Lorelei and Creed climbed the steps to the Sanctum of the Eternal Flame. Lorelei had been in plenty of dangerous situations before, but there was something about the fete that was making her scalp prickle. Drug dens and dealers she understood. The fete was a different beast entirely. The empire’s upper crust would be there. They could make her life a misery. They could send her to the salt mines, her mother, too. They could have them both tried and burned as heretics.
They walked past the fluted columns, through an open space with a massive glowing brazier, and came to a stairwell leading down. The praetorian guardsman stationed at the stairs held out a hand to stop them. Lorelei steeled herself for questioning, but the guardsman just glanced at their dragonbone coins and waved them on.
The next level down was a modestly sized room with lanterns on iron hooks illuminating a dozen bronze plaques about the Talon Wars. In the center of the room was a spiraling staircase leading down. Beside the staircase were two masked woman with blonde hair and a table with champagne flutes filled with sparkling wine. The two women handed a glass each to Lorelei and Creed.
Lorelei and Creed continued down the stairs. Granite blocks gave way to scarred rock and, eventually, a high tunnel. Wisplights hung from the tunnel’s ceiling by chains, their pale blue light chilling the tunnel’s already chilly air.
They navigated the tunnel through a misshapen cavern, its walls covered in dragon bones and skulls. Masked guests in fine gowns and suits milled about. Servants wore pearl-white togas, calf-length boots, and willow wreaths made of silver. Some carried platters of sparkling wine, others whisky. A woman approached Lorelei holding a wooden platter of glass vials filled with a bright red liquid—likely seraphim, a hallucinogenic serum made from cobalt dragon blood.
“Care to partake?” another woman purred and held out a bowl of glittering blue scales. “Cobalt scales,” she said. “Put it on your tongue, and it will clear your mind of troubles.”
Lorelei waved off the offer and caught up with Creed, who was heading toward a red-lit tunnel. As they entered it, the sounds of conversation were replaced with moans and grunts of pleasure.
A handsome man with dark eyes and luscious lips walked up to them with a bowl of red powder and a stack of tiny spoons. “Fireheart?” It was a powerful aphrodisiac made from the dried blood of auburn dragons.
Creed waved him away and moved on. Lorelei rushed to catch up with him. They passed by an alcove full of scantily clad whores, both men and women, well muscled, for the most part, but some with softer, more supple bodies, and all chained loosely to hooks on the walls. Some were bald or had closely shorn hair; others had long hair, often braided. Most smiled as Creed and Lorelei walked by. Others blew kisses or waved lazily.
Lorelei watched in fascination as a masked woman with stark cheekbones lifted the chains of two muscular men off the hooks and led them to a grotto dug into the wall with pillows on the floor. All three were soon naked and writhing on the pillows.
They pushed through the crowd past several similar grottos with more guests and servants of flesh, rutting and moaning. The backdrop of dragon bones and eyeless skulls made the place feel like a drug-fueled dream.
For the most part, Lorelei avoided Creed’s gaze. When she dared a look, he seemed unconcerned, but he was very good at masking his emotions.
In the final grotto were the Syrdian singers. All four were naked and bent over, their heads and wrists clamped in a stockade. Their torcs and bracelets were gone. Their braids had been undone, leaving their hair a mess of tangles and snarls.
Beside the stockade, a young man in a black mask took one of several straight razors from a pedestal and stared at the trapped women. Only then did Lorelei notice the clumps of white hair on the stone floor. The Syrdian women’s scalps were patchy. There were small cuts here and there, some of which still bled, staining what remained of their white hair.
The nobleman grabbed a lock of hair on the woman on the left, pressed the razor against her scalp, and sliced. The woman howled and her knees buckled, but she was held up by the stockade. The nobleman crouched and held out the lock of hair under her face. “My uncle died because of you.” He tossed the hair on the floor and left. The crowd in around the grotto entrance applauded.
Lorelei felt sick to her stomach. Blood trailed down the singer’s forehead, along her nose, and dripped onto the pile of hair.
“Come on,” Creed growled, taking Lorelei by the elbow.
They continued down the main cavern. Several servants in togas entered from a wisp-lit side tunnel. Two guards in scale armor bookended the tunnel’s mouth, watching the room with arms over their chests.
At the opposite end of the cavern, people were crowding around the entrance in some sort of commotion. Lorelei spotted Tyrinia among them.
