And she had to do it before the evil mastermind showed his face.
The Testing Room
Rilla knelt at the hearth, pressing her hands against the back of the firebox. “Marie-Anne, I’m going outside to get my bag.”
“Will you come back?” The girl’s voice shook.
“Of course. I’ll be gone for a minute at the most. I need to get some tools to break down the door.”
“Oh. Okay,” replied Marie-Anne.
Rilla crawled outside. The troll she had knocked out still lay unconscious in the clearing next to its dead companion. She bashed it over the head with her staff, so he wouldn’t wake up and cause her problems. Her satchel lay a few feet away, and she stepped towards it.
Behind her, Robin squawked. Two other bluebirds swooped down and carried the bag off by its straps.
“No!” she shouted. “I need that.” The birds held the bag high in the air. As much as Rilla jumped, they held it out of reach. “Look,” she said, breathing hard. “I appreciate your concern, but I have to rescue those girls.”
The birds continued to hold it high in the air. Robin landed on Rilla’s shoulder, seeming to tweet orders to his comrades.
“I can always knock you down with my slingshot. I don’t know what effect it would have on little birds like you, but if you were passed out, injured or killed, you wouldn’t be able to carry out Lord Bluebeard’s orders.”
Robin squawked, and the other birds dropped the bag from a height. Rilla ran to catch it before it crashed to the ground. “You were trying to break my vials, weren’t you?” she muttered, crawling through the gap in the door. “Well, it didn’t work.”
At the fireplace, she told Marie-Anne to stand back, and she poured her last vial of Trollsbane around where the hearth met the wall. The mortar sizzled, and she shoved the door with both hands, but it stayed fast. Rilla tried hammering the door with one end of her staff, but it didn’t move.
She wiped her brow. Perhaps there was a hidden door somewhere in the chimney. Her stomach twisted at the prospect of going back into that confined space, but she forced herself back in.
“Are you still there?” Marie-Anne’s voice was shrill with panic.
“Yes,” said Rilla. She closed her eyes and pressed her palms on the back wall. “Just trying to find a way in.”
No matter how much Rilla pushed, banged and threw her weight, the fireplace remained solid. At this rate, she would never save the women.
A sharp peck on her ankle made her yelp. She pulled away her foot and ended up crunching a vial. Then, she slipped on the liquid and fell on her rump. Her skull and shoulder blades hit the back wall of the hearth.
It rotated, and Rilla tumbled backward, sliding down a slick, mossy stairway into a dank basement.
She landed flat on her back, which ached from the impact. She opened her eyes. The main source of light came from the fireplace from which she fell, and when she inhaled, the odor of sweat, urine and excrement made her gag.
Rilla held her hand over her nose and pushed herself to her knees. A little girl stumbled back, mouth agape, revealing her missing front teeth.
“Marie-Anne?” asked Rilla.
The girl nodded. In the dim light, Rilla made out her filthy, emaciated form. Whatever she had been wearing when she’d been captured had now disintegrated into rags.
Robin and another companion flew down in a fluster of wings and perched themselves on Rilla’s shoulder.
Standing, Rilla allowed Marie-Anne to lead her through a darkened hallway which seemed to be carved from stone. Even the hard floor appeared to be some kind of sedimentary rock. She held her body alert, ready for ambush.
Low moans and tortured breaths, which at first were barely audible, now echoed through the corridor. Rilla turned a corner and found herself in a chamber carved out of the same rock. Here, underneath the foul stench of squalor, hung the metallic odor of blood.
In several deep alcoves, Rilla could make out about a dozen women of all ages shackled to the walls. There were also children, all girls, sitting huddled next to the grown-ups. Some of them were just babies. They were not chained, so Rilla assumed their jailor didn’t deem them a threat.
“Fetch my bag,” she said to Robin.
Robin stayed on Rilla’s shoulder, but the other bird flew away.
“Hello, everyone,” Rilla raised her voice. “My name is Cendrilla Perrault, and I’m here to free you. I’m going to break you out of your shackles and we’ll go up the stairs and find help.”
