3. As Heavy as a Secret
As Heavy as a Secret
Sharply backing away from the apothecary’s lethal decor, my heel caught the edge of a workbench.
A mortar teetered as I froze mid-step, my body locking in that delightful ‘oh no’ posture where you’re not sure if you’re going to cause the end of the world or just embarrass yourself.
The pestle clinked and then rolled against the soapstone before falling silent again.
I exhaled sharply and risked a glance back at the drying plants. Wolfsbane slows the heart, causing paralysis. There was enough here to sedate a dozen men. Or kill them.
Why in the name of the forgotten gods would the midwives be preparing such a quantity?
Unless the Citadel was planning on hosting a very aggressive population management gala.
It felt excessive, really. And I know my social standing is somewhere between ‘useful but unsightly furniture’ and ‘that stain on the rug nobody's bothered to clean,’ but I would think a mass culling warranted at least a courtesy mention.
As if I were expecting them to bite, I gave the suspicious flowers a wide berth and scurried back toward the—
I froze. A muffled murmur came from right outside the door.
Just as it creaked open, I dove behind the nearest workbench. I pressed myself into the shadowed space between the table legs and the wall as air seized in my lungs.
“I swear I heard something,” a woman whispered.
Candlelight spilled into the room like liquid gold as two women entered.
Altrix midwives, by the look of them. Unmistakable with starched linen coifs on their heads and long aprons draped over the rough-spun crimson robes of their order.
The one who’d spoken moved with the subtle authority of the tidemother, her dark eyes sharp under a silver-streaked brow.
“Probably nothing,” the other said, candle aloft. The threadmother. “But it was unlocked. Again.”
The flickering glow moved across the room until it landed on the bundles of wolfsbane.
The tidemother shook her head. “Look at that.” She cast a steady glance at the plants, lips pressed together as if wishing they weren’t there. “More than enough, I’d say.”
“Mmm. Everything’s in place then.”
A pause lingered.
“The others are ready?”
“They’ve all secured their services. Timing…” the threadmother murmured with a sigh. “Well. That’s always the hard part.”
Services? Timing? My tangled brain, always ready to assist, supplied a list of possibilities. None of which was comforting. A coup? A culling? A really aggressive bake-off? I noticed the threadmother’s slight frown, a shadow passing over her features. Even they didn’t seem fully on board.
“The door should be locked,” the tidemother said sharply.
There was a sound of agreement. “The matron should have the key.”
Seconds later, the door clicked shut behind them. My ribs ached with every thump of my heart. I waited for the silence to settle.
I had no idea what the midwives were planning. But I suspected getting caught right now would obligate them to invite me to their little poison party.
Pulling out my lumin shard, I tip-toed to the door. I cracked it, listening for voices. For movement. For footsteps.
The hallway was empty, so I bolted toward the stairs. But in the short distance, I slipped on the recently polished floor. So much for being quiet. With cart-wheeling arms, I slid into the stairwell door with a thump.
Smooth, Wren. Real spy material.
Daring to open it only a crack, I squeezed through and listened.
There were still three floors below me, but the entrance to the tunneling catacomb stairs was located down on the next floor.
Then, it was a quick dash down the corridor to the closet.
I shouldered my way in to the small space and took a moment to calm my hyperventilating lungs.
The first time I hid in this closet, I hadn’t acquired the lumin shard yet. The glow from the crack by the floor had been much more apparent, illuminating the space as if a candle were burning.
Now, the lumin shard’s white glow washed over the dusty shelves filled with old vases, terracotta urns, and tapered candles bent like the spines of ancient scholars. Two brooms stood sentinel in the corner, their bristles brittle with age.
Wait.
I frowned at the chair with the broken leg. It was angled a tad too far to the right. Suddenly, I felt uneasy. Had I really rushed out that fast last night? I scanned the cramped closet, but nothing else looked out of place.
Discovering poison must be making me paranoid.
Shaking my head, I nudged it back and found the divot on the back wall. As heavy as a secret and smooth as a lie, the door groaned open.
Light flooded in. Much like the shard hanging from my neck, the pieces of lumin rock speckled the stone walls of the descending spiral staircase like stars in the sky.
They illuminated the rough-hewn walls, which were far older than the Citadel’s smooth granite.
Archways lined the descent, each one framing the open center of the stairwell.
The moss and bracken-encrusted stone stretched down to the mosaic floor far below as if it were an endless well.
The air thickened as I descended, rich with musty petrichor and tinged with iron.
The breath of the earth itself. I inhaled deeply and let the aroma of my underground paradise fill my lungs, my bones, and all the hollow places inside.
The constant restlessness that tickled beneath my skin—and seemed to get worse with each passing day—eased slightly.
This was my safe place. My secret place. Down here, there were no cracked marble tiles. No looks of pity or whispered insults. Just the peaceful regard of a few thousand dead Sideri—who had bigger problems than my social standing.
My pulse still thrummed from all the close calls tonight. So I made myself pause at the bottom of the stairs for my nightly ritual of leaving behind everything above me.
I focused on the familiar mosaic on the circular floor of the stairwell.
The intricate pattern of navy, royal blue, and gold depicted the night sky like a star map, with the alignment of the asteroid Alauda and the double quasar of Caster and Pollux at the center.
Forever marking the moment every few sun cycles when the old Sideri religion claimed the stars fell and touched the earth.
The story behind the moment was a love story, of course.
As most Sideri stories were. Castor and Pollux had heard a song carried up from the world below and had fallen in love with the same woman—Alauda, a celestial traveler who had begun her life as a skylark on the earth and could not be persuaded to settle anywhere for long.
The twins, fixed in their place in the sky, could only be reunited with her in the hours when the asteroid she had become passed between them and the world.
During the solar day of that alignment, every child born within the Astrum Obelisks would be born Sideri. Children of Gemini.
I'd traced these tiles a dozen times. Studied every chip and crack. Counted the points of each constellation. Marveled that the Sideri mapped the cosmos with a manic devotion I could understand deep in my now-steady heart.
I ran the tip of my finger over the glossy tile depicting Alauda.
Here, and only here in all the Citadel, she was rendered as she’d begun—as a bird.
Everywhere else she was the asteroid, the traveler, the point of light between the twins.
But here…here the artist understood that it was in this place she could truly be herself.
Satisfied with my calming technique, I meandered into the passageways, with their rows and rows of dusty skulls aligned on shelves stretching between tombs. A subterranean cemetery for the Sideri’s dead, displayed here in a place of honor during their two thousand-year reign.
Each skull was unique. Some were intact, and some were missing teeth. Some were small and fine as eggshells, others thick and brutal as war-hammers. All staring with vacant, empty eyes.
I’d named a few of my favorites. There was Edmond, who had an impressive crack across his forehead.
He clearly lost a fight with a wall. And Ophelia, whose delicate bone structure suggested she’d been lovely once.
I’d like to think she had a scandalous affair and her last words had been deliciously inappropriate. A smile tugged at my lips.
I found greater peace here in this underground necropolis than with the living in the Citadel above. Which probably said something about my mental state, but I refused to examine that too closely.
Making a left, I strolled down one of the curving main corridors. Like the spokes of a wheel, the passageways encircled and radiated out from the cavernous main chamber at the center.
I stepped into one of the cramped antechambers leading to my destination when my skin prickled. The air stirred with a vaguely familiar sound of rustling fabric. Suddenly my illusion of solitude snapped the moment steel met skin.
And instantly I knew. The person on the stairs. The chair.
Someone had found my closet.