Miranda spent much of the rest of the day alone, until Dorothea scratched at the portal door.
“I have something I think will free your uncle from his prison,” she said, poking her head out of the tunnels. “A powder they say can bring down walls, which the blacksmith helped me obtain in exchange for another few draughts of his stiff drink. We’ll have to be careful with it, though, and leave as soon as he’s out, in case anyone notices the noise.” She looked down at Miranda. “Well? Are you coming?”
Miranda looked up at her, the edge of the tapestry she held forming a tent above them both. “I . . . isn’t there anything I should bring? Anything we need?”
“You’ll have gowns aplenty in Naples, and they won’t do us any good while traveling. I’ve got clothes and caps for us, so we can move about looking like men. And some food, some supplies. That’s all we’ll need. It’s all we can carry, anyway.”
Miranda looked back at the room behind her. She had hated so much of her time here, but as she and Dorothea spent time within them, these rooms had begun to feel like home. “All right.” She went to get the chair to climb up to the portal. “Wait—should I bring the veil?”
“Leave it.” Dorothea moved back into the tunnels. “If we get to Naples, you’ll never have to wear it again.”
They clambered through the tunnels, noisy in their haste. The rain outside had begun to whip itself into a storm, and claps of thunder cracked beyond the castle walls. The furor of the tempest might disguise the clamor once Dorothea and Miranda used the powder, and it easily covered up the sound of their footsteps on the stone.
She cleared her throat. On all her previous visits to the tunnels, she had tried to be as silent as she could, but now she wanted to be heard. By one person, anyway. The person she had been longing for all her life, even when she knew it not.
“Mother?” Her voice sounded small in the engulfing darkness. “Mother, we’ve come to find you. We need your help.”
No one replied. Dorothea took Miranda’s hand as she summoned her courage to speak again. “Mother, please. Help us. We go to free Antonio. We’re leaving the castle. If you can hear me—” She raised her voice. “If you can hear me, please show yourself. We need you now.”
She tried anew around each curve in the path, to no avail. They came to the covered road, and she took up a torch from its entrance, casting the light about. They followed the twists and turns of the road until they came to what Miranda now recognized as Prospero’s workrooms, only to find the iron door to the old laboratorium locked.
“It’s never been locked before.” She tried the handle, but it didn’t budge. “Who locked it? Who came down here before us?”
“Who? Who?” The voice boomed down the halls, and thunder pealed in its wake. Lightning crackled through the high windows. “Do you remember the little white owl on the island, Miranda? The one you loved so well. He asked the same question, every morning, every evening.” Miranda’s hand fell, limp, from the door. “He asked and asked, and in the end the spirits silenced him. Too many questions, Miranda, bring ruin to us all.”
Dorothea pressed her back against the door, her eyes following Prospero as he came down the passage, from the direction leading out of the castle, in the path of their escape. “Stay back,” she said to Miranda in a low voice. “I’m going to use the pow—” She choked. “The p— The p—”
“What powder, little witch?” Prospero reached out his hand, twisting it, and the pouch at Dorothea’s side snapped off its strap, sailing into his fingers. He crushed the pouch in his hand, crumbling it to dust. “With Moorish tricks and Sapphic temptations you did ensnare my only daughter, innocent as she was of the evils of this faithless world. Perhaps I am to blame, for I did not warn her of all the corruption that can twist the hearts of men.”
He turned his eyes to Miranda, coming closer, step by careful step. “I did not tell you how blood can turn, go rancid and black, pitting brother against brother, and father against son. Your womanly mind is feeble, and fickle as the wind. You do not understand the bargain you’ve made, Miranda, but renounce it now, and I will forgive.”
“She did not corrupt me.” Miranda’s voice shook, but she pressed on. “We saw what you did, Father. I saw. What became of my mother. How you violated her.”
His laugh reverberated all around her. “False visions, crafted by your cunning companion.” He came to stand before them, and Miranda clasped Dorothea’s hand. “She thought I would not see, that her meager magic exceeded my own. Do you think anything happens in these walls without my knowing?” He snapped his fingers.
