Vortex Chronicles: The Complete Series

by Kova, Elise

  “I’m not allowed to say much,” Vi answered honestly. She would honor her deal with Ulvarth only as far as it benefited her. But Serina seemed sharp enough to figure out the undercurrents on her own—she was already seeking to piece together the facts. And while Vi wasn’t looking for a friend, she could use an ally. “But I will say this: Taavin is the last person I would ever harm.”

  Serina seemed startled Vi had used his name so confidently. Eventually saying, “You seem honest enough about that.”

  “Good.”

  The woman continued to hover. Her eyes drifted down to Vi’s hands. It was then that Vi noticed she was dripping blood onto the floor. The clots of her wounds, left behind by the shackles, must’ve been washed away in the bath.

  “Would you like me to heal that for you?”

  “I think not,” Vi said, after a long moment’s debate.

  “It’d be no trouble.”

  “I know it wouldn’t be as I, too, know halleth.” She wasn’t very good at it, but she knew it. Now the Larks also knew that she possessed Lightspinning. “I don’t think I want to heal these with magic. I think I’d like the scars from Ulvarth’s hospitality. It seems a fitting reminder of my time here.”

  Serina regarded her warily, as if seeing her for the first time. It was the same look Arwin had given Vi when they had stolen Fallor’s boat, after Vi had killed a pirate with two words. Now, like then, Vi reached the same conclusion: Let her be wary.

  Finally, Serina bowed her head, turned, and started for the stairs, not quite hiding her relief at the prospect of making her escape. Which only made Vi more surprised when her door opened again a short time later. Serina popped in just long enough to leave a small roll of bandages on the foot of her bed before leaving again without another word.

  Vi debated her next move as she wrapped her wrists in the bandages. The mere mention of Taavin was all the direction she needed. She closed the door and headed back up the spiral stair the way she came, across the lofty bridge high above Risen, and back into the main tower of the archives.

  She started up the first ladder she came to, arced around the wide landing that granted access to this stretch of shelves, then up a second stair. Up and up she climbed, higher and higher. It was nearly impossible to keep her attention on her destination among the ocean of books.

  Close to the top of all the walkways, Vi was nearly level with the sculpted women holding up the brazier she’d seen from the first moment she’d entered. The light was blindingly bright and the fire that raged behind their arms was white-hot. How could anyone say this flame needed rekindling? If someone were to spark it further, they risked burning down the whole building.

  Oddly, no heat reached her cheeks. She didn’t feel the slightest bit of warmth from the blaze. Even as someone who first learned to interact with fire as a Firebearer, she still suspected she should feel something.

  Vi squinted at it, holding her breath. She was waiting for something… but she didn’t quite know what. A sign from the Goddess, perhaps? Taavin heard Yargen’s voice in the flame; surely as her champion, Vi should hear something, too?

  “Magnificent, isn’t it?” Vi turned, startled. She grabbed the railing for stability, suddenly off-balance and aware of the dizzying height. Ulvarth had ascended the stairs opposite her, the imposing man slowly walking around the brazier. Vi regarded him warily, still gripping the railing. “I asked you a question.”

  “I thought it rhetorical, given it’s obviously magnificent.”

  “I didn’t bring you here to admire it.” His voice went low and dangerous.

  “Didn’t you though? I am to find a way to reignite the flame, am I not?”

  He smirked. “You don’t already know how?”

  “I couldn’t go into it, really… It’s something that can only be understood fully by the Champion and the Voice.” Vi borrowed the morphi’s explanation of their magic. He didn’t seem to notice, but for her it felt like a double-edged blade to shove between his ribs. Vi had the satisfaction of one-upping him, and the knowledge that she’d borrowed an explanation from people he unjustly hated.

  “I hope you’re right, for your sake.” Ulvarth gave her a sinister smile. “After all, your father starts his trials at the queen’s earliest convenience.”

