Winterveil (11 page)

“He did not try!” Dalliah said bitterly. “He was arrogant. He collected the knowledge he wanted and moved on to the next ‘challenge' without a thought for what he had left behind.”

“You trusted him.”

“We were rivals. He stole everything that was mine,” said Dalliah. “His family became the strongest bloodline while mine was slaughtered one by one. We all knew that Skill grew more potent with each generation. Families were our strength, every generation surpassing the abilities of the last. The book of Wintercraft was meant for all of us. The Winters family claimed ownership of its secrets and conspired to destroy all Walker bloodlines except their own so they would maintain control. They murdered Walkers in their beds. They stole children from their parents and abandoned them in distant towns. It was those named Winters who tempted the bonemen into destabilizing the veil four centuries ago. They are the reason I sealed these souls into the wheels. If they had not already taken my spirit, they would have sealed it in there just as swiftly to cover up their mistake. Do not tell me how I should live. The Skilled may be remembered throughout history as healers and kind fools, but there are darker undercurrents to our society that you have barely begun to recognize.”

Dalliah's face was hard with anger. She reached for the table, grabbed
Wintercraft
, and held it over the time-slowed water. “This is what your family treasured most,” she said. “Beyond friendship, beyond duty, and beyond any sense of morality. They studied the veil because they wanted their line to flourish, while others were expected to wither and die. They sacrificed too much for the words in this book. They did it for you and for every other sorry soul that carried their tainted blood. Look where it has led you! Those who fight the will of their ancestors become tormented by the ghosts they left behind. You have seen them. They watch from the windows and wait in the shadows, but they will never help you. All they want is for you to live like them. Those who walk the path of a Winters always carry destruction in their wake. You all deserve to die in fear. Every . . . last . . . one.”

Dalliah dropped the book into the center of the wheel, and its purple cover hit the water with a sharp slap. For one brief moment Kate thought it might float, but instead the thick water clawed over its edges and began seeping into the paper. Guilt crept across her chest. She had not saved it. She had not
tried
to save it. She was just standing there, watching it. She waited for the pages to ruffle open and bleed ink, but it stayed firmly shut. No air furled from it, and it dropped like a stone, taking Ravik's note with it, settling against the exposed mechanism inside the dead wheel.

“The book is no use to your family now,” said Dalliah. “Soon you shall die along with it.”

11

FELDEEP

N
othing Edgar said could convince anyone that killing Kate was not the answer to Fume's problems. He argued with Greta and Baltin. He even tried to be reasonable, but in the end he was informed that the decision had been made and he was in no position to challenge it. He remembered shouting about the Skilled—telling them they had developed a taste for murder. Finally he was so appalled by the shift in their approach to life that he could not share the same room with them any longer.

He left Silas and the Skilled in the meeting hall and headed back into the open cavern. He tried not to look at the bodies, abandoned where they had fallen. He did not want to risk finding his brother among them. He needed to believe that Tom really was still out there somewhere with Artemis, protected and safe.

He walked past a row of houses and spotted a fallen dagger on the ground, still tucked into its sheath. Its unfortunate owner must not have had time to use it before the others turned upon him. Memories of his time in the training room returned at once. He picked the dagger up, unsheathed it, and spun the handle deftly in his hand. His lower back tingled at the point where a faint scar marked his own recent near death at the point of a Blackwatch blade. Silas had saved him then. He did not understand why Silas would not give Kate that same chance.

Edgar threw the dagger at a closed door, and the blade stuck proudly into the wood. No one would listen to him because he was not one of them. They thought he could not understand the importance of protecting the veil just because he could not see it for himself. But he understood enough. He was not the one being blinded by fear. He could see more clearly than any of them.

If anyone deserved death, it was the Skilled. They had raised weapons against people who should have been as close as family to them. In the past Edgar had thought of the cavern as a haven; now it would always be a place of blood and death.

He walked past the empty lockhouse and sat down in a garden where rotting logs had been laid in rows, each one of them covered in wide mushrooms. He picked a handful and ate them raw, throwing their rubbery stalks against the nearest house. Water seeped in droplets through the cavern's brick-lined ceiling, dampening the garden. Edgar shook a trickle of liquid from his hair and looked up.

Living underground meant that people quickly became used to water leaching down from above. That water served as a lifeline to the people of the City Below. Their underground rivers and ground-filtered streams allowed them to live. The mushroom garden would have been placed there to make use of the water leaking from the roof, but what Edgar saw was more than a trickle, much more than a simple leak.

