Chapter Twenty-Nine
The cellar near the kitchens is one of the few things in Castle Pyka that doesn’t seem to have changed at all.
It’s an absolute disaster in here.
Ronan, Seth, and Taran are ostensibly somewhere nearby, but the only one of them I can locate is Ronan, and that’s exclusively because I can feel him. I’m able to guess at the others’ general direction only based on the crashing sounds and clouds of dust and cobwebs.
It’s like the Alchemists’ Guild Mistress’s chambers, only if instead of priceless ingredients and rare manuscripts littering the floor, it was crates full of moth-eaten clothes, broken toys, tarnished candlesticks, and paintings of my ancestors done by someone who must have been going blind in one eye.
It seems like anything of value has been sold, leaving only the truly worthless garbage. If we weren’t looking for something in particular, I’d tell Seth to light the entire place on fire.
As we make our way deeper into the room and further from the doorway, Ronan casts a few glowing orbs of light to help the others see.
I try to emulate his magic, but I’m finding it difficult to wield when I’m not directly next to him and no one’s life is in danger.
Hopefully I’ll get some time to practice while we’re waiting for the others to return.
“Hey, Sylvie. Catch!” says Seth, tossing me a leather pouch. “Do you remember these?”
I empty the pouch into my hand. Dice. “I remember you cheating. You always picked this one, and it always comes up four.” I hold up one particularly uneven block of white bone.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I’m just lucky.”
I drop the die to the ground to demonstrate. “Four.”
“That’s just one toss. Do it again.”
I toss it again. “Four.”
“Still doesn’t prove anything.”
“How are you going to stand there and lie when I’m proving it to you?” I toss the die again, but this time, it rolls too far.
“Shoot,” I say, knocking over a pile of empty frames as I chase after it. I find it settled into a groove in the wood. Damn, it’s actually on two this time, but that’s only because it got caught. “Four,” I say. If Seth can lie, I can lie.
I reach to pick it up, but when I touch it, the plank of wood creaks and moves.
I wedge my fingers into the gap and pull, and the plank begins to come up, bringing with it part of a door. I shift the crate covering it out of the way and lift it open.
“Hey, guys. I think I found something.”
There’s a ladder down into a small room. There doesn’t seem to be much down there—a couple of cedar chests, a desk, and a bookshelf.
A bookshelf.
Ronan sends a light down there, checking it out over my shoulder. “I’ll go first,” he says, but Taran grabs him by the arm and stops him.
“The air could be bad down there. We need a wind-born.”
Damn, we shouldn’t have let Typhon go. “I don’t know if we can trust anyone here to do it.” If they see something of value in there, they’ll likely take it.
“I can get some fresh air in there pretty quickly,” says Seth, igniting a flame on his fingertips.
Taran extinguishes it with a water-filled palm. “Put that out, you lunatic. You could blow the entire place up.”
Seth’s breath hitches audibly as Taran keeps hold of his hand a moment too long.
I look away, trying not to gag.
“Look for bellows,” says Taran. “The kind used to stoke a fire.”
It doesn’t take long to find one, although it takes a bit longer to find one that doesn’t have holes in it. Taran directs it through the opening, blowing fresh air into the confined space until he’s reasonably convinced it’s safe.
“I’ll go first,” he says once he’s finished.
“I’ve got you,” I say, wrapping a tendril of shadow around his waist.
“Thanks, but if I collapse in there, I’m already dead. Whatever you do, do not come after me.”
“That’s very heroic and all, but don’t you think we ought to get a wind-born?” says Seth, his voice rising in concern as Taran climbs down the ladder. “Taran?”
Taran walks around the small room, holding his breath and directing the bellows to the floor. After several tense moments, he finally relaxes. “It’s safe.”
Ronan goes down the ladder next, followed by Seth, and then finally me.
By the time I reach the bottom, Seth already has the first chest open.
“Oh, this is where Father kept the good stuff.” He laughs as he pulls out several very beautiful weapons: a rapier with a delicately filigreed guard, a longsword with a jeweled pommel.
A saber with a curved blade perfect for cavalry.
Ronan and Taran check the desk and bookshelves, finding a number of papers there regarding the war. Plans and missives, maps of Selara and known weak points. They’re dated, but we take them anyway in case they could reveal something about how to retake Faros.
I turn my attention to the other chest. It’s nothing special, just standard wood with iron hinges, except for its lock. I try picking it, but the pins won’t set.
