had moved quickly.

  “Here’s the thing,” Ambrose continued. “I also have a sword? My aunties had me anoint the hilt with red verbena to hide it from those with foresight. They’re strict about these little precautions because they love me.”

  He gave Grandier another saucy wink. Grandier swallowed, throat moving against the blade he hadn’t seen coming.

  “Being less dangerous than Prudence means I’m still pretty dangerous,” Ambrose informed him. “We could’ve had a nice afternoon! But no, everything has to be dark treachery. It leaves so little time for dark delights. Information, please.”

  Seeing the future taught you to be philosophical.

  “Mercy,” drawled Grandier, lifting his hands in surrender, and gave Ambrose the information.

  “Merci to you as well,” said Ambrose, and headed off to find Prudence.

  She was easily described to the denizens of the Marche d’Ailleurs. Even in Paris, very few were like Prudence. Ambrose made his way deeper into the market, past pied pipers piping and a large aquarium in which seven mermaids were milking a sea cow. The milk-mermaids wore cute seaweed aprons.

  There was a stall called Icarus’s Emporium, draped with long golden feathers instead of ribbons. Ambrose selected a mauve quill made from a phoenix feather with a corona of flame at the feather’s tip. He dipped the quill into shimmering purple ink and wrote, on the inside of his own arm, a brief, pointless message for his cousin.

  Witches could write to each other with enchanted implements. He’d taught Sabrina the spell before he left. Perhaps it was a foolish impulse to reach out to her.

  He’d be a fool, then. It wouldn’t be the first time.

  Beside the feather emporium and across from the milk-mermaid aquarium, Ambrose saw a stall with a shimmering canopy made from the pink mist of youthful fantasies and glittering with the sparkling jewels of tears. This was a seller of dreams.

  Surely Prudence wouldn’t go anywhere near such a place. Yet Ambrose found himself drawing closer. The purple ribbons in the entryway stroked his arms as he passed, and he heard Prudence’s unmistakable voice.

  “Dreams are for children. I only care about vengeance!” Prudence declared.

  “That’s nice,” said the witch. “Did you want to buy a love potion? Dreams of love are the most popular. A knot of nine to make his heart thine, an enchanted bee to set your name buzzing in his ear? Can’t go wrong with a standard love philter.”

  Prudence was silent.
Ambrose was about to tell Prudence if she did want a love philter, his auntie Hilda was a dab hand with them.

  Only then an idea struck, falling into Ambrose’s mind naturally as an apple of knowledge into a witch’s hand. He’d sulked to Aunt Hilda that he liked Luke, and Luke didn’t want a second date.

  Oh, you didn’t, Auntie Hilda. Did you?

  To make her boy happy, she might. It all fit. Luke’s sudden ardent attention, when he’d disappeared after their first date. The way Luke, focused on tracking down evil witch-hunters and being Father Blackwood’s perfect pupil, readily became entangled with a warlock criminal. Ambrose’s heart sank, remembering. Luke was right to fear witch-hunters. They’d killed him. He’d followed Father Blackwood, thinking that would keep him safe, and he’d loved Ambrose, thinking love was real. The poor boy had died under a delusion. Ambrose had known something was off.

  He’d wanted to believe he could be loved. As if he were so irresistible. As if he might win over even Prudence.

  Ambrose smiled bitterly, and toyed with a curling ribbon. He didn’t need to buy dreams here. He’d always had too many.

  “I have a secret.” Prudence’s voice was slightly slurred.

  “You’ve been at the goblin fruit, haven’t you?” asked the seller of dreams.

  “It’s a humiliating, obscene secret. It makes me burn with shame to think of it.”

  “Oh well,” murmured the seller. “Go on.”

  “I have a charnel pit where a heart should be,” said Prudence. “Nothing soft survives between the cold stone walls of the Academy. I could never love anyone.”

  “But?” supplied the seller of dreams.

  “I liked a boy, once,” said Prudence. “He didn’t … really notice me.”

