Within eight days, we knew that whatever the Door was—one of the Vile, most likely—it existed like our wrights. It could affect us and the world around us even though we couldn’t affect it.
“What do you see?” Carlow asked and chucked another rock at the Door. It didn’t even waver as the rock sailed through it.
“The door to my mother’s sickroom,” I said. “She died there.”
“Grim.” She sipped from a mug of tea. “I see the door to your room. It was Poppy’s before it was yours. She was too young to be away from home. Used to come running to Creek or me every night when the Door gave her nightmares. Next time I love someone, they’ll be cursed and I’ll be dead.” She downed what was left in her mug and shuddered. “At least she’s not cursed.”
Basil grabbed Carlow’s hand, lacing their fingers together when she tried to shake them off. “The door to the courtroom when I was bound. I want to rip it open and stop myself from letting anyone known I’m noblewrought.”
“It’s odd,” said Carlow. “I know Poppy’s dead, but I still want to open that door and see her.”
I’d sacrificed so many things over the years to heal the folks in Felhollow—my mother’s laugh, my first memory of her, and the feel of her hand against my cheek. She was a smear in my mind, a slightly blurred hodgepodge of emotions. My only clear memories of her were the ones my noblewright had never wanted. Losing them would have been a mercy, not a sacrifice.
“I only have bad memories of that room,” I said. “The Door’s not as smart as it thinks it is. I burned that room and the building around it. What do you think I’ll do to you?”
Darkness seeped into the cracks of the wood, swallowing up the door I knew too well, until there was nothing but jagged splinters like teeth hanging before me. Carlow gasped.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you offended it.” Basil leaned closer to the Door and glanced back at me. “It can’t get offended, right?”
My noblewright reared up behind me, and I rose. Our wrights were only pieces of what the Noble and Vile could do. The Door didn’t need a contract or sacrifice to act.
“Of course it can,” I said and licked my lips. “It’s one of the Vile, and look at what it’s been reduced to.”
Within ten days, we had fashioned Creek’s bones into a new door with a sturdy lock. His bones thrummed the same way my wrights did, a low sound that was more uneasy feeling than sound. Carlow drew up a blueprint of the mechanisms needed, and I worked the bones into it. She couldn’t, because her binding to Order prevented her from working with bone, something only healers were allowed to do. Safia couldn’t, because her binding to Life prevented her from doing anything with bones that would kill a person.
“It’s a miracle either of you can manage to do anything,” I muttered.
Carlow grunted. “I manage nothing.”
“We manage fine,” said Basil with a sigh, “so long as all we attempt to do is what they say to do.”
They kept bridges, roads, and buildings safe—keeping folks happy with the council and court—and made beautiful homes and trinkets for those who could pay—keeping the council and court wealthy.
“I’m shocked none have argued for my binding yet,” I said and settled Creek’s reworked bones over the Door. A high-pitched whine pierced my ears. The Door trembled.
“They have,” said Basil, glancing around the cavern and our makeshift laboratory. “His Excellency threatened to strip them of their titles and let them try to destroy the Door.”
“They’ll take you seriously now,” Carlow said. “Good luck with that.”
Within twelve days, the lift was made and Safia joined us in the cavern. She took a shallow breath when she saw the Door and wrung her gloved hands so violently the seams ripped. Hana rubbed her shoulder.
“It can’t hurt you,” Basil said to Safia, “so long as you don’t cross the chalk line.”
Hana would have said it, but Alistair had sacrificed her voice the day before, and it hadn’t yet returned.
I beckoned him off to the side while the others showed Safia around. He came immediately, stayed at least one step away from me. He hadn’t touched me since our argument, and he kept his hands always at his sides when nearby. He never even stood behind me.
“There is a law the council has put forth, but the majority opposes it,” I said. “However, I think you should override it if they vote it down.”
“What’s the law?” His expression was inscrutable behind the red glasses.
“It demands noblewrought, not just healers, be in residence at munitions factories in the event of an accident and would lift some of the restrictions on their bindings.”
“Consider it done,” he said, waving his hand. “I will broach it during a coming meeting.”
“Your Excellency!” Safia’s voice echoed. “I’ve never seen the Door before.”
Alistair turned, scowling. “Yes, that’s why you’re here now.”
“No, I mean that it’s taking the form of something no one here, including me, has seen before.” Safia yanked a journal from her bag and flipped to a clean page. “It’s the door to Mother’s church. I’ve only ever heard about it. Look.” She sketched a large set of stone doors with a line of Madshavi carved atop it. “The Madshavi is correct. Does it know the language, or does it use my knowledge of the language?”
“It’s never duplicated languages before,” said Alistair, tugging the paper from Safia. “Is this replication accurate?”