Miranda felt metal scrape beneath her wrist and pulled her hand back as if burned. There, from the door, a dozen iron hands reached out, grabbing hold of Dorothea, pinning her against the door.
“I command this castle. Every stone heeds my desires. Every beam and bolt bends to my will.”
Dorothea yelled, but a gray hand slipped up to muffle the sound, clamping down upon her mouth. “She will tell you lies no longer, Miranda. Forget her tales, and listen to me. Mark my words. I will build a new world, and its capital will be this very castle. It will be Heaven brought to earth.” He smiled. “This realm as it was meant to be. The paradise we lost, ere death entered this world.”
“The dream,” she gasped.
His smile grew. “The dream. Can’t you see it, Miranda? A world more magical than the island, and greater by far.”
Beside her, Dorothea struggled. Miranda stared into her father’s face. “Death . . . undone.”
“Yes.”
“The way you undid my mother’s death.”
“Believe not whatever illusions you saw, Miranda.” He moved his hand in a circle, and she saw the hands of iron tighten their grip. “I loved your mother well and gave her the greatest gift I could conceive. Who could fault a grieving husband for doing all he could for his virtuous wife? Who, after all, would not want more life?”
Miranda shook her head. “It was a half life.” She reached out to slip her hand between the metal fingers on Dorothea’s arm, to reassure her with a touch. “A life where she only existed for you, as a testament to your power, Prospero. Did you ever think how it would be for her? Did you ever think of what she wanted?”
“How dare you speak such foul words to your own father.” He loomed above her, as he had loomed for all her life. “You will learn, Miranda. You will leave the witch, and you will learn your place.”
“I will not.”
He lifted both his hands, and she felt the fingers squirm. They dug into Dorothea’s flesh, and Miranda clawed at them, losing her grip. “You’re hurting her. Stop it!”
Prospero flexed his fingers slightly, and the digits closed around Dorothea’s throat. “No! Let her go!”
Dorothea made a strangled noise. Miranda rushed toward her father, thrusting the torch into his face. It singed his beard, nearly catching flame. He knocked the torch from her grip and it tumbled to the stones, throwing his shadowed eyes and mocking mouth into relief as Miranda stared up at him.
“You will not forget this lesson, girl.” He clenched his fists, and the fingers of iron contracted with them. “You have sleepwalked through this life and never known the suffering it brings, for I have protected you from its costs. But I will protect you no longer. You must learn, Miranda. You must listen—”
He hissed, dropping his hands, as sparks flew past them in the dark. Miranda spun to the right, to find the source of the light. She snatched up the torch and raised it high, but could see nothing.
She listened. She listened, and she heard it. The clicking, the clacking she had heard all those nights ago outside Antonio’s cell, far off, growing ever closer.
Prospero squinted into the blackness before roaring into its depths, flicking his wrists and sending a blast of wind that whipped at Miranda’s hair as it gusted down the long passage.
“And so mine enemies send some rival magus, do they? Begone! I have no time to play politics.”
He raised his arms back to full height, and Miranda spared a glance at Dorothea, whose hazel eyes bulged as she tried futilely to break free of her restraints.
Tick. Tick. Tick. Miranda turned, throwing her torchlight once again into the dark. This time it limned the form of the approaching figure, from the gleaming white of its exposed feet to the iron mask it wore, its thin hands outstretched, faint traces of golden light streaming from between its fingers.
Prospero did not look towards the stranger, so focused was he on his resuming his own speech. “You will learn, girl. Attend me, and learn this lesson well. This castle, this world, the very stuff of this universe, is mine to control, and it is—”
“Not yours alone.”
An arc of light flew straight at Dorothea. The hands all around her retracted, melting back into the door, as Prospero finally set his gaze upon the advancing figure. Its voice was ragged, its speech half-slurred, but there was no mistaking it.
Beatrice, the once-dead duchess of Milan, had returned for her daughter at last.
