Chapter Fourteen
The city invented its own rumors about what went on behind those walls.
The abandoned building was close to the western gate. Seraphina chose it because the streets here were quieter than near the market or the university quarter.
The French demolition had left its mark on this part of the city – empty lots where fortress buildings once stood, a boarded-up tavern that never reopened, a warehouse with half its roof caved in.
Most travelers who came through the gate headed straight for the town center, and other vagrants who needed a place to sleep preferred the center as well, where a church or a charity might take pity on them and offer a blanket or a hot meal.
With the money she’d made singing, Seraphina had bought bread, some hard cheese, a small jar of plum jam, and an apple. A feast, if she’d ever had one. She’d acquired a tinder box, too.
First, she inspected the building. It had once been a chandler’s shop, and the front room still smelled faintly of tallow and old wax.
The floorboards creaked under her feet. She moved carefully, using her stick to map the space.
There was a counter along one wall, warped and splintered.
Behind it, a doorway led to a back room where the chandler must have worked.
The air was damper here. She pulled her hood down and craned her neck toward the ceiling.
The snowflakes that landed on her cheeks told her the roof had gaps. She wrinkled her nose and kept moving.
A narrow hallway ran along the side of the building, and at the end of it was a small storage room.
The door hung crooked on its hinges, but the space inside was dry.
She tilted her head back, checking the ceiling.
Solid, no holes, and no wet patches on the floor.
There was a narrow window, shuttered and nailed closed, but with enough gaps in the wood to let in air. It would do.
She set her food down in a corner, wrapped in a cloth the cheese vendor had been kind enough to give her, then went back to the front room and gathered pieces of furniture she could use to make a fire.
It meant smoke and light, which would give away her position, but also warmth.
She was frozen to the bone, so she would risk it.
Hopefully, everyone was huddled around stoves and under blankets on this cold night, and no one would notice.
Back in the storage room, she struck flint to tinder and coaxed a small flame to life, feeding it carefully. The fire stayed small, just enough to warm her hands. She spread out her feast and ate slowly, enjoying every bite, then spent another hour listening to the crackling of the feeble flames.
Seraphina missed him. Around this time of night, he would stroke her long hair and sing in his grave voice lyrics he’d written himself.
She would listen and feel the tension leave her body.
Her mind would drift, and when he lay down with his back to hers, she’d feel warm and less scared.
Now she was fighting sleep because she was terrified of what tomorrow would bring.
Exhaustion won, and she curled up on her side.
The streets were covered in a thin layer of snow when she crawled out of her hiding spot in the morning.
It crunched under her boots but soon turned to sludge as she approached the busier parts.
She didn’t have a plan exactly, but she thought it was worth hovering near the academy for a while, maybe walking along its walls for old times’ sake.
The academy sat on the highest hill in the city, a complex of dark towers and weathered buildings made from stone that centuries of rain and smoke had stained almost black.
A steep wall surrounded the entire place, and crows lived on the rooftops and among gargoyles, their cries carrying down to the streets below.
Most people called it the Old University, though its real name was Kr?henstein, Academy of Relics.
It had been founded by the Sarumite Order centuries ago and was now the most prestigious relic academy in all of Europe.
Inside those walls, relics were authenticated, tested, catalogued, and conserved.
The academy had a museum that opened to the public on certain days and sometimes offered lectures that anyone could attend.
Sixteen old families from across Europe sat on its board, and choosing a new headmaster was as serious a matter as choosing the Pope.
From its position on the hill, the academy overlooked the Danube River, and at night, when lamps burned in its windows, the city invented its own rumors about what went on behind those walls.
Seraphina spent a few hours strolling up and down but didn’t dare to get close to the main gate. Keeping a respectable distance, she listened to the people going in and out, hoping to hear a voice she recognized, a voice that belonged to someone who would recognize her as well and vouch for her.
It was as if the people she’d known two years ago were no more. All the voices that reached her ears belonged to strangers, most of them sounding young. New students and apprentices.
Seraphina returned to the market, settled in her spot, and took out a cup she’d found in the chandler’s shop. Plan or no plan, she needed to eat. Once she had something in her stomach, she’d think of something else.
By now, everyone who could read in Ingolstadt knew the city watch was looking for a woman of twenty-four, with blond hair and no eyes, yet the people who stopped to listen to her sing didn’t seem to spare a single thought to her appearance.
She kept her entire face covered, except for her lips, and her long hair tucked beneath her cloak.
Maybe the fact that she chose to expose herself like that worked in her favor.
An escaped prisoner wouldn’t display herself in the main market and would certainly not sing with the voice of an angel.
That wasn’t her own assessment. Matteo had once told her she sang like an angel, and mortals didn’t deserve to hear her voice. He asked her to join in every time he played the piano.
Seraphina ate that day, and the next. For three days, she followed this routine, spending the night in the abandoned building, loitering around the city in hopes of hearing a voice from the past, singing and earning enough kreuzers to not starve.
On the fourth day, her luck ran out.
“That’s her!”
Thudding steps and the draw of a saber.
“You two, with me. That’s her right there.”
Hartmann. From across the market square, she felt a finger being pointed at her, and she scrambled to grab her coin cup and push herself to her feet.
Her right leg had fallen asleep, and she winced as she leaned on her walking stick.
He shouted again, at the crowd this time, telling them to stop her.
The people were confused, slowly stepping out of his way.
She knew it was him because she recognized his voice. As he’d recognized hers.
Seraphina pulled her hood lower, chin tucked into the collar of her cloak, and tried to determine in which direction she should run. For now, all she could do was hobble as feeling returned to her leg.
West, she thought. Only to turn and run straight into a massive chest. She took a step back and raised a hand to either protect herself or apologize in case this was an innocent passer-by, but the man caught her wrist and pulled her to him.