“I’ll have to ask my mother,” Safia said. “I’ve never been to In-the-Presence-of-Wrights, but it looks right.”
“If it is, does that mean it’s good at extrapolating information it gains from us?” asked Carlow softly.
“Or that it’s seen the door?” I turned to it, exhaustion slowing me down. For days, the Door had taken up every thought and movement. It was one of the Vile, the only one left in this world, and all that was holding its fellows back. It conjured up our greatest wants to tease us into freeing the Vile. It accepted whatever we offered, devouring all without a care. “I’ve heard of that town before. Why have I heard of that town?”
“Ipswit?” Safia shrugged. “There’s nothing much there anymore except for the church. The whole town’s abandoned.”
“I will have someone travel to In-the-Presence-of-Wrights and sketch the door so that we can compare.” Alistair glanced at me. “And check on whatever is bothering you?”
“Nothing there but the church?” I clucked my tongue. Will had bought land in Ipswit, and I needed to know why. “Yeah, I need to know what’s there.”
In twelve days and one night, I had spent no time alone with the Door. I returned that night after the others left, slipping into the Door’s cave with only the dim light of my hand lantern. The Vile had possessed magic we couldn’t imagine, and yet the Door could do little outside this cave. Alistair’s vilewright, if asked to destroy the infection in a wounded arm, would destroy the whole arm. The Door devoured whatever was offered to it.
“You’re more discerning,” I muttered to my vilewright, and it trilled, acknowledgment fluttering in my chest.
As a child, I’d fed my wrights when I was lonely. They had grumbled and stretched, and I had felt them there within me. Without me. The only creatures in existence to never leave me. I asked for nothing, just wanting to know they were still there. I liked to think they understood and did small things for me without a sacrifice first because of it.
The Door was like wrights in a way; maybe it could be trained like them too.
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
The Door creaked. I cut my fingertips open and pressed five bloody prints into the earth within the Door’s boundaries. My blood vanished the same way it did when I sacrificed for my wrights. Pain scraped across my fingers. The dirt stuck to my hand.
“Let me go and I’ll give you more blood,” I said, “but if you don’t, you will get nothing more from me, and I’ll starve you until we have to sacrifice someone. You’ll get nothing in between. I can imagine it now—a withered door too weak to change its appearance until finally we feed you again.”
The dirt slipped away and settled on the ground.
“Good.” I patted the earth, letting more blood drop. “What’s your number? There must be an end to your hunger. If you devour all the mortals to stay shut, what will you eat after?”
Perhaps Alistair was right—the Door had opened something in me, and now the dark was spilling out—because I never would’ve had this thought of people as numbers before.
Footsteps echoed in the cavern. I turned, hands still red. Alistair stood in the mouth of the cave.
“This is dangerous,” he said. “Especially alone.”
“Wrought are never alone.” I stood but didn’t move. “Are you you, or are you the Door?”
Alistair chuckled and tossed me his glasses. I caught them, their solid weight familiar and comforting.
“Did you speak to the council yet?” I asked, rising and brushing off my knees.
He shrugged. “I will get to it tomorrow. Safia’s revelations were too tempting to abandon.”
Getting him to do his job was as hard as cracking a corpse’s chest, but at least I knew the outcome would be good.
“It’s been eating the cover and lock.” Alistair touched the glasses in my hand, careful to not touch me, and gestured for me to put them on. “Creek’s bones won’t hold it shut.”
“They already weren’t. It just took some of my blood without any issue.” I dropped his glasses over my eyes and gasped. “Is it always like that?”
“No,” said Alistair. “This is new.”
Shadowy tendrils reached out from nowhere, as if parting a curtain we couldn’t see, and picked away at Creek’s bones. They pulled the pieces into whatever invisible space they came from and then vanished again. The air shimmered where they all disappeared.
“Perhaps the lock only made it harder for it to accept sacrifices?” I handed Alistair his glasses and took a step over the boundary.
Alistair reached for me, fingers brushing the back of my coat. I waved him away.
“What’s it doing?” I asked.
“The same thing,” he said, and part of me thrilled at the catch in his voice. “A few shadows reach for you, but they’re less substantial than the others.”
“You couldn’t eat me right now if you wanted.” I tapped my toe against the dirt and backed away. “Let’s see how long it takes to break down the lock.”
I had ignored the notes from Julian and Will. Mack, at least, was as troubled as I was. I didn’t know how to move forward when Will’s guilt was guaranteed, the contract bound me to Alistair, and his treason might have been justified. If we shut the Door, at least Will would live and we’d have time to untangle the mess.
“I want to witness the next sacrifice,” I said, “and see exactly what the Door can and cannot do.”