The corridor dead-ends at the entrance to the catacombs, and sure enough, a tall, broad-shouldered man stands guard, dressed in his formal breastplate, armed with both sword and bow.
“Hello, Fernando,” I say.
“Lady Red,” he acknowledges.
“Just Recruit Red, now. I thought you’d be with Elisa.”
He gives me a wry grin. “Alas, a very few of us are stuck here. There’s still a prince to protect, you see.” Fernando lowers his voice. “I hear you made quite an impression on your first day.”
I frown, and Fernando gives me a sympathetic smile. “The prince said to expect you. Hurry inside before someone sees.” With that, he opens the door and gestures for us to enter.
Fernando shuts the door behind us. We’re in a narrow, dark tunnel, but an orange glow testifies to something ahead.
“Stay close,” I order.
“Are you always this bossy and disagreeable?” Iván asks.
“I’m usually laughing and inquisitive. Must be the company.”
“Huh. I’ve heard that Inviernos don’t understand sarcasm, but you wield it with ease.”
“I’m Joyan, you daft dung beetle.”
“But your skin . . . those golden eyes . . .”
“Don’t confuse my ancestry with my nationality. Joya d’Arena is my home, and I’d give my life for it.”
“So you admit you have Invierno blood—” Iván’s thought dies on his lips, for we have reached the Hall of Skulls.
It’s a cathedral of bones, with archways made of human ribs and walls made of human skulls. Thousands of people must have died to create this space because there are so many bones, layered atop one another, pressing down. In the desert, bones are always white, bleached by the relentless sun. Here, they are as gray as stone.
I hate this place. Rows of votive candles are supposed to create a warm and sacred glow, but it just feels fiery and cruel, a reminder that death is too harsh, too final. Strangely, Elisa loves it here. She says it reminds her that death is an important foundation of her great city, and that something of the dead can last forever.
I guess I want my legacy to be more than a pile of ashen bones.
In the center of it all stands an altar of white marble veined in black. On it are three fresh long-stemmed roses. They are the holy variety, with the sharpest and hardest of thorns, just in case a supplicant wishes to prick a finger and offer a drop of blood in the holy sacrament of pain.
Arched doorways on either side open to dark tombs. “This way.” I lead Iván into the third doorway on the right.
Inside are several caskets resting on giant pedestals, each covered in a silken banner. Some of the banners are old and tattered and moth-eaten. One is barely a decade old and in excellent condition.
“Is that . . . ?”
“King Alejandro,” I confirm. “Elisa’s first husband and Rosario’s father.”
Iván stares at the casket, unblinking, for the space of several breaths.
“Iván?”
“Rosario always says the sins of the father shall be visited upon the children, from generation to generation.”
“That’s from the Scriptura Sancta,” I say. The holy text is full of horrible things like that. It’s one of the reasons I could never believe in a god.
“I liked him,” Iván says. “The king, I mean. Everyone says he was a weak monarch, an inattentive father. But he was kind to me.”
“You met him?”
“When I was very little. Six or seven.” I remind myself that Iván’s father was a member of the Quorum of Five and a part-time resident of this palace, before he turned traitor and tried to start a civil war. So it makes sense that Iván would have met the royal family at a young age.
“He must have made an impression,” I say.
Iván shrugs. “I guess. Where to next, bossy girl?” He’s trying to pass it off like it’s no big deal, but once again shadows veil his eyes, and he refuses to meet my gaze.
“Over here. There’s a small latch beneath the base of the casket. Help me find it? I’ve never come this way alone before.”
Together, we crouch to run our fingers along the base of the pedestal. The floor is gritty here, and slightly damp against my fingertips.
“I’ve got it,” he says. I leap backward to make room as the casket pivots to the side, revealing a deep stairway spiraling down into blackness.
“Holy God,” Iván says.
“Be very careful. Sometimes these steps are covered in a really gross slime.”
“Slime?”
“Algae, maybe? It’s very wet, where we’re going.”
“This is the weirdest night of my life,” he mutters to himself.
The stairway leads deep into the earth, and the going is agonizingly slow. I’m always hesitant to place my hand on the wall for balance, lest I risk shoving slime beneath my fingernails. Finally it levels off, and the tunnel opens to an irregular, cave-like chamber. Sand covers the floor, rippled from being underwater at high tide. Barnacles climb the walls to knee height.
“This room gets flooded!” Iván says.
“You figured that out all by yourself?”
“Red,” he says, coming to an abrupt halt.
I whirl back around, ready to lay into him for slowing us down.
“Please stop insulting me,” he says.
“What?”
“Threatening me. Questioning my intelligence. Calling me a daft dung beetle.”
“Don’t forget ‘ridiculous goat.’”
He sighs. “You’re being petty and mean.”
I open my mouth, but my protest dies. Hector would be so disappointed in me. You’re a member of court and a favorite of the empress, he always says. Your actions have meaning; your words have power. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“You are?” He seems taken aback.
I’m angry and scared. Scared for Rosario, angry at everyone who voted against my adoption . . . maybe I’m even a little angry at Hector and Elisa for leaving me here all alone, even though it was mostly my own idea. It’s making me lash out at Iván, an easy target because of his own questionable parentage. “I won’t do it again.”
I turn back around to continue our journey.
“Well, that went better than I expected,” he mutters.
“It doesn’t mean I like you.”
“I would never presume.”
The cavern narrows to a tight corridor of rough limestone, and we squeeze inside.
“I can hardly see a thing,” Iván says.
“We’re almost there.”
Our path ends at a stair, rough-hewn, damp with water, and aiming steeply upward.
“It smells like fish,” Iván observes.
“Yes.”
The top of the stair opens onto a high stone plateau. When Iván’s head crests the stair, he gasps.
I know how he feels, because even though I’ve been to this secret place dozens of times, my first sight always takes my breath away.
We’re inside an immense cavern, lit by lanterns and torchlight. Spread below us is a small village with thatch-roofed huts surrounding a massive bonfire. Rope ladders and swinging bridges connect the village to smaller caves high in the walls, along with a few additional huts that have found precarious purchase on plateaus like the one we stand on. Lush vines drip from cracks in the ceiling. A cool night breeze teases the torch flames, so that the light in the cavern is constantly shifting. Something in the limestone walls catches the light just so, causing the entire cavern to glisten.