26. Museology #2
We skirted into the main body of the library, but Lysanor was waiting. She stood in the center aisle, silver light glowing in her hands.
“They will destroy Willow’s Grave searching for you,” Lysanor said. The air around her rippled and heated, and the silver embellishments on her robes gleamed in the light of her power. “And for what? So you can go home, little Keldorian? No one here will have a home.”
“We’re sealing the—”
“The Rift! Yes! I know. The same damn Rift that my home was sacrificed to fifty years ago. The same damn Rift we will continue to tear each other apart over as long as it remains standing.” Lysanor’s power swelled, and Iseult stepped forward, ready to take the brunt of it.
“Perhaps it is time we let the Rift die, and if that means you die with it then—”
A shadow shifted between the bookshelves behind Lysanor, and a heavy book swung into her head.
Lysanor’s magick evaporated, leaving us in nothing but the light of the opal veins in the floor and the halo cast by Iseult’s leg.
Taj, the library assistant, dropped the book she’d just used as a bludgeon and caught Lysanor as she collapsed to the floor.
“Lysanor’s a good woman,” Taj said, her glasses slipping down her nose, “but she’s as much an outsider as the Baron’s guards. I have no quarrel with you, though I’ll probably tell her you’re the ones who hit her if you don’t mind. I’d like to keep my job.”
“Tell her I did it,” Iseult said.
Lysanor stirred in Taj’s arms, and her eyelids fluttered.
“Go. The exit is open.” Taj looked up at me. “Be safe, Lady Saergrim, whatever it is you are trying to do. Willow’s Grave stands with you.”
Iseult led the charge up the spiral stairs, and I hurried to catch up. Orla, however, hesitated at the bottom, still looking at Lysanor.
“Orla!” I called. “Come on!”
She turned to look at me, her face unreadable, and then started after us, taking the stairs two at a time with her long legs.
The willow vines visible through the glass ceiling burned with green fire, and bits of rock and rubble pattered over the panes. Iseult’s cloak billowed out behind her, and her stolen Helm of Lyria reflected the emerald hues of the firestorm outside.
Another distant, monstrous roar echoed behind us, but I forced myself to keep moving forward, through the entrance hall to the exit, past the marble cat statue, and into the smoke-filled streets.
“Wren!” Ciarán’s voice called from the bridge, his eyes casting an orange haze through the smoke. I ran to meet him, but Orla sprinted past both me and Iseult to meet him first.
She shoved him hard in the chest, and Ciarán’s eyes widened in shock.
“You ass!” Orla drew back a fist as if preparing to hit him, but I grabbed her cocked arm and pulled her away. She twisted and shoved me next, knocking me back against the stone railing of the bridge. “You’re an ass too!”
“What’s going on?” Ciarán hissed.
“She found out about the keep flood,” Iseult explained.
“You lied too! And then kissed me!” Tears streamed down Orla’s face. “You’re all liars!”
“If you want me to feel bad about trying to kill Ferrin, try again. This is all I have left of my parents because of him.” Ciarán shook the bottle of ashes at his belt. “Tiernan was perfectly fine with drowning his sister if it meant saving the worlds, so why can’t you be okay with killing Ferrin?”
“First of all, I’m not Tiernan. Second, I’m not angry you tried to kill my uncle!” Orla yelled. “I’m angry none of you trusted me enough to tell me the plan!”
“You almost got Ciarán killed in the Second Sentinel when you chose Ferrin’s life over ours,” I pointed out. “You haven’t given us a reason to trust you.”
Something broke on Orla’s face, but a green blast overhead sent us diving for cover against the bridge railing while bits of rock and opal fell from the sky.
When the debris stopped, a new voice spoke.
“Perhaps this is something that can wait?” An older gentleman with an impressive beard of white and gray waited on the other side of the bridge with a second, younger man.
“Who are they?” I asked Ciarán as he helped me to my feet.
“Our escape plan. We can trust them. They already got Tiernan, Fana, and Jonquil out.”
“You may call me Montu, Lady Saergrim.” The older man bowed and then gestured to the man beside him. While Montu’s light robes looked like the robes I’d seen all over Willow’s Grave, the younger man wore simple leather armor over a vest and pants. “And this is my son-in-law, Laertes.”
“You told them who I am?” I glared at Ciarán.
“Your secret is safe with us,” Montu promised. “We will get you out of the citadel and to safety.”
“Why?”
“You returned my grandmother’s pendant to our family after it was taken at the wall.”
“And you are an enemy of the Barony.” The younger man, Laertes, grinned. “Which makes you a friend to us.”
“The pendant?” I looked at Ciarán. “The one we took from the guard and you returned?”
“Yes, Blue, try to keep up.”
“Quickly,” Montu beckoned us into an alley, “before more guards arrive.”
We followed them into the shadows, but Ciarán halted with a wince, and turned to look back across the river towards the library.
“What?” I asked.
“Your mother,” he said. “I don’t feel her anymore. Her Nightmare is gone.”
“Gone?” I took a stumbling step back towards the bridge, but Ciarán pulled me back and after the others.
“As in she woke up. She’s fine, but Caitria will be after us soon.”
More explosions rocked the Great Willow overhead, but the streets were at least clear as anyone with any shred of sense had long since sought cover.
We moved quickly, dodging falling debris and smoldering vines as we ran through streets and back alleys. A handful of times, Laertes and Montu ushered us back the way we’d just come to avoid the guards prowling the streets and pulling families from their homes in search of us.
“How are we getting out?” Iseult finally asked. “Won’t there be guards at the gates?”
“We’ve had to adapt in the last decade and a half since the Barony arrived.
We’re on the outskirts of the Baron’s territory here, and when she relegates guardsmen to the citadel, it is usually as some form of punishment against them.
As such, the men she sends are cruel, corrupt, and suffering from lack of immediate oversight,” Montu explained.
“And with rotsbane attacks on the rise on steamtrails, Skal is in short supply too, making the guards all the more greedy.”
“It’s nearly impossible to get into the city without being robbed at the gate,” Laertes continued.
“Which is why some of us dug under the city walls to create our own way in and out. My wife and I, we tried to make it to the tunnel the other day, but the baby was coming too quickly and we had to come through the northern gate.”
“And they took your pendant,” I said.
“But you got it back,” Montu said. “So we are helping you escape.”
I hesitated, stopping the alleyway.
“But if we escape, what happens to Willow’s Grave?” I asked. “Both Caitria’s army and the Barony guards are blowing it apart looking for us.”
“If you are on your way to do what your friend says you are, and you reseal the Rift, you’ll have saved us,” Laertes said. “Imagine the Highland Army and the Barony with the unlimited magick of Keldori. If Willow’s Grave has to fall to save the rest of Skalterra, then we will do so with honor.”
“But your new baby—”
“Will be fine, Lady Saergrim.” The young father bowed, and the same sense of shame that had plagued me among the inhabitants of Darragh’s Watch rose in my veins. “You worry about the Rift. We will worry about us.”
I nodded, unable to speak through the knot in my throat. I did not deserve these people’s reverence. They were putting their faith in the wrong person.