The women did not respond, but in the dark, she could see their faces pointed at her.
She walked into the first cell. It contained a blonde-haired woman, sitting on the floor, clutching a baby.
Rilla bent down to make eye-contact. “What’s your name?”
“Drusilla,” the woman replied. “This is Pandora. Are you really going to save us?”
Rilla nodded. “I’ll get you out of here. Now, I need to hit the shackle with my staff. It’s going to make a lot of noise and it might pull. Is that all right?”
Drusilla nodded.
“Thank you.” Rilla examined the iron shackle fixed to the stone. There was no mortar, so she assumed it had been hammered in. She raised her staff, and the woman cowered. “Don’t be scared.”
She hacked away at where the shackle joined the wall, but it stayed intact. Rilla huffed.
A thump sounded from behind. She turned. Her bag had arrived, and the bluebirds tweeted at her. “Thank you.”
She rifled through her bag, examining each vial, until she found the substance Freida had poured on her arm on that first Alchemical Defense lesson. “Azure salt. This will corrode the metal. Drusilla, hold out your arm, please.”
The other woman obeyed and Rilla placed two drops on the iron ring linking the chain to the cuff around her wrist. The iron let out a cloud of brown gas, and liquid seeped down from the ring. Rilla corked the vial and put it aside, then with her fingers, she pulled the ring apart.
Drusilla let out a cry of joy and stood on shaky legs. “Thank you.”
Rilla spent the next hour or so freeing the women from their chains. Some of them stood, while others remained sitting or lying on the floor. When she had unchained the last woman, she stood in the main vestibule, surveying all whom she had freed. Only half the women were upright.
“How many of you can stand?” she said to those who hadn’t moved.
Only three got up. The others shook their heads.
Rilla’s heart sank. She would have to carry them up by herself.
“Are you really Cendrilla Perrault?” asked an old lady. She wore a tattered maid’s uniform, which struck Rilla as odd.
“Yes.”
The women crowded her, asking questions. Some wanted to know how she would get them out. Others demanded the identity of the man who had held them captive. One woman asked her whether she was married to the Prince after winning her case against Lord Bluebeard.
The crush of the filthy, smelly bodies against her caused ripples of nausea to crawl up Rilla’s insides. Her head spun and her throat constricted. She needed fresh air and space. “Everyone, back away. I have to carry people up the stairs.”
They made space for her to grab the first woman, who was rail thin, but willing to ride on Rilla’s back. Rilla placed a second heavily pregnant woman in her arms. “Everyone, follow me.”
With Marie-Anne walking beside her, holding her baby sister, Rilla ascended the stairs. At the top, she breathed in a lungful of forest-scented air. She deposited the two women in the clearing, bashed the troll another few times on the head and told the bluebirds to fetch fruit.
“How are we going to get out of here?” asked a young woman.
Rilla scratched her head. “I will send a message via one of these bluebirds.”
Her gray eyes lit up. “To the Prince?”
Rilla’s heart sank. He would have been her first choice, but her poor friend remained under the control of those horrid trolls.
She shook her head. “The High Steward, Lord Florian.”
She went back to get her bag, which contained paper and quill. After bringing a pair of prisoners upstairs, she penned two notes: one to Lord Florian and the other to Professor Engel. She included hand-drawn copies of the map and handed them to the bluebirds. While the people from the Academy were closer and most likely to arrive the fastest, it would not hurt to have the Lord High Steward on her side.
With each trip up the stairs, she carried two prisoners at a time, except for when she brought up an elderly woman who claimed to be the mother of a newborn. By the time she had taken them all up, which took eight trips, the sun hung low in the sky, making the shadows of the trees stretch across the clearing.
Rilla stretched and smiled at the women. The troll stirred, so she clubbed it over the head a few more times with her staff. “All right, ladies. Someone should be coming for us soon. They know how many are here, so you’ll be safe by bedtime.”