Trails of water were clinging to the curved ceiling, following it down into holding troughs placed around the walls. Edgar watched rivulets of water vein across the bricks until heavy droplets gathered at the source and dripped straight down onto the garden. The trickle of water became a spluttering pulse, and then gravity took over, sending water streaming down at a rate that was definitely not normal.

Edgar stood up. Water was seeping out of the bricks all over the cavern. Droplets became spurts, and the flow above Edgar became a stream that forced speckles of old brick down onto the log where he had just been sitting. A sudden glugging sound made him turn to the fountain that stood in the very center of the cavern. Water was bulging out of its wide stone basin. Waterfalls poured from its sides, and the ground around it glistened as it overflowed.

Edgar ran back to the meeting hall and interrupted an argument between Greta and Baltin. “The fountain. It's flooding!” he said. “Water's coming through the ceiling.”

Silas was already on his feet, pushing past Edgar to see what was happening.

“That is impossible,” said Greta.

A thin slick of water washed in around Edgar's boots, and Greta's expression changed from disbelief into fear.

“We have to leave,” she said. “Gather up everything you can. Count the children, bring the books.”

Silas returned. “The water is rising quickly. You,” he said, pointing to Baltin, “take the first group to the city square. And you”—Greta this time—“take the rest to the museum, and prepare the circle there. Enemy soldiers may already be nearby. If they breach the walls, the square should be safe for a short time. If they reach the museum, do what you can to keep the circle going.”

“Where is the water coming from?” asked Baltin, as people burst into action around him.

“The dams sealing the rivers from the Sunken Lake could have been damaged,” said Greta. “Too much water is being released too quickly. This cavern was built on one of the old waterlines. If it floods, this entire level could be reclaimed by the old river.”

A few of the older Skilled were looking up at the meeting hall ceiling, whispering their good-byes to paintings pinned there of people who had died before them.

“We do not have time for superstition,” said Silas. “Move.”

The water in the cavern was already ankle deep. The Skilled waded through it, carrying crying children in their arms, heading for the green door. Silas and Edgar stayed to make sure no one was left behind.

“Do you think they can make a difference?” asked Edgar.

“The children are useless,” said Silas. “Greta and Baltin rely more upon what they think they know than what they can actually do. The elder women and the freshly discovered Skilled are the city's best chance to slow Dalliah's work, but that chance is still small.”

“What good will opening the circles do?”

“Possibly none whatsoever, but it is better than leaving them down here to drown or kill each other. If more of them had lived, we would have had a greater chance. We have done all we can do here.”

Water fell from the ceiling like rain. The fountain was so full it looked as though a large bubble were sitting on its surface, but even that would be swamped if the level rose much higher. The flood was showing no sign of receding as water spread down through the cavern's tiny cracks from saturated channels that ran between ancient layers of rock and earth.

Silas moved through the knee-high water as smoothly as a rat. The cavern's rear door was open, and he could hear shouts from nearby tunnels as the water spilled down into the deeper levels.

“What do we do now?” asked Edgar, shouting above the noise of his own legs splashing through the wet. “Shouldn't we get out of here?”

“The water will follow its natural channels,” said Silas. “You are in no danger.”

They reached the exit, and Silas chose the nearest turning heading down. From there they followed a thread of tunnels until they heard someone giving orders to people up ahead. Silas led Edgar away from the voice and squeezed into a narrow passageway hidden in the wall. Edgar could hear him scraping sideways between two walls of solid earth, and he stopped at the opening, unable to see any light at the other side. He hesitated, his heart quickening; then he forced himself in.

The narrow space made it impossible to breathe freely. The wall was so close to his nose that motes of earth tickled his nostrils with every breath. All he could do was concentrate on his feet as his squelching boots picked out a curve of long, shallow steps. He counted them silently as he went—sixty-seven . . . sixty-eight—until the wall fell away and he squeezed his way out into the relative freedom of a pitch-dark tunnel.

He took in some deep breaths and listened for Silas nearby. With no sound to give him away, and not daring to speak in case Silas was being quiet for a good reason, Edgar ran his hands along the tunnel wall and headed in the direction that made his instincts tremble with primal fear, a sure sign that Silas was nearby. He found Silas twenty paces away, his eyes shining in the dark.

“Good,” said Silas. “You are learning.”

“Tell me we didn't walk through that for nothing,” said Edgar.

Silas struck a match and held it out before letting it fall. The tiny flame fell to the ground and kept going, passing through a tightly latticed grate and casting its glow over a ladder hanging down the side of a steep shaft. Edgar took the matches and lit another, crouching down to look closer. Below the grate, a band of tarnished metal circled the inner edge of the shaft with words etched into it.

