Chapter Forty-Two
The moonless door observed me silently, stoic and blank-faced in the unshifting darkness of the cave.
To my back, the bridge stretched, the underground lake like satin beneath it.
The journey from the atrium had gone more quickly this time than the last, my path—full moon, waning gibbous, crescent moon, then, finally, new moon—clear where previously it had been shrouded in the unknown.
I’d taken both knives with me when I’d set off; I did not know how long I had before Clio woke and attempted to track me down again.
Stepping forward, I placed my hand on the circular golden knocker and called forth my Wit.
When I’d tugged the scrap of paper loose from my drawer, back in my bedroom while I’d been waiting for Eliot to fetch me a night ago, I hadn’t recognized the writer of the message inscribed on it immediately.
The penmanship was delicate, too neat to have belonged to Ophelia or her brother, tame in comparison with Noé’s violent scrawl.
But when I’d started to read, I’d heard her voice, as clear as if she’d been muttering the words alongside me.
I could still hear it, echoing in my ears even now.
Miss Lovett , Sybil’s message had begun.
You asked me recently what my Wit showed me when I took your hand our first day in Fortblanche.
I did not want to reveal it to you then, but I will do so now: I saw you standing before a door.
As I was seeking its location also, I initially took my vision to mean that we would be rivals, but in recent days I have begun to reconsider my early impression.
You are clever, and my time is short, so I will not overburden you with an abundance of motive.
I will tell you only that one year ago, I entered Bastian Alaire’s competition at the request of my mother, Lucie Dabos.
She and the Weaver King are old enemies, as you likely know, and she was eager for any information that might help to secure his downfall.
After witnessing several instances of suspicious behavior from my fellow silkwitch Ophelia Lear early on during my stay at Fortblanche, I identified her as a focus of my investigation.
It was from her that I learned of the existence of the moonless door—though until recently, its whereabouts, and the location of the key which accessed it, remained a mystery to me.
The past year, I have spent attempting to solve Ophelia’s riddle and find the door.
Now, at last, I believe I have. All going well, my worries will be unfounded, and you will never read this letter.
If my fate changes, however: Follow the directives hidden within the book by Pender in my bedroom.
The truth of the Vainglory is hidden deep within the tunnels of Fortblanche.
I make only one request of you, which is that if you choose to pass through the moonless door, you do so alone. Eliot Lear is a good man, but too many silkwitches have suffered because of the lies our Weaver suitors have spun us.
If they are to be brought low, they should be brought low by one of us.
I had not wanted to trick Eliot during our previous journey through the tunnels. Though he himself was no silkwitch, his sister had been one; I’d gained entrance to the Alaires’ estate only because he had opened the door for me. Whatever lay on the other side of this one, he deserved to see it.
Still…Sybil had perished in pursuit of the Weaver King’s secret, and I had not. From the moment I’d read her message, I’d known: I would honor her request.
I tightened my grip on the knocker. About me, two things were true:
I was a liar and a thief.
And my doors never failed.
My Wit humming within me like a plucked string, I reached out my arm and, gently, I pulled on the moonless door…
And despite the fact that I possessed no key, it swung open.
From the room within, Woven light flared, washing the cavern in its milky glow. I squinted as my vision adjusted to its brightness, then drew a final, steadying breath and stepped across the threshold.
I blinked as the details of the room became clear. Behind the door lay a workroom.
Aside from the Woven sconces mounted throughout it, the space was nearly identical to its aboveground twin: Arranged in two even lines, ten spinning wheels sat quiet and still, stools placed beside each one for spinners to occupy.
Balanced atop them, canvas pouches spilled hanks of hair in all different shades, the finished product—magesilk—plaited into long ropes, which hung from the walls like severed braids.
Easing the door closed behind me, I advanced to the nearest wheel, the adrenaline that had spurred me on since I’d bested Clio rapidly fading. This was the room Bastian Alaire had been so desperate to prevent others from seeing? The space Sybil had presumably died trying to infiltrate?