Marie-Anne stepped forward. “What about Bruna?”
Rilla’s heart pulsed, and she stiffened. “Huh?”
“She’s in the testing room.”
“Where’s that?”
The older women backed away, as though Rilla was going to ask them to come down and point out the room.
“It’s okay. I can go there by myself. Just tell me how to find it.”
A withered, white-haired old woman holding a toddler spoke first. “It’s around the corner, on the right of where we were kept.”
Rilla nodded and made her way quickly back down to the dungeon. She hurried down the hallway, past the cells and turned right. At the end of another rock hallway stood a wooden door. With each step, her heart thudded harder.
What she would find in this testing room, she couldn’t fathom. It was also unclear why Bruna was here, in the dungeon under a stone hut, deep into the woods, instead of in a holding cell in the center of Metropole. And if poor Bruna was dead—Rilla couldn’t think about that.
A layer of guilt burrowed into Rilla’s stomach, writhing among the fear and nausea. All this time, Bruna had been suffering while Rilla occupied herself with handsome Princes, dance lessons, grades and Lord Bluebeard. Judging by the state of some of the women, Bruna would have suffered the entire time.
The door was locked, but Rilla jammed her shoulder against it, forcing it open. A whiff of honey filled her nostrils. Flying insects, trapped within a large jar, provided the only source of illumination. They seemed too big to be fireflies, and Rilla did not dare free them, in case they were fairy hornets.
In the middle of the room was the same kind of metal autopsy table on which she’d seen the doctor dissecting the headless girl. Her thoughts went back to the sinister Johann Morgen, who seemed far too fascinated by Rilla’s physiology to not be the evil mastermind behind the kidnappings and experiments. Since she found no one on the table, Rilla picked up the jar and walked around the room.
Her gaze skittered over the human skull, jar of teeth and bowl of bloody fingernails. She continued her search for clues, until she rounded the table and found a pair of bare feet sticking out from underneath. A cold chill fell over her body, and she froze at the sight of the unmoving woman.
“Bruna?”
Rilla’s hands could not stop shaking. It seemed clear that her friend was dead, and standing at the edge of an autopsy table would not bring her to life. It wouldn’t help the poor women waiting for her in the clearing, either.
She forced herself to kneel and reached out a trembling hand to touch the foot.
It was warm.
A breath of relief pushed its way out of Rilla’s lungs. Bruna was still alive! Rilla eased her friend out from under the table and pulled down her thin chemise to protect her modesty.
“Bruna?” She tapped her friend’s cheek, but it didn’t even twitch.
Rilla brought the jar of glowing hornets closer to inspect her friend’s face. Bruna looked about the same age as Madam Florian, with streaks of grey hair woven between the dark strands. If it wasn’t for the brown, furry birthmark on her left cheek, Rilla would have thought she was looking at Bruna’s mother.
She could worry about the drastic aging later. There were women waiting for her protection and Rilla needed to get out of this dungeon, now. Picking up her friend, Rilla stood. “I’m so sorry for not trying harder to find you.”
She walked out of the room, rounded the corner and went back down the dark hallway, all the time, castigating herself for what she could have done different. Maybe she could have written to Prince Armin, but at the time, she hadn’t wanted to cause him any more stress. She could have insisted that Madam Florian spoke to her husband about Bruna, or even she could have even sent a letter to the Lord Chief Justice.
Her eyes filled with tears at the sight of Bruna’s withered face, but Rilla could not stop looking at the lines and wrinkles and wondering what kind of torment would cause a young woman to age so.
As they approached the stairs, a dark, wet cloth filled her vision, covering Rilla’s mouth and nose. On reflex, she gasped. A sensation of flipping upside down filled her senses and her mind spiraled like a vortex until she knew no more.
The Mastermind
Rilla awoke with a pounding pain pulsing throughout her skull. Acrid chemicals, embalming fluid and medicines overwhelmed her senses and made her stomach churn. A bitter taste filled her mouth and her muscles spasmed. She turned her head and retched, her breakfast coming out in a sour spray. Groaning, she opened her eyes to find herself in the testing room.
