Chapter 19 #3
I couldn’t stop myself from peering through any open doors, which abruptly ended when I tried to look over a wall of chthonium bricks and found myself peering into a garden.
My first thought was of the courtyard above us in the black level—the path of stones, the wriggling black grass, the trees that had tracked me with a strange, hungry awareness.
And then I realized none of these plants were recognizable, though they were alive and well, unlike virtually every other plant I’d seen in the city.
Chthonium pipes extended between two hives, spraying a fine mist over the lush, primeval garden. There was a walking path and bench set in the midst of it all, giving the strange impression that this had been transplanted Below from a lai’s manor, but for the primordial appearance of the plants.
Moss grew over the bench, clear red drops of liquid beading on the fuzzy, pale green carpet.
A tree of thick branches and glass-smooth bark leaned over it, shedding fleshy petals, and massive ferns the size of horse carriages unfurled and dripped, their fronds ragged and colored with streaks of red and yellow.
All familiar, and yet I had never seen a fern, moss, or tree quite like that, not even in books.
But there was something natural about them, despite their thick veining and strange coloration.
I looked at them and knew, somehow, that these were grown from seeds, untampered with, and though they might not be recognizable, they were entirely authentic to themselves.
“I wonder where they found these. The Southern Expanse, perhaps?” There was no hiding the uncertainty in my tone. Surely a naturalist would have brought back samples of such plants.
Wroth leaned over my shoulder, grunted, and pointed at something near the bench. I stared harder, tracing outlines, until I realized what I had taken for stones under a carpet of moss was, in fact, a body. The moss was eating it.
“Oh.” I mouthed the word, backing away from the wall, which the moss was making a valiant effort to climb over.
Rasmus looked at the lush greenery, his hand twitching as though he held an alchemist’s kit and wished to take samples, but he turned away. “That’s Roderic in there, I believe. He collected botanical samples for the lai Heriot alchemist.”
He was utterly toneless, and kept walking with his shoulders hunched and his head down.
“Does anyone else smell that?” Marrion muttered, and Wroth nodded, though all I could smell was the thick, earthy scent of the garden.
But based on how Marrion wrinkled her nose and shook her head a little, I knew I wasn’t going to like it much when I was close enough to smell what she was scenting.
I also didn’t like the quiet. The silence was oppressive, so smothering that my own heartbeat echoed in my ears. Liuridar had been awful, but at least the roar of the river and the trickling of the waterfalls had been in the background, giving it some semblance of life.
This part of the city, hidden beyond the Gates, just felt like a grave. The kind of grave where the corpses were watching with dead eyes and malicious awareness.
The thought sent a shudder down my spine, and I realized that’s exactly what this place felt like, being watched. Not even in the city itself had I felt such a sensation, and yet there was nothing living in sight.
“Over here,” Rasmus said, his shuffling feet picking up speed. “Just around this corner.”
Wroth moved forward eagerly, but I found myself slowing down, a hand on my pistol and ready to draw.
We turned the corner, and found the undeniable mess of human settlement in the middle of a wide expanse.
Wooden crates had been stacked amid piles of debris.
A campfire had long since burned itself out to cold ash, the remains of a half-eaten potato and a pipe packed with charred dreamroot left before it.
Bedrolls were scattered here and there; clothes had been flung over a fishing line hastily tied between hives and forgotten.
One of the hives stood with the door open, and a crate of chthonium ingots had been upended, spilling out across the road.
As Wroth strode towards the camp to sift through the debris, I motioned to Talos, peering inside the house.
The golem aimed his beam of light inside, revealing that the sleeping-chrysalis had been torn down, and instead there was an actual wooden bed in its place.
A simple one, to be sure, but I snorted nonetheless.
“I suppose Alvar was too dainty to sleep on the ground with his men,” I muttered, my eyes drifting to his pack, overfilled with fine clothes and tools.
A few discarded pieces of human Artifice remained among his possessions: a compass whose needle spun wildly, the sort of lighter I kept in my own pocket for emergencies, a jeweler’s loupe for fine detail-work.
None of it compared to the small pieces of chthonium Fae Artifice littered among them; moving quickly and quietly, I wrapped a smooth-edged rectangle the size of my palm that emitted a soft noise when touched, an instrument of whirling, clacking crystal tubes, and a device that bore a passing strange resemblance to my own Pathfinder beetle, stowing them in my pack.
As small and inconsequential as the pieces seemed, they would be a trove for the Collegium Artificers to ponder.
Afterwards, I upended his pack. Tools clanked on the floor as I sorted through his belongings—his wrenches and turnscrews were of the finest steel, and I yanked several velvet jackets edged with Forian lace out, but there was nothing else of note.
Under Alvar’s bed, which I noticed had fine linen sheets and a silk bolster pillow, there was a small wooden chest.
I used Alvar’s own lever to pry it open and began sorting through the contents. There were several letters written on expensive parchment and sealed with the lai Orros crest, and I felt no guilt whatsoever as I opened them.
An icy fist squeezed my heart as I read through his correspondence, the promises of gold and weapons to several of the wealthiest, most influential lai noblemen in the Rivers in exchange for their support, the assurances that all was going according to plan.
And beneath the letters was a small pile of gold.
The coins were odd, perhaps foreign; he had brought a hell of a lot of money for someone with nowhere to spend it.
I pocketed the letters, closed the chest, and shoved it back under the bed.
Before I left, I picked up the compass out of curiosity, watching the needle continue to spin and jerk wildly.
When I stepped back out of the hive, Wroth was still crouched before the campfire’s ashes, frowning. “They haven’t been here for some time.”
“No,” Wroth said, sounding distracted. “They went this way.”
I followed his line of sight to see a wide hole amidst the rugae of the walls, another tunnel with the sinuous sigils of the Fae inscribed around it. Marrion’s palm was held towards the entrance as she nodded in agreement.
“Here,” I told Wroth, handing him the packet of letters. He opened one and read it, his scowl deepening into the sort of expression one must see right before the fiend ripped their guts out, but I laid a hand on his shoulder as he shook his head and sighed.
“They played your brother like a fiddle,” he told Rasmus, slipping the letters inside his shirt. “Gave him just enough rope to hang himself with, and he rushed straight to the gallows without looking twice.”
Rasmus said nothing.
“But where was he planning to acquire all this promised gold? Not even your mother’s family stipend would cover these amounts,” Wroth mused.
“What else were they looking for?” I asked Rasmus, and he shivered as he gazed into the mouth of the tunnel, finally shaking his head. It was like this place had struck him silent.
“There was plenty to be found right here. Chthonium, Artifice…there was no need to explore further.” I couldn’t reconcile the bed frame, implying a long-term existence down here, nor Alvar’s cavalier attitude toward exploration, with the weight of this place.
We all felt it pressing down on us, the heaviness of its hatred, and yet they had gone further still.
“He could’ve sold it all for a fortune. Why on earth would he go in there? ”
“Some men just don’t know when to stop.” Wroth eyed us, counting the knights, and finally tossed his mane and shook out his shoulders defiantly. “And neither do we.”