Astra
After I found Sadie Corwin’s file, Hale began watching the supply carts that crossed the infirmary junction.
Most turned toward the occupied corridors or returned to the kitchens. One followed a different route. It appeared during the evening handover carrying covered bowls, clean linen, and lamp oil, then passed through a service door beside the records stair. The delivery sheet bore a large black C.
It returned later with empty bowls, stained linen, and two lamps that had burned down to their wicks.
No one had admitted there were occupied rooms below the archive.
The evening after Marrow wrenched Kieran’s shoulder, the cart appeared again. Hale stayed with him while Caspian and I waited near the junction.
Two stewards guided the cart between them. One carried a ring of iron keys. The other held the delivery sheet Hale had described.
They passed the records stair and unlocked the service door.
Caspian looked at me. We had already agreed that if the cart returned, we would follow it together.
We slipped through before the door closed. A narrow stair descended through colder air, with WING C painted in black on the wall. The cart rattled below us, its wheels loud enough to cover our steps.
Wing C lay farther beneath the inhabited corridors than I had expected. The water channels ended at the first landing. Below that, oil lamps burned in iron brackets, leaving stretches of passage in darkness.
The air smelled of damp wool, old smoke, and boiled grain. Beneath it was the close, sour trace of rooms that were rarely opened.
At the bottom, the stewards stopped beside a barred checkpoint. One unlocked it while the other checked the delivery sheet. Caspian drew me into the shadow beneath the stair.
We waited until the cart passed through, then crossed the open space while the gate was still swinging. Caspian caught the iron edge before it struck the frame and lowered it carefully into place. The latch settled with a soft click.
The corridor beyond was lined with heavy doors. Some bore brass numbers. Others were blank. There were no false windows painted on these walls, no attempt to make the rooms resemble anything but cells.
We kept to the stretches of darkness between the lamps and followed the sound of the cart.
At each occupied room, one healer called the resident’s name before sliding a covered bowl through a low opening. The other marked the delivery sheet. A few voices answered. From the other rooms came only the scrape of bowls being pulled across stone.
Near the end of the corridor, the healer stopped at a door marked nineteen.
“Delphine Moreau.”
Silence.
He waited, then crouched and pushed the bowl through. “Still not speaking.”
His companion made a mark on the sheet. They moved on toward a descending passage at the far end.
I stared at the brass number after they had passed.
Delphine had been one of the only people at Zenith Hall who was kind to me when I arrived.
She had pushed bread across the table when she was barely eating herself, warned me about Cosima, and told me her name twice so I would remember it if she disappeared.
The initials in the tunnel had proved she survived the west door.
Door nineteen meant she was close enough to reach.
Caspian touched the back of my hand. “We found her.”
A door opened behind us.
A third healer stepped into the corridor carrying folded linen. He saw us before we could reach the shadow of the next lamp.
“You’re not permitted down here.”
He dropped the linen and pulled a cord beside the door. A bell clanged beyond the checkpoint.
The supply stewards turned at his voice. One reached for the keys at his belt. The other seized the cart and began pulling it back from the descending passage.
Caspian moved first. He caught the cart by its wooden rail and drove it sideways across the corridor. Bowls slid from the shelves and broke against the stone. The cart struck the wall between us and the stewards, blocking the narrow passage.
The man with the keys lunged across it. Caspian caught his arm. While they struggled over the cart, I tore the ring from the steward’s belt.
“Astra, go.”
The gate clanged open behind us. Guards were already coming through the checkpoint.
I ran for door nineteen.
The first key would not turn. Behind me, wood scraped across stone as the stewards dragged the cart away from the wall. Caspian drove it back into them.
“Astra, now.”
A long iron key slid into the lock. I turned it, threw the door inward, and pulled the keys through with me.
Caspian shouted as the door slammed between us. I locked it from the inside just as someone struck the other side.
The room was small and dim. A lamp burned behind a metal screen near the ceiling. The narrow bed, washstand, and chamber pot had been fixed to the floor. The ration bowl lay on its side beneath the hatch, broth spreading across the stone.
A woman had risen from the bed.
Confinement had pared her down until her shift hung loose at the shoulders. Her hair had been cut unevenly at her jaw, and she needed the wall to stay upright. I knew her anyway.
“Delphine.”
She stared at me, breathing hard. “Astra.”
She tried to cross the room. Her knees gave before she reached me, and I caught her beneath the arms. For an instant she went rigid. Then her hands closed in the back of my coat and she held on.
I had watched her walk to the basin with her fading Mark bared to the whole school. I had watched Quill call it a Dimming and Caswell put a hand on her shoulder. The west door had closed between us before I understood that no one intended to let her come back.
Now I could feel her breathing against my neck.
“You remembered,” she said.
“You made sure I would.”
Her grip tightened. I held her carefully. Her shoulder blades felt sharp beneath my hands. I had never seen her this thin.
“Rev found your letter to Lior,” I said. “She sent it out with the flour wagon.”
Delphine pulled back far enough to see my face. “Did he get it?”
“I don’t know for certain. But it left the Hall.”
She closed her eyes. Her shoulders lowered as the breath left her.
Fists struck the door again. Caspian shouted my name from somewhere beyond it, followed by a guard ordering him to the ground.
“That’s Caspian,” I said. “We bonded at the Hall.”
“Your Mark reached for him that first day,” she said.
Her sleeve had slipped back while she held me. At the Hall, the lines of her Mark had been fading toward nothing. Now they were fractured near the center and dark around the breaks, the skin there badly healed.
“They did this after they brought you here.”
Delphine covered the Mark with her other hand. “They said they might be able to reverse the Dimming. The first readings did nothing. The last one broke it.”
“Marrow was there?”
“He came in after they started. He told the readers to stop.” Her voice flattened. “They didn’t stop quickly enough.”
“What were they trying to find?”
“They called it recovery. No one answered when I asked what that meant.”
In the tunnel beneath the Hall, I had promised myself that if Delphine was alive, I would bring her out. Now I was locked in with her, and Caspian had gone silent on the other side of the door.
“Sadie,” I said. “You carved her initials beside yours.”
Delphine lowered herself onto the bed. I stayed close enough to catch her if she slipped.
“She went through the west door before I did,” she said. “I found her name in one of the old ledgers. After they brought me here, I heard a healer say she had been kept in this wing too.”
“Where is she now?”
“They moved her before I arrived. Nobody would tell me where.”
Metal groaned outside. A bar dropped across the door with enough force to shake the hinges. The key in my hand no longer mattered.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
Delphine looked toward the door. “Not fast.”
“Then lean on me.”
Voices rose outside, then quieted at a command I could not make out. A moment later, Marrow spoke from the other side.
“Open it. Now.”
I held out my hand. Delphine took it without hesitation.
I helped her to her feet. When the bar began to lift, we were both facing the door.