Ordren raised his old, cracked wisplight over his head to guide him as he trudged through the catacombs. He’d just descended from the dragonworks, and the stink of chemicals mixed with the stink of the sewers formed a lip-raising, stomach-punching miasma that burned his nostrils like a lit match. His joints always ached in the cold, but a pain in his left knee, which he’d twisted the day before, flared badly with each step. He’d nearly decided not to go see the Hissing Man. He hated coming down to this shithole, and he’d been coming too often of late, but the particular bit of knowledge he brought this time was one the Hissing Man had specifically asked for. If the Hissing Man found out he’d been in the room when that old goat of an inquisitor-turned-historian, Kellen, told Creed about the stupid chalice and didn’t immediately inform the Hissing Man about it, he’d probably end up floating in the Wend with a death mark carved into his forehead.
Ignoring the way the walls kept pressing in on him, Ordren continued and eventually reached the crypt with the wisplight in the ceiling. Gaul stood waiting on the far side of the room. Ordren stood far enough away not to get grabbed by the neck and have his head smashed against the wall again. “I’ve got news.”
Gaul looked Ordren up and down, pointed to his neck, and smirked.
Ordren ignored the jibe. “Well, you stupid oak, are you going to bloody tell him or not?”
Gaul sucked his teeth, opened the door to the Hissing Man’s sepulcher, and stepped inside. A moment later he emerged, left the door open, and proceeded to act as if Ordren didn’t exist. Ordren blew out a deep breath, entered the sepulcher, and closed the door behind him.
As usual, the Hissing Man was at his desk on the other side of the sarcophagus. He was running his fingers down the page of a ledger, the sort used by moneylenders. As Ordren sat in the chair across from him, the Hissing Man snapped the ledger closed and rasped, “I’ve little time.”
“Then I’ll be quick. Your chalice is being delivered to the library tomorrow.”
The Hissing Man jerked, somehow making his hunched back look even more malformed. “What time?”
“Kellen didn’t say.”
“Who’s delivering it?”
“The archivist. Ezrel . . . Ezraela . . . Something like that.”
The Hissing Man paused a moment, then asked, “Where does she live, this archivist?”
Ordren cursed himself. He should’ve got that before he came to the catacombs. “I’ll find out.”
The Hissing Man glared at him, then snorted. “Anything else?”
“That’s it.”
The Hissing Man rang the bell, then opened the ledger and returned to his figures. “Gaul will pay you.”
Gaul opened the door. Ordren stood and headed toward it. Still smirking, the oak tossed Ordren a pouch and glared at him as he passed through the doorway.
Ordren was so flustered he didn’t bother counting the coins, but when he was out of Gaul’s sight, he stopped and tugged the purse open. It was all there, ten thrones by way of tin wolves and a smattering of silver stags. “The Chosen have fallen so low they have to pay in fucking tin now?”
As he cinched the pouch, the wisplight slipped from his fingers. The treated glass was thick, but the light was already cracked. It broke in two. Ordren watched in horror as the wisp floated toward the ceiling of the tunnel. “Faedryn’s black fucking teeth!”
He picked up the two halves of the glass globe and tried to recapture the wisp, but it was like trying to catch a mote of dust. It entered a narrow crack in the stone high on the wall, and then it was gone, and the tunnel was plunged into darkness.
Ordren’s chest tightened. He thought about continuing on, but he’d never been good with directions underground. If he kept going, he might never find his way out, and he was already losing track of the twists and turns he’d taken from the Hissing Man’s sepulcher. He couldn’t do it. As much as he hated the idea, he’d have to return to the Acre and beg for a wisplight.
Hands pressed to the wall, he retraced his path and eventually saw a cool blue light against a tunnel wall far ahead, and then the old, familiar crypt came into view. Gaul was there, but he wasn’t alone. Three other scourges in black habits were there, and they were talking with the Hissing Man, who was standing in the doorway to his sepulcher.
He didn’t want to know what they were saying, but as he crept forward, a few words echoed down the tunnel to him. The scourges were apparently worked up about an incident at the shrine. When the Hissing Man spoke and pointed, they all left, even Gaul, and headed down a different tunnel—thankfully not toward Ordren.
