It really had been a garden once.
The priests had cultivated anything that grew in the colors of night, pale moonflowers, black apples, and the night roses. A few vines with the bluest flowers still peeked out of the mist that carpeted the ground.
Kinos stood apart, watching Raef by what light the wall let in.
He shuddered at the chill and checked his palms for scrapes and nicks. He would not have been able to bear meeting the faces of the dead that lingered here.
He almost scoffed. They’d killed her and torn down her temple, only to seal it in artificial, everlasting night.
A bit of the base remained, part of the curving wall. A few of the flying buttresses hadn’t broken in the collapse.
A pillar of white marble and black basalt, the tower had once crowned Versinae. Now nothing rose higher than Hyperion’s dome.
Raef had known better than to expect scraps of paper or bits of books, but still, he looked for them among the ruins and blackened ground.
Much of the tower’s rubble had gone into the wall, but a vast pile remained.
A marble eye stared up at Raef from the dirt.
He crouched to brush the dirt from a bit of broken statue.
“Who is it?” Kinos asked as Raef lifted the piece.
“I can’t tell. Probably some Hierophant.”
“He was the head of the order?”
“Yeah,” Raef said. He laid the half-face back among the rubble. “Father Polus was the Hierophant in my time. He was stern, but he wasn’t mean.”
“You got in a lot of trouble, didn’t you?” Kinos asked.
“How did you know?”
Kinos smiled.
“Just a guess.”
Raef shook off the attempt at lightening his mood.
“He was always punishing me, usually for running or pinching extra food.”
“How did he punish you?” Kinos asked.
It was hard to answer, not because the details were dire, but because the memories hurt now. Maurin knew where he came from, but she’d never asked, had never wanted or pressed to know.
“By making me sit in his office and read while he wrote letters,” Raef said.
His voice creaked on the well of emotion, the long-swallowed feelings finally surfacing from the depths of his gut.
“That doesn’t sound so bad.”
“It wasn’t,” Raef said. “But I was a kid. It bored me to tears. It took me a long time to realize that he wanted me to learn, that he was trying to teach me . . .”
Raef trailed off, remaining silent for a while.
“I miss him,” he said, looking over the ruins. “I’d give anything to have them back.”
“I can’t understand,” Kinos said, hanging his head. “Not completely, but I do, a little.”
“Your family?” Raef asked.
He sank. He hadn’t even asked. Of course Kinos was worried about them. How could he not be?
“I don’t even know if the Hierarch kept his promise, how long I was in there, or if they’re even alive,” Kinos said.
Raef reached out. He wanted to put his hand on Kinos’s shoulder, maybe embrace him, but dropped his arm to his side.
“We should see if there’s anything we can use for bedding,” he said.
“Yeah.”
They circled the rubble, their soft steps the only noise. They could sleep in the lee of the wall. There wouldn’t be any wind, but it was already cold.
“What’s that?” Kinos asked, nodding to a slab of bronze peeking out from the rubble.
“The doors to the undercroft,” Raef said. “If it’s intact there will be stores, maybe even food.”
“I’d settle for a cloak,” Kinos said, rubbing his arms with his hands.
“Let’s go see,” Raef said.
He didn’t mention that there might be other reasons, a slim chance for answers to the mysteries of the shadowknife and the box.
They shifted stones to clear a door, rolling them more than lifting, cautious of their edges. Dirt and ash gloved their hands. Finally, they could swing one door open.
The stairs were intact. The roof remained standing, its arched vaults held aloft by thick, fluted columns.
“I won’t be able to see,” Kinos said.
“Do you want to stay up here?” Raef offered.
“Maybe—Yes.” Kinos let out a little breath. “Just be careful.”
“Always.”
Flashing a smile he didn’t feel, Raef took a long breath, and descended.
The tower’s fall had cracked the ceiling of the main chamber, but not broken it. Roots had wormed their way inside, marring the beauty of the blue plaster and the inlaid silver stars. They peeked out from the ash that covered most of the space. Many of the smaller vaults had collapsed.
Raef’s steps unveiled bits of the polished marble floor. No Grief gathered here, which was a mercy he sorely needed.
The memories of the last time he’d seen this place were rising, whispering at the edges of his mind.
For a decade he’d bottled them up, swallowed them down, and dulled his senses. He had no rum with him tonight, and he knew it was time. He had to let them rise and surface.
