The Secrets of Solace

by Jaleigh Johnson

  As she stood on the steps outside the council building, Lina was surprised to find the large cavern dark and deserted. The people who’d been milling around earlier were all gone. Then she remembered that it must be after midnight by now. She’d lost track of time while she’d been crouching in that ventilation shaft—and her stomach reminded her with a sharp pain that she’d also skipped dinner.

  Most of the lumatite clusters arranged along the walls had been removed for the night, and the few that remained cast long, ominous shadows in the cavern. Lina had her own wristband of light to guide her, and she’d never been particularly afraid of the dark, but it was still unsettling to be so suddenly and surprisingly alone. She had started to walk down the steps when she heard voices echoing from within the council building behind her.

  That was odd. Hadn’t she and Zara been the only ones left in the room? Zara had stayed behind after dismissing Lina, but someone must have come in through the rear entrance after Lina left. Lina stopped, listening out of habit, even though the last thing she needed was to be caught eavesdropping again. The voices were muffled by the doors, but Lina thought she recognized Zara as one of the speakers. First, a secret meeting, and now Zara was talking to someone who had slipped in the back door to the building in the wee hours of the night. What was going on here?

  Then Lina heard the soft click of the door handles turning. She was going to be caught again! When it came to sneaking, she was having no luck at all tonight.

  Down the steps from the council building, the cavern’s sculpture garden was only a few yards away. Lina sprinted for the closest statue: an elaborate carving of the extinct servoya tree. She ducked behind its thick stone trunk and tried to get her breathing under control so no one would hear her. Then the double doors to the council building creaked open, and a voice echoed in the quiet cavern.

  “When did this happen? Is Nirean searching for him?” a woman’s voice asked.

  Lina perked up. She’d been right. That was Zara, but who was she meeting?

  “She’s looking in the refugee areas right now,” said a second voice—one of the councilmen, though Lina couldn’t remember his name. “The search would go faster if we asked more of the chamelins to assist.”

  “No,” Zara said firmly. “It’s too great a risk.”

  There was a beat or two of silence before the other councilman replied. “I’m sure I don’t have to remind you that the chamelins would give their lives to protect this community. They have proven themselves worthy of trust time and again.”

  Now Lina knew who the man was. His name was Lantric, and he was a chamelin archivist—one of three who sat on the council. His clipped tone suggested that Zara’s words had offended him. What was going on here?

  “Lantric, please let me apologize. I know how important you are to Ortana,” Zara said. “But there’s a great deal at stake here, and the need for secrecy is as much for your protection. We want as few people involved as possible.”

  “Nirean will find him,” Lantric said, his voice softening. “He’s unfamiliar with the layout of the stronghold. There are only so many places he can hide.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Zara said, but she didn’t sound convinced.

  Their voices moved away across the cavern. After a moment, Lina could no longer make out what they were saying. When it was silent again, she stepped out from behind the statue.

  They must have been talking about one of the refugees, someone who’d wandered off into an area where he wasn’t supposed to be. It happened often enough. With so many refugees roaming around the dormitories, they were bound to get restless, curious about their temporary home. And Ortana was certainly unique, as homes went.

  But if that was the case, why all the secrecy surrounding the search? Why didn’t Zara want to get the other chamelins involved? Something didn’t feel right.

  Lina was torn. Part of her wanted to slip back down to her workshop to visit the Merlin one more time, and then get herself off to bed before she got into any more trouble. But another tantalizing voice whispered that she could take the secret passage along the refugee corridor and maybe find Nirean or this mysterious person she was looking for. It was a newer ventilation shaft, so she wouldn’t have to worry about someone hearing her moving around in a creaky old tube, or wonder whether it was about to collapse under her. She could find out what was going on, and no one would even know she was there.

  Yes, and remember the last time you planned something like this? she scolded herself. It was only hours ago, and it almost cost you your apprenticeship. No, whatever was happening here, it was the council’s business, not hers.

  But she was part of this community too, and the council’s decisions affected everyone. What if this was important?

