CHAPTER 36

In the Lair of the Enemy

The warehouse seemed smaller in daylight, not mysterious but ordinary, with a plain wooden facade and dingy salt-encrusted windows. Casting a glance over her shoulder, Sefia tested the door.

Locked.

Out of habit, her hand went to her pocket, although of course the lock picks were gone, probably carried away by the swift Callidian Strait by now. Ignoring the twinge of regret in her chest, she slid a hairpin and knife into the lock and, with a few twists of her fingers, opened the door.

Inside, the warehouse was all echoing ceilings and dusty light. Hefting her pack, which almost seemed empty without the Book, Sefia wound among the wooden pallets and lengths of rope to the far wall near the foreman’s office.

She wondered if it had been too much of a gamble, entrusting the Book to a Jaharan messenger. But she had to do this quickly, before the Guard found out where Archer was going and hunted him down, and messengers were bound by oath as well as the promise of severe punishment to carry out their duties. And she had no one else she could trust to deliver it to Captain Reed, with instructions to bury it deep on one of those hidden islands only he seemed to be able to find.

Facing the wall, Sefia summoned the Sight. Over and over, she watched the porter touch the stones in sequence as he ushered countless candidates into the tunnels.

Like shadows, her hands followed his movements, and soon the door slid aside, revealing the darkened corridor beyond.

There were no guards in front of the door this time, but the had not changed—a promise that after she crossed the threshold, nothing would ever be the same.

She gripped the symbol and began to turn.

As the door opened, she was struck by how familiar it all was: the tapestries on the walls, the portraits of stern-faced subjects, the leather armchairs, and Tanin, standing behind her marvelous ebony desk.

Just as the Book had foretold.

Tanin looked up from what she was scribbling, hurriedly, on a sheet of parchment. Her silver eyes flickered with recognition.

“Sefia.” Her eyes narrowed, and she returned to her writing. “Come to finish me off, have you?”

Sefia closed the door behind her. “Just to talk,” she said.

Heating a stick of wax over a candle flame, Tanin sealed her letter with a brass stamp. “I’m afraid I’m not much of a conversationalist these days.”

Sefia had read about Tanin’s damaged voice in the Book, but she was still surprised at the rasp of it, like a wood file, so unlike the clear commanding tone she remembered from nearly three months before.

Tanin propped the letter against a bottle of ink. “What do you want?”

“To strike a bargain.”

“Oh?” Tanin twirled a cloak around her shoulders and clasped it at the neck. Her gaze roved over the room as if checking for items she might have left behind.

“The Book for Archer’s life.”

Tanin froze. She blinked, like she was seeing Sefia for the first time. Her gaze darted to Sefia’s pack. “Don’t tell me you brought—”

“I’ve hidden it. Not even my father could find it now. But I’ll tell you where it is, if you abandon all your plans for Archer. Get another captain for your armies if you have to. But leave him out of your war.”

She could almost see the wheels turning inside Tanin’s head. She swallowed, waiting for the future she’d seen in the Book to come to pass.

Slowly, Tanin sank back down. With a flick of her fingers, she unfastened her cloak. “If it’s written, we won’t need to find him,” she whispered. “He’ll come to us.”

Sefia almost smiled—it had happened exactly as the Book had said. “Then you’ll turn him away,” she said, already knowing how the argument would unfold. “He lives, and you get the Book back at the end of the war, or you’ll never see it again.”

Tanin raised an eyebrow. “What does your boy say to this?”

“He doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Your sacrifice is touching.”

Sefia ignored the twist in her heart. “Do we have a deal or not?”

“The war could take years.”

“You’ve waited decades. A few extra years won’t make much difference now.”

Tanin steepled her fingers, probing Sefia with a gaze that was suddenly sharp again. “You’d have to remain in the Guard’s custody, as insurance. The two of you might be separated for a long time.”

“I know. I’m willing to stay.”

“Even knowing what we do? What we did to the Locksmith?”

Sefia smiled. It was smile or cry at this point, and she refused to let Tanin see her cry again. “I’m not signing up to be tortured, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“You’d be a prisoner, essentially. You might not have a choice.”

“I’d have Illumination.”

“What if we took your eyes?” Tanin asked idly. “Illumination relies on one thing . . .”

