Chapter Thirty-Two
The entrance was just as I remembered it: black-tongued and depthless, the drop of the staircase visible just past the threshold, like a cliff edge falling away into nothingness.
After being notably absent all day, the rain returned with night’s descent, emerging with a great howl like a nocturnal animal.
Thunder had rattled the stained glass windows as I’d raced through Fortblanche, a cloak clenched tight around my neck, its hood pulled over my features so I was just another shadow amongst the gloom.
Determined not to repeat my mistakes from my previous visit, I carried a Woven lamp, which I’d taken from my quarters, clutched like a beacon in my hand.
I’d encountered few people on my way to the workroom where I knew the tunnel passage lay, nodding blithely to the handful of servants I’d passed by in the detached way I’d seen Eliot do—as if the staff were very young children I did not have time to entertain.
As none of them had given me so much as a questioning look in return, I assumed my approximation had been adequate.
Now I stood with the tapestry puddled at my feet and the tunnel mouth open before me.
A breeze caressed my face, its damp-earth scent bringing to mind a collection of unsavory images: filmy tide pools, white collars of salt, and the unrelenting, toothless wear of the ocean, like an old man gnawing incessantly at his food.
Stooping, I picked up the lantern I’d brought with me, which I’d set down to tug the tapestry free of its rod.
White light flared from within the lamp’s glass interior when I swung it experimentally toward the dimness, its Woven enchantment awakening in the presence of the dark.
My confidence bolstered by its glow, I stepped through the door, easing it shut behind me.
The tunnel walls crowded close, like the flex of a throat as it swallowed me down.
Unlike the first time I’d ventured, lampless, into the sunken passageways beneath Fortblanche, the lantern’s milky glow meant I could see the path ahead of me now: a staircase carved from waxen ivory stone, tripping steadily downward until the gloom carpeted over it again.
Mice skittered at the edges of the light, hiding themselves in the darkness like robbers; spying them, I curled my lip, remembering the rodent I’d glimpsed in the study during the first trial.
Be careful. Be quick. Ophelia’s words spurred me onward, a wind to my back. Who were the they she’d referred to in her note, I wondered? The Alaires? It seemed the only logical conclusion; then again, nothing that had occurred since I’d entered Fortblanche had been logical, per se.
What was the Weaver King hiding down here in the dark?
The first step was the most difficult. Once I’d managed it, the rest came easier, my feet carrying me downward until the workroom was a distant memory to my back.
Sooner than I expected, the stairs leveled out beneath me, depositing me at the entrance to the atrium I’d discovered during my last visit.
Past the stone archway, I could make out its rounded, circular belly and the seven other identical archways set into its curved walls, each one with a cold lamp mounted above them and their own corresponding passageways disappearing like long tails into the murk.
For a moment, I was drawn viscerally back into a memory—of myself standing in this very place a week or so prior, enveloped in the pitch-dark.
I remembered the scrap of fabric in front of me, like an ivory flower blossoming from the stone.
Had it belonged to Sybil? She’d never confirmed as much—not verbally, at least—but imagining it lent a macabre kind of poetry to the whole affair: two complete strangers; two paths meeting briefly, then diverging again, carrying each of us on according to our respective purposes.
I knew why I’d come, last time. Why had she?
“Miss Lavoie?”
The call broke through the death-quiet of the atrium, so unexpected, I believed for a moment that I’d imagined it. In my periphery, something winked, like a fly buzzing into my vision. I shook my head, refocusing—
And froze when I saw, like a vision from the past, the lamp above the door across from me light up.
My thoughts scrambled. From my previous visit, I knew that the atrium lamps were Woven, like that which I carried—enchanted to activate only when they sensed a presence nearby.
Hastily, I stumbled farther back into the dim tunnel behind me, grateful I hadn’t yet advanced far enough to trigger the one waiting beyond my own archway, and turned my handheld lantern down low.
“Clio, enough with the hysterics. I’ve already apologized once—come now, you know I meant no offense. Let’s make up and be gone from this desolate place.”
I watched on, disbelieving, as from the depthless maw of passageway opposite me, Dorian Drake strode into the light, dressed in a gray suit and carrying a Woven lamp of similar design to mine. It swung by his side, pulsing blue-white like a ghost.
Drawing to a halt, the judge passed his free hand over his brow, tilting his chin back with the air of a man on the brink of exhaustion.
He muttered something into the dimness; I could make out no words beyond a growled unreliable , spat out like a curse.
What was he doing here? Looking for Clio Lavoie, it seemed, but why was the silkwitch not at dinner with Manon and Anais?
Had I stumbled upon another illicit rendezvous?
I glanced around the otherwise abandoned atrium, as dark and solemn as the inside of a tomb. As far as locations went, it was not what I’d term a romantic one.
“You know,” Dorian called out a second later, as if answering my unvoiced question, “you’re supposed to be helping with our search—not forcing me to hunt for you .
