Chapter Twenty-Three
Twenty-three
Wren broke her fast in my room. She picked suspiciously at the food offered by the Lys’Careths but clearly enjoyed everything she sampled.
I was ravenous after last night’s Aetheric maneuverings, and I ate everything she’d left behind while I told her about the prince’s uncle, Luna’s visit, and what we’d done.
Sitting in the chair across from me, one leg crossed over the other, she stared at me for a long, quiet time. “So it wasn’t coincidence that Luna found us all those years ago. She’d been looking for us.”
“That’s what it sounds like.”
“It was pretty random that an Anima communicated with us just to point out a rabbit.”
“It was a deer.”
“It was a rabbit.”
“Agree to disagree.”
She waved that away. “She’s always been protective of you. I thought it was because she felt bad about your pain. Sounds like there was more to it. Someone must have asked her to protect you. Had to be your father, right?”
“I don’t know who else it could be.” I had no other family, and this wasn’t a storybook. Fairies weren’t planning my rescue.
“How do you feel about the Aetheric business?”
“Physically, I feel better than I have since the practitioner. It’s like she cleaned away what he did, the scar he left behind. As for the doorway, I don’t think I did much. She formed the connection. I just let it happen.”
She nodded.
“Are you going to tell him?”
No need to explain who “him” was. “That I let an Anima open a doorway to another realm in the middle of his palace? Of course not.” Seeing ghosts was one thing.
Even if opening a doorway wasn’t enough to make me a practitioner, which Luna seemed to think, it might still draw the Emperor Eternal’s attention. Of course, he’d have to catch me first.
We were silent for a moment while she stared at the only sausage we’d left on the plate, apparently debating whether to indulge in another one. “I do know that someone imprisoning a damned god isn’t the shit we need right now.”
“Maybe you should skip the blasphemy given the general state of things.”
“Maybe they should skip being arseholes.”
The sausage was looking good to me, too, so I cut it in two, stabbed one half for her, and passed it over. “Do you think she’ll ever tell me all of it?”
Wren sighed, uncrossed her legs, and folded her arms on the table. “I don’t know. And I don’t know if she knows all of it.”
“Tell me what you didn’t tell the prince last night,” I said. “What are the rumors about the Aetheric practitioner?”
She chewed. “Mostly angry ghosts doing bad deeds.”
“There are always rumors about that,” I said. “And it’s usually humans doing the damage.”
“Always. I did hear something about a woodworker who went for a job in the foothills but hasn’t come back. There’s been no sign of her.”
“Maybe she took her chance to go to the City of Flowers?” Pay was rumored to be higher in the capital, where there was more wealth to go around.
Wren lifted a shoulder. “They say she was always busy. Had orders from around the stronghold. It might amount to nothing, but I’ll let you know if I hear anything.”
I sighed. “I don’t like sitting around all day, especially not while you’re out there working and earning coin. This place is ruining me.”
“It’s been three days.”
“Three days with a soft bed and square meals and warm clothes and no attacks on my person. Servants and guards and fancy celebrations.” I lifted a foot. “And look at these damned boots.”
She nodded. “They’re good boots. You need to take the clothes with you when you leave.”
“So I can ruin them with mud and shit? No, thanks. It will be back to holey tunics. I won’t be trying to impress a prince then.”
Her brows lifted. “You’re trying to impress him?”
“I’m trying to not get kicked out of the castle for being slovenly.”
“Lys’Careth or not, I don’t think he’d do that. But there is something to be said for looking the part. And you’re playing the part of…”
“Palace guest?”
“Something like that.”
The faster I stopped the Aetheric practitioner, the faster the stronghold would be safe—and I could return to my old life. The longer I stayed here, the harder that return would be.
“You don’t have to be in a hurry,” she said.
My eyes nearly pitched out of their sockets. “Excuse me? Aren’t you the one always warning me off getting too close to royals?”
“I get the entire bed to myself. And Nheve feels bad I’m still in the manor, so she gives me more food.” She looked at me and smiled slyly. “We’re both being spoiled.”
When we’d eaten our fill, I escorted her through the palace to the library to show her what I’d found. It seemed there were fewer stacks of books and papers near the door, so maybe Talia had sent a servant to work on it while guests were at the party.
Wren walked inside and stared up at the jewel box ceiling, then the piles around the room. “Shame no one took care of it.”
