13 DAYS. 15 HOURS. 18 MINUTES.
I drove Meena down the pipes that lowered us to the bottom floor, having left the steamer on level fifteen in favor of fitting in, and the guards stayed behind, following a few minutes later. I did my best not to look back at them, not to check they were still there, but it was hard.
I didn’t trust this Red, nor should I.
My lifeclock was its usual self, so I was pretty sure we weren’t going to die doing this; but that didn’t mean we weren’t going to get injured or imprisoned or tortured or any number of things while still alive.
Some people viewed the lifeclocks as though they were their saving grace—the knowledge of when they going to die keeping them at peace—but I thought it was a burden. There were other things that could go wrong. Other things to watch out for and avoid in life. But no one ever talked about those.
“Stop panicking,” Meena said as we walked back past the cracked fountain in the center of the shopping district on level zero. “I can hear the wheels turning in your head from here.”
“Wha—? I’m . . .”
“Whenever you’re silent, you’re working out that big brain of yours by either puzzling out how things work or worrying. In this case, I assume it’s worrying. Give your brain a rest, El.”
“When you’ve figured out the off switch to allow me that, please let me know.”
“I certainly figured it out last night.” She snickered.
My eyes rolled of their own accord, a blush burning my cheeks. “I’m just worried this will go wrong somehow. I have a bad feeling.”
“I know.” Her hand rested on mine on the handle. “Me too. But this is the closest we’ve had to a lead all week.”
She was right. Of course she was. But that didn’t stop the worry from rocketing across my brain like a pendulum, swinging from one concern to the next.
Meena thought she knew where the church might be, given where the it was on the higher levels, but I wasn’t so certain. Not everything was lined up like that here in Prago City. Sometimes it was a shop, then on the level above it was a cluster of small houses, and above that it was a barber shop. In Palatina, things were always stacked on top of each other according to what the columns of buildings were. It would be a shop in that position on every floor. Except for the palace, which had royal embassies below it; of those, all below level fifteen had, apparently, been abandoned long ago.
Meena led us through the streets, past the sellers that lined a whole road, their wares laid out on patterned rugs on the floor, some with makeshift canopies overhead to keep out the overbearing sun.
To think of that. Keeping out the light here on zero. It was different here, but there was no doubt an endless list of different troubles to go along with that.
We walked through a tunnel that seemed to serve no purpose at first. It opened into a shabby stone court with a well in the center. People milled about carrying umbrellas seemingly made for shade and wearing brightly colored dresses over bustles that bunched behind them to enlarge their rears.
“I think it’s around the corner from here.” Meena looked up with wide eyes and mouth agape. “There are no buildings on top of this section. It’s just...open sky.”
I followed her gaze. Just as she had said, they met the sun. The real sun. No wonder people seemed happier here.
Meena turned in her chair to face me, a small smile on her lips. “What do you like best about Prago City?”
“I . . . it’s so bright and colorful.”
“Maybe one day you can move here, set up a new garage and start afresh.” She stared ahead as she said it, a carefully placed mask on her voice, but I caught the crack at the end and the single tear sliding down her cheek before she brushed it away along with a wayward strand of hair.
“Maybe.”
The corner she had pointed at earlier came into view, and what stood beyond it took my breath away. The church was stone as white as any I’d seen, streaked with teal, and it spiraled so high, it was a wonder it all fit onto a single floor. It no doubt didn’t. The church, like the one back home, likely extended to all the floors. It seemed endless from here on the ground. An endless white building that held many secrets.
Around us I expected people or shops, or even a courtyard, but this was a dingy corner surrounded by houses, the white stone the only light in a dark crook of a place. So sharp in contrast to the courtyard of light mere moments away. Someone closed their shutter a few houses away, and a mother pulled her child into a building behind us, frowning and shaking her head.
The guards slowed to a halt behind us, following at a distance. Even silent, they were a reassuring presence. No matter what happened behind those doors, the princess would be safe.
That was all that mattered.
“I think it best we find a side door,” Meena whispered, though I didn’t know why. “Maybe we can find more information if we aren’t seen.”
One of the guards took the right side of the building and told us he’d be back shortly, and after a few minutes he returned from the left, having done a full circle around the building. “There’s a locked backdoor and two side doors, both of which are open.”
The other guard looked at us again with that confused brow and said, “I hope you know what you’re doing, Princess. This doesn’t seem like the kind of place you should be.”
She frowned at him and uncurled her fist with a deep exhale. “I know. But it’s important. Which door do you think would be best?”
“The left had fewer sounds coming from behind it, so that one.”