  “Let’s hope it’s a fair trial.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it will be.” Ulvarth finally came to a stop only a few steps away. “You think me a monster.” Vi kept her mouth shut and let that be answer enough. “But this is one thing I don’t have to be monstrous about. Your father dug his own grave, by digging the world’s.”

  She searched his unflinching gaze. Ulvarth may be a monster. He may be ruthless and calculating and obsessed with his own power. But there was confidence in those blue eyes. Not just arrogance, confidence. At least in this instance, he genuinely believed himself right and just.

  “So maybe I am a monster. But you’re the spawn of a monster. So you’re really no different.”

  “Call me a monster and I’ll show you my fangs.” Vi sneered widely for emphasis. Ulvarth chuckled.

  “A shame you were born a human to such poor parentage. We may have gotten along in another life, you and I.”

  Vi was certain she’d hate him in any and every lifetime. She hated him from his pointed ears to his mirror-polished boots.

  Ulvarth sauntered away as though he owned the whole world. The megalomaniac likely thought he did. Vi tracked him with a piercing stare as he ascended the staircase to the next ring of walkways, then up one more ladder to the highest walkway. She began moving, as quickly and silently as possible, following behind him.

  Up the first set of stairs, Vi wound back, looking for a sign of Ulvarth. He had disappeared. She quickly climbed the ladder, not even caring if Ulvarth saw her or accused her of following him. But when she finally ascended… he was nowhere to be seen.

  Vi walked all the way around the wide rung of the archives, her fingers trailing along the books. There was nowhere for him to hide. And no door for him to walk through. The only exits were the stairway she’d ascended and the rectangular windows at the top of the bookshelves—allowing the flame’s thick smoke an escape. But Vi didn’t think Ulvarth had gone through one of those.

  Tapping her knuckles against the railing, Vi looked at the pillars that supported the roof above the flame. From all Taavin had said, she suspected this ceiling was also his floor. The pillars between the openings were wide enough to be hollow and fit a man though.

  Taavin had said there were many secret passages in the Archives and he’d used uncose to find those passages. Vi didn’t have the same skill. But she would make up for it with her knowledge of blueprints, architecture, maps, and planning.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Vi scoured the books for an hour. She walked through the archives—up staircases and down ladders—until her legs and arms were tired. But she didn’t stop until she located the tall shelves containing the information she sought.

  “The Building of Risen,” Vi mumbled, selecting the book from the shelf. She set it down on a stack she had already collected, then pulled two more. The Larks had said they recorded all knowledge, so surely, somewhere in this vast labyrinth, there was something on the construction of the archives.

  She continued flipping, searching, ignoring the growling in her stomach and Larks moving in and out of the Archives. Vi scanned pages on pages of blueprints until she began to find ones that matched the structure she recognized around her. To a layman, the sketched cross-sections would be difficult to line up. But for Vi, the whole building was slowly rebuilt in her mind’s eye.

  Her focus stayed on the uppermost portions of the buildings, no matter how fascinating the rest of its construction was. The triangular buildings that stretched out from the central spire were a web of bridges and passageways. The foundation of the building was a feat of engineering—brilliant minds had outdone themselves here. There was more than enough substance for her to be engrossed for months
.

  Vi’s attention drifted upward to the flame. She didn’t have months; she had days, weeks at best. Tracing the lines in the book with her index finger, Vi could clearly see the layout of the uppermost portions of the archives—much simpler than the rest. Away from the outer buildings and their connecting bridges, it was only the hollow column of the inner archives, and whatever the architects had hidden in the walls.

  Sure enough, just as Taavin had said, within the walls behind the bookcases were passages that swirled and crossed over each other.

  “Where’s an entrance?” Vi murmured. She suspected one of the bookshelves was false—it wouldn’t be the first such trick door she’d seen. But she couldn’t find any indication of a hidden doorway in the blueprints.

  Not wanting to give up on the theory, Vi went up to the landing and paced one, two, three times, running her hands along the bookshelves.

  They didn’t yield their secrets.