  Silence followed. The ribbons curved around Ambrose like leaves furling with the evening.

  “With a face like yours, dear heart, I find that hard to believe.”

  “Oh, we indulged in many lustful activities, obviously,” said Prudence. “But I wasn’t … special to him. And—oh, I sicken myself!—I did want to be. He was different from anyone I’d ever met. Trust no man. Every man is out for himself. I learned those lessons by heart. I taught them to my sisters. But he proved everything I knew wrong. He sacrificed himself for us.”

  Ambrose drew in a deep breath as he understood.

  “I don’t understand how such a revolting thing happened to me. What more could a girl want than dark delights and even darker desires? Only I wanted …”

  “What did you want?” The dream seller’s voice was intent, scenting the possibility of a sale.

  “I wanted him to smile at me.” Prudence sounded despairing. “Why would I want something like that? A smile’s pointless. Only he walked through the dark halls of the Academy, and his smile let in more light than a window. I never imagined anybody having a smile like that. I never dreamed of someone on the Path of Night walking in so much light.”

  “Ah,” said the seller of dreams. “So you want a love potion for this charmer.”

  “I want,” Prudence snapped, “to stop being a fool. There’s someone I must hunt down.”

  “This smiling man?”

  “Someone very different,” said Prudence. “One is the best kind of man, and the other the worst. The man I’m hunting is wretched and twisted, and I will drink every drop of his dark blood and spit it out. I must make him pay for what he did to me and mine. I can’t afford to be distracted! I must save my little brother and sister.”

  There was a clink, glass on metal, of potion bottles and shifting stoppers. Ambrose moved forward, away from the clinging ribbons, to her side.

  Prudence’s head was in her hands. “He has Judas and Leticia. I don’t know what he’s doing to them.”

  “Aha,” said the seller of dreams. “So what you need is—”

  Ambrose coughed to cut off the sales pitch. Prudence’s spine went sword-straight, dark eyes blasting startled disdain upon him.

  “That certainly wasn’t forty-six minutes!”

  “He had a case of premature expectation—the expectation being that I was an easy mark. So I got the name and a location out of him at swordpoint. Shall we go?”

  The seller of dreams looked miffed to be balked of her sale. Ambrose gave her a charming grin as he escorted Prudence outside and away from the Marche d’Ailleurs.

  “Your father went to school with, and recently paid a large sum of money to, Nicolas Frochot,” Ambrose told Prudence, “who lives in the Paris catacombs, where anything can be hidden behind the walls of the dead. Father Blackwood may be with Frochot yet.”

  Prudence lifted her chin, a huntress catching the scent of her prey at last. Her loping stride lengthened.

  Ambrose kept up, staying by her side so close their hands brushed. When they did, Prudence glared venomously and yanked her hand away.

  Ambrose and Prudence made their way to the catacombs through the Parc Montsouris, past ivy-draped houses and fervently blooming rosebushes in an enchanted square. Petals tumbled through the air as though there were always a parade in this twisting cobblestone lane. Rich perfume made his senses reel.

  He felt he’d made many discoveries in the market.

  He’d believed Prudence only cared for her sisters and thought it beautiful she could love them after the Church of Night had tried to crush the heart out of her. Once again, he’d failed to see all of her.

  There was room in Prudence’s heart for a boy.

  Someone at the Academy. Someone she’d been intimate with. Someone who’d sacrificed himself. The answer was obvious.

  Prudence had cared about Nick Scratch. Longed for him, desperately wanted him to smile for her. And Nick cast Prudence off. He chose Sabrina.

  No wonder Prudence didn’t even want to hold Ambrose’s hand. She’d been thrown aside by the only boy she’d ever wanted, then viciously betrayed by her father. Ambrose was surprised she’d let him come with her on this quest. She must be sick of men.

  “Prudence,” Ambrose said as they moved from the roses and toward the dead. “I know how scared you are for Judas and Leticia.”

