17. Chapter 17
Willow
Logan will not like this.
Liam had repeated that one sentence a total of six times since we left the mansion and I’d told the carriage driver to head for the Basilica instead of the town centre.
I was tired of lounging around and waiting for Logan to find the right time for everything.
Time was what I did not have. There was only a quarter of a faded shadow left on my shoulder.
Too many dead Mortdale nobles and an unaccounted number of dead witches.
Whatever had happened to the Mortdale witches had also happened to those born in Meridian—Cassandra included.
She was the only reason why I had struggled to believe what Gerda told me at the Cleansing.
Logan wouldn’t do it. Not to his sister.
If the same thing that had happened to her had happened to the others, he wouldn’t keep it a secret. Right?
Right?
With Thomas tucked in my pocket, I strutted inside the holy grounds like I belonged there. Parasol in hand and top hat at a rakish angle, as Theodora had called it, I looked like a proper lady. Minus the stinky sewer rat in my pocket currently chewing on a cricket.
And minus the anxious guard trailing behind me like a lost puppy. “You’re not supposed to venture so far from the city. The Basilica and the town are not under Logan’s jurisdiction. This is the exarch's territory. And he’s been dying to get his fingers on Logan’s witch for a while now.”
“Does he have any reason to harm me?”
“Yes,” he hissed, looking around at the acolytes who’d stopped doing what they’d been doing to stare at us. “Everyone has a reason to harm you.”
“I’m a cleansed witch.”
“You’re Logan’s.”
“I didn’t know my husband had so many enemies.”
“He has very few friends.”
The exarch didn’t seem surprised at my sudden appearance. He was wearing his huge vestments, only today he had a deep green chasuble with a white stole around his neck instead of the pure vivid red ensemble from the Cleansing.
“Lady Duncan, what a pleasure,” he greeted. “You must have questions.”
Questions?
What was he on about?
He took my hands in his, and I tried not to shrink away from him. “All your kind does after the Cleansing.” A slimy shudder raked down my shoulder blades when his thumbs worked back and forth over my hands. “I will always be here to answer them.”
“Yes,” I said, pulling my hands from his and folding them behind my back. “I have so many of them. So, so many questions.” Running my eyes over the Basilica grounds, I asked, “There was this lovely gentleman the other day. I forgot to thank him for helping me find my way around.”
“Gentleman?”
“A Fredrick?”
His eyes pinched at the corners as he slipped on a polite smile. “No Fredrick in here. All acolytes carry their baptismal names in our old languages.”
“Ah,” I said, nodding and threading my elbow through his, pulling him on a walk to cover more of the Basilica grounds.
He was obviously startled because I was practically dragging him around.
“My husband read me some of the Chronicles last night, and I got curious. Is it true that Sankta Katerina is buried under the Basilica?” I brushed a hand playfully against his chest. “Or is it just for…theatrics?”
I’d aimed for pride or ego at best, but struck his balls by the twisted look on his face. “It is absolutely true. We do not invent stories about our Saints, Lady Duncan.”
I put my gloved hand on his arm, and that seemed to catch him by surprise—his anger softening. “Call me Willow.”
I heard Liam sigh and mumble between his teeth. “He’s going to cut the damn exarch’s arms off now.”
“I’m really sorry for insinuating, I just find it a little hard to imagine,” I said with a sigh. “A Saint,” I went on. “Buried so…poorly. One would think it would be under gold or in a palace.”
Where was I going with this?
Did I want him to bake me on a pyre for my witch mouth, or actually take me down there?
He nodded, much more patiently than I’d expected. Probably because his hand had moved to my lower back—which I’d only noticed because Liam made another comment about the exarch losing his legs to my husband. “Our Saints are humble.”
“Is it possible for me to pay my respects? I truly want to devote myself fully. Since the Cleansing, I’ve found myself…immersed,” I said, smiling like the stone saint behind him.
The exarch paused, forcing me to pause with him.
He sent a narrowed glance in Liam’s direction—glaring and glaring as if waiting for my young guard to crack like an egg in boiling water.
He slid an easy smile on, turning to me again.
“Maybe another time. Someone will escort you out. Have a great day, Lady Duncan.”
Damn it. Onto plan B.
I reached into my pocket and shoved Thomas out. “I’ll get you a juicy chicken if you can keep them busy for at least a good fifteen minutes.”
“Too many feathers. Get me a dog.”
I gagged. “Absolutely not.”
“Then a cat. A big, round one.”
I gasped. “Turkey. Last offer. Or be happy with bugs for the rest of your life.”
“We have a deal. It better be a big one. And alive.”
A full five seconds later, screaming ensued.