  She retreated back to her perch and her books. There was a way to Taavin from up there, but it may not be the only way. As Vi searched for alternate routes, she kept an eye out for Ulvarth—though there was no sign of him. He had been gone for a long time—long enough that suspicion frayed the edges of Vi’s concentration. The only good thing about his absence was that she could search in peace.

  Closing each of the books, Vi tried to place them exactly as she’d found them on the shelves, giving no indication what she’d been looking for. She returned the way she’d came.

  Vi stopped at the entrance to the walkway that soared atop a giant archway to the Lark’s halls. There was no one in sight—hadn’t been for hours. Still, she waited for Ulvarth, waited for someone to show up. She waited long enough that the sun began to dip, changing the light that streamed through the glass ceiling of the walkway from gold to a deep amber.

  “Very well then.” Vi lifted a hand, Taavin’s voice echoing in her mind. “Uncose.”

  Nothing. No magic sparked. No glyph came to life underneath her fingertips. It was just as Taavin suspected, though Vi didn’t regret trying. With the merest flash of disappointment, she proceeded with the manual route.

  Rapping her fingers along the side of the bookcase that met with the stone of the outer wall of the Archives, Vi listened closely. Her first couple taps sounded dull, with little reverberations. The fifth rang hollow.

  Vi looked up the wide panel of wood. At about chest height, there was a thin line in its surface—one she’d overlooked at first—and another a short distance away. Vi pushed in a few different places before the panel popped loose and swung open. She hoisted herself into the narrow tunnel, closing the door behind her with a fraying leather strap on the inside.

  It had been some time since anyone had come this way, if the cobwebs and bug carcasses were any indication.

  Vi trudged on, determined, until the tunnel opened up into a proper secret passage. Working to rebuild the Archives in her mind as she walked, Vi wound upward once more from the inside. She kept a low flame over her shoulder, just enough to see by, though she extinguished it the moment she heard voices.

  “You will tell me its secrets, and hers,” Ulvarth rasped, as though struggling to keep his voice quiet. Vi crouched low in the darkness, closing her eyes and trying to imagine how high up she was.

  Second walkway from the top? Maybe?

  “Don’t think I will let you see her unsupervised,” he snarled. Taavin, for his part, remained worryingly silent. “You will not make a fool of me again. You are mine.”

  A door slammed so hard that Vi could almost feel the stones of the archives rattling. There was the sound of metal sliding against metal, followed by heavy footsteps. She held her breath, creeping on hands and knees upward—just a little farther.

  A glow stone cast eerie light on the inner wall. She stopped, flattening herself on the ground. Ulvarth stomped across the narrow hall, oblivious to her presence. Vi couldn’t see what he was doing, but she could hear him fumbling with something, footsteps on the other side of her, and… silence.

  Vi kept a hand over her mouth, trying not to breathe. Her fingers trembled. Not from fear, but from loathing she didn’t know if she had ever felt so strongly before. She pushed herself off the ground and continued upward to a four-way intersection. Directly ahead, the passage sloped down into the darkness. At her left was a ladder and at her right, a short ramp up to a flat wooden surface.

  That was when it hit her.

  Each of the landings in the Archives was in the shape of a right triangle, jutting out into the hollow center. The walkway was flat and formed a right angle with the wall, but the hypotenuse sloped down and away. Initially, Vi had thought it merely an aesthetic choice. Now, she realized otherwise.

  The passage to Taavin wasn’t in the bookcases. It was in the floor. Casters invisible to the naked eye slid a trap door underneath the bookcases she’d been looping around, looking for one such secret passage when it had been right under her nose the whole time.

  Cursing herself, Vi turned away from the ramp and toward the final option at the intersection—a ladder upward.

  The passage narrowed slightly as she climbed, and Vi imagined herself in one of the columns above the bookcases—fire from the Flame of Yargen billowing out on either side. Farther on, a faint ambient light glowed.

