Letting go of the rope, I rolled across the floor, sprang to my feet, and sprinted out of the hall. I didn't even have to look back to know there were guards on my tail, but that didn't matter. This castle had been my playground, home, and school since I was eight years old. They wouldn't be able to catch me here.
I rounded a corner, boots sliding on the slick marble so that I almost knocked into the opposite wall. This was the long, mirror-lined hallway nobles paraded down on their way to the audience hall, to show off to each other.
Wall-mounted candelabras ran the whole corridor. When lit, they created endless repeated reflections of light and shining silver accents and polished white marble. With all the nobles packed inside the hall for the Day of Prosperity speech, they had been allowed to burn low, and now the corridor was dim and gray and echoing with the many rapidly approaching footsteps behind me.
If the guards rounded the corner before I reached the end of the hall, it would be a clear shot for their crossbows to my back. But they wouldn't catch me sprinting the hall.
I gripped the middle arm of the nearest candelabra and pulled it down. It hadn't been used in ages, and moved grudgingly, with an aching squeal. But the panel next to it lurched open. I stuffed myself inside and forced the panel closed behind me.
The passage was dark as the entrance to hell and at least a thousand times dustier. I crawled forward, shoulders hunched, sneezing helplessly. How could I have ever believed I was the Thief? This had been easy enough as a child, but now I could barely squeeze through. My mind and hands had learned thieving, but my body wasn't exactly built for it. Nemia, a foot shorter than me and far slimmer, wouldn't be having this much trouble. And without my allergies, she probably wouldn't be sneezing like a beacon for any guards who might be listening.
There was nothing for it, though. I had to be the one to interrupt Magali's speech. As the castle nuisance well-known for swiping nobles' jewelry, I was the one they would most recognize. In the city, where few people knew what the Guardians looked like, we needed someone with the Mark to prove their identity to interrupt the speech. I could no longer provide that.
I moved as quickly as possible. If there were any guards aware of the Mirrored Hall's secret passage, I needed a head start. But crawling through dust and dead spiders and their living brethren left me plenty of room for my mind to wander.
I wondered how Joshua's "resurrection" was going. The idea that the Assassin, as the Healer's Dark counterpart, might be able to raise the dead, was an extreme one. But it had been mentioned as a rumored power of the Assassin in Ari's book, and given that we had a man who was supposed to be dead in our midst, we had decided it was time to spread the rumor to the castle. It helped that Tobias, who had authorized Joshua's fake execution, was dead, and probably hadn't informed many people it was fake.
Joshua hadn't exactly been pleased to hear his part in the plan ("It shouldn't be hard. You just have to act like you've been dead for a month and are angry to be back," I told him. "And that's how you normally act."). But from the glimpse I caught before hauling my ass out of the hall, he seemed to be doing fine. He'd broken open Lucien's modified dais at the perfect time. And despite his complaints that morning before climbing into the dais to be delivered, I doubted anyone was going to stop and ask how he had risen from the dead in the middle of the audience hall. Not in that chaos.
I just hoped he managed to get out of there. We were counting on everyone being too terrified or conflicted about re-killing their Captain to hinder his escape too much. And that was a lot to expect. We'd spent hours last night going over passageways like this one that he might use to escape. Strange how I once never thought I'd spill my secret escape routes to the Auxiliary Captain.
But the whole plan was just as gutsy and ridiculous. We had two Assassins running around the city today — Nemia, who wasn't the Assassin but had the Mark to impress people who didn't know her, and me, who wasn't widely known as the Assassin but could make a bigger splash by playing on the Assassin's rumored powers. It all relied on muddying the waters with gossip and rumors and magic and fear and a dash of showmanship. What was one gaping hole in the story when the story was nothing but holes? Magali would never be able to set everyone straight about who we were or what we could do.
I was ruminating on where our plan would do next when I found the end of the passageway, by dint of hitting my forehead on it. I hissed a few curses and thumped it until it gave way, spilling me onto the floor in a puff of dust.
Someone yelped, and then a heavy platter hit the ground next to my head.
"Rude." I picked myself up, taking one of the small, frosted cakes that hadn't slid off the platter with me. The poor kitchen girl who had dropped it stared at me, mouth open. "Don't mind me. Just passing through."
I stuffed the cake in my mouth and strolled through the kitchen. Cooks and servants glanced my way, or glared as they had to walk around me, but I was otherwise ignored. With the Day of Prosperity feast to prepare, none of them were interested in a dust-covered intruder, whether they recognized me or not.
Very close to the kitchen were the stairs to the dungeons. Tucked in the back of the dungeons were the records room, the memory chamber of past Guardians, and the Artifacts vault.