 

B
Y ORDER OF THE WATCH, ANY OFFICER ENTERING THIS

PLACE DOES SO AT HIS OWN RISK.

 

“Where does it go?” he asked.

“Into a place most people on the surface would like to forget,” said Silas, pulling the keys he had taken from the training rooms out of his coat. “No one can be ordered down here. If you choose to come with me, stay alert and avoid eye contact with people unless absolutely necessary. They have more right than anyone to wish both of us dead.”

Silas unlocked the grate, and it swung open in perfectly oiled silence. He descended the ladder, and when Edgar finally joined him at the bottom, the glowing embers of a slow-burning torch flickered up ahead. Directly above it, letters had been scorched into the stone, creating black words at least three feet high.

 

FELDEEP PRISON

 

Dozens of small crates were stacked neatly beneath the sign, leading toward the looming shape of a large arched door. Edgar had seen one like it before, only that one had been chained and marked with a warning:
NO ENTRY. NO ESCAPE.
Silas dug a long key into the lock. “Be ready.”

Heavy locks clicked and creaked within the door, and the ratcheting sound of a chain and pulley mechanism clunked into action, pulling the door inward to reveal a fiery light. The smell of burning caught in Edgar's throat, and he could hear people shouting to one another farther in. The corridor they had entered was perfectly straight, and Edgar's boot sent a loud metal twang reverberating from the walls as his foot connected with one of two rusted rails running along the ground.

“Coffin rails,” said Silas. “They were here long before the prison. Nothing runs on them anymore.”

Edgar already knew more about Feldeep Prison than he would have liked. During his time working for the councilwoman he had been present at trials when prisoners were sent there and had overheard conversations between wardens about the kind of life people lived locked away underground.

The prisoners kept down there were not murderers, smugglers, or thieves. The High Council dealt with people like that in a far more direct way, often involving a rope or a sword. Feldeep was reserved for a different type of threat. Its cells were populated with people who the High Council believed could be of use to them someday: collectors who had disobeyed orders or whisperers who had stumbled upon secrets not meant for public ears. If Councilman Gorrett had protested his innocence, he might have been sent there after a short trial, but following his open confession Edgar knew that all he had to look forward to was a bloody death.

Feldeep was a holding place for people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. Edgar could not imagine what spending years down there might do to a person, but Silas certainly could. The two of them followed the passageways with the steady walk of condemned men, neither of them admitting to the other the extent of their hatred for the place they were about to enter. Whatever reason they had for being there, Edgar hoped it was worth it.

“The prisoners will try to attract your attention,” said Silas. “Some of them have been down here for decades, and they are not the same people they were when they were first sent here. Do not listen to them. Stay quiet and let me speak. I was responsible for sending some of them here, but for two years of my life I was one of them. They will know me.”

Silas's keys allowed him and Edgar to pass easily through barred gates that restricted entry into the prison's inner sanctum. Compared with the city it served, Feldeep was not a huge prison. It had once served as a repository, protecting relics taken from the estates of the most revered people in Albion. Jewelry, statues, diaries, carvings, and other precious items were taken there whenever a person of historical interest died, but all that was long gone. The cavern now housed almost a hundred prisoners within its walls, but it was still home to some of the most impressive architecture in the City Below.

Edgar could not help looking up. It was like standing beneath the hull of an upturned ship, a vast mausoleum created using craftsmanship that had long died out within Albion. Its inner caverns had vaulted ceilings that tapered up to points in some places, all paneled with slats of ancient wood stained black and mottled with age. The wooden beams reached up into narrowing clusters that looked like starbursts when viewed from below, and the entire place was centered on one far-reaching hall that magnified every sound, with smaller paths leading off from it on either side.

It would have been beautiful if still used for its original purpose. In its time that magnificent chamber had been filled with Albion's cultural treasures. Now its small side rooms were home to a very different aspect of Albion's history. They had been adapted into a series of sealed cells, their old arched doors replaced by barred iron gates, and almost every one of them was occupied.

Candles flickered behind the doors, and shadowed faces turned to look at the newcomers as Silas and Edgar walked by. Whispers spread quickly along the halls, trailing them to the nearest crosspath and spreading out until the entire chamber hissed with hushed words. The prisoners were thin and wary, their bagged eyes betraying the tiredness that came from years of being locked away underground. Edgar felt uneasy. “What if the wardens see us down here?” he asked.

“Then things will become interesting,” said Silas.

“Are you sure about this?”

“No one in Feldeep is permitted to know anything about events in the City Above,” said Silas. “Even the wardens are forbidden to communicate unnecessarily with people outside these walls. With luck, they will not know what has happened in Fume in recent weeks. We can use that ignorance to our advantage.”