  Lina sighed. All right, a quick detour, long enough to find out what’s going on, and then back to the original plan.

  Her decision made, Lina was about to make a move when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye. A second later, a shadow emerged from an alcove on the east side of the cavern. Her heart leapt into her throat. Instinctively, she crouched down behind the stone tree, hoping that whoever it was hadn’t seen her. Then, very slowly, she peeked around the statue.

  The shadowy figure moved fast across the cavern toward her. It had seen her! Lina clutched the sculpture. Heart pounding, she cast around for a better hiding place in the garden, but she couldn’t move anywhere now without being tracked. The figure was too close.

  She was about to make a break for it in the opposite direction when she realized the shadow wasn’t coming toward her any longer. It had slowed and was now moving in a zigzag pattern across the hall, as if whoever it was didn’t know exactly where he was going or maybe couldn’t see very well in the dimness.

  Or both. Was this the refugee Zara and Lantric had been talking about?

  As the shadow approached, Lina realized the figure was much shorter than he’d seemed from across the room. He stepped into a pool of lumatite glow, and Lina got her first glimpse of his face.

  Her breath caught in surprise. He was just a boy, no older than she was. Dressed in tattered, dirt-stained clothes, he had thick bandages wrapped around his head, covering part of his cheek and nose. One end of the bandage had come loose and fluttered behind his right shoulder. Lina’s heart clenched at the sight of the injuries, and she made a decision. She stood up and stepped out from behind the statue. She hadn’t wanted anyone discovering her here, but she also didn’t want the boy falling in the dark and hurting himself further.

  She stepped forward, intending to touch his shoulder to stop him as he ran past her, but suddenly, the boy made a sharp turn and dashed forward. His eyes widened an instant before he plowed straight into her.

  The air rushed out of Lina’s chest when the boy hit her. She thought she was going to go flying through the air, but then instinct took over, and she grabbed at the boy, searching for something to stop her fall. She wasn’t picky: shirt, hair, arms, neck, whatever was handy. She ended up latching onto the boy’s shoulders, and they fell together. Lina’s butt hit the ground first—this had to be some kind of record for most scrapes and bruises in a single night—and then she fell on her back with the boy sprawled on top of her so that they formed a human X.

  Gasping, Lina fought to return air to her lungs. To be fair, she’d done her best to stay out of trouble this time. She’d been trying to help, yet here she was, lying on the ground again with scraped shoulders and a sore backside. She hoped the boy had fared better.

  Uh-oh. Lina tamped down the beginnings of panic. He’s not moving. The boy was lying on his stomach across her legs, his face turned away from her. Please tell me I didn’t knock him out, she hoped. Or worse.

  “Um…hello?” Lina said, nudging him gently with her knee. “Are you all right there?”

  “Mmphus,” the boy replied, which he followed by a prolonged groan.

  That didn’t sound good. Lina’s worry intensified. What was she going to
do now? “Please say something,” she implored the boy. “I, er, didn’t mean to knock you out.”

  “I’m…fine…I think,” the boy said, his speech becoming somewhat clearer, even though his face was still pressed against the floor. “Wow, you…I mean, you came out of nowhere. One minute, I was running…I was running, and then…there was this wall right in front of me. You. Wall. I was not expecting that.” He was still a little disoriented. Then, to Lina’s relief, he rolled off her and onto his side so they were face to face. “Oh, hello,” he said, smiling weakly.

  “Hello.” Relieved that he seemed to be all right, Lina mirrored his smile and raised her hand in greeting. “I’m Lina—or, you know, the wall.”

  “I’m…uh…Fredrick,” the boy replied. His grin widened. “Or, you know, the crazy person running through the dark.”

  Together they sat up. Lina rubbed her lower back and wondered how many black-and-blue spots she would have there tomorrow morning. Crawling through the ventilation shafts was going to be a chore for the next few days.

  “I didn’t hurt you, did I?” Fredrick asked, watching her. The darkness and the bandages made it difficult to read his expression, but she could hear the concern in his voice.