The last time I set foot in the Vault was the night Jaden had disappeared. I'd come for the Thief's lamp, sure it was my birthright, determined to take it with me when I left the castle — only to have it burn my hand. This time I walked right past the lamp's case to the end of the room. Inside the final glass case, resting on black velvet, was the Assassin's dagger. Its blade was rusted, all its metal dull. It hadn't been touched since there had last been an Assassin to touch it.
The glass was cool in my hands as I lifted it, clinking against the stone floor when I set it down. My heart raced.
I slid my fingers around the dagger's hilt and lifted it from the velvet. It was sturdy, of middling weight, completely unremarkable. And it would be useless until I had taken care of it—
Even as the thought crossed my mind, a flake of rust peeled off the blade and floated to the floor. And then another. The pommel lost its dullness and gleamed in the bare light. The faded leather wrapped around the hilt firmed in my grip and shone like new. The rust stripping away revealed a blade of pure black, edges sharp enough to cut deep with the lightest caress.
It knew the Assassin was back.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Also tucked deep in the dungeons was the hidden exit from the castle, disguised by a large boulder outside. I was eager to find it and leave. I wanted to be back at headquarters, finding out how Gal and Nemia had done today and if Joshua was alright and what rumors were bubbling up. I was so preoccupied that I made the wrong turn away from the Vault — this wasn't where the secret exit was.
It was apparently where the morgue was, which I didn't understand until I was standing among what I had taken to be low stone tables. It was the magic that clued me in. Mage's sigils were carved all across the walls and floor and tables. I couldn't read them, but in looking closer at them I finally realized I was surrounded by coffins. The sigils had to be to prevent stink and decay.
I should have turned the other way and found the exit, but my curiosity got the better of me, as usual. I stooped to read the paper label on one coffin.
Delia Reed. Suspected rebel. Died in questioning. Autumn 1301.
Died in questioning. That meant torture, and it had been recent. Perhaps even ordered by Magali herself. I worked my jaw, trying to force down my anger before I did something that would only hurt myself, like kick one of these coffins. Disrespecting the dead wouldn't get Magali what she deserved any sooner.
The next coffin read: Unknown. Poaching in Royal Forest. Died from wounds taken during capture. Autumn 1301.
This must be the holding place for inconvenient corpses until they could be buried. Prisoners the royals needed to identify or didn't want to admit they had killed.
I threaded between the coffins, reading them. One other unidentified thief. Two more suspected rebels, though both had died of illnesses or infections during imprisonment. Not all of it was nefarious. Two guards had died of unspecified injuries, their labels indicating that their families were expected to arrive to bury them soon. Their deaths were also dated to autumn, but they were further back.
They could have been killed in the skirmish of rebels and royal guards when Joshua and I failed the kill Iso. I wrapped my arms over the pang in my stomach and kept going.
Oh. This was very interesting. Tobias was down here.
The Sage. Autumn 1301.
His cause of death wasn't listed. I sank down next to his coffin, trying not to shiver, thinking of his cold body separated from mine by just a few inches of stone.
Why was the Sage awaiting burial down here? He wasn't unidentified, and he didn't need to be taken care of discretely. There was no family to preserve him for. Actually, hadn't they already had his funeral? Why on earth wasn't his body in the ground right now?
I didn't want to open his coffin. But I did need to know if it contained what it said it did. So I pushed the heavy lid open — bit by bit — just until I could see...
Tobias's face was just as I remembered it, though I saw only a sliver in the space I'd made. I couldn't keep from shuddering.
I did notice that his lid, unlike the rest, wasn't dusty. Someone had reason to look at the Sage's body, perhaps regularly, if the ease with which the lid opened was any indication. And there was an examination table on the other side of his coffin, a variety of healers' knives and scalpels still out.
Were they examining Tobias's body for something? Had he been sick? I pulled the lid out farther, looking for anything strange on his body. A sheet was draped over most of him, but his bare arms looked normal —
I jerked away, hands over my mouth.
His mark had been cut out.
For a moment, the dark stone room wasn't the morgue. It was a tiny cell, smelling of blood, full of fear, and I was going to turn and see Iso laughing and Medea with her slender knife in hand—
I gulped for air. It was stale and dusty and sickening, but I forced myself to breathe.
Iso wasn't here. I had killed him. I was alright. Someone else had done this to Tobias. After he had died.
I dragged the lid back in place, still shaking and refusing to look at his body. Sweat trickled down the back of my neck. I was ready to leave. I wanted to have left several minutes ago.
But what I had just seen could be important. I should see if there was anything else to be learned here. Anything that could help the rebellion, any dirty secrets.
I looked at the other coffins in the back as briskly as possible. The first three were unlabeled and empty. Apparently the castle hadn't made enough corpses to fill their storage space.
But the final one was labeled. I swiped dust away from the writing, winced, sneezed several times, and read it.
Jaden Eyro. Assassinated. Summer 1301.
Feeling like I might throw up, I pushed the coffin lid all the way open and looked down into a face that was not Jaden's.
Cabrel.