5. Topple Off the Cliff
Topple Off the Cliff
The room tilted slightly to the right.
“What are you talking about?”
“They don’t let Sideri go free.”
“Well, they’re going to let me go. Even Frater Andren said so,” I protested.
“Not going to happen.”
“Yes. It. Is.” I wanted the words to sound strong and defiant, but they just came out in the vocal register of a startled mouse.
“There’s no freedom for the Sideri. The Sideri are kept in secret, no more than slaves to the ones who own us.”
“No, you’re wrong. We’re honored,” I protested. “We’re celebrated.”
He smirked. “They tell the Sideri those lies so you reveal your embers to them when they manifest.”
The room tilted sharply to the left.
“Us. You said us before.”
He glared at me and then exhaled in irritation, as if he were talking to a child. “My gods, woman, you need to think. You seem pretty intelligent—but apparently common sense must escape you.”
“It does not,” I sputtered. Though, in fairness, common sense had probably packed its bags and left the moment I followed the man who had just threatened to cut answers out of me. But we weren’t going to acknowledge that.
“Do you really think mothers would give up their children? Willingly? Just because of the date they’re born? And that people would celebrate them? The oppressors they defeated two hundred years ago? Those who manifest gifts making everyone else in the population inferior?”
The floor beneath me disappeared, sending me tumbling down into a new reality in which the world hung upside down.
With every ounce of my being, I wanted it to be untrue, but there was a nagging sensation that everything he said made total sense.
Which was deeply annoying. I’d spent almost nineteen years building a rather nice reality, thank you very much—and he was demolishing it in under five minutes.
The image of Frater Andren’s face as I told him about my excitement for the alignment celebration only an hour ago flashed in my mind. He didn’t share in the excitement. More than that, his reaction made no sense at all. Unless…
What had he said? I just don’t want you to be disappointed if things don’t go as planned. I assumed he was referring to the possible delay of the alignment. But maybe he was referring to the disappointment that there would be no celebration at all.
My breath caught in my throat—or was it the fact that I would never actually see the city? That I would never leave these walls. That my days were numbered.
I wanted to disbelieve every word that came out of this man’s mouth.
But I couldn’t. All those little puzzle pieces that never quite fit.
They would answer no questions about our parents.
They never allowed us to see the outside world.
I’d never even had the chance to speak to another Sideri after they left the Citadel.
Until now.
I'd been ignoring the doubt. Assembling the picture while they'd been hiding half the pieces and insisting the pile of inconsistencies were just—what? Creative interpretation?
His face softened just a fraction.
I couldn’t come up with a reason this man would lie about this, but there were also countless reasons not to trust him.
He was dangerous, hostile, and downright contentious.
But in that moment, when the brows over his green eyes eased away from the bridge of his nose, a glimmer of understanding crossed his face.
And for someone who was so accustomed to being the outcast, the anomaly, the defect…
that little change in his hard expression meant more to me than I was willing to admit.
The look was gone a second later as he shook his head. “You need to get over—”
There was a clatter from above.
Voices and the thunder of heavy boots echoed down the stairwell. And not just one pair of boots, but many, many pairs of boots.
Both our eyes widened.
They were after him. I’d come down here every night for several moon cycles, and no one suspected. He’s here one night and attracts a search party.
With a papery rasp of metal, he pulled two deadly looking short swords from somewhere under his overcoat. He paused, his eyes snagging on the beam of light shining on Tenebris Forest. “They can’t know.”
Right. This evening was already chaotic enough without adding secret locations into the mix. I ran over to the mechanism, readjusted the dials quickly, and sent the crank spinning.
“We’re trapped. Need to get out of sight,” he whispered, already moving toward one of the many arched entryways encircling the room.
“And then what?” I questioned, catching up with him. “We hide behind some conveniently placed skulls and hope they eventually get bored?”
Incredulous green eyes flickered in my direction before he charged through the archway and into one of the many corridors of the catacombs, scanning the alcoves for an opening large enough to conceal us.
Oh, wait. “But there is a way out.”
