Winterveil (8 page)

“I am sure the locals have found your theatrics very entertaining over the years,” said Dalliah, already unpacking her bag and laying two books open on the larger table. “I, however, will not be taken in by your display. You cannot escape the wheel. You are manipulating our senses to make it appear so, that is all.”

“The dead are listening, Dalliah Grey.”

“Yes, yes. I'm sure they are.”

“They are waiting for you.”

Dalliah stopped unpacking and rested her hands upon the tabletop. “They will have to wait a very long time,” she said.

“This girl is not like the others. She has protected herself. You . . . will fail.”

Those words grabbed Dalliah's attention. “How has she protected herself?” she demanded. “I have eliminated the boy. There is nothing left.”

“She is bound to another. We can see him.”

“No,” said Dalliah. “I will not listen to you.”

“You doubt the truth.”

“I doubt
you
. Kate is under my control, and you will soon be gone. I will not listen to you.”

“That is a mistake.”

The door to the records house closed by itself, and Kate heard the snick of a lock.

“Did you think we would not defend ourselves? Did you think we would not be prepared?”

Dalliah returned to her books, refusing to acknowledge the presence of the spirit she was about to destroy.

“The wheels were not yours to take, Dalliah. You ruined us.”

Dark liquid seeped out of the cracks between the tiles within the wheel and surged out over the symbols, staining each tile with a wash of old lake water. Trickles of it spilled down the side of the wheel and ran toward Kate's boots.

“Ignore it,” said Dalliah, without turning around. “It is only trying to get your attention.”

The water trailed around Kate, leaving a small patch of dry floor where she was standing.

“Dalliah spilled our blood. She stole everything from us.”

“Each individual spirit is a vast repository of energy,” said Dalliah, her voice light, talking to Kate as if she were instructing an ordinary student in an ordinary room. “But every one of them is driven by something.” She tore a page out of one of her books, lit a match from her bag, and held them both over the wheel. “Greed, love, ambition, empathy. Whatever they think is important,
that
is their weakness. You find it and use it against them, living or dead. After that, they are yours to control.”

The spirit fell silent. The water receded a little, and the flame licked gently at the very tip of the torn page.

“This page contains the final prediction of a very particular seer. Someone who is connected to both this spirit and to you, Kate,” said Dalliah. “It was written in the woman's blood just before her execution at the hands of the wardens fifty years ago. Her spirit is still here in the city somewhere, bound to this . . . the last of her physical remains. Burning her blood will break her last connection to the physical world and send her soul into the black. The spirit in this wheel will not allow that to happen.”

Kate could not see what was written upon the paper, but the effect upon the spirit was immediate. The water dissipated, the room darkened, and the wheel on the floor began to turn. The tiles in the outer ring flipped and grated smoothly around their channeled grooves.

“That's better,” said Dalliah, allowing the match to fizzle out. “You wouldn't want anything to happen to this.”

“What does it say?” asked Kate.

“Your mother's family have always done things a little differently,” said Dalliah. “They knew enough to see beyond their own existence and protect the future long after their own deaths. Your great-grandmother foresaw the falling of the veil when she was ten years old and went on to become one of the greatest seers Fume ever knew. These were her final words. She used her blood to allow her to connect with the living world even after death. This spirit will not risk harming her, even to protect its own existence.”

“If this spirit is a member of my mother's family, I can't let you kill it,” said Kate.

“Why should that matter?” said Dalliah. “Every soul belongs to somebody's family. Why should yours be spared? And why would you care? I thought you were an intelligent girl, but you were foolish enough to try to hide the truth from me. You have let your mask slip. You know too much for a girl whose memory has truly been lost. You knew the banners in the servants' quarter were a tradition. You recognized the spirit that was drawn to you in the street. You have remembered. Do not think I have not noticed. You may not be my student, Kate, but you will follow my orders. The veil has already shown me what is to come. No seers or spirit tricks of the mind can stop what we must do. This spirit will be cast into the black, where it belongs. It is a relic of the past.”