“Now?” Creed asked.
Lorelei nodded. “As good a time as any.”
Creed reached into his belt pouch and headed toward a table with plates of half-eaten food. Lorelei, meanwhile, approached a servant with a tray of empty plates headed toward the guarded tunnel. “Pardon me”—she put a hand on his shoulder, leaned in close, and whispered—“no one told me where the privies are.”
“Of course.” He pointed to a tunnel closer to the entrance. “Just down there.”
Lorelei smiled and squeezed his shoulder. Creed swept in, set a small plate among the others already stacked on the platter, and deposited a glass globe filled with powder between the plates while doing so. It was a tripflash, one Creed had modified to start popping and sparking after a minute’s delay.
Lorelei thanked the man, and watched the servant walk past the guards and into the tunnel.
Tyrinia and her gaggle drifted toward the center of the cavern, and the closer she came, the more Lorelei worried the sound of the tripflash would draw her attention. They’d needed Tyrinia to be in the catacombs, but they couldn’t have her finding them before they reached the cavern where the drugs were kept.
At last, she heard a sizzling sound from the guarded tunnel, then a bunch of people shouting, a scream, the crash of shattering plates. Fortunately, it was far enough down the tunnel, and the crowd was so loud, that few people seemed to hear it except the guards, who rushed into the tunnel.
Lorelei and Creed snuck in behind them. Twenty paces in, they passed a tunnel on their right. At the far end of the tunnel was a natural chamber with several wisplights, tables, and crates. In the entryway, servants were talking to one of the guards. The other guard was crouched, rooting through a pile of broken dishes on the stone floor. Behind them, in the center of the chamber, was a bronze statue of a woman, gladius held high, one foot propped up on the skull of a dragon, a hero from the Talon Wars the servants desecrated with their very presence.
Lorelei and Creed rushed straight ahead into another, much larger cavern, and crouched behind a mound of stone to get their bearings. Like nearly everywhere in the catacombs, the walls and columns were covered with dragon bones, but this one had a limestone crypt some thirty yards from where Lorelei and Creed were hiding. The rectangular crypt had a peaked roof and a frieze supported by fluted columns. Wisplights on iron posts marked a path across the cavern floor toward it. Lorelei recognized this place. Skylar’s tutor had brought Skylar, Lorelei, and Ash here for a history lesson. The crypt honored the memory of Sanctus Lucian Solvina, one of Skylar’s forebears and the quintarch credited with creating the Covenant and ending the bloody stalemate with the Kin.
The frieze over the crypt depicted a man in armor and helm holding a spear, the rays of Lux shining down on him. Beyond the crypt was the skeleton of Lucian’s mount, Fulgor. Its wings were spread, its neck arched, preparing to strike. At its feet, was the skeleton of Casurax, the mount of Wyan One-Hand, the Kin leader whom Lucian slew. Lighting both in ghastly pale blue was a large wisplight, hanging by a chain from the cavern ceiling. It was the soul of Wyan himself, captured and trapped by Lucian’s son decades after Wyan’s burial. It was dim now, a faint, glimmering star threatening to wink from existence altogether.
“Rather bold to use a sacred crypt to divvy up contraband,” Creed said. “An insult to Lucian’s memory, no?”
Lorelei had been thinking the exact same thing. “This fete has been going on for years in some form or another. Tyrinia seems to have lost her capacity for shame somewhere along the way.”
A servant carrying a platter exited the crypt with a tall, hollow-cheeked man whom Lorelei immediately recognized as Theron, Lucran’s chamberlain. He spoke to the servant tersely and returned to the crypt.
As the servant followed the wisp-lit path toward Lorelei and Creed, Lorelei stood, leaving herself in plain view.
Creed immediately snatched her wrist and tried to pull her back down. “Let him pass!”
“No. Tyrinia needs to be told we’re here before she’s out of her mind on rapture.”
Creed heaved a sigh, then nodded and stood. As they headed side by side toward the servant, he said, “Do you suppose they’ll let me choose the urn for my ashes?”
“Yes, and I’m sure Tyrinia will deliver it personally to your mother.”
On seeing them, the servant pulled up short. “Y-you’re not supposed to be here.”
“We have business with Theron,” Lorelei told him in passing.
The man looked ready to argue, but he stiffened when Creed pointed to the mouth of the nearby tunnel. “Run along now.”
He glanced at the crypt, then turned and hurried away.