I grabbed the young soldier by his lapels. “Liam, you have about five minutes to take me down there.”
He looked like he’d been struck by bouts of neurasthenia as he shakily asked, “Why…why were you talking to your rat?”
“Don’t ask questions you won’t like hearing the answers to.”
He mumbled a very, very long prayer between his teeth as we ran across hall after hall, diving at least three floors down before reaching a locked heavy iron sectoring door sealing the tunnels.
The sickly sweet scent was almost caustic, heating my throat with each inhale even all the way across the giant wooden door.
After a few long agonising seconds of fiddling with my hairpin in the lock, I managed to pry it open.
“You’re truly terrifying,” Liam whispered.
“You should see what I can do with a comb.”
I brought my gloved hand to my nose when the sugary, choking vapour filling the tunnels clogged my airway. Light particles floated in the air when I shone the lamp ahead. It wasn’t dust or ash, it was…pollen.
“What in the name of the saintly Hells,” Liam muttered, stepping beside me.
The tunnel walls and floor were leaking a gooey red slime, covered in a layer of burgundy red flowers reeking a scent so cloying it made my eyes water.
Was this why the exarch didn’t want to bring us here?
I tested some remnants of soot between my fingers.
This was what they’d been burning down here? Flowers? Just flowers?
And they’d sprouted again.
Liam grabbed my arm when I reached to pluck a flower. “Woah, crazy witch lady. Are you supposed to touch those?”
“They’re not poisonous. Scabiosa atropurpurea, pretty common flowers, actually,” I said, taking my handkerchief and folding it around the flowers I'd collected. “It’s a genus in the honeysuckle family.” My voice drifted off in the last sentence. “That’s why it smells like…honey.”
The exact same scent I’d smelled in Alfred’s work room. The same scent from the Basilica gardens I’d smelled that day. It had never been cadaverine or putrescine. It had never been the scent of rot. It had been flowers. But it was syrupy, and in a mawkish way.
Liam sniffed the air, turning towards the doors and gagging. “Why is the wall leaking…that? Looks and almost smells like blood.”
“It’s just water and red podzolic soil; it’s high in iron, that’s why it smells metallic and musky,” I said, smearing some between my gloved fingers. “But where’s the damp coming from?” I murmured, glancing around at the tunnel ceilings.
“Pretty sure there’s a well in the Basilica grounds.”
Scooping up some of the red, watery gunk in a hairclip, I emptied a tin of talcum on the ground and stuck the pin into it.
Liam looked pretty disturbed. “How did these flowers grow in absolute darkness?”
“A question I can’t answer the way you want me to.”
“I don’t smell magic, Willow. Null, nought, none. Not even a little bit.”
“You can smell magic, but you cannot smell chaos,” I said, pulling a needle pin from my hat and pricking my finger. “Your nose is already used to it because chaos is in everything. In all of us. Me and you included.”
“No, no!” Liam whisper-yelled when I lifted the bloodied finger to my forehead. “Absolutely no magic. Not here, crazy lady. They will come on us like hounds! That’s unless I don’t pounce on you like one first. Magic makes us crazy, remember?”
“It’s not magic,” I said, trailing my bleeding finger across my forehead.
“What are you doing?”
“Testing chaos. Dark chaos and white chaos don’t mix.
They’re like oil and water.” Chaos churned within the bounds of my body, and I stumbled on my feet, a little lightheaded when a force of unusual gravity assaulted my body.
It was like a blood rush. Chaos pulling and pooling to my head as the dark flowers started vibrating.
Something groaned above us, as if hinges of rusted iron were pulling open, and Liam let out a succession of cuss words.
He paced back and forth, chewing on his thumb. “Saints, she’s lost her damn mind. He’s going to kill me. Saints, he’s going to tear my throat open and let me slowly bleed in front of hungry dogs.”
Liam suddenly went quiet, sliding close behind me and tapping my hand with his before he reached for his gun.
My attention rose from the ground when a dark voice called, “Miss Briar, are you lost?”
I wiped the blood mark off my forehead and turned around. “It’s Lady Duncan,” I said, facing him—Fredrick. The human corpse that I had embalmed with my own hands.
“It is, isn’t it?” He bowed his head lightly. “My mistake.”
“It’s Fredrick, right?”
The man’s limbs sounded rigid as he moved. “Balos. That’s what they call me here.”
“Ah.”
“If you’ll pardon me, Lady Duncan.”
Liam stepped forward when Friedrick passed by us, disappearing down the humid tunnel. “Did he follow us down here?”
My brow still burned even with my back turned away from the tunnels, skin pounding with a dull ache. “Does he smell human to you?”