“Just like you,” Kate said defiantly. Anger welled up inside her, and it was a relief not to have to pretend anymore. “You are used to getting everything you want. You buy people's loyalty or frighten them into doing things for you. The men who pulled the wheel from that lake never would have risked their lives unless you forced them to. You killed Ravik because he wouldn't follow your orders. You left Silas and Edgar to die on the Continent, and now you think you can force me to do what you want. You're wrong. I don't care who you are. I won't let you do this. I won't help you.”

The two women stood on either side of the spirit wheel, but neither noticed the shifting movements of shades pressing in around the walls. They did not see the wheel illuminate two bright symbols—the snowflake and the mask—or notice the pungent smell of deep water as the lake outside slowly began to rise.

“The Winters family has always been stubborn, reckless, and misguided,” said Dalliah. “I expected more from you.”

“No, you expected less,” said Kate. “You wanted someone you could control. That person is not me.”

8

BLOODIED BLADE

A
t the same moment, half a city away, Silas was at the reins of a carriage speeding through the dark streets with Edgar at his side when they felt the ground tremble. Ahead of them, a flock of bats exploded from the roof of a tower before its spire slipped and smashed down into the street below.

Silas forced the horses to the right, slowing down to dodge debris as it rained down upon the buildings and the people hiding within.

“What was that?” shouted Edgar.

“That was Kate resisting Dalliah.”

“But the ground . . . it was like . . .”

“Thousands of souls literally turning in their graves,” said Silas. “Walkers cannot breathe in this city without attracting attention.”

“That felt like a
lot
of attention.”

“This has already gone too far,” said Silas, steering the carriage around a tight corner and snapping the reins to gain speed. “Dalliah wants Kate to leave her spirit vulnerable. She is testing her. She wants Kate to lose control.”

Edgar hooked the hatch open and leaned out as they sped onward. “Are we going in the right direction?” he asked. “I thought Kate was back that way.”

“Dalliah has already moved her,” said Silas, pulling the horses to a stop as they encountered a jam of people snailing through the streets. “I sent the crow to watch her. We cannot stop them like this.”

“Can't you . . .
sense
where they are?”

“The veil is letting the half-life seep in all around the city,” said Silas. “As it falls, it becomes harder to see clearly.”

“Shouldn't it make it easier?”

“Do not make assumptions about things you do not understand. The more active the souls within the city become, the more difficult it is to sense individuals within the crowd. We will find them, but we are going to have to do it the old-fashioned way.”

Silas turned the carriage down a steep, rattling slope, slowed the horses, and turned them at the very bottom, where the way was blocked by a low iron fence. There he and Edgar abandoned the carriage. They climbed over the fence and followed a narrow path between a mass of tightly packed buildings.

“Where are we?” asked Edgar. “I feel like I've been here before.”

“Things have changed since then.” Silas walked straight into a narrow house that had a sign nailed to its front wall.

 

Dangerous Structure

Keep Out

 

Inside, the first room looked as if someone had ignored the sign long before them. A hammock was slung across the far corner with full sacks spread around it to create a long bunker of belongings. The fire had been lit recently, but whoever was living there was nowhere to be seen.

“Can't these filthy parasites read?” Silas walked straight through to the back of the building, where rubble and broken beams were spread across the floor. He pulled open a hidden panel in the wall, and a wide section of bricks swung out into the room. The creak and heavy rattle of its metal wheels were sounds that Edgar could never forget. He knew now exactly what that place was. He froze on the threshold. His breathing became fast and shallow, and it was an effort just to stand his ground, so strong was his instinct to run.

Silas flicked a switch behind the wall, and a small fuse burned down a sloping corridor, igniting a trail of gas lamps as it went. The smell of the gas focused Edgar's memories. He had only ever seen that place in darkness, but it was somewhere he had never wanted to visit again.

“Follow me,” said Silas.

Anxiety made Edgar's muscles twitch and his stomach knot. However, if this was the only way to find Kate, he was not going to run away.

The corridor was simple and straight, and Edgar walked down it like a man on his way to the gallows. He winced when the wall swung closed and concentrated instead upon what lay ahead: Silas, standing beside a plain wooden door.