If only we could have kept Larus with us to break it. I wonder if he even knew this was down here. I’m betting my parents kept this from him if he didn’t know to bring this stuff to Kalla when we moved.
“Try your shadows,” suggests Ronan when he sees me struggling.
I wedge a tendril of shadow into the lock, but the pins are busted beyond repair.
“Stand back,” says Seth.
I look up to see him wielding a huge axe over his head like a madman.
“What the fuck!” I shout as I jump back.
Seth swings the axe into the lock, splintering the wood open and breaking the entire latch.
“I said, ‘Stand back.’”
Ronan puts his arm around me possessively, making sure I’m uninjured. “You’re an idiot.”
“Gods, you’re all so unappreciative. It’s open, isn’t it? Let’s see what else Father left for us…”
Seth pulls open the chest, but there aren’t any weapons inside.
There are books.
No, not books. Journals. An entire chest full of them.
“Mother…” Seth mutters as he opens one from the top.
I pick one up and begin reading at random.
5th day of Summer, 595
I fear I’ve broken Sylvara’s heart today.
The acrobats have left, and I haven’t had it in me to let my seven-year-old child run away to join the circus.
You would think I told her the sun will not rise again.
She’s always been so agreeable, but she’s stomping around sullenly, sighing from room to room.
I asked Seth to take her with him into the woods, but he’s at the age where he refuses to do much but be in his room.
I dread to think what he’s doing in there.
“It does not say that,” says Seth, snatching the journal from me, his face gone blood red.
“How old would you have been?” asks Taran.
“Twelve,” says Ronan. Seth and Ronan are the same age.
Taran purses his lips not to laugh when he realizes what Seth might have been doing in his room at age twelve.
I reach into the chest and keep pulling out old journals, skimming until I find one with Ronan’s name in it.
3rdday, 7th week of Summer, 588
I had a strange encounter today with the little princeling that frightened me deeply.
I can’t say if it’s paranoia, the baby making me worry, or something that I should genuinely be concerned about.
Lysander suggested asking the God-King’s healer, but I’m not certain if it’s worth troubling them or if maybe I should keep it from the royal family entirely.
Seth was out in the bailey, playing a ring toss game when Ronan joined him.
They played together for a time, but the game is new to Seth, and he could not handle losing to Ronan for long before he began to cheat.
I called him over to admonish him, but truly I couldn’t help but feel a little pride. He’s a shadow-born through and through.
Still, I figured I must teach him that if he’s going to cheat, he needs to do it well and avoid being caught. He was being exceptionally obvious, although Ronan showed no signs of detecting his artifice. I doubt he’s encountered anyone in his five years of life willing to even try to deceive him.
Seth came over, but Ronan did as well. I explained to Seth how the game is played, how he must stand behind the line before making his throw. Not accusing him of doing it on purpose, just making a point that he wasn’t following the rules. He stormed off, angry with me for exposing him.
Perhaps I’m wrong then, and he’s a fire-born like his father.
I expected Ronan to speak up and say something to Seth or to me about his cheating, but he didn’t. He simply thanked me for the help.
And then he took a step closer, reaching for my belly and then pulling back suddenly when he saw he had my attention.
“Do you know what that is?” I asked him. Calia has had no luck conceiving again after Ronan was born. I’m not certain he’s ever seen a woman with child before.
“She’s in there,” he said to me.
Not “a baby.” “She.”
“I don’t know if it’s a girl or boy yet,” I said. “I can’t know yet. But there is a baby in there. They’re kicking. Would you like to feel them?”
I don’t know why I did it. My only excuse is that Ronan is such a darling little thing with those big golden eyes taking up half of his face.
It’s difficult to refuse him, even knowing who his father is.
And I suppose I wanted to show him what pregnancy is, since there’s a decent chance, given Calia’s age, that he’ll never have a sibling of his own.
I lifted my tunic, showing him where the baby was kicking.
“See? It’s alright. You can feel it if you want. It doesn’t hurt.”
He reached out his tiny little hand, and when he touched my belly, light flashed, almost blindingly bright.
“Holy shit,” says Seth. “How is that possible? We were five.”
Children sometimes have sparks of magic before their magic settles in adolescence; sometimes several types of magic, even.
But the magic is very weak and unpredictable.
“I’m sure it was just an ordinary spark,” I say, although I’m really not certain of anything at all. “Do you remember this?” I ask Ronan.