  Prudence eyed him in disbelief. “Fear’s not a feeling I’m familiar with. And I don’t intend to get acquainted.”

  “If it was Sabrina,” Ambrose persisted, “I’d be sick with terror.”

  Prudence’s lip curled. “No doubt. You Spellmans indulge in all sorts of pointless emotions.”

  “That’s us.” Ambrose smiled.

  Prudence turned her face away, toward the shadowy entrance of the catacombs.

  “I only want you to know, I won’t rest until you have your brother and sister back,” Ambrose promised. “You don’t have to trust me. But you can trust me. I won’t leave your side or break my word. I’m with you until the end.”

  He paused before stepping into the shadows with her.

  “Coming?” Prudence asked. “I don’t care if you’re with me. I only care if you delay me.”

  They descended the spiral staircase into the ossuary together.

  Above the door, in French, was graven the words STOP. THIS IS THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD.

  Centuries ago, the cemeteries of this city had teemed with bodies. Floods sent corpses erupting from their graves and into the streets. Millions of long-dead Parisians were dug up from their graves and their bones thrown in the quarries beneath the city. The warlock Nicolas Frochot seized his chance to have the bones arranged in mystically significant patterns and built himself a charming magic-infused home in the depths of this empire of death.

  Fragmented skeletons were the walls of these chambers, their skulls the wainscoting. Ambrose and Prudence passed down several galleries lined with bones. Where light struck, the walls of bones were deep somber yellow. All the rest was dark as the shadows in a skull’s eye sockets. In one wall there were skulls set in the pattern of a heart. Ambrose was about to point out this romantic sight, but it might make Prudence think of Nick Scratch in hell.

  Poor brave Prud
ence, and the broken heart she’d been hiding. Ambrose had never particularly noticed Nick Scratch’s smile, which Prudence was so enthusiastic about. He guessed Nick’s smile was fine. Seemed a little fake to Ambrose, but he hadn’t taken much note of the details of Nick until the end. When Prudence showed up in Ambrose’s room with her friends, Ambrose thought: Some guy. He’s hot! Good for him! Then he’d seen the way Nick scrambled up to greet Sabrina, nervous in a way Nick wasn’t in a tangle of the Weird Sisters.

  Ambrose realized, Oh, that’s for Sabrina, then, and hid a smile. Ambrose loved Sabrina to have nice things. He fully supported Nick persuading Sabrina to follow the Path of Night, where Ambrose hoped Sabrina would be immortal and powerful and happy. The way Nick looked when Sabrina came down the stairs of Ambrose’s home in a beautiful bloodred dress … that wasn’t fake.

  But Ambrose didn’t like to think of anyone hurting Prudence.

  He recalled Prudence’s uncharacteristically soft voice, describing Nick. He wondered what it would be like, to see Prudence smitten.

  Prudence ran her fingernails over a vast circular pillar made of tibia and skulls, her spell summoning dark things out of hiding. “My power came from the Morningstar. So come out, come out, wherever you are …”

  Ambrose joined his power to hers, making sure they didn’t touch but their shadows did.

  The skulls whirled in the walls, empty eyes pointing the way through the labyrinth. The problem with mystical configurations was that any witch could use them.

  They saw the flicker of a robe, no more than the edge of a fleeing shadow. Prudence gave chase with a bloodthirsty howl. Ambrose listened to the echoing footsteps and worked out what direction they were headed.

  He teleported to the shadows beside the Fountain of Lethe, where ghostly fish swam through silver waters. When Nicolas Frochot ran past, Ambrose tripped him up.

  Prudence threw herself on the man, straddling him. Ambrose didn’t see why evildoers got so lucky.

  Nicolas Frochot was pale with the soft, disturbing pallor of a creature who never saw the sun. After centuries in the dark, his eyes were almost gone, tiny dots of darkness gleaming in eye sockets veiled with flesh. He wriggled beneath Prudence like a bug found under a rock.