“I never thought I'd come here again.” The sound of his own voice gave Edgar confidence, but he was careful not to look too closely at the door. The last time he had seen it he had been eleven years old. He had walked through that door a boy and emerged as something else, something he tried every day to forget.

Silas pushed the door open and walked inside.

The cellar space was just below ground level: a wide room with grids in the ceiling that were wide enough to let light through, but small enough to make sure no one could get in or out. It smelled old. The floor was made of stones laid to simulate the city streets, and there were metal clasps set at irregular intervals near the center where wooden training dummies could be bolted into place.

It was a practice room, built for teaching and testing older children in the “art” of battle. It might have been completely empty now, but Edgar remembered the heat and the sweat, the brutal instructors, and the students who dared not get to know one another in case they were forced to fight. There had been no harmless training weapons in that room. Every blade was live; every arrow, sharp.

Eight doors leading away from the main room all hung open, with only faint patches of light seeping from those that were lucky enough to have grids of their own looking up to the street above. Edgar remembered the smell of the horses that had walked above those rooms. He remembered rain pouring in, soaking the small bed that had been his for five terrifying months of his life, and the sound of locks thudding into place as the students were sealed in one by one.

“We are looking for a metal lockbox,” said Silas, his voice echoing around the empty space. “I will take the rooms on the right; you take those on the left.”

The inside of the door they had entered through was stained with the dark silhouette of a sword pointing to the floor. Edgar touched it gently. Only people who had worked in that room knew what the sword represented. He was ashamed to be one of them. He ignored Silas's order and stood there looking at the sword until Silas returned, carrying a metal box.

“Do you still believe you made the right choice?” asked Silas, standing behind him.

“It wasn't a choice,” said Edgar. He lowered his hand from the door, remembering the night years ago when he had smeared a streak of his own blood upon it. It had been before he had known Kate. Before everything. “Why is no one here?”

“The High Council moved the operation soon after Da'ru claimed you. They could not risk an outsider's knowing about it. You know that.”

“Then it's still happening somewhere?”

“There is no reason to change a system that works,” said Silas.

“Why did we come here? There's nothing left.”

“Nothing I would want anyone else to know about.” Silas smashed the lockbox against the wall, and the lid cracked open, revealing a bunch of keys, each one made from dull iron. “It pays to keep a few hiding places. That is one of the first things we are taught. I'm sure you remember it.”

Edgar had done his best to forget everything about the time he had spent in that room. It was the first part of Fume he had seen after being taken off the Night Train on the day wardens had harvested people from his hometown. He had never spoken of those months to anyone. Not even Kate.

“This has nothing to do with me anymore.”

“Our past makes us who we are,” said Silas. “You had an opportunity here. Some of our finest wardens were trained in these rooms.”

“We weren't
trained
. We were
tested
. Three students died while I was here. They didn't deserve to.”

“They were recruits, and they died because they were not good enough,” said Silas. “When you claimed a life in the name of Albion and smeared your own blood upon that door, you swore an oath, the same oath that I did in a room just like this. You pledged your life to the protection of Albion and to the safety of this city. You swore loyalty to the wardens and therefore to
me
. Regardless of the turns your life has taken since then, you still owe me that loyalty.”

“I don't belong here,” said Edgar. “I shouldn't have come in.”

Silas pulled the door closed, and Edgar backed away from him. “You are afraid,” Silas said. “Not of me. Not of what's out there. You are afraid of yourself and what you became in this room.”

“No.”

“Do you think I entered warden service willingly?” asked Silas. “Few people choose this life. You were carried away from your home when you were young. I was sold by a father who needed silver to feed the rest of his family, but we are both the same. We were trained into this life. We were molded into something we never would have been had our lives taken a different path. Once it is done, there is no turning back. We survived when others did not. We were better than them.”

“I didn't know what was happening!” said Edgar, his face reddening with anger. “You stole us from our homes. You took us from our families and then made us
kill
each other!”