I wheeled her chair onward, taking a left. Meena’s lifeclock caught my vision, sneaking out of its usual golden cage as the cloth slipped. It ticked thirteen days.
The door was a haggard old thing made from some kind of dark wood—it barely stayed on its hinges, much less managed to keep people out—but it swung open with minimal noise, only a slight shuffle against stone.
Once inside, darkness engulfed us, but none of us dared light a lamp.
“He said the basement, right?” I asked Meena. “So we should find a way down below ground level.”
Taking one of three paths—the one without a door—we made our way around the building, hoping we didn’t see anyone or bump into anything that might give away our presence. The only thing going through my mind the entire time was that I was thankful Meena had hired a good wheelchair, because any squeaks from lack of oil would have echoed throughout the cavernous stone hallway. Eventually, after a couple of dead ends and a few turns, I found a set of stairs.
The guards stepped in, one taking the princess and the other taking the wheelchair, as I led us down an even darker corridor of stairs that spiraled to the floor below.
Eventually, when I thought we had been climbing down for so long we would exit at the center of the earth, I came upon a door.
“Careful, El.” Meena’s voice echoed, and she quickly sealed her lips.
“I know,” I whispered.
The door was barred with a lock the size of my fist, with a gloomy keyhole that stared at me as though mocking my skills. I whipped out a set of pins from my belt and got to work picking the tumblers one by one. A tricky endeavor with this lock, as it had a few corners to navigate and some rusting that made some of the tumblers hard to unlatch, but eventually a click echoed through the air and landed upon our ears.
“Not so terrible now, are you, lock?”
I swung the door open with a loud squeak that made me wince, then sat Meena in her chair as quickly as possible before entering and finding a store cupboard to hide in just around a corner.
“This place is nothing but dank corridors and confusing corners,” one of the guards complained. “What are we actually looking for?”
“A warehouse,” I responded, hoping to shut them up.
But they just asked more questions.
“A warehouse containing what?” the other asked.
“Nothing that concerns you,” I snapped.
When it was clear no one was coming to investigate the suddenly unlocked door, I let us out of the room and took a real look around. The dusty corridor was spacious and had various shelves littering the space. I took a step back, examining the whole, and I realized it wasn’t a corridor at all.
“It’s a workshop,” Meena whispered seconds before me. “Do you think it’s Red’s?”
I shrugged. “Take a look around before someone comes in here and we have to explain ourselves.”
Meena spent a good while searching through papers at the desk while the rest of us rifled through bottles of things I didn’t recognize and jars stuffed with various rocks and plants and strange liquids I couldn’t identify.
“Even if some of these are what you’re looking for, I wouldn’t be able to tell,” one of the guards said. “Do you know what it looks like?”
We didn’t answer, and he groaned under his breath.
“He’s right, Meena.” I wiped an exasperated hand over my forehead. “Some of this could very well be what we need, and I’d look right over it.”
“Here,” she said, pointing to a paper in her hand. “We need this.”
In her hands was a diagram of an unassuming plant with tiny leaves on a long, winding stem that looked for all the world like it could have been a weed growing among the moss back home, and I wouldn’t have taken the slightest interest. On the back of the paper, however, was a detailed list of all the times someone had ordered some and at what cost.
It seemed the Temple of Seren was much richer than anticipated.
“Where did you find that?” a strange new voice asked.
Fiery red hair and a strange accent graced my senses, and for a second I didn’t understand that I was looking at a person of this island, let alone this city. But here she stood. “What are you doing?”
The hood of their cloak came down, and more red hair spiraled in long locks around her face and down past her waist, her blue eyes hesitating on mine. When she clicked a gun in our faces, however, I shook my stupid brain free of its shock and held up my hands.
The guards, however, raised their own guns and were now in a stalemate with what I assumed was the owner of this workshop.
Her red cloak shined in what little light her oil lamp gave off, but the clothes beneath seemed less clean, as though it had been a while since she’d had time to get around to the task. “What are you doing in my workshop?” she asked through gritted teeth. “And where did you find that paper? I’ve been looking for it.” She didn’t move, but she did consistently dart her eyes to the piece of paper in Meena’s hand.
I was reluctant to hand it over, but I would if it kept Meena safe. Meena, on the other hand, only gripped it tighter, and I had to repress the frustration that lodged in my throat.
“We,” Meena began, “stumbled in accidentally while getting lost in the church.”
“Sightseeing,” I confirmed.
“I see,” she said as she lowered her weapon. “And on this tour, did you manage to see everything you wanted, Princess?” The surprise on our faces forced a chuckle from her lips. “Did you honestly think I wouldn’t know who you are? And there are no ways into this part of the building from the church above us. Only through a side door and then a locked cellar door that was curiously unlocked when I came upon it.”