A spinner’s workshop. It felt too disappointing to believe, like a childhood fantasy suddenly exposed. Surely, so much effort, so much wondering, could not result in a discovery so…mundane.
There had to be more.
Idly, I pressed my finger against one of the pegs on the wheel, causing it to creak into motion.
The wood was glossy, recently oiled; inside the pouch resting on the stool beside it, a thatch of dark hair waited to be threaded onto the bobbin.
I plucked idly at a strand, wondering abruptly where it had come from.
I recalled Noé saying that the family’s reserves of his mother’s hair had run out—had this been purchased from the cloisters?
Behind my ribs, there was a sudden lurch. Stitched onto the canvas in fine golden thread was a name.
Manon.
I stepped back, my gaze darting to the next stool over. Atop it, an identical pouch of hair sat, fat and froglike, another name sewn in looping letters into the fabric. My heart dropped as I took it in: Marie-Louise .
The tithe. All those mornings the Alaire maid had combed through my hair, the loose strands wound dutifully around the golden spool.
After that first time, I’d stopped questioning the practice—had resigned myself to it the same way I’d accepted the constant wearing of my caul.
Had the yield the maid pulled from my scalp been taken here—deep underground, to sit alongside the rest of the maidens’ offerings behind a locked door? And if so, why?
Moving as if in a trance, I located the bag with my name. Nausea rolled through me at the sight of my own hair collected within, a knot of brown like dried grass. Compulsively, I reached out, taking a clump between my fingers. The strands were brittle to the touch, like hay.
Aside from the hair, a small pocket had been stitched to the inside of the pouch, containing a tight scroll of paper within it. I plucked it free without hesitation, flattening it against thestool.
Cecilia Lovett: Purity of yield measured at eighty-five percent. Potency of yield measured at ninety percent—exceptional. Able to open locked doors; potential extrapolations to gate-walking, way-finding.
Recommended ranking: second spot. See also: Clio Lavoie, first spot; Manon Blanc, third spot.
The handwriting was unfamiliar to me. Oddly, it was that detail I fixated on before any others. I did not know the person who had penned this note, and yet, without my awareness of it, they had seen me. Touched me—or, at the very least, touched the hair that had been taken from my head. Judgedme.
Second spot. I felt laughter bubble up my throat. All the effort I’d undertaken to pass the Alaires’ trials, all my scheming…It had earned me nothing.
I had always been destined to lose.
He…told me the door guarded one of the Weaver King’s most valuable secrets.
And that if the key fell into the hands of his enemies, they would use it to bring him down.
Sitting back on my heels, I turned Clio’s words from the atrium over in my mind.
A secret. Was this the secret Dorian had meant: That the Alaires’ competition was not fairly judged at all but rather rigged from the beginning?
It was shocking, to be sure, and yet…it did not feel like enough.
The people most likely to be angered by such a revelation were me and my fellow maidens, and though I had no love for Bastian Alaire, I doubted Dorian would consider me a worthy enough opponent to label an enemy.
Perplexed, I studied the notations on the scroll again.
The lines regarding yield, I could make a guess at—likely, they referred to the purity and strength of the magesilk spun from a silkwitch’s hair—but the other measurements were harder to decipher.
Gate-walking. Way-finding. Those terms, I could not untangle; they were foreign to me.
Tucking the scroll into my waistband alongside the dull knife, I stood up.
I’d lingered in the tunnels long enough.
Clio would wake eventually, and regardless, if one of us did not emerge soon to claim victory in the Alaires’ final trial, I had no doubt Bastian would send his men down to find me. His intended runner-up.
The truth of the Vainglory is hidden deep within the tunnels of Fortblanche. I had ventured beyond the moonless door; I had uncovered the secrets tucked beyond it, yet I still did not understand their meaning.
An Alaire had spun this web. I needed an Alaire’s help to unravel it for me.
The time had come, at last, to speak with my correspondent.