” His words had taken on an accusatory tone; when only silence answered him, he turned in a circle, as if searching for a figure hiding in the blackness around him. “Bastian won’t be happy about this!”
The back of my neck prickled. So it wasn’t for love that Dorian had descended into the subterranean murk beneath Fortblanche—he was searching for something.
What was it? If he’d enlisted Clio, a silkwitch blessed with the ability of perfect tracking, in his quest, I assumed the answer was not so simple as a lost handkerchief.
Intrigued, I crept closer. Standing in the pool of illumination cast by the wall lamp, the judge had the appearance of an actor on a stage, reciting his lines against a lonely spread of black.
He was mumbling to himself again, his voice too hushed to make out.
Hiding my lantern behind my skirt, I risked another step forward, cautious of revealing myself yet desperate to parse his words.
My mouth went dry as, without warning, the judge’s head jerked up. “Who’s there?” he hissed. “Clio?”
I felt my pulse speed as his eyes swept across the circle of archways, passing the one I was lingering behind, just out of sight. For a second, I swore I felt a spark of electricity as our gazes locked, like a curtain being thrown back, shoving me roughly into view.
He took a half step forward, his features ghoulish in the glow of his lantern. “You think you can keep yourself from me?” he murmured. “My family are sorcerers—amongst the strongest of our kind. I will draw you out like pus from a wound.”
His eyes narrowed, darting left, then right, as if awaiting a flash of movement—proof that he had spooked his prey.
“If you are not Miss Lavoie, it would be best to come forward now,” he said lowly. “The Weaver King is merciful—if you ask it of him, he may be inclined to forgive you. All he desires is his key.”
My muscles were burning, my stillness so rigid it was painful—but all I could hear was the word key : That was the object of Dorian’s search. It had to be the same key Sybil had spoken of.
In my mind, I saw Ophelia’s handwriting in the library book again: They have buried something behind the moonlessdoor…
The clack of a pebble interrupted my thoughts, emitted from the tunnel behind one of the archways to my left.
Immediately, Dorian perked up. His attention cut, briefly and agonizingly, to the passage where I was hidden; then, to my relief, he turned and rushed in the direction of the noise, disappearing back into the dark.
Footsteps clicked over the stone as he made his way through the atrium, the bob of his lantern like the drift of a sea creature, suspended in the gloom.
Minutes ticked by as I waited for a sign of his return.
When several had passed and none came, I stepped out from the protective hood of the archway, wincing as the Woven lantern positioned above it flared dutifully to life at my movement.
For a second I stood frozen, waiting for Dorian Drake to leap from the shadows like a cat pouncing at a mousehole, but the atrium remained silent, the judge seemingly long gone.
I allowed myself a sigh of relief. Now that I knew I was not alone in the tunnels, the safest option would be to take the escape I’d been handed and retreat to my quarters while I still could.
Yet…after the encounter I’d witnessed, I felt more certain than ever that if I followed Ophelia’s library-book riddle to its end, I’d find waiting there alongside it the explanation for her death.
The key Dorian was searching for, which Sybil said she knew where to find…
the moonless door…the tunnels—all three were connected somehow.
The answer to the mystery felt so near; I could not possibly turn back now.
My pulse slowed, my muscles unclenching.
Releasing another breath, I turned, examining the archway I’d just passed through.
With my presence now triggering the mounted lamp and the additional aid of my handheld one, I could see that a design had been carved along the arch’s top edge: a crescent moon flanked by waves, similar to the pattern etched into Noé’s bedroom door.
A pattern?
My senses perked for signs of Dorian’s return, I moved clockwise, from the passage I’d come through to the next one to its right.
Etched atop the archway that fed it was a variation of the same design, a half-moon centered between the waves rather than the crescent the previous one had depicted.
The version carved into the next arch over was plumper still: a waxing gibbous, glowing in the lamplight.
A lunar cycle. I paused, understanding dawning on me.
Eight tunnels branching off the atrium, for eight stages of the moon.
But where was the moonless door? The one Ophelia had mentioned in her message?
I searched for it, but where the new moon should have risen in the progression, there was simply another crescent—slimmer than the others but present nonetheless. Unhelpful.
Mentally, I recited the riddle Ophelia had penned: First is the rabbit, then follows the fox. Third comes the archer, last the rooks in their flocks.
Rabbit. What rabbit could Eliot’s sister possibly have been referencing, I wondered?
Was I in the wrong section of the tunnels?
The thought filled me with dread. Judging by the number of arches surrounding me, Fortblanche was as filled with subterranean passages as holes in a bit of driftwood.
Without guidance, finding my way to the proper starting point would be next to impossible.
I eyed the entrances around me, dark mouths hiding their own mysteries. So many. I wondered what lay at the ends of all their paths. More tunnels? I could imagine it: one passage leading to the next, spiraling steadily downward, like teeth marks on an apple core. All the way to the bottom.
And if I reached that point, what kind of creatures might I find waiting there?
It seemed foolish to explore further without direction. Giving up, I turned away from the atrium and ran back into the dark.