She took a deep breath and walked up to Meena, placing the gun to her head. “Hand that over, and I won’t blow your brains out here and now.”
Meena gripped the paper harder, but I snatched it from her and handed it over. “Here.”
“El!” Meena whined.
“It’s not worth your life!”
She stood from the chair and scowled at me, fists clenched tight. “It’s the only chance I have at a life!”
The woman standing in front of us changed her expression and lowered her gun, defeat evident on her face. “Princess, I’m afraid I cannot help you.”
“But—” she started.
“I know what it is you seek, but in all the years my predecessors and I have searched, we have yet to find the answer.”
“So,” I began, “when my father came looking, he didn’t find the answer either?”
Her eyes met mine in a hazy fog of recollection, and the moment the dots connected, surprise crept across her face. “You’re Preston’s daughter?”
I nodded, my eyes darting away from hers.
“He was a great man. If anyone could have figured it out, it was him, but he couldn’t help me. Nor I him.”
My brow furrowed in a silent question she answered before I could speak. “He had a daughter at home who needed him, so he couldn’t stay and help me discover the answer.” She stepped in front of me, her feet almost silent on the stone, and she lifted my chin so our eyes connected once more. “I never understood his decision back then. But looking at you now, I get it. He chose you.”
My cheeks blushed crimson, and I didn’t know what to do with the attention now searing at me. Luckily, Meena did, because she grabbed my hand and cleared her throat. “Excuse me, but can we get back to the task at hand?” Her irritated scowl amused me. “After all, it’s my life we’re focused on.”
I rubbed small circles on the back of her hand and squeezed gently. “How far have you gotten?” I asked.
Running a hand through her long locks, Red grabbed the piece of paper out of Meena’s hand. “I’ve been looking for this for days.” She held it up and pointed to the plant. “This is a plant that grows in the blessed sands, and it has the ability to alter someone’s state of time, but our lifeclocks are complicated, and no one seems able to work with them properly.”
“It’s forbidden,” I reminded her, “so no one has ever learned how.” My hand fiddled with the broken lifeclock in my belt pouch, the one from Dad’s old stuff. “Do you have some herbilore with you?” I rushed to the desk and laid the old lifeclock pieces out, lining them up and trying my best to put them together. But just like before, I didn’t really know how some of these pieces—several of which I had never encountered before—fit. The outer pieces weren’t a problem, but the internal mechanism was like a puzzle inside a maze, and I couldn’t see up from down.
Red placed a vial of dull green liquid beside me, no bigger than my pinky finger, and I grasped it. Red’s fingers, however, didn’t let it go. “My father and his father and his father before him tried hard to figure out how to apply this medicine to a lifeclock, but no one got anywhere, and I inherited the problem.” Her fingers let it go. “I don’t have much, and it’s very expensive stuff.”
“What happens when you just simply drink it?” Meena asked.
“It kills you in seconds,” she responded off the cuff. “The plant is poisonous.”
The guards had been silent with their guns by their sides since Red had holstered hers, pretending to ignore the information in front of them, but it seemed their ability to do that had come to an end, because one of them asked, “So, you’ve been looking for a cure to time?”
“Princess,” the other asked, “why are you looking for this?”
“I’m afraid I cannot tell you that.”
He only had to look at her wrist and the wheelchair she sat in to put the pieces together, and his face smoothed out intentionally as a solid picture formed in his mind. The truth, I imagined. He didn’t seem the stupid sort.
Instead of more questions, he pulled her blanket up farther and stood back, grip tightening on his gun, but he was silent.
“While I can use trial and error, I really won’t know if I have done it right until I’ve tested it on someone.” But I couldn’t do that, because what if I killed someone?
“And you see the problem,” Red said, her voice half snark, half defeat. “Every time I come up with a potential new idea, I have to test it.”
Everyone’s eyes flitted to hers, accusation in them.
“Oh, get off it. Of course I’ve tested it.” She gestured around the dark stone room with her gun. “Does this look like the lair of a sane person?”
I stepped closer to Meena while I worked, placing myself between her and Red, and tinkered faster, aware of the eyes on me and the time-sensitive nature at hand. But no matter how I placed the pieces, how I connected what to what, I got nowhere. “I’m missing something.”
Meena snatched the piece of paper back from Red and scowled at the writing on the back. “You get this from the Temple of Seren, yes?”
“Yes,” she said as she rearranged bottles on the shelf opposite us, again, not turning back to look at us.
“So maybe we need to take this to them?” she asked. “Maybe they have answers they don’t want to share.”
“But they might share with you?”
“Being the princess does have its privileges.”