Passages ran between the pillars, doorways leading farther into the dark. Raef explored one, and found it full of ledgers. It had flooded. He lifted one book, but it was too stained to read, so he set it back in its watery grave.
Other tunnels led to statues, hooded figures, her priests and children, the other gods of the Night House. Her cult statue had stood on the tower’s main floor. It would have been crushed in the fall.
Raef’s wrist pulsed faintly. He wasn’t even certain he’d felt it until he took another step and it came again. The shadowknife stirred like a waking heartbeat. It sped up as Raef progressed deeper into the vaults.
A narrow door stood open, and on the other side, a rectangle of black glass, polished obsidian, hung on the far and final wall.
It gleamed in the shadowsight, reflecting Raef’s fractured image back at him.
The glass was broken.
This had been what Kinos had described, the carving on Eastlight, on his island.
Raef reached out, brushed a hand over its surface, felt the faintest touch of cold.
He knew it would not open again, though it had once before. This was the thing, the memory he’d avoided. How he’d escaped, and how they’d died.
* * *
“Lady Moon,” Raef chanted. “Sail the Ebon Sea. Mother Moon, daughter of the deep. Midnight Moon . . .”
He trailed off. He’d forgotten the hymn’s third line again.
Shaking his head, he reached for the blindfold but left it alone with a sigh. The priests required him to wear one in the prayer rooms, to keep the shadowsight from breaking his punishment, a meditation on sacred darkness.
He was the only one who could see in the dark, so he was the only one who had to wear a blindfold. It was stupid. He shouldn’t be punished for a gift she’d obviously given him, just like he shouldn’t be punished for running up the stairs. Walking was a waste of time.
He wasn’t old. His bones didn’t crack or creak like the priests’. Nor was he one of them. That was years away. He didn’t need to appear dignified no matter what they told him.
Raef pinched himself to stay awake. It had to be close to noon. He should be asleep, tucked in among the other novices, sharing snores with them in the barracks, but the old man had given Raef this punishment, probably because the prayer room smelled like feet.
He sighed again. A hand jerked his blindfold away.
Raef twisted to see Father Polus, Phoebe’s Hierophant, the old man himself, looming in the doorway. Raef hadn’t heard it open.
Polus’s stern face met Raef’s stare.
How did Father Polus always sneak up on him?
All of the priests were taller than Raef, but the old man loomed.
“Father?” Raef asked. What had he done now? Worse, what had the Hierophant found out about?
Polus tossed him a robe, the sort they wore for winter prayers.
“Get dressed, Raef.”
Raef pulled on the heavy garment. He didn’t intend to argue, not when Father Polus was wearing that expression, but he opened his mouth to ask a question.
“Don’t speak,” the priest said, cutting him off. “Just follow.”
Father Polus had definitely found out about something. Probably that fight in the yard, or maybe that Raef had skipped midnight prayers last full moon to spy on the Initiates.
Father Polus took him by the wrist and dragged him from the prayer room as soon as he’d finished lacing his sandals.
All the tower should have been fast asleep in the middle of the day. The priests kept all-night vigils, watching the eastern sky. That was their duty during the new moon, to await her return from the Underworld. It bored Raef. Most priestly duties bored Raef, but he accepted their importance and usually went along with minimal grumbling.
The curtains in the halls should have been drawn against the daylight, but they stood open, letting the noon sun touch the darkness of her temple. Raef wanted to protest, to ask the Hierophant about it, but experience with the old man’s moods said he’d allow no questions. Cowed, Raef let himself be carried along in the old man’s wake.
Something cold ran up Raef’s spine to see the priests and Initiates running for the roof, where all the order prayed at moonrise, where they sang to the temple of the sun when Hyperion set. His priests would sing back, making a chorus that ran through the city’s highest plaza. Father Polus pulled Raef against the tide, toward the cellars.
It wasn’t fair. Running was what had gotten him punished. Something had to be terribly wrong for the priests to do it and for the Hierophant to not punish them too.
They reached her statue on the main floor. The chant of many voices, strange and brassy, rose from outside. Raef gasped at the sacrilege. This was new moon.
The Initiates were forbidden to speak. They fasted. They waited for her to complete her descent to the Ebon Sea and to return through the secret door.