“The palace is an archive, and the former prince apparently didn’t care.” I looked at her speculatively. “Talia offered me a job sorting through it. I declined. You want?”
“No,” she said. The word came out quickly, an automatic rejection. But her eyes—wide and hungry—told a different story. I wondered if she was imagining how many people she might heal with the knowledge contained there. “Are there healing tomes?”
Gods, it was satisfying to know someone so well. “No idea. You can search for yourself.”
“Well,” she said, casting her gaze across the room. And I marked it as the first time I’d ever seen Wren fall in love with something that didn’t have a blade.
“But first, prepare yourself,” I said. She followed me to the bookshelf and made a satisfied noise when I opened the panel.
She walked in first, then made an unsatisfied noise when she saw what it held (honestly, nothing). “It’s an empty room.”
“Now it’s empty. But just imagine what it might have held before.”
“More books?”
“Secret maneuverings,” I said, spreading my hands for emphasis. “Rebellious plots.”
“Stronghold ledgers, locked up so the figures couldn’t be altered.”
“Let me have my intrigue, Wren.” I walked to the bookshelf, climbed the ladder, and pulled down the book. “There’s also a book in a secret language.” I handed it to her. “Maybe Eonian?”
She opened the book, flipped one page after another. “It’s not Eonian,” she concluded. “I mean, I only know a few words, but this is nonsense. The letters look Eonian, but these aren’t Eonian words.”
“Not words,” I said, and stared down at the pages. “Maybe it’s in code. One letter substituted for another.”
“Maybe. You’d need the key to read it—the list of substituted letters. And even then, they might still be written in Eonian, which you can’t read.”
“Damn it.”
“Does it matter?” she asked. “If it’s been in here for gods know how long, nobody needed it.”
“You’re probably right.”
She frowned, crouched down, and swept her fingers across the floor.
“It’s dusty in here, I know. Hasn’t been cleaned since it was emptied.”
“Not dust,” she said, and rose, then turned her fingertips toward me. They were smeared with something dark gray. “Ash,” she said.
I brought over a candle and crouched beside her. She was right. There was ash in spots across the floor.
“They didn’t just clean it out,” I said. “They burned things.”
“Now I’m interested,” she said. “But we can’t do anything without the code. And I bet the code was burned like everything else.”
She rose and dusted her hands.
“I just wanted to do something helpful,” I said. “The Aetheric practitioner is still out there, and Luna’s focus is on saving the god.”
She put a hand on my shoulder, squeezed gently. “You opened a door to the Aetheric and saved a Guardian’s life. That’s helpful. I’m going to look for healing books.”
I nodded, took the secret book, and closed the door behind us. It would be much easier, I figured, to hide a single book among thousands than to keep the secret room hidden while we were using it. I was still nervous about locking us inside.
While she perused the stacks and shelves, I sat down at a small table with the secret book and stared at the letters until my eyes watered. I looked for patterns: names, repetitive words, numbers. Anything that might give me a thread to pull. But if there was a pattern, I couldn’t find it.
The exercise was likely pointless. It was an old book in a room no one had visited in years. Yes, it was a lock I hadn’t yet learned to pick, and those were always fun. But I had other concerns—real concerns—so I shoved it into the bookshelf closest to the table.
When I’d first come into the library, I’d only gone through a couple of the bookshelves looking for information about the Aetheric. Wren sat on the floor in front of the shelves I’d already checked, an enormous book in her lap. So I crossed to the other side of the room and began my search.
An hour later, my neck was aching, and I’d found only a pamphlet printed on the thinnest paper I’d ever seen with a bit of scratching about Aetheric energy.
Still on the ladder, I flipped through it, but it was mostly advice for people who wanted to plead with Anima for favors or to leave them alone.
Nothing I could use. So I stuck it back on the shelf and climbed down the ladder, nearly tripping over one of the piles of books I’d forgotten was behind me.
I managed not to toss myself onto the floor, but the books weren’t as lucky.
I considered leaving them there—what was good enough for a prince was good enough for a thief—but I couldn’t stoop to that level.
So I crouched and gathered them up, adding them back to the precarious pile from which they’d fallen.
The last volume I replaced was a clothbound book with A Record of Carethia embossed in gold on the front. I glanced at the stack. The book beneath it had the same title, but with a date a fortnight earlier. These must have been the archived reports dumped in the room and left to molder.