Ordren had a terrible dilemma. He might steal a wisplight from the Hissing Man’s sepulcher, but the Hissing Man would surely notice, and he didn’t know the Acre well enough to find the exit on his own. The Hissing Man himself was likely headed toward the surface now. Ordren decided to follow him, then head up to ground level when it was safe.
He stole into the crypt, peered down the tunnel the Hissing Man had taken, and saw him entering the next crypt over. When the Hissing Man had entered the tunnel to the next crypt, Ordren hugged the tunnel wall and followed him. Five crypts down, the Hissing Man turned right and disappeared. At the same tunnel, Ordren peered around the corner and found the way ahead empty. The urge to quicken his pace was nearly overwhelming, but he forced himself to slow down and move silently.
A few steps in, he heard a click. Then the groan of old hinges. He edged farther along the tunnel, and the open door of a sepulcher came into view. Inside, lit by the pale wisplight in the crypt’s high ceiling, the Hissing Man was standing in front of a sarcophagus. He tugged something out from beneath his threadbare habit, a dual-sided locket, Ordren realized, the sort shepherds used to store auris and umbris. The Hissing Man opened one side of the locket, took a pinch of powder and sniffed it up his nose; then he took another pinch and sniffed again. He clicked the locket closed and rubbed his powder-laced fingers over his gums.
Stone and scree, this is no business of yours, Ordren.
He knew he should leave, but the thought of making a sound terrified him. And if he was honest with himself, he’d always had a grim fascination for the Hissing Man. Who was he really? How had he risen to the top of the Chosen? Why had he fashioned himself after an illustra?
The Hissing Man groaned and bent over, clutching his arms and moaning. Something popped, and he howled. His limbs cracked and snapped like muted fireworks. He grew straighter, taller. His hunchback disappeared. He stopped groaning and began to breathe heavily, wheezing at first, then more calmly. Bright goddess of old, he seemed to be transforming into a different man entirely. But who? Ordren couldn’t see his face.
The Hissing Man stood up straight and tall and lifted the lid of the sarcophagus, which would normally take four men to budge, and slid it aside with ease. He took off his worn habit, his belt, and his shoes, and put them in the sarcophagus. Then he took out a different set of clothes and donned them—a fine white robe, then a long, white-and-gold tabard with Alra’s eight-pointed star on the chest, and a pair of leather sandals. Last, he drew out a mask of ivory and gold and put it on. Ordren watched in horror as Illustra Azariah slid the lid of the sarcophagus back in place.
Ordren’s lips quavered. He realized he forgot to breathe. He should’ve braved the darkness. He should’ve left the catacombs, light or no light. Now he was trapped. If the illustra saw him, he’d be dragged to the temple and put to the question, chained to the Anvil and burned.
Ordren pressed himself against the tunnel wall as the leader of the Alran Church left the sepulcher. Azariah seemed to stare straight at him—but the illustra merely turned and closed the door, then walked down another tunnel, turned at the next crypt, and was gone.
Ordren stared at his trembling hands, clutched them together, willing them to still. It seemed impossible, but then he remembered the similarities in manner and speech he’d noticed on one of his recent visits. “May her memory abide,” the Hissing Man had said, making Alra’s sign, eerily reminiscent of what Azariah had said and done earlier in the night.
Ordren crept closer to the crypt and read the brass plaque above the door:
Cassian Andrinus, beloved of Kalyris Andrinus and Illustra Azariah Andrinus III
Cursing himself for a fool, Ordren decided he couldn’t follow Azariah. He might be spotted. Nor could he steal a wisplight, not even from some long forgotten sepulcher. He knew he would be found out. As he made his way back toward the dark tunnels, he couldn’t decide which would be worse: being put to the question in the temple or what the Hissing Man would do to him in the catacombs.
A different sort of terror consumed him as he reached the pitch-black tunnels beyond the Hissing Man’s crypt. He took several wrong turns and nearly lost hope he’d ever find his way out.
In the end, it was the stink of the sewers, then the acrid odor of the dragonworks that helped him find his way. He’d never felt such joy as he did breathing in that noxious stench.