Though Sefia had known this was coming, actually hearing the threat in Tanin’s broken voice still made her skin prickle. “The Sight,” she said. If she couldn’t see, she couldn’t access the Illuminated world. She’d be powerless.

Balancing the tip of her letter on one corner, Tanin spun it beneath her finger.

“You wouldn’t,” Sefia said.

“I would. But maybe not to you.”

“Why?”

“Sentiment.” A bitter smile curved Tanin’s lips.

Sefia twisted her pack straps. “We have a deal, then? The Book for Archer’s life?”

Lifting the letter, Tanin ran it over a flame. The paper caught, burning at the edges. As fire crawled up the face of the page, she flicked it into the waste bin.

“Deal,” she said.

This was as much foresight as the Book had given her. Now Sefia had to trust her own wits and skills to see her through the next few years.

Taking a candle and a box of matches from her desk, Tanin led Sefia through the hidden back door of her office, past the tapestries into the sloping corridor behind. Candelabras lined the walls, and the rough stone was black with scorch marks. They passed ornate wooden doors, long hallways, and twisting staircases that spiraled up into darkness.

Sefia wondered if they climbed all the way to Corabel above.

At last they came to a room—a cell—with a bench hewn out of stone and a soiled bucket in the corner. Though she didn’t show it, Sefia couldn’t help but feel afraid.

As she removed her pack, Tanin held out her hand. “Your lock picks too,” she said.

“I don’t have them anymore,” Sefia replied, sliding her knife and hairpins into the woman’s palm.

Surprise flickered in Tanin’s eyes, but she said nothing. Placing the candle on the stone bench, she lit the wick. Light flared in her silver eyes.

“I have to consult with my Director,” she said.

Doubt passed through Sefia like a draft. “I thought you were—”

“I was.” Tanin raised her ink-stained fingers to her throat. “Until you did this to me.”

The Book hadn’t shown her that. Had it tricked her? No. She could still change the future. She could still save Archer. She had to. She blinked, summoning the Sight, readying for a battle. “I came to you thinking you could give me this. If you can’t—”

“If I haven’t returned by the time the candle burns out,” Tanin interrupted suddenly, pressing the knife and pins back into Sefia’s hands, “run.”

Run?

Before Sefia could ask what she meant, Tanin swept out the door and locked it behind her.

Sefia climbed onto the bench, hugging her knees. If things didn’t go as planned, if the new Director, whoever that was, didn’t agree to their deal, Tanin had given her a chance to escape.

Was it a trap? A test?

Would it cost Tanin, if her Director found out?

Beside Sefia, a bead of wax slid down the candle, pooling on the cold stone. Swallowing her doubts, she leaned back against the wall to wait.

•   •   •

The candle had almost burnt out by the time Tanin came to collect her.

“You got your Director’s approval?” Sefia asked.

At the use of the title, the woman shot her a glare and blew out the flame, leaving the wick smoking in a mound of wax.

She led Sefia to another room, empty but for a full-length mirror on the opposite wall.

Sefia studied their reflections as they approached: their black hair, their dark eyes. In the windowless room, Tanin’s creamy complexion appeared sallow, but Sefia’s sun-weathered skin seemed to glow golden, like her mother’s had.

As if echoing her own thoughts, Tanin whispered, “You look like her.”

Sefia leaned in to study the mirror frame. It was decorated with readers hunched over desks, poring over manuscripts in such exact detail that if she leaned close enough she could read entire passages from their immobile pages. The artistry of it all was so exquisite she was almost sure the figures moved when she wasn’t looking, their quills skittering across golden sheets of parchment.

“Why are you showing me this?” Sefia asked.

“This is the way to the Main Branch.” Without further explanation, Tanin stuck her hand through the mirror, disappearing up to her wrist in a pool of silver and light—a portal.

She gestured Sefia forward.

Squaring her shoulders, Sefia stepped through it with the barest shudder, like a stone sinking into a still pool. A ripple of cold went through her, and then she was appearing from the other side of the glass.

This room was lined with black and green marble laid out in complex geometric patterns, with lamps along the walls that let off a glow unlike any Sefia had ever seen. She’d read of electricity in the Book, of course, but she still found it hard to believe.

There were four mirrors in this room: one edged with silver waves, one with gold, another with ramparts of stone and turrets with metal flags poised in an invisible wind, and the one they’d just left, with a frame of lighthouses and cliffs and a walled city—Corabel.