She gasped.
He leaned in, and the first thing that hit Seraphina was the smell of his skin. She knew it well. She’d been trapped with it for two weeks.
“Draw him away from the crowd,” he whispered in her ear, his breath warm as it snuck under her hood and crawled down the length of her throat. “Lead him somewhere secluded.”
She nodded, and he let go. She heard him walk away, probably to take care of the other watchmen Hartmann had summoned, and she was glad to find her leg was fully functional again.
She bolted toward a row of houses and down the first alley that opened before her.
The wind whipped at her face and blew her hood back.
Seraphina let it fall to reveal her blond head, a beacon for Hartmann to follow.
She careened around a corner into a wider lane, then cut left again into another alley so narrow her shoulders nearly brushed both walls.
Behind her, she heard Hartmann’s heavier footfalls and his ragged breathing.
He was cursing, shouting at people to get out of his way.
She heard a woman’s startled cry and something hitting the ground.
Seraphina didn’t slow. She burst from the alley onto a street where a man carrying a crate jumped aside as she flew past.
She was relieved to notice her lungs weren’t burning yet.
A few days of decent meals, albeit small, had returned her strength, and her muscles were happy to be put to good use.
She veered right, then left again, taking a path she knew by heart even though she couldn’t see where her feet landed.
Stone steps worn smooth took her to the river, but before she reached the bank, she took a right.
The postern gate was just ahead – the narrow tunnel cut through the wall where she’d hidden after escaping from prison.
She plunged into the passage, her footsteps echoing off stone, and came to a sudden stop.
Something was blocking the way to the other side.
Approaching it carefully, she tapped it with her walking stick and realized it was a cart laden with barrels.
Someone had abandoned it just outside of the tunnel, and now she was trapped.
“No...”
Behind her, Hartmann slowed, then halted.
Seraphina turned and felt him there, standing in the arched gateway. She lifted her stick and held it with both hands, feeling a rush of apprehension mixed with power flooding her veins. Here they were again, facing each other, him armed to the teeth, her carrying vengeance in her heart.
Getting stuck in a tunnel with Hartmann hadn’t been her intention, but it was playing out perfectly.
Now she couldn’t run from what she needed to do.
After his machinations had failed, he hated her enough to want to end her with his own hands, so it was a matter of life and death.
It was him or her. He wasn’t giving her a chance, so when she finally spilled his blood and listened to his last breath leave him, Seraphina wouldn’t feel guilty in the slightest.
“Bitch.” He spat on the ground. “I have you now. Nowhere to run.”
She widened her stance and lifted her chin, letting him come to her.
“I could shoot you on the spot. Throw you in the river.”
She grimaced. “If you wish to alert everyone, sure.”
He wasn’t that dumb, or so she hoped. A gunshot would echo off the stone walls, carry across the water.
The city watch would come running, and even Hartmann couldn’t explain away a fresh corpse and a smoking pistol.
She’d seen how he operated, skulking in shadows, bribing guards, careful to keep his hands clean.
“I’ll gut you like a fish,” he said.
Better. She could work with that.
He came at her slowly, drawing a knife from his belt.
Seraphina tracked his movements, the shape of him growing larger as he closed the distance between them.
She shifted her weight to the balls of her feet and held her stick low, angled across her body.
Hartmann lunged, slashing upward with the blade.
She stepped back and swung the stick hard against his wrist. The crack of wood on bone was music to her ears, and she heard the knife clatter to the ground.
He cursed and dove for it, but she was faster.
She brought the stick down on his shoulder, then jabbed the end into his ribs. He grunted and staggered sideways.
“You think you’re clever?” he snarled, circling her. “You think you can fight me, you blind little whore?”
She didn’t answer, just kept her stance wide and her breathing steady.
He came at her again, this time with his hands out, trying to grab her meager weapon that was proving to be quite an inconvenience to him.
She twisted it free and cracked him across the jaw.
His head snapped to the side, but he recovered fast and caught the stick mid-swing.
He yanked hard, pulling her toward him, and drove his fist into her stomach.
Pain exploded through Seraphina’s middle.
She gasped and dropped to one knee, but as Hartmann moved in to finish her, she swept the stick low and hooked it behind his ankle.
She jerked it back with all her strength, and he went down hard, his skull hitting the cobblestones with a sickening thud.
He let go of the stick, and she rolled away, scrambling to her feet.
“Matteo is dead because of you!” she hissed at him.
She hit him across the back as he tried to rise.
“You coward, you ran when it was your job to stay and fight!”
Another blow, this one to his shoulder. He roared and pushed himself up on his hands and knees.
“You betrayed the academy and the Order!”
She swung again, catching him in the ribs, and he collapsed onto his side, wheezing.
She stood over him, chest heaving, the stick raised high.
He rolled onto his back, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, and she brought the stick down with everything she had, striking him under the chin. His head lolled to the side.
“Because of you, they raped me and carved my eyes out!”
She shouted the last words so loud that if it hadn’t been for the river now at her back, its waves churning violently, people might have heard her.
What had happened to Seraphina two years ago wasn’t something to be spoken of.
The shame, the filth she still felt on her body and inside it, the innocence she could never get back.
.. Those were to be kept hidden, tucked safely in the recesses of her mind.
She used to think that if she buried them deep enough, one day, she’d wake up and her heart would be light again because she’d simply forgotten.
What a foolish idea.
Not that revenge was the absolute answer, either. Killing them all wouldn’t erase what they’d done to her. But it was something.
Seraphina lifted the stick, ready to bring it down on his skull.
A hand caught it mid-air. Seraphina’s heart lurched. She spun toward the river, and the relic showed her his tall shadow standing in the gateway, the Danube roaring behind him.
“No,” he said.
“Rune...”
“I’ll do it.”