They brace themselves as the exit unhinges. Malice whips around, blocking Wonder. In protest, she skitters to his side, refusing to be shielded, brandishing the glass shards that she’d collected.
The door glides open, a spectrum of light flooding the interior. From the beyond the veil, ivory archery and a curtain of sage hair emerges, followed by an older face that gazes upon Wonder with a mixture of reproach, exasperation—and pride.
It’s the same countenance from decades of training and meditating. The last time Wonder had seen it, she’d been sneaking through the forest to the Archives, and she had attacked this female, not recognizing the opponent until she had rendered the female unconscious.
Her Guide holds up a set of quartz archery. “You forgot this.”
The glass spear hits the ground, the makeshift weapon slipping from Wonder’s hand. She leaps forward and throws her arms around the elder, wrapping her in a suffocating hug. “Harmony!”
“Wonder,” the mentor says, embracing her and then pulling back to offer Wonder the longbow and quiver. “I found it before the Court did.”
“How did you know…”
Mild amusement shines in Harmony’s features as she speaks familiar words. “Did you think I wouldn’t recognize your moves?”
During the forest battle, Wonder and Harmony had wavered, vaguely registering the singularities of one another’s fighting tactics. After Wonder had stuffed that bloom down the Harmony’s mouth, the Guide should have awakened thinking she’d hallucinated.
Wonder should have known better, not to underestimate her mentor. At some point, the elder must have concluded who had attacked her.
“I wanted to convince myself otherwise,” the Guide says in a rush. “But the alert verified what I’d suspected after you knocked me out. A breach in the Chamber during Stellar Worship could only be you.” She glances at Malice. “I don’t believe we’ve ever crossed paths, yet you look familiar. Best to save explanations for later, though. It’s a marvel they didn’t hear you attempting to break down the door.”
Wonder straps on her weapons. “We didn’t have—”
“—this?” Harmony holds up a capsule of seed-and-blossom fluid.
Quickly, the mentor explains that the Court had called upon her, trusting that she’d be able to scout for Wonder more successfully than anyone, should Wonder turn out to be the trespasser. Harmony had found the liquid while scouring the dorms, pretending to hunt along with everyone else.
Rapidly and briefly, Wonder divulges that Malice had created the Asterra Flora, enabling them to breach the Archives.
“Perceptive concoction,” the elder compliments, handing the blend to Malice.
“I do like perception.” He swings his gaze to Wonder. “Your Guide’s the one you laid out in the forest?”
“Did I forget to mention that?” Wonder inquires.
Footfalls rush across the level, punctuated by hollers. Indeed, the details can wait. Wonder, Malice, and Harmony spill into the stacks, two levels above the restricted section. They hustle through the aisles just as a voice yells and the first bowstring vibrates.
23
They command Wonder and her companions to halt. They roar warnings and entreaties, because enough damage has been done to sacred ground. To escalate this conflict rather than surrender further endangers the Archives.
How dutiful of them to finally remember this landmark’s worth.
It’s hypocritical after leaving the illuminated manuscript gallery in shambles. Nonetheless, that episode had been an isolated affair, not full-blown mutiny. Perhaps the Court does not wish to put this area at additional peril and now strives for a peaceful result, to preserve the environment as best as possible.
Wonder agrees. And she would obey if her peers weren’t counting on her, if she didn’t know what would happen to Malice and Harmony if caught.
She dashes past compartments full of books, foils and engravings flashing a million letters on either side. Within the labyrinthine funnel, that first bowstring vibration perks Wonder’s ears. The reverberation hisses through the lanes, enhanced by footfalls charging with the speed of asteroids.
The nocked weapon seethes like a smoldering object. It’s the noise of a lava rock arrow teeming with life. As Wonder hurdles over a chair, she spots the cloaked ruler in her periphery, his longbow taking aim.
She dives, evading the projectile as it skims the air. Somersaulting alongside her mentor, they surge onto their bent knees and fire, a synchronization of quartz and ivory arrows that block more blows and knock two souls off their haunches.
Agate lances across the distance, striking from the sidelines. An iron table leg swings into the arrow’s path, smashing it off course from Wonder and Harmony. Malice skids in front of them, wielding the broken furniture limb like a club, spinning it in his hands and then crooking his free fingers at the enemy, beckoning them to try again. His leer teeters on the edge of sanity, baiting the legion of Court members and keepers and archers.
Wonder does a quick count, her gaze hopping from one face to the next. She recognizes the repository warden who always showed her where to find the best maps and reading nooks.
And there’s Hope and Joy, whom she’s known since youth, who must be in the Peaks for an intermission from servitude. That accounts for her classmates’ inability to approach and recruit them as originally planned. That explains why her peers had called out to both and received no reply.
The archeresses wear tunics of starlight and leggings of moonlight, embellishments of leaves and gems woven in their hair. They brace themselves, hedging before exercising their archery.
The Court has chosen this means of defense selectively, enlisting subjects with whom Wonder has a connection, those whom it would pain her to battle against. And while the sight produces a hitch in her gut, it also pumps her veins with defiant energy.
Surging to her feet, Wonder yanks on the waistband of Malice’s jeans until he twists. They keep running with Harmony, dodging relentless arrows of lava rock, agate, crystal, azurite, pearl, marble, copper, and a dozen other sources. The Chamber spasms from top to bottom, with titles beating against one another.
Ahead, the lane splits into three like the prongs of a fork. On instinct and lacking the time to choose, each of them takes a different route. Wonder races down the center aisle while damning the breach. Why hadn’t they just stayed together?
Vaulting into the quarter housing books about the ethics of constellations, she steers her assailants west. Arriving at the correct passage of stacks, she jerks on a sequence of titles, the order of which causes the bookcases to rotate like doors, rearranging their positions and changing the surrounding layout.
Based on the grunts, she has caught her adversaries by surprise, hemming them in with unexpected dead ends. Although they must know this trick, they hadn’t anticipated it.
Wonder pumps her limbs, flying down the new route. Assailants glide in and out of her vision, shadows brandishing weapons of longbows and crossbows and blades. Spotting their quarry, they chant orders and cry out directions.
She cannot hear over the fuss. No echoes of a grated tenor or meditative flight. No throbbing gait or graceful exodus.
Where are they? Where’s Malice? Where’s Harmony?
An unrecognizable archer-in-training rounds a corner, blocking Wonder’s path. She darts toward him, then slides on her hip, uprooting the archer from his stance before he looses his arrow. The male topples, and so does his archery, which doesn’t belong to him.