“What is it, Jovan?” Eliska didn’t even look up at me.
“You saw Hadrea yesterday didn’t you? Did she ask you about the catacombs?”
She glanced up at that. “She took the maps. I brought them to you at the Manor yesterday afternoon and she said she’d pass them on.” She pulled me backward and out of the way as the operators began loading another immense stone.
“I still haven’t seen her. She was up before the bells this morning and I thought she might have gone down there.”
Eliska dropped her voice, checking around her quickly for listening ears. “She was interested. There was a room on the map marked with the Darfri symbol for Os-Woorin, the lake spirit. I thought it must be an old shrine. That was what gave me the original idea to … well, you know. But it was well into the caves, probably right under the lake itself, so given what Chancellor Caslav told me, I never went there, and told Hadrea not to as well.”
I almost laughed. As if Hadrea could ever be told not to do something she wanted to.
“Ready to fire!” someone called, and Eliska shook her head apologetically. “Jovan, I can’t talk right now.”
It was tempting to go the caves then and there, but I was Tain’s only source of news of the attack on the bridge. I set back at a run, thinking hard.
* * *
“I told you, stop worrying. I’m fine. I’d be better if you gave me something—”
I looked up at Tain sharply. “I told you. These aren’t substances to take lightly at the best of times. In your condition I don’t know what they’d do to your body.”
“All right, all right. I’m feeling much stronger anyway.” Tain watched me, bemused, as I sorted through stacks of journals I’d brought from our apartments. The history of our family. These records predated Silasta and even Sjona, giving insight into our ancestors in the formative days of their reign.
“Is this just about Hadrea?” he asked as I flicked through the older hand-bound journals. “We don’t even know she’s down there. She could have gone anywhere.”
“It’s not just that. There’s something about those tunnels, something about this lake spirit reference. We don’t know much about it, but religion was important back then. Os-Woorin found its way into a children’s rhyme that’s lasted all this time. What do you think that means?”
“I’ve never thought about it,” he said. “It’s just a rhyme.”
“Etan once told me there can be fascinating history in rhymes children sing,” I murmured, turning the old pages carefully. The words ran back and forth in my head, mocking me. Was there some link between the rhyme and what Hadrea had told me about how the first Chancellor had summoned the lake spirit and blessed Silasta? Why weren’t there any references in history books?
When children played the old wooden game, they formed piles, stacking on one another on the ground. The bolder ones sat on each other’s shoulders during the “build it up” stage, and giggled as they wobbled, trying to stay up as they sang “so we don’t fall.” It was a song about building something, obviously, but not something wooden. “Are they talking about building the city?”
Here, this was the right era. My ancestor Tresa, the first proofer—though she had just been a close ally of the Chancellor with an interest in chemistry, then, not truly a proofer. I scanned. There wasn’t much—innocuous notes about experiments, indecipherable comments about people I had never heard of. Some blank sections that looked like she’d started to take notes on something and never finished. The strange thing, the thing that bothered me, was why my own family’s notes were so absent mention of spirits or ritual. If everyone was religious back then, even if it had fallen out of fashion and thus records over time, why had I no memory of Darfri beliefs in our own family journals?
“I guess it’s just a song about the Os-Woorin blessing, then.”
“Maybe.” This next section had several blank pages. I stopped. Once or twice might have been an error, an unfinished task. But my family wasn’t known for that. I smoothed the paper with my fingers. This journal was older than my family code. Sensitive information might have been conveyed another way.
It was still dark, and there were better lamps in the outer room. I left Tain on the bed and unpacked my pouches on the table by the door; both needed checking and refilling anyway. I took the jar of naftate, which I’d had out as a detector for manita fungus, and spread it thinly across the blank page, pulse thumping. Had Tresa known the trick with geraslin ink?
“Jov, what is it?”
The light still wasn’t good; was that a glimmer of color? I laid the journal directly under the lamp and stared at the page, willing something to happen.
“Nothing,” I said at last, returning to Tain, disappointment heavy in me. “I thought there might have been something important there.”
“Mmm.” His interest had faded. “I think I need to be down there.”
I looked up from the journal. “At the front? Are you mad?”
“Tell me honestly, how’s morale? Do the people still have hope?”
I dropped my gaze back to the book, avoiding his. The mood of the trenches had been apparent even from my short visit, and I wouldn’t lie to my Chancellor or my friend. “People are saying we won’t last the night. Some of our people have fled and are hiding in the city rather than wait to defend the bridge or the trenches. They’re frightened. They think the rebels will use magic to defeat us.” Maybe they will, I thought, my brain twitching with unease at the clash between what I had observed and what I could rationally explain.
“And what are they saying about me?”
“That you’re dead. Or that you found a secret way out of the city, and fled.” I saw his expression, and shook my head. “Unless we’ve found a way to neutralize Marco before the night’s out, you can’t do anything about it. You’d be the biggest target in the world if you went out there in this state. The only reason we’re managing to keep you safe now is that he thinks he already killed you.”
“I thi—” He looked up suddenly. “What was that?”
“What was what?”
Tain’s head jerked to me and then back to the doorway, lost in darkness outside the range of the small bedside lamp. “I heard something.”
I stood. “It must be Salvea. Salvea? Is everything all right?”
The rustle of wooden beads marked passage into the bedroom. Then, “Everything’s just fine, Credo Jovan, Honored Chancellor,” Marco said.
Petra venom
DESCRIPTION: Toxin extracted from the poison sacs of the venomous armored petra spider.
SYMPTOMS: When stung directly or poison is injected, intense pain and burning around sting site, followed by spread of stiffening and convulsing muscles, fits, breathing difficulties, coma, death. When ingested, immediate breathing difficulties, convulsions, and rapid seizures, death.
PROOFING CUES: None. Extracted venom is odorless and tasteless.
28
Kalina
Outside the tent, Garan was whistling again. The cheerful tune rankled, stuck as I was inside, hearing the sounds of the troops in the distance. We had pulled off the boats well north of the city, setting up a base camp out of sight of the rebels. A small contingent had been sent to the east bank to deal with the remaining rebel army guarding the south section of the old city; the rest were marching with Aven toward the main rebel army. I was stuck here.