He swung around to face me. “Are you sure? Where?”
For a split second, I didn’t want to tell him. What reason did I have to keep helping him? And then I remembered: I’m not supposed to be down here either. This was saving us both.
“Follow me,” I whispered, stepping past him toward deeper trouble, and quickly accepting that we were officially accomplices now.
I led him through the corridor and down a long, dusty passageway. The clatter descending the stairs grew louder. We had very little time.
“This way.”
Lumin rock sprinkled across the arched ceiling illuminated the skulls in their neat rows—skulls that grew older and older the further we traveled.
We finally darted into an alcove with a large sarcophagus.
The carvings on the stone lid were almost worn smooth with age.
Tugging the lumin shard necklace from underneath the collar of my robe, I ducked behind it, passing through the small opening that wasn’t visible in the near darkness.
I turned to watch him squeeze through while being very careful not to touch the coffin.
Interesting. I didn’t take him to be the type to be squeamish.
The man carried around multiple rude pieces of cutlery, but apparently ancient stone boxes were where he drew the line.
Then he straightened, only to realize that he would have to crouch low to avoid hitting his head on the rock above us. As we moved along with nothing but pitch blackness ahead, I lifted the hem of my heavy robe to step over the uneven ground and debris littering the tunnel.
Could this shadowy, menacing man be telling the truth? Did I have only weeks to live? What did that say about my intelligence if everything I believed came from nursery rhymes told to fool children?
And what of the restricted section of the library with its frustratingly secure lock and all those intriguing books I was never allowed to read?
I just assumed they contained inappropriate sonnets or scandalous illustrations of bare ankles.
But what if ‘restricted’ was just another word for ‘inconveniently true’?
I’d never stepped outside the Citadel. There weren’t even windows in this building to gaze at the surrounding city.
Everything I knew about the world had been fed to me by the tutors or read in books—but of course only the ones they allowed me to read.
It suddenly felt like a rather comprehensive education in absolutely nothing useful.
I would be in denial if I didn’t consider that horrible man who came to the Citadel two years ago, whose sole purpose was to draw out my ember using pain and fear.
My stomach turned itself inside out. After that, how could I even begin to believe that they wouldn’t harm me now?
A shutter ran up my spine, and I locked those memories down. Now was not the time for a breakdown.
Frater Andren…could he have known that they didn’t plan to let me live?
The closest person to a friend I had in this entire world?
No, I refused to think that the man who sang to me while I healed up from the beatings could have known.
He sat outside my bedroom door all those nights and sang every song from the Chanson of the Stars in his deep, gravelly baritone voice. I just wouldn’t believe it.
I glanced behind me at the man; his riot of blonde waves again shielding his face as he ducked to avoid the low ceiling.
He was Sideri. There was no potens lock I could see, but he said “us”.
He also stated that there was no way out of here.
Like he had spent enough time in these tunnels at some point searching to think that there wasn’t an exit.
Why did he come back? What is significant about the vernal equinox and that location in Tenebris Forest? Those men were after him. A lot of men. If they were after me, a guard of two would have sufficed. I was quite certain I ranked much lower on the threat scale than Big Scary Man.
Moving further from the catacombs, we rushed through the twists and turns of the tunnel. Soon, we came upon a partially collapsed section so tight that even I had to crawl through. I wasn’t sure the man would fit. A bulge in his overcoat lodged between him and a boulder.
He backed out to reach under the black fabric to pull out a dagger and set it on the ground just past the opening.
I stared at the shiny metal with the black leather-wrapped hilt.
Another one dropped next to it. And then another, this one ornate with a green stone grip and a silver pommel.
Then a handful of small, flat, all-metal knives with short handles.
Were those the knives you threw? And then, out of nowhere, the dull rasp of a set of twin short swords sliding free of their scabbards echoed through the small space.
He placed them on the pile with the rest of the weapons.
I took a step back from all those stabby bits. I’d never seen so many dangerous things in one place. Where did he hide all that? Did he have some sort of dimensional pocket sewn into the lining of that overcoat?