  “I’m fine,” Lina assured him. “I was more worried about you.”

  “Me?” The boy looked confused.

  Lina pointed to his bandages. “You’re already hurt,” she said. She hoped whatever injuries lay beneath the bandages weren’t too serious.

  “Oh, these.” The boy reached up and touched the bandages. His lip curled in disgust. “Don’t worry about them. I’m all right.”

  But Lina could tell by his reaction that she’d hit on a sore subject. “Hey, listen,” she said, eager to make amends, “are you hungry? Because I’m starving. We could make a raid on the kitchens for a late snack, and then I could take you back to your room—”

  “Thanks,” the boy interrupted, getting to his feet, “but I’m not hungry.” He started to limp away from her.

  Lina’s mouth fell open. “Where are you going?” she demanded, automatically raising a hand to stop him, even though he was already too far away from her. “You’re limping. You might really be hurt!”

  “I’m fine!” the boy assured her, moving faster. “I have to get going—got, umm, important things to do!”

  “Important things? But it’s the middle of the night! And you’re going the wrong way,” Lina added. “The refugee dormitories are that way.” She pointed, but the boy didn’t look back.

  Then, from across the chamber, there came a babble of voices moving fast toward them from one of the adjacent corridors. Once again, Lina crouched behind her statue just as light spilled into the room. It came from a lantern held by Zara. Nirean followed close at her heels. The chamelin spread her wings and leaped into the air, soaring across the cavern in pursuit of the boy.

  So they were after Fredrick? But why all this fuss over a refugee boy? Lina pressed herself against the stone tree trunk, but Nirean’s attention was on Fredrick. She never saw Lina. The chamelin caught up with him just as he was about to enter the hallway to the museum. She glided over his head and banked, folding her wings so she could drop into a crouch in front of him, effectively blocking his escape.

  Fredrick let out a choked yelp and skidded to a stop before he ran into the chamelin’s chest. Good thing too—it would have been a much harder impact than running into Lina. When they were shape-shifted, the chamelins’ bodies were hard as granite.

  The boy’s shoulders drooped as he realized he was caught. Nirean shifted back to her human form and crossed her arms as she stared down at him, disapproval etched on her aging features.

  Shooting a quick glance across the room, Lina noticed that Zara had remained in the far corridor with the lantern. She appeared to be watching the other entrances into the chamber. Lina wondered what—or whom—she was looking for, but then Nirean’s voice distracted her.

  “You should go back to your room, Fredrick,” Nirean said, her deep voice carrying across the chamber. “You can get lost wandering around by yourself at night.”

  “You know, that is an excellent point,” Fredrick said brightly, as if it had never occurred to him before. “It’s a good thing you found me when you did. I might have ended up running into a wall in the dark.”

  Lina covered her mouth to keep from chuckling. She recognized what the boy was trying to do, but unfortunately for him, all the charm in Solace wasn’t going to work on Nirean. Lina knew because she’d already tried that tactic at least a dozen times.

  “What I really wanted was a breath of fresh air,” Fredrick continued. “I don’t suppose I could step out for a few minutes, run around in the snow, maybe get a look at the stars?” By his tone, Lina could tell that the boy already knew what the answer to his request would be.

  “You know I can’t let you do that. Now come with me,” Nirean said, laying a hand on his shoulder. “We can discuss this when you’re back in your chamber.”

  The boy’s sigh was loud. “Sure, why not,” he said, and Lina thought he was working hard now to sound cheerful. “Back to my room—that’s much more exciting anyway.”

  They moved across the chamber, and Lina couldn’t help noticing that the boy subtly steered Nirean’s path away from her hiding place. Fredrick may have been caught, but he wasn’t going to give her up. Lina smiled to herself in the dark.

  After they’d disappeared down the corridor from which Zara and Nirean had come, Lina stood up, stretching her cramped legs. Her gaze fell on an object lying on the ground near the statue. She knelt down and picked up what looked like a wad of cloth. Turning it over in her hands, she realized it was a large bandage. It had to be Fredrick’s. It must have come off his cheek when they collided and fell. But if it was Fredrick’s bandage, why was it perfectly clean? There was no blood, or even medicine for his wound.