Tanin appeared behind her and crossed to the only door in the room, where she removed the scarf around her neck, revealing a scar like a sickle moon. She gestured to Sefia.

There was no turning back now.

She allowed Tanin to tie the scarf over her eyes. Darkness closed in around her.

There was a jingling of keys, and then Tanin took her arm, leading her through the door. The air opened up around her. Light touched Sefia’s lids through the silk.

“Is this the Main Branch?” she asked as their footfalls echoed around her. The room must have been huge, because her voice carried, magnified dozens of times.

Tanin said nothing. They passed onto a carpeted floor—a hallway—and the light from Sefia’s left told her where the windows were. Unless they’re more of those electric lamps, she thought, making a note on the map forming in her head.

She was led down steps and through other corridors. The air grew cold as they descended into the heart of the mountain. Their footsteps began to echo on the rough stone floors.

“You’re taking me to the Administrators.” She almost jerked out of Tanin’s grasp.

“Director’s orders,” the woman whispered. “But don’t worry. They won’t harm a single hair on your pretty little head. You have my word.”

“How can I trust you?”

“I think we have to learn to trust each other.”

When Tanin finally untied the scarf, they were standing at the threshold of a simple, unadorned bedchamber. It had a set of drawers and a wardrobe for clothing, a chest at the foot of a narrow bed. The only sign that they were in a dungeon was the fact that there were no windows and there was no way to unlock the door from the inside.

As Sefia’s eyes adjusted to the sudden light, she realized with a start that they were not alone. A tall man dressed in white stood beside her, unnerving in his stillness. Though he barely moved, she got the feeling he was studying her with every fiber of his being, watching her with his mismatched eyes—one nearly black, the other clouded—listening to her movements, smelling her with every silent breath.

“Sefia, meet Dotan, my former Master,” Tanin whispered.

He didn’t speak, and neither did she. This was her jailer, and perhaps one day, her interrogator. His scarred eye bored into her like a white-hot drill, burning as it went. There was such malevolence in his expression that Sefia knew immediately that he’d kill her if he ever got the chance. He may have been planning it even now.

She just hoped Tanin’s deal would be enough to protect her—at least until she found ways to defend herself among her enemies.

Tanin gestured her into the room. “You’ll stay here for now. The lamps have power, and there’s running water in the taps.”

“Some dungeon,” Sefia said.

“If you’d prefer more ascetic accommodations,” Tanin replied tartly, “I can have that arranged.”

“Is that her?” someone asked eagerly, peering through the doorway like a spectator at a traveling show. “The traitors’ daughter?” He was just a boy, not much older than her or Archer, with brown skin and large eyes, made larger by a pair of thick spectacles he kept pushing up on the bridge of his nose.

“Away, Tolem,” Dotan said in a voice sharper than Sefia had expected. Tugging the boy by the collar, he ushered him away. The sense of malice in the air dissipated like smoke.

“Was that the Apprentice Administrator?” Sefia asked when she was sure they were gone.

“Yes.”

“He’s so young.”

Tanin looked almost regretful. “It took Dotan a long time to replace me.”

“How long will I be here?” Sefia asked.

“Until I send someone for you.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m going to need proof that you’re keeping your end of the deal.”

At the door, Tanin turned. A smile flitted across her features. “Everything in good time,” she murmured, and shut the door.

Sefia shuddered. She was in it now. No changing her mind, no going back.

She began to explore the room. Fascinated by the lamps, she flicked the switches on and off, on and off again. She tested the taps and was rewarded by a rush of steaming water.

She took a bath—the first hot bath, it seemed, she’d had in years, in a real bathtub under a real roof. Layers of grit and trail dust sloughed off her in ribbons while she scrubbed her hair.

Later, a servant came by with a tray of food and a leatherbound book. Hesitantly tasting her dinner with a gold spoon, Sefia traced the title with the tip of her finger.

OSTIS GUIDE TO TALISMANIC BLADE WEAPONS

She read. Most of the text was bewildering to her, talking of magical methods that were beyond her comprehension, but here and there was an underlined word, a scribbled sentence, diagrams drawn in the margins, that helped her to understand.

This was how bloodswords were made.

She read, and when her eyelids grew too heavy to read any more, she turned off the lamp at her bedside. The dungeon seemed to close in around her while she lay under the covers, tracing the worry stone that lay warm against her neck.