Dorothea fell to the floor, gasping. Miranda ran to her side, pulling her up, away from the door, as Bice slammed it open. Miranda heard banging within the workrooms and knew what her mother had done. She had unlocked Antonio’s door, as she must have unlocked the door to the laboratorium on Miranda’s visits before. She had been with her all this time. Miranda had never been alone.
Prospero’s sea-blue eyes were frozen on the figure’s face. “Bice . . .” He recovered himself. “My beautiful wife. Returned from death, and waiting for me still. You have suffered, I know, while I have been away, without my magic to heal you, but now that I rule once more—”
“I learned to heal myself, Prospero.” Her mother advanced, her sticklike limbs moving like spider legs. “My lesions and my rotting bits. This body that you left me with. Did you think you had gotten them all? Your books, your beloved texts? Did you not remember all those you had missed, hidden in your secret stores, down here in the depths?” She drew in a deep draught of air, as if the words had left her lungs weak. “I had so much time . . . to learn. Only . . . time. Endless . . . time.”
“And we will have more.” Prospero stretched his hands towards her. “Much more. Embrace me, fair Beatrice, and rule by my side as we bring magic to this profane plane.”
She shook her head. “You are lost, Prospero. Your sins, both committed and as yet undone, number more than the stars.” She lashed out, the light from her fingertips arcing, this time bringing Prospero to his knees. He fell heavily, and Miranda almost cried out, for still he was her father, and still she could remember the love she once felt for him, before all this, before she knew the truth of all that he had done. His great shaggy head rose, and he tried to lift his own hands, but Miranda’s mother kept them pinned to the stone as she closed in. In the workrooms, Miranda heard a stirring. Antonio was moving within.
“So you’ve learned a few tricks.” Prospero licked his lips. “But you are no match for me, Bice. After all, I taught you all you know.” He began to hum, and from the stones around Beatrice’s feet, talons of stone rose, ripping at her ankles with jagged claws. Miranda gasped, but her mother stepped free of them easily.
“You let your guard down, Prospero.” She snapped her wrists, and twin streaks of light hit the ground, sending the stone hands back into the floor. “You believed yourself invincible. But you’re weak now, aren’t you? You used your power to speed your way back from Lyon, and to create this storm, for you could never resist such sound and fury.” The long bones of her toes tapped against the rock. “You are old, and winded, and your body still obeys the natural laws, unlike mine. You could never overcome that, could you?” She raised her hands, rotating her wrists, and Prospero’s eyes bulged.
“Set me free.” Prospero’s voice no longer rumbled, and Miranda saw his muscles strain under the force of her mother’s magic. “Please, Bice—if you show me mercy, I will change. I will give up this magic, if that is your will. I swear it.”
“Set you free, and again you will weave your lies. Again you will desecrate graves and subjugate daughters and escape your rightful sentencing by the skin of your silver tongue.”
“I will not, I swear it.” He looked towards Miranda, his eyes wild. “I sought to renounce my art, truly, before we returned to these shores. I can do it again. I will surrender it all, here and now, if you only let me go.”
“No more.” She rubbed her fingers together, and Miranda saw the bits of bone shining through. “Words are thy power and thy curse, Prospero. You speak too much and listen too little. Speak no more.”
Prospero gaped like a fish. He kecked, but no sound came from his mouth. The lightning from the windows above sliced across his face, and Miranda saw the veins beneath his pale skin, the blood pooling in his eyes.
She kept her arms tight around Dorothea as she heard Antonio’s dragging footsteps emerging from the cell. Bice slipped a hand into her strange, funereal garment and pulled out a shining blade, handing it to Antonio, who accepted it, his eyes never leaving Bice’s mask.
Beatrice crossed to where Miranda and Dorothea crouched and extended a skeletal hand. Miranda took it, shivering, and her mother led them both away from where Antonio stood over Prospero, back down the passage to the castle. “Come away, Miranda, and rest now. Let men settle the affairs of men.”
They slipped into the darkness, and the sound of Prospero’s screams did not follow them.