  Lina clenched the bandage in her hand as the memory came back to her, of that moment when the two of them had been lying on the floor facing each other. She’d looked right at the boy, and even though it had been dark and hard to see his features clearly, she remembered now that there hadn’t been a wound on his face. Did that mean there was nothing under the other bandages as well?

  But if not a wound, what were those bandages covering?

  Lina crawled through the ventilation shaft as fast as she dared, hoping to catch up to Zara, Nirean, and Fredrick before they turned down one of the side corridors and she lost them. She’d mapped all the man-made ventilation shafts that paralleled the largest corridors in the east wing of the stronghold long ago and knew them by heart, but once she reached an intersection, she had to listen for voices to tell her where to go next. There were only so many grates along the ceiling where she could get a look down into the corridor to see if she was on the right track. And she couldn’t move too fast, or Zara and Nirean would hear her. She needed to avoid that at all costs.

  Maybe it was the mysterious boy and the bandages hiding his face, or the fact that Zara and Nirean didn’t seem to want anyone to know what they were up to, but Lina had a sinking feeling that if her teacher caught her snooping around again, she might be in very real danger of losing her apprenticeship. Only Zara would be the one tossing her out this time. The thought weighed heavily on her, and for the tenth time since she’d crawled into the ventilation shaft to follow Fredrick and the others, Lina told herself she was being monumentally stupid. Yet she kept going anyway.

  Something was happening here, and Lina wanted to know what it was. She knew it had nothing to do with helping a lost refugee who snuck out of his bed in the middle of the night. Zara and Nirean were trying to hide the boy. Lina could tell from the corridors they traveled through that they were keeping him in a separate area from the rest of the refugees, and they’d gone so far as to wrap fake bandages around his head. Lina couldn’t begin to imagine why.

  Did it have anything to do with the council’s closed session? Was that why the council memb
ers had looked so anxious when she’d crashed into their midst, why Tolwin had been so furious? Had they been afraid Lina would overhear an important secret, something to do with the boy?

  Voices echoing from below and ahead of her made Lina pause. If she pressed her ear to the floor of the shaft, she could just make them out.

  “I’ll let you take it from here, Nirean,” said Zara’s voice. “We’ll talk in the morning, Fredrick.”

  Lina bit her lip in sympathy for the boy. She recognized Zara’s tone. It looked like Lina wasn’t the only one who would be getting a lecture and a punishment in the morning. Then she heard footsteps moving in opposite directions down the corridor.

  No! Up ahead was an intersection. She had to choose to go right or left. She wanted to follow Nirean and the boy, but what if she accidentally trailed Zara instead? The footsteps were moving away. She only had a second to decide. Then the footsteps moving left stopped, and she heard Fredrick’s voice coming from the same direction.

  “Councilwoman Zara,” he called after her, and the footsteps moving to the right stopped. Lina went very still, listening. She thought that surely the three of them could hear her heart beating a frantic rhythm in her chest.

  “Yes?” Zara replied.

  “You would tell me if anything…” The boy’s voice trailed off, and Lina wondered what he was thinking. He was much more subdued than he had been earlier. “You’ll let me know if you hear anything—any news?”

  No, Lina realized. He sounds sad. Sad and lonely.

  “I promise I’ll tell you,” Zara said, her voice softening. “Try not to worry. Good night, Fredrick.” Her footsteps moved away again down the corridor to the right.

  Lina waited for Nirean and Fredrick to resume their walk before following. After a few more twists and turns, their footsteps stopped, and Lina caught the sound of a door opening and closing.

  Now came the tricky part. Surveying the intersection before her, Lina had to guess which of the smaller ventilation shafts led to Fredrick’s room. And she had to see if she could fit down the shaft. The archivists’ quarters were notoriously stuffy because the ventilation shafts were so narrow that they never cleaned the air properly or circulated it enough.