Maella awoke from the deepest sleep she could remember having in a very long time. She had fallen asleep on top of the sheets, curled up next to her father like a dog. He was underneath the sheets, tension smoothed away from his face. On the other side was Esson.
Both slept. They looked like two versions of the same person, even down to the purple tint of their skin.
She did not regret forcing her father to take licatherin. It had been wrong but she would do it again.
Sitting up, she looked around and found the room empty. Hot coals glowed in the fireplace. The cloth that gave them privacy stirred slightly from some unknown breeze. Her father and brother were alive and together. It was the culmination of so much that she had been searching for—yet it was all so far from being done.
As long as General Foster fought for their extinction, Maella and her family would never be safe.
She rose from the bed, ran fingers through her tangled hair, and let the cloth whisper its rough weave against her face as she stepped into the hallway. She wondered where Claritsa and Sethlo were. Torches still lit the hallways even though it must surely be daylight.
The portals only turned on at night and into early morning now. As the cobwebs of sleep left her mind, Maella closed her eyes and reached out unconscious feelers. Though she could still feel a hint of the door that connected Thrae to Rathe and had allowed General Foster to follow them to this palace, the doors were off again. She had slept through the night and at least part of the morning.
Maella opened her eyes and wandered down the stairs. As she walked, she stretched her arms and legs to get the blood moving. When she reached the door to the outside courtyard that held the familiar fountain, there was no hesitation. She opened the door, feeling the rough wood and metal rings against the skin of her hands.
Sunlight blinded her and it took several seconds to adjust. Beyond the courtyard, back into the market area, people bustled with activity. Some of them were dressed in the clothing style of those she had seen when first entering the palace grounds. Others looked like they had come from Jillow City with clothes crusted with dirt from their flight.
So Tain had kept his word. People from Jillow City had been welcomed into the palace grounds—as many as Tain had been able to bring inside.
Maella’s eyes traveled to the fountain. She had been avoiding the structure, enjoying the sunlight and the sleep that had rested her body and her soul. The fountain loomed large in her memory, mixed with nightmares of smoke and fire. She had only been four years old when she had fled with her family from Thrae to Earth.
Maella went to sit at the fountain and dipped her hand in the water. The fountain’s circular base held a pool of clear blue water. The next level up was a bit smaller, and so on to the next until the very top, which displayed a large version of the Botron family symbol cut out of stone.
A curved quarter moon, its points sharp like knives—that’s us, the doormakers. Three links, separate yet attached, pierced by the moon.
Water flowed from the symbol, filling each pool underneath until spilling over into the next one.
But when Maella stared at her family symbol now, it reminded her of the relic. Something felt incomplete—
“I used to supervise you while you played in this fountain,” Doormaker Tain said.
Maella withdrew her hand from the water. Sethlo’s ointment had all but turned her blisters into little more than an uncomfortable itch, but Tain’s words had burned her. She could not imagine ever feeling comfortable enough to play around Tain.
He approached the fountain and looked so like how she remembered her father when he had been healthy and happy. She let her hand touch the water again. She was no longer afraid of Tain. Whatever wrongs lay between Tain and her family, for now she was ready to put them aside for the evidence of his loyalty and care for her father.
“I don’t remember that.” Maella stared down at the water. “But I remember this fountain. I remember being terrified and thinking that I needed to jump into its water or I would burn to death.” Maella looked at her uncle. “Why would I remember something like that?”
“Because that almost happened the night you…” Tain trailed into silence. He looked off into the distance. “You, and my mother, and your brothers, and my brother, and of course your mother and aunts and cousins, left. Not all left, not even half the family left, but those who remained behind with me were eventually all killed in this fight.”
“It happened on Earth like that too, I guess,” Maella said. “I don’t remember much, but there’s only my parents, Grandmother, and my brothers now.”
“Your grandmother has always been powerful. She has an incredible ability to persuade people to see her side of things. When she left and took so many with her, she assured the destruction of everything she had left behind.” A note of bitterness entered Tain’s voice. “Except for me.”
Maella plunged her hand into the water to feel the shock of that coldness against her skin. “But why did we leave? Why do I remember fire and smoke and screaming?”
“It was near the end of the last Doormaker War,” Tain said. “This is not the first time General Foster has waged war against us. In the last war, he had doormakers from another family working with him, pursuing the One Door for their own ends—though he executed the doormakers who worked for him once he no longer needed them. We had come to a tentative truce, but some of the Sechnel and Hestroth could not accept it. There were disagreements on what to do about—”
“About the One Door,” Maella finished. “About me and the patterns that connected me and my brothers to it.” Maella made her hand into a fist under the water. Her skin was starting to wrinkle. She had been taught never to open a door. Only later, once she broke the family rule and had a seven door death sentence hanging over her head, did she learn so many patterns connected her and her brothers to the One Door. Her family had sought to prevent that connection, yet here she and Esson were anyway. At least Josa was still safe on Earth.
“I disagreed with your grandmother.” Tain sighed. “The patterns were clear. You and your brothers have always been involved with the One Door. The patterns connecting you to the One Door were dark and destructive. But the patterns of your brothers gave me hope the One Door could be…managed…if we could find it. The Botron family has always had the strongest connection to the One Door out of all the doormaker families. That is why we are the last of the doormakers still alive across all three worlds.”