Novices like Raef were granted a child’s leniency, but they were still taught to keep quiet and silence was encouraged.
They had to pray her back from the Underworld, not offend her with noise and light. Even Raef respected those rules.
He didn’t know the consequences. No one had ever told him, but he had this terrible notion that she’d be trapped there, unable to return to the sky.
Sweat stuck the robe to his skin. It should not be so warm.
They passed a casement. Outside, a horde in brazen armor wove flaming swords. Their chant, almost guttural, reverberated through the tower’s stones.
The sight of them made Raef forget the Hierophant’s command for silence.
“Father, what’s happening?”
“We are out of time, Raef.” Polus grabbed Raef’s wrist, harder than before. His touch burned like ice. “I’m so sorry. I thought we would have longer.”
“But what’s happening?” Raef demanded.
“The Knights of Hyperion have come for us.”
It made no sense. The knights were their cousins, the children of their goddess’s brother.
Hyperion’s light was Phoebe’s light. They reflected each other. She glowed because of him.
His knights and priests guarded the day as Phoebe’s own watched the night. Why would they come to her temple armed for war?
Raef looked to her statue, her cloak of black basalt and her boat of silver-veined granite. Her marble face, half hidden, gave no answers.
Heat surged through the air. The fine hairs on Raef’s arms stood straight. Something struck the tower in a whoosh, a blow of unseen force. He smelled fire.
Another blow struck and Raef’s world shook.
The acrid reek of burning vellum burst over him, falling in a noxious wave.
“The library!”
Raef tried to pull away, to start back up the stairs and reach the books so precious to the goddess.
Father Polus’s grip on him tightened until it hurt.
“Down,” the Hierophant commanded.
The tower shook.
High above, an acolyte screamed as she toppled from the stairway’s railing. She fell, still screaming. Father Polus shielded Raef’s eyes with his hand, but it did nothing to silence the wet snap of her landing.
Raef felt something in his chest break at the sound.
His sobs turned to choking coughs as the knights’ chant grew louder, deeper, more menacing. Father Polus dragged him into the cellars and closed the doors behind them. It muffled the chanting, but the ceiling above them smoldered. The mortar between the stones lit with an orange glow. The bronze doors steamed.
The cooler darkness of the cellars relieved the oppressive heat, but the smoke soon found them. The screams of those trapped above drowned out the chanting.
Raef wiped his tears and breathed through the sleeve of his robe.
Their journey ended at a black door. Pure obsidian, it shone like a mirror.
“You have to open it, Raef.”
Raef blanched at the tears on the Hierophant’s face and whimpered, unable to make words. He could not have imagined anything making the old man cry. Raef’s own tears froze inside him at the sight.
“You have the key,” Father Polus said. “Use it.”
Lessons rushed back. A room full of doors. Father Polus ordered him to call the shadowknife and open every lock, one by one, in secret practice.
Raef blinked, remembering it all.
The attack on the tower, the fire the knights lobbed against it, stopped. They’d done their work. A great rumble began above them. Father Polus pushed Raef toward the door.
“You have to leave us now, Raef. You have to survive. For her.”
“Please, Father. I don’t want to.”
“You have to,” the Hierophant growled even as he threw his arms around Raef.
Raef didn’t want to die, but he didn’t want to leave his brothers and sisters, his fathers and mothers, behind.
The screams above grew louder. A great crack, like a hot mug dropped into icy water, silenced them. The flames found them. Fire swirled in the darkness.
“It’s time,” Father Polus said, letting Raef go. “The tower is breaking apart.”
Raef called the shadowknife and plunged it into the black door. The obsidian grew darker. Its gloss flattened to matte. The starless night on the other side sucked the heat from the air around them. He shivered despite the fire, the smoke, and his heavy robe. The sweat turned clammy all across his body.
“Come with me,” he said, hearing the plea in his voice and not caring how young he sounded.
“I cannot,” Father Polus said. “That door will only open for those of your blood.”
The flames were all around them. They seeped into the undercroft like hunting serpents.
Raef’s tears froze to his face as he went through the waiting doorway.
The memory let him go. He gasped like a diver surfacing from the bottom of a frozen lake and woke in the undercroft. He slumped to the ground, pressed his back to the cracked obsidian, and sobbed.
“I ran,” he said. “I ran through this door and left them to die.”