Chapter Thirty-Three
Clio’s door was shut tight when I arrived back to the maidens’ corridor, nothing but silence emanating from the room beyond it.
I wasn’t sure whether the dark-eyed silkwitch was lingering in the dim quiet on the other side or still lost in Fortblanche’s tunnels with Dorian—nor what excuse, if any, she had given to justify her absence at dinner.
It was strange to think that an hour or so had passed since I’d set off for the tunnels.
It felt as though, had I been carrying a timepiece, its hands would have ceased to swing the moment I’d crossed through the hidden entrance in the workroom, like a diver holding their breath as they plunged underwater.
I slowed as I passed the other maiden’s doorway but did not stop. The time to question Clio would come. For now, though, I had more urgent matters to attend to.
Entering my room, I made straight for my trunk.
The library book with Ophelia’s message waited within, resting where I’d set it prior to departing, but this time I ignored it, instead retrieving the spiral candle and setting it on my desk.
The wax, already half melted when I’d found it, had sunk even lower from my previous uses; measuring the nub that remained, I estimated I had one, maybe two conversations left before it burned out completely.
Which meant I needed to make this one count.
I penned my message quickly, having perfected the wording during the journey back to my room. I know where the key Bastian Alaire is searching for lies.
The flame took it, leaping up and singeing my fingertips as I held the paper over the wick.
Hissing, I sucked at my nails, sitting nervously back.
There was no guarantee my correspondent would answer me now, when they’d spurned my previous attempts to contact them after Sybil’s death.
So long as their identity remained unknown, writing them at all was a risk, but I hadn’t forgotten their message the night of the Midway Ball either: the scroll imprinted with the words Did you take it?
With what I’d overheard Dorian say in the tunnels, I strongly suspected the it their note referred to was none other than the key the judge was looking for—that the two were, indeed, one and the same.
And if my correspondent knew about the key, they likely also knew what it led to: the moonless door from Ophelia’s message.
Perhaps they even knew how to get there.
My thoughts scattered as, like a sapling bending in the wind, the candle flame guttered, then sprang back to life. A scroll flung from its center, bouncing off the desk and landing just beside my left thumbnail. The inscription on it was short—just a single word, lacking any punctuation. Where.
I released a breath, my eyes fluttering closed with relief. I had their attention.
Now I had to keep it.
Tell me its purpose, and perhaps I’ll share, I wrote.
The reply came a minute later, almost indignant in the way the scroll thwacked against the desktop. You think you can influence me? You do not know my allegiances. Perhaps I wish for it to stay lost.
And yet you warned me against taking it, and you respond to my messages now, after ignoring my previous ones, I countered. Why?
Because I dislike playing unwinnable games. And this one has tipped in Bastian Alaire’s favor for too long.
I lifted a brow as I read the words emblazoned on the paper.
The answer wasn’t what I had expected—there was no self-righteousness in it, no moral posturing or discussion of a cause.
Not for the first time, I wondered at the identity of the person behind the message, painted white by their candle’s glow just as I was.
I wished, viciously, that I’d been blessed with Marie-Louise’s Wit rather than my own—that I could peer through Fortblanche’s mirrors until I found the figure writing to me in the dark.
After a moment, I replied. Then help me balance the scales.
I knitted my fingers together impatiently as I waited for the fire to sputter again. When it did, I practically leapt for the scroll that burst from the flame, flattening it on my desk. Its purpose is that of any key. It unlocks a door.
The moonless door?
So you are familiar with it. Interesting.
I frowned. What lies behind it?
Bastian Alaire’s greatest boon. And his most secret bane.
Frustration plucked in me as I read the reply—jumbled, its meaning incoherent. Stop speaking in riddles, I wrote. How do you know of it?
I make it my business to learn all the Weaver King’s weaknesses.
Phrased like one who wishes to see him fall. Are you a silkwitch? Or a rival?
You wish for me to tell you? How disappointing.
I huffed, my irritation growing. Shaking my head, I sucked at the nib of my fountain pen, considering my response.
As I lowered it to a fresh scrap of paper, the flame winked again, a new message dropping onto the desk in front of me.
Curls of smoke wisped soundlessly from the scroll’s surface, rising to tickle my nose.
The hairs on my arms lifted as I took in the message written on it. Let us make a deal. I shall reveal myself if you do the same. Tell me who you are—I grow tired of speaking anonymously.
I wet my lips, my eyes darting nervously back to the candle.
Its wick had burned still lower over the course of our conversation, melted wax weeping over the edges of the brass holder.
My correspondent’s patience was evidently waning, but if I could keep them distracted until the fire died, maybe I could outrun their questions.
Like a rebuff, another note spat forth. You think you can evade me forever?
My heart stopped. Ice flooded my veins as, a minute later, a fourth message followed the previous three. Answer me.
I spread the slip of paper between my fingers, my hands trembling as I considered its command. Before me, the flame wavered, as if preparing to rear back and confront me with yet another scroll, seeking truths that I did not wish to give.
Acting on instinct, I leaned forward and blew the candleout.
—
Later, I woke to the sensation of heat, like a dry tongue licking up my arms.
Eyes still closed, I rolled over, pushing my bedsheets—sweat-damp and clinging—away from me.
Where normally, indigo darkness would have painted the space behind my eyelids, a faint, milky glow now filtered through the dimness, like the pearlescent trickle of moonlight.
It flared brighter as I noticed it, its light searing the last of the drowsiness from my mind.
Had I left my drapes open when I’d gone to sleep?
Frustrated, I sat up.
My first thought was that my bedroom had turned spectral—all my furnishings, the flat rise of my walls, were caught in the same ivory luminescence I’d glimpsed through my eyelids, like the uncanny shine of a ghost. Squinting, I turned to where the illumination—and the eerie warmth—seemed to be emanating from.
I clapped a hand to my mouth, muffling my horrified gasp.
Ophelia’s candle, which I’d blown out prior to climbing into bed, was lit again—and worse, its flame had caught on the edge of the drape hanging near it, twining like strands of ivy up the fabric.
As if triggered by my sight, the smell of it hit me in a wave: acrid and pungent, filling my nostrils and stinging my throat.
Fire. In a rush, I surged up from my mattress, my bedsheets tangling around my legs as I stood, and nearly bringing me down to the floor.
Kicking them off, I stumbled over to my desk, extinguishing the candle with a desperate huff of breath and beating fervently at the drapes.
My pulse slowed briefly as the flames quenched, only to rabbit faster again as my gaze traveled down to my desk, taking in the single new scroll that awaited me there.
When I read the message imprinted on the curl of paper, I was unsurprised.
Somehow, I had been anticipating it—not only since I’d blown out the candle flame earlier, but in an unconscious way long before that, perhaps ever since I’d opened that door in the Diplomat and found Eliot waiting behind it.
The threat of exposure had been with me all along, an unsheathed blade tucked into my pocket; eventually, no matter the care I took, it would cut me. And now, at last, it had.
Written on the scroll in precise gray letters was a message:
You write to me in search of secrets, yet you are not keeping your own nearly as well as you think.
I am not the only soul in Fortblanche who knows your name.
Beware, Miss Tamerlane.