CHAPTER 36

Up above in the chapel, Line sat quietly. He rubbed his temples in short, staccato movements. The pressure felt good. At the same time, he closed his eyes so tightly that he could feel his facial muscles ache from the effort. When he finally relaxed, he thought—for the briefest of moments—that he heard Francis’s voice, thin and faint in the distance.

“Francis?” he called out. It was crazy to think that his brother might be here, but he couldn’t help himself. “Francis?”

Line pictured his brother huddled in a ball, whimpering himself to sleep—just like he’d done after their mother died.

Stop. This is not useful. Line stood up and shook his head violently. Then he wiggled his legs, trying to loosen his calves and quads. Pull yourself together.

It was the pain in his arm that brought him back. His ankle was feeling better, but his arm was worse. It was really hurting now—both throbbing and itching. He needed more lekar. The throbbing seemed to extend beyond the arm, radiating up into his shoulder. He felt the pulse in his neck. It was fast. Too fast? He wasn’t sure.

Line looked up suddenly.

He thought he’d heard something far above. Line walked into the stairwell that led to the roof and called for Kana. No reply. He climbed the stairs for a minute or two, shouting Kana’s name, but there was still no answer. He turned back. Kana was often like this—running off on his own for long stretches. He used to do it all the time when they foraged together. Damn, Kana was good at finding mushrooms. Those eyes of his—they could spot anything in the darkness. And lately, it was more than just his eyes that were remarkable. Line thought back to when Kana had pushed that door closed at the mayor’s house. Who knew he had that kind of strength?

Line moved his hurt arm and yelped. Tentacles of pain ran up into his shoulder and neck. He looked down at the arm. Gangrene. For a moment, he visualized Palan’s stump. He began to panic, just a little bit. There were tiny signs that something was wrong—his toes were starting to clench and sweat was gathering in the small of his back. Easy now. Don’t go there.

To focus his mind somewhere else, Line grabbed the candle and walked methodically around the room. He climbed onto the stage at the room’s far end and was examining the stone pulpit when he took a bad step and slipped. He landed on a pile of cold, wet seaweed, and his arm felt as if it had been stabbed with red-hot needles. Line cursed loudly. He was about to get back on his feet when he noticed a latch attached to the top of a narrow metal drawer that was built into the pulpit. The drawer was so unobtrusive that, under other circumstances, he never would have seen it.

At first it wouldn’t open, and when it finally did, there was an audible sucking noise—the sound of an airtight seal breaking. The edges of the drawer were lined with crude rubber inserts. Line had seen seals like this before. People in seaside towns often kept their most valuable papers in airtight drawers to protect against the dampness and humidity; his own mother had stored jewelry and documents in such a compartment. Line reached into the drawer and pulled out a lone piece of paper, which was so old and thin that it was almost translucent in the candlelight. It was a diagram of the citadel, showing the main staircase, the chapel, and the roof with its grasses and trees. It also showed the second stairwell—the one that Marin was now exploring—which appeared to go all the way down beneath the tower into a vast, cavernous basement.

The diagram was etched in faded black ink, but someone had used blue ink to scrawl three crude X’s along the very bottom of the back stairwell. There was also an arrow that started on the bottom of the back stairs and pointed into the great basement. Line studied the diagram carefully but couldn’t puzzle out what the X’s or the arrow meant.

At that very moment, Kana returned, silently emerging from the shadows.

“About time,” said Line. “Hey, I could use more of that lekar.”

“Sure,” said Kana. He reached into his pocket, pulled out the wooden container, and handed it to Line.

There was very little left. Line spread a dollop of the ointment onto his forearm. Although it stung the wound and surrounding tissue at first, the sting was soon reduced to a tingle, and then the whole arm went cool and numb. Line returned the container to Kana.

“Where’s Marin?” asked Kana. His eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed—even without eating, he looked healthier than Line and Marin. The candle threw an arc of light onto his muscled legs . . . and onto a dark, spreading blot on Kana’s right boot.

“She went down those stairs to look around,” Line said. “Did something happen to your foot? Is that blood?”

Kana looked down and lifted the toe of his boot. “I slipped. Lucky it’s just a scrape.”

Line tilted his head and looked into his friend’s blue eyes. “You are lucky.”

Kana glanced at the darkened doorway.

“She’ll be back soon,” said Line. “How were the Dwarf Oak Islands?”

Kana shook his head ruefully. “No rescue ships, but at least I didn’t see anything heading here from the island.” He noticed the paper in Line’s hands. “What did you find?”

“A diagram of the basement. It was in an airtight drawer built into the pulpit,” Line replied, handing Kana the paper. “Take a look.”

Seconds later, something scurried across the chapel floor. It was a rat. Line and Kana watched it with curiosity. Very occasionally he had seen rats by the town docks, but there were very few in Bliss. A second rat emerged and then a third. They were coming from the hallway that Marin had entered. More rats came—at least a dozen.

“What’s with the rats?” Line muttered. He looked back at the diagram Kana was holding, then glanced again at the three rusted gates, which were lying on the floor of the chapel. “Wait a minute,” said Line. “The three X’s on the diagram—those are for the three gates.”

“Huh?”

“The people who holed up here—they were going to use them to block the way up.”

Kana still looked confused.

“Look at the arrow,” said Line, stabbing his finger at the map. “The arrow must be pointing at a way into the basement—a way in from the outside—and the people here were going to use these gates to seal off the tower. But they never did.”

“Why not?” asked Kana, glancing over at the gates lying on the ground.

“Who knows why,” said Line. “The point is, there’s a way to get inside the citadel from the basement.”

A wave of fear swept across Kana’s face.

“Marin!” yelled Kana. He ran to the doorway. “MARIN!”