“There really are no other doormakers?”
“Not that we know of,” Tain said.
Maella bit her lip. She thought of Tomi. Tain still did not know.
“The fire and the smoke?” Maella prompted.
Tain closed his eyes briefly. “We were attacked the night your grandmother had convinced part of the family to leave Thrae. She no longer trusted me. A group of Sechnel found a way into the palace grounds. Some of our own people sabotaged us. I told your grandmother I would accelerate my search for the One Door. I knew that the sabotage meant it was only a matter of time before war again. The way to end that was to gain control of the One Door.”
Tain turned, looking toward the market. “Your grandmother vehemently disagreed.” He looked down at Maella and she felt that stare burn into her. “They lit rooms on fire. You’ve seen all the cloth and tapestry we have around. There also used to be trees throughout the courtyards. Everything was smoke and fire and I found you screaming at this fountain. Before I could get to you, before I could send your tenbl or Hestroth, your grandmother swooped in and took you away. Before I knew it, all of you were gone.”
Maella felt the ring of truth in her uncle’s words. Her grandmother and parents had never explained her nightmares away, no matter how many times she had described them.
She loved her grandmother, mother, and father. In the deepest part of her heart she believed they only wanted to keep her safe. But that didn’t mean they had chosen right. She could love them, and believe in their love for her, and still accept they had made some terrible mistakes. Her own choices over the last few years were proof of that.
“You have slept for a very long time. You have given my brother back his life. We must move on to the next step. The One Door still remains to be found and so does the missing piece of the relic.”
“But we don’t know where the actual relic is,” Maella said.
“General Foster has it,” Tain said. “That is the information given to us from refugees captured by Foster who escaped to the palace’s protection. But the relic will do him no good while it is incomplete and without a doormaker to use it.”
Food smells from roasting meat drifted into the courtyard, making Maella’s stomach rumble. Ignoring the hunger, she wondered where in the palace Sethlo and Claritsa had been given rooms. She was glad they were not with her in this moment.
The lie of omission had grown like a cancer in her belly. Secrets about who she was and what she could do had been a destructive force in her life. In this case, one more secret from Tain would only continue to help General Foster’s side. Tomi might have been saved from General Foster if she had only spoken up sooner. Even now, Tain was forming a defense and battle plans based on bad information.
Taking a deep breath, Maella broke her promise to Sethlo.
“General Foster does have a doormaker. I don’t know if he knows it. But there was a little boy. We called him Tomi because we didn’t know his real name…”
Maella told Tain everything she knew about Tomi. His Klylup transformation and the patterns they had discovered inside the Library of Souls. How he had been captured during the race to the palace. How she had kept all of this from Tain because she had not yet trusted him.
Even still, she could not bear to describe the part where she had forced Tomi to open a door with her.
But Tain guessed that all on his own. “When you took back Claritsa, he was with you then, was he not? He helped to open a door to this very place.”
“Yes,” Maella said, wincing on the word help but choosing not to correct it.
“I know this boy.” Tain closed his eyes as if reliving a painful memory. “There is a history here. He is why I made the oath to never again force a doormaker to do something against his will. I did not know he was the Klylup at the top of the Tower of Shadows.”
“But you knew there was a Klylup in the tower,” Maella said. “You knew Klylups were once doormakers.”
“I knew there was a Klylup kept in the tower. I assumed whoever this doormaker had once been was killed when the tower fell.”
Maella frowned and a fire of fury stoked in her chest. “But you knew how Master Hull was using the Klylup in the Circle. You knew he used the Klylup to execute us.”
“I will not deny I had heard enough to wonder, but I chose not to listen. I was trying to prevent a war.”
Maella felt sick to her stomach. “You were there when he sent me and my friends to the Circle! You were there when Torian died!”
“I was with the pattern-machine. I knew Master Hull was holding a festival, but I did not…” Tain trailed off, his expression sorrowful. “I was intent on the patterns and searching for the One Door—for all of you. I knew I was close to finding you again, but I never demanded the truth from Master Hull until it was too late. He was always able to explain things away to my satisfaction. I chose not to verify. I came through the door, only rarely, only to visit the pattern-machine. I am one doormaker fighting the last of this battle to keep three worlds from breaking apart. It was difficult…” Doormaker Tain shook his head. There was a hard edge now to his voice. “There is no excuse. It is what it is. I would not change any decision I have made. I have only done my best with the ashes my mother left me with.”
Maella could not forgive Tain for any of the cruelty that he could have prevented in the Tower of Shadows…but then again, she could not forgive herself for the pain and death she had caused others either.
It stunned Maella to realize she was more like her uncle than she had ever thought possible. She had done terrible things for the sake of pursuing what she thought was right. Through that pursuit, many wrongs could be laid at her feet, but all of it had brought her to where she was now—with her brother and father alive and together, with a chance to end all of this for good if they could find the One Door and fix it.
“Come.” Tain stood, holding out a hand. “I want to show you something.”
Maella looked up and gave Tain her hand. She somehow felt the gesture of taking his hand was more meaningful than helping her up from the fountain.
“We have a library here,” Tain said. “It is nothing like the Library of Souls, but it does have maps of Earth. And there is also a librarian who will be glad to see you are very much still alive.”