The cold metal beneath her skin told her she was on the autopsy table. Someone had bound her wrists with leather cuffs and raised her arms above her head. Worse still, ropes wound around her body at strategic points: waist, hips and knees, attaching her to the table.
Her feet twitched, and she noticed her heels were not on the metal, even though she could feel the surface under her fingers. So, the table wasn’t long enough to accommodate her outstretched arms as well as her legs. That could be useful when trying to escape.
She opened her eyes, squinting at the glowing jars. Everything was a blur, which made her eyes ache. From behind, someone moved, and she could make out the scratching of quill on parchment. Rilla closed her eyes and breathed hard. If she didn’t clear her head, she’d be at the mercy of a monster. She checked on her limbs, flexing each. They worked. She was still strong and healthy, except for the pounding in her head.
The next time she opened her eyes, the jars were in better focus, but still blurred around the edges. Rilla craned her neck to try to see the man who had captured her. Once again, she thought of Doctor Morgen. With his morbid personality, penchant for cutting people up, and abnormal curiosity about Rilla, it would make sense for him to detain and experiment on the women.
Rilla gritted her teeth and wriggled in her bonds. She would make Johann Morgen and Jacques Dubois pay if she ever got out of this mess. She whispered, “Robin?”
But there was no answering tweet. She stiffened. The red-breasted bluebird was the most protective and aggressive of them all. Rilla hoped he wasn’t injured or dead.
“I do apologize for keeping you waiting,” said a familiar voice, but it wasn’t accompanied by the usual inappropriate laughter.
Rilla’s heart beat faster than a desperate woodpecker. This didn’t sound like Doctor Morgen at all. She closed her eyes again and breathed in and out, concentrating on getting her pain under control so she could fight. As long as her opponent wasn’t one of her combat instructors, she had a chance of battling her way to freedom.
After one last, deep breath, she opened her eyes, only to meet the gaze of Professor Engel.
She shut them again, a wave of despair drowning her hope. This man had been her sole ally among the Academy staff, and the betrayal was too much to bear.
“I’ve been curious about you, Cendrilla. May I call you by your first name?” The Chancellor didn’t wait for an answer. “Have been, ever since the doctor reported the
anomaly in the troll’s blood.”
“That had nothing to do with me.”
“I beg to differ. Now, I finally have you and I will discover exactly what you are, and how you came to perform those amazing feats.”
“What are you talking about? Lord Bluebeard and I defeat—”
“I am well aware of the ambassador’s part-ogre status. It’s an open secret here, and of no interest. What I find fascinating is you, Cendrilla.” He ran the back of his fingers down her cheek.
She shuddered.
“You’re precious enough for someone to pay your weight in gold. If a shrewd man like Lord Bluebeard is pursuing you so relentlessly, I wager you’re worth your weight in diamonds.”
“He’s after my dowry. My guardian—”
“Ah, yes. Dear Candide. You’ll be pleased to know she spent the gold foolishly, and she is now penniless.”
Rilla clamped her jaws together, willing herself to stay silent. How she wished she could hiss and spit at the man. Who cared what Mother and the twins had done with the money? She wriggled her wrist, finding enough give for her to break through the leather.
Professor Engel leaned over, locking his amber eyes with Rilla’s. “What are you, Cendrilla Perrault?”
“I was a servant until I came to the Academy.”
“Do not take your predicament lightly.” His voice, once gentle, became stern and clipped.
“As far as I know, that’s all I am. An unlucky servant. Nobody has told me otherwise.”
The chancellor nodded, rubbing his chin. “Then I will perform alchemical tests. I was going to pilfer the required vials from Master Capello, but thanks to the contents of your handy satchel, there is no need.”
Rilla’s heart sank, but she couldn’t regret bringing her alchemy kit. Not when she’d used the Azure salt to help break out the imprisoned women.
The Academy (Perrault Chronicles Book 2) Page 19