  Stepping off the ladder and onto a small landing, Vi found the source of the light—or at least, the heavy door around which wisps of light managed to escape past the heavy latch and lock tightly on the outside. Sandalwood incense curled through the door jamb.

  Vi swallowed, working to get rid of the lump trying to form in her throat.

  “Taavin,” she whispered. Nothing. The panic from Ulvarth’s departure returned in full force. “Taavin?” A little louder.

  “Who…” his voice was muffled. But she heard footsteps nearing the door.

  “Taavin?”

  “Vi, is that you?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you—”

  “Given everything that’s happened, I think me figuring out how to get to you should be the least surprising thing,” Vi teased lightly. “There’s a lock on the door. How do I get in?”

  “The lock is new. I think only Ulvarth keeps the key. He says he’ll only let me out at specific times to collect whatever research I need.” Her blood instantly boiled at the words. She had grown up in a beautiful prison as well… but never one with locks on the doors.

  “If I break the lock, he’ll know.” It was still tempting to do it, just to mess with him. But Vi suspected Taavin would be blamed—and punished. She ran her fingers over the rung the heavy padlock was slipped through. Such a delicate-looking piece of iron for a door that was bolted so tightly. “But I have an idea.”

  “There’s no way to fix the lock with Lightspinning,” Taavin cautioned hastily, needlessly.

  “I know. I’m not breaking the lock, and Ulvarth doesn’t need to know.”

  Vi pushed the spark into her fingertips, rubbing the rung again and again. The iron heated slowly. She wanted it hot enough to be malleable, but not so hot it dripped off the door. She’d have to fix it before she left, after all.

  Her left hand held the lock in place as her right worked. Vi dug her nail into the soft metal, pulling back and separating it. She widened it just enough that the padlock could slide out. Vi set it on the floor carefully, giving the metal time to cool before she undid the latch and opened the door to the face of a very shocked Taavin.

  “That’s the problem with metal locks.” Vi gave a small smile. “They’re not really the best at keeping Firebearers out.”

  He stuck his head through the open door. His eyes fell to the still locked padlock on the ground. Vi tapped the rung attached to the door that she modified.

  “You heated the rung.” He went to rest his hand on the now separated metal. Vi stopped him with a touch.

  “It may still be hot.”

  “Fire truly doesn’t burn you.”

  “No, and tha
nk the Goddess for that holdover from my Firebearer training.” Vi looked to her hand, opening and closing her palm for a moment before shifting her attention to him. His eyes were worried and sunken, face pale. He looked more harrowed being around Ulvarth for a few days then he had on the run or while dying in a cave. “May I come in?”

  “What?” Taavin’s attention was jolted from the door. “Oh, yes, of course.”

  He stepped to the side and Vi entered, though Taavin’s eyes remained on the door and the dark ladder that stretched away from his quarters. Vi caught the longing look from the corners of her eyes. It was the look of a man presented with the notion of false freedom. They both knew if Taavin left, Ulvarth would find him—and the consequences would fall on both their heads. Besides, all the answers they needed were here, anyway.

  He’d described his room once to her and Vi had worked to imagine it in her mind’s eye. She’d been right about a few things, wrong about others.

  The whole room was in the shape of an octagon—that much she’d managed to get right. The walls were, indeed, painted in soft grays and whites, but mostly white. The gray was a delicate embellishment in tiny patterns of birds, swords, and suns across the room. It was such a subtle contrast that in certain light, it disappeared completely.

  A single shelf on the wall to the left of the door held a handful of texts. The bookend on one side was a bunch of inkwells. On the other, screws and scraps of metal rested, little cogs shining in the low light. He’d mentioned his hobby of watchmaking and Vi had entirely forgotten. They’d been forced to leave behind so much of their peacetime lives since starting this journey. Vi thought back to the hobbies she’d had, the things she’d enjoyed—things she may never be able to do again.

  Other than the shelf, there was a single chair and ottoman, facing a lonely window on the wall opposite the door, one other window to the right.