I was hallucinating Andevai’s voice. I sheathed my sword, grabbed both bags, and ran blindly after the others. My head was reeling and I am sure I could not have told anyone my name or indeed anything except that I was not giving up the bags, not even to death.
“Cat! This way!”
I followed Bee’s voice past a series of curtains whose fabric slithered like woven metal. As the last one slipped down my back, my leading boot stubbed a step.
“Now we owe you a debt for saving us,” said a goblin, hidden behind the last baffle. “Your price is paid.” I could not tell if it was grateful or disappointed.
“I’ll take them up from here,” said the headmaster’s assistant. “You’d best scatter before your lords come looking for the trouble we’ve caused.”
I heard the rustle of the baffles as the goblins slipped back into their underworld so quickly I didn’t have a chance to thank them or ask them a question or even to think. Startled by the sound of footfalls, I set down the bags and drew my sword. A young man with a long black braid dangling over his shoulder like a rope took the bags from beside me. After a moment, I realized it was Rory, and there was light enough for me to see. They were already climbing. I followed.
Up! The steps went on forever. My air came in bursts. Did I hear ticking? What if there were other creatures stalking after us? What was that thing?
The headmaster’s assistant glanced back.
“Your sword is glowing,” he said in a low voice.
The light came from my blade. Its harsh glow revealed him clearly. He hadn’t the creamy-white complexion of the northern Celts, although he was very pale. He had broad Avar cheekbones and the epicanthic fold at the eyes commonly seen among people who lived in the vast lands east of the Pale. It was his white hair that was most startling. It had been cut in an awkward approximation of the short local Celtic style, swept back over his ears. His fashionable indigo dash jacket was too strong a hue for him. The backs of his bare hands bore tattoos, like faded blue ink, of a curling design that might have been vines, or serpents. It reminded me of the old Roman saying: Beware the serpent in the east.
“Bee does stink of dragons,” said Rory, pausing on the steps, “and so does he. It wasn’t a good idea to come with him.”
“I do not stink,” said Bee, “and you will apologize at once to Maester Napata. It’s very rude to tell people they stink.”
“Even if they do?”
“He’s sorry for being rude, and I’m sorry he was rude to you,” she said as she halted two steps below the headmaster’s assistant. He had the expression of a man used to hearing people whispering about his looks, and not in the way Andevai was likely accustomed to admiring sidelong glances directed his way.
“If you are sorry, that is enough.” Having made this bold statement, he hastened up the stairs as if his own courage were about to bite him.
“Really, this isn’t the time for you two to fight so childishly,” I said as I climbed past them. Rory looked offended and Bee surprisingly chastened. “Maester Napata, what was that thing? What kind of agreement do you have with these goblins? How do you know about these tunnels?”
“I am not the one who can answer your questions,” he said. “The men in the clockmaker’s shop will not have much trouble tracing us if they wish to alert the militia. Hurry.”
We climbed with my sword as our candle, but the gleam on its blade faded as a pallor of natural light seeped in from an unknown source, turning darkness to gloom. We emerged into a musty vaulted chamber.
“Just give me a moment to catch my breath.” I leaned against the stone wall, coughing.
Rory set down a bag and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “I smell bones and ashes.”
“We’re in a tomb,” said Bee, looking around.
Alcoves sheltered votive statues, dusty jars sealed with painted lids, and hammered metal plaques recording names and clans. Two stelae guarded the space. One was cracked through and listing. The second was carved on one side with the sigil of Tanit-a triangle capped by a small circle and straight arms-and on the other with a bull, a lion, and a crescent moon sheltering a sun.
I ran a hand down the length of my now ordinary black cane. “What was that thing?”
Bee glanced nervously toward the darkness that hid the stairs, but we heard no ticking. “It looked like someone built a clockwork automaton in the shape of a troll’s skeleton, powered by steam. Do you suppose goblins really are that ingenious?”
“I killed its combustion with my sword just as it was about to breathe scalding steam over me,” I whispered. “I shouldn’t have been able to do that. It felt like I pulled Andevai’s cold magic through the blade.”
Bee frowned as she touched my cheek with the back of a hand. “I hope you don’t expect me to explain what just happened. I must say, dearest, our lives were a great deal quieter before that awful night when my parents handed you over to Four Moons House.”
Maester Napata beckoned. “Maestressas. This way. Please to hurry.”
He led us up steps. The air grew wintry as we breached the surface through a marble tombhouse. We staggered blinking into what seemed a fierce brightness of day. Overhead, the sky was rent with blue. The storm had passed on, although cold soaked through our coats. Hailstones littered the ground. The city’s growl rose from beyond high walls.
Rory looked around with a bemused expression. “So many little stone houses. What people live here?”
“Only the dead,” said Bee.
“Do dead people live? I thought if they were dead, they did not live. It’s very confusing.”
“It’s the tophet,” I said. The walls had been reinforced with a spiked chain along the top to keep out vandals, treasure-seekers, and mischief-makers.
“What is a tophet?” asked Rory.
“Every Kena’ani child who died untimely in the first eighteen hundred years of the Kena’ani settlement in Adurnam was interred in this cemetery,” