Chapter Forty-Two
Seth does open his mouth during our voyage repeatedly, but not to speak: he’s the only member of our party to be nearly paralyzed by seasickness, his bouts of vomiting a constant refrain during the five-night voyage into the Queen’s Bay.
I pass the time primarily out on the deck, learning from Octavia, Larus, and Mama Adama about the function of the various sails on the Lady Caria’s two masts, never quite grasping all of their names, much less the art of maintaining the ship’s course and speed, but I welcome the distraction from the waning pull of Ronan’s magic as I slip further and further away from him.
On the final day of our voyage, I wake with no sense of him or the new power at all.
I feel like solely myself again for the first time since my captivity, or what I imagine I once must have felt like, but now the sensations in my own body are aching and foreign, like someone has carved out all of the best parts of me with a blunt knife and left me with the empty shell of who I could have been.
I guiltily twist his ring on my finger, knowing I should have returned it but glad that I forgot to in my haste.
Grateful to have some small part of him with me even now.
We dock in Faros’s North Docks, the closest to the Guild we can bring the tall ship.
Seth and I wait on board as Octavia secures us Selaran clothes in the market.
The disguises aren’t terribly effective, but they only need to get us through the plaza where Zara abducted me: Fushi knows another secret tunnel into the Guild accessed through a drain near the Temple of Vahlo, a favorite of apprentices looking to drink themselves silly at the local taverns without harming their chances of securing a higher post.
We enter the city at night. In the nearly seven months since we left, the damaged walls have been rebuilt, but the buildings and streets haven’t seen the same attention.
Entire blocks remain filled with rubble, their inhabitants long moved on.
Open spaces have been reclaimed for encampments and training grounds for Adria’s legions, forcing us to detour around the plaza and the temple to avoid the worst of the soldiers.
I spot the palace through the missing top floor of a damaged building.
It looms up on its hill, as eternal as Vayla’s flame, the reddish stone unblemished and unchanged, the only noticeable difference being the green and blue banners hanging limply in the still night air.
I dreamt of those banners flying over the palace a hundred times since the first war.
The palace of my dreams was distorted, the proportions based on a book that hadn’t been rendered by someone with great skill, but the image in my mind merges with the reality easily enough, the main hall stretching, the courtyards shifting into place.
It’s the place I dreamt about without question.
And yet, instead of the elation I thought I would feel back when I dreamt of Nithyrian victory, all I feel now is despair.
Seth and I follow Fushi into a low grate, nodding goodbye to Larus and Octavia, who continue on to a warehouse stockpile near a western gate, the only location Felix is certain of based on what he overheard and witnessed during deliveries to the Guild.
They’ll find a way inside and wait for our signal or the chiming of midnight, whichever comes first.
We follow Fushi through a series of passages, some of them narrow enough to give us pause, but he doesn’t betray us.
Whatever grip Karis has on him, it’s effective.
When we reach an unmarked wooden door, he stops and faces us.
“This will lead us into an underground hallway near the gold-refining rooms.”
“The gold-refining rooms? You didn’t say anything about going into the gold rooms.” I remember their entrance from my previous trip here. It was guarded by only alchemists then, leading me to believe that access would require more than just force to achieve.
He shakes his head in pitying exasperation, judging us for our ignorance.
“Novel processes are always done in the most restricted areas of the Guild. Precursor steps may take place in other laboratories, but if the Faros Guild has truly cracked magic suppression, they’ll keep that secret in the most secure location. ”
“How do we even get in there?”
“I sent a message to a friend on the inside when we docked,” he says. He knocks a specific rhythm on the door. There’s a pause, and then it opens to a familiar face in a brown robe.
“Your friend is the Guild Mistress?”
“Not for long,” says Hypatia, appraising me with her wizened stare but not recognizing me at first. But then she sees Seth and puts it together. “You’re the Verran girl. The God-Queen’s sister. And her brother too, I’d wager. Fu, you didn’t tell me these were our guests.”
“I didn’t tell a lot of people a lot of things. What do you think would have happened to them if my message was intercepted?”
“Fair enough.” She reaches into her robes and pulls out her Guild medallion. “Come. I have robes hidden down the hall. It’s the best I could do on such short notice.”
I slip a brown Guild robe over my clothes, breathing in a strong odor of frankincense. The robe is a little long for me, and Seth’s is a little loose for him, but with our hoods up, we look the part.
We follow Hypatia through a series of underground corridors, passing through the hallway where I found the torch and up the stairs to the corridor near the gold-refining rooms. It stands guarded by just the two alchemists once more. “That’s all the security they need?”
“It is indeed. When we’re inside, you’ll understand why.”
I look to Fushi, but he shrugs. “I’ve never been in. I wasn’t deemed worthy.”
“You weren’t deemed trustworthy, and they were right about that.
” Hypatia looks at me, her expression grave.
“I want you to know something before we go in. I’ve worked here for decades in loyal service.
I believed in our work, believed in the good it could do.
If I had known, if I had ever even guessed—” She stops, her hands flexing in front of her.
“They chose me because they believed that I could be manipulated. They believed I would do what I was told, that I would keep quiet, maintain the status quo. All I had to do was keep Ronan happy long enough to see the war finished.”
I wish I knew enough to follow what she’s saying. “Who chose you?”
“I never met them. I received my orders from the Vice Guild Master. That’s not what I was trying to tell you.
What I want you to know is that I had no choice.
If I hadn’t played along, they would have found someone who would have.
So I did what I was asked until they discarded me. And now I truly have no choice.”
“I’m not following.”
“Gold room access is for life. If you’re stripped of your access, there’s only one way to carry out the sentence. They don’t tell you it’s coming, but you live here long enough, and you always know. My time is up. My usefulness has run out.” She twists the medallion in her hands. “Well, almost.”
“Hypatia, are you saying what I think you are?” Xu Fushi’s face has drained of its color. “What have you done?”
“Nothing, yet. It’s not what I’m going to do. It’s what we’re going to do. Your letter couldn’t have come at a better time. I never would have managed this alone.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a throwing knife.
“Refine this, you bastards!”
Then she flings the knife into one of the guard’s eyes.