“Listen to the Mort now.” Bastian rolled his neck, shook out his shoulders. “We’ll have you renouncing your vows in no time.”
She was glad of the dark. The heat in her cheeks could light a damn candle.
Bastian inclined his head to the well. “Some help, then?” He went back to pushing at the statue, apparently much heavier than it looked, inching it along the wooden platform toward the wall of the well.
With a rumbling sigh, Gabe stepped forward, his shoulder brushing Lore’s as he passed her. She didn’t move, and that was meant as a challenge. The way his eyes flickered to her said he took it as one.
“Where have you been?” Lore asked.
“Thinking.” The line of his jaw was harsh, casting a deep shadow over his neck.
“And did you come to any interesting conclusions?”
He finally looked at her, then. Turned so that one blue eye blazed down at her like a lighthouse at a rocky shore, danger and safety at once. “I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t let you do this by yourself.”
“I have Bastian.” Truth and a weapon and a memory of breath shared in an alcove. “I was never going to be doing this by myself, Gabriel. Just not with you.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched.
“What you should’ve been thinking about,” she said, “is what you’re going to do when it’s finally proven to you that Anton is a liar.” Then she turned around to go help Bastian move the statue.
After a moment, Gabe followed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
In our observation of the captured necromancers who worked in pairs, the more powerful necromancer would channel the Mortem, while the less powerful one would direct it. In this way, they were able to raise more of the dead using less energy by binding them together. Some necromancers were also able to shape raw Mortem before channeling it through themselves, causing things like increased strength or stamina once this shaped Mortem was finally taken in. Theoretically, this practice could be harnessed for military purposes, but so few are capable of it that further research into the possibility is impractical.
—Notes from Thierry LeMan, researcher working in the Burnt Isles circa 10 AGF
With all three of them working, moving the statue was fairly easy. Gabe directed them—the statue was on a track, barely visible against the wood grain in the dark—and they inched the statue forward until it slotted into a notch carved into the top of the well wall.
“Upon reflection,” Bastian said, hooking his hands on his hips and scowling at the statue, “moving it toward the notch seems obvious.”
“What an auspicious start we’re off to,” Gabe muttered.
Lore was too out of breath to say anything. Even sliding along a track, the damn statue was heavy.
Bastian moved the wooden piece covering the top of the well, now unencumbered by stone gods. Inside, a perfect ring of pitch-black, so thick it looked almost liquid. Cold emanated from the depths of the well, and all three of them took a tiny, instinctual step back.
“Do you have a key?” Gabe’s voice was low and dark, still suspicious. He arched a brow at Bastian, who looked utterly confused.
“A key for what?”
“The chambers,” Gabe said. “The chambers within the catacombs. They aren’t just left open.”
“Well.” Bastian pushed back his hair. “Fuck.”
“I can get in.”
Lore didn’t look at either of them. She looked at that vast well of darkness, an entry to deep parts of the earth where the living weren’t meant to go. “I can get in,” she repeated.
Gabe’s brows knit. “How?”
Behind him, Bastian said nothing.
A swallow worked down her dry throat. “I can get into any chamber we find. Just trust me.”
She knew it like she knew the shape of the catacombs, like she knew her name and the crescent edges of the scar on her palm. No part of that world beneath the earth would remain closed to her.
The war in Gabe’s mind played out on his face, cut through in silver moonlight. They circled trust, but never quite landed, carrion birds with a body dying slowly.
“She was a poison runner,” Bastian said, cast in darkness beneath the lip of the well’s roof. His arms were crossed, his voice low. “She knows how to pick a lock.”
Gabe could tell there was more to it, and could tell she wasn’t going to share. Lore could read it in the line of his mouth, hard and unyielding and shaped like well-hidden hurt.
Gabriel Remaut had lived a lifetime of subtle wounds, and she just kept giving him more.
But he shook it off. Nodded. “Fine.”
Bastian’s eyes never left Lore. The moment she felt steadier, tamped down the guilt in her gut, he seemed to know. A tiny inclination of his head, then he stepped up to the well. “Right. Lore and I will go in and search. I don’t know how long it will take to find the bodies, but I would imagine we’ll be back before dawn. Remaut, you stay here and—”
“Absolutely not.” It was near a growl. “You think I’ll let you take her down there alone?”
“I think you’re going to have to,” Bastian said, his voice smooth and courtly and more weapon-like for it. “Someone has to keep watch, and you make the most sense.”
“Why do I feel like you planned this?”
“I can assure you I didn’t, Mort, seeing as neither of us knew until five minutes ago that you were even coming. You left Lore alone all day.”
“I’m sure you didn’t.”
Bleeding God and His absent heart, these two were going to drive her mad.
“Bastian is right. Someone has to stand watch.” Lore said it quick and firm. Whatever territory Gabe and Bastian were edging into, she wanted them out of it. “And people will question you being here a lot less than they’ll question him, Gabe.”
The moon reflected off the gilded roof of the Citadel, gleamed in Gabe’s blue eye. He stared at her a moment, then rubbed at his patch. “Think, Lore,” he murmured. “If I have to stand watch, so be it, but I’d honestly feel better if you went on your own instead of with him.”
“You left.” The words recalled the wordless—her dark room, bodies fitting together before coming decidedly apart. “I know you prefer me alone, Gabriel, but I don’t.”
He shifted back, away from her. The gleam of moonlight left his eye; shadow fell over him like a cloak.
Bastian hopped up onto the lip of the well, then crouched down to peer into the dark. A click, his pearl-handled lighter flaring to life in his fist. The tiny flame didn’t do much, but it did illuminate a short, narrow staircase, spiraling down the side of the well. “Any idea how far this goes before you reach the bottom?”
“The well is about ten yards deep.” No emotion in Gabe’s voice. It was flat as placid water.
“Excellent.” Carefully, Bastian stepped onto the first stair. “See you at dawn.”
Lore could feel Gabe’s eyes burning into the back of her neck, scrutinizing, knowing there was something she hadn’t told him.
Something she wouldn’t. Even if his silence, his unwillingness to ask, made her conversely feel like maybe she should.