“The recruit who died at the end of your blade died an honorable death. Would you prefer he had killed you instead?”

“It wasn't meant to happen.”

“But it did happen,” said Silas. “If you forget what you were taught in this room, it will have all been for nothing.” He held out the keys. “You escaped the warden life once, but you cannot hide from that part of yourself forever.”

Edgar took the keys and looked at Silas with suspicion. “Why did you bring me down here?”

“Before this is over, you may need to fight,” said Silas. “You have been following me around like an injured dog since we left the Continent. I know you are stronger than that. You are not the weakling people see when they look at you. I saw you during your early training. I know what you can do.”

Edgar breathed in a deep breath. “It wasn't right,” he said, looking around the room.

“Life rarely is.” Silas stepped aside, leaving the doorway clear. “You made a choice here once; now I am offering you another. You can renounce the oath you made as a recruit, disappear into the city, and I will never look for you again. Or you can do more than just trail behind me. You can accept your past, remember your training, and reclaim the potential this room sparked within you. I need a fighter, not a servant. This is your last chance to walk away. I will not save your life again.”

Edgar looked down at the keys. When Da'ru Marr first came to the training room to collect him, his brother, Tom, had already been sold into her service. Da'ru had known that their parents were Skilled. She had murdered them both during her experiments into the veil, and she intended to keep the brothers close by. If they showed signs of the Skill, she would be the first to know about it.

By council law, recruits could leave active warden training only if the High Council required their services elsewhere, so when Da'ru made her offer, Edgar, forced to choose between two equally unwanted futures, had accepted it. If he had known then that Da'ru had killed his family, he would gladly have shed more blood in that room. He remembered being young and worn down. All he had cared about was protecting his brother. In the end, he had not even been able to do that.

Without the skills he had learned from the wardens, Edgar would never have escaped from Da'ru's service. He would not have been able to help the Skilled or survive days traveling through the Wild Counties before infiltrating Kate's hometown. He would not want to change any of that. It had become easy to forget about his past and pretend that he was afraid, that he was weak. But deep inside, Edgar Rill was very different.

Edgar held out the bunch of keys. His shoulders were set a little straighter, his back was firm, and his chin was high. “I'm not a coward,” he said, “and I'm not weak.”

Silas clutched the keys and let the door swing shut. “I was not the one needing to be reminded of that,” he said. “This city is still ours. As long as a single brick of it stands, we will defend it. Dalliah is moving quickly, and an army is on its way. The old rules no longer apply here. It is time to make a few of our own.”

Edgar had been through only six of the doors in the training room before. Silas headed straight for the seventh. The tiny room inside was completely bare except for a circular stone grate sunk into the floor. Silas crouched on one knee, and a long iron key slid perfectly into a concealed lock at the side of the grate. He swung the heavy lattice of stone open, revealing a narrow staircase spiraling down.

“The Blackwatch are not the only ones who have used agents to infiltrate the City Below,” said Silas. “Wardens have walked these tunnels secretly for years. If the people down there want to save their city, they are going to have to fight for it.” He disappeared quickly from view down the steps, and Edgar followed, pulling the grate shut behind them.

The tunnels of the City Below were dank and silent. The gentle flicker of a few rare candles illuminated the way, and the deeper the tunnels sloped, the more distant the sounds of the world above became. Silas knew where he was going, hesitating only twice when he came to junctions that were unfamiliar.

Deep within the narrow maze of rock and earth they crossed a wooden walkway that hung over a deep tomb cavern, and the ground beneath them gaped like a wound beneath the city, endless and black. Silas slowed his pace when they reached the other side, closing in upon a dark shape lying across the floor of the tunnel up ahead. Edgar picked a candle from the wall and kept walking until the candlelight was close enough to spread over the shape, revealing a lifeless face staring blankly into the dark.

Edgar stared at the woman, lying on her side with one of her arms outstretched, left where she had fallen. Her eyes were open, their natural color bleached with deathly gray, but there was no mistaking what that color had been.

“Black irises,” said Silas. “She was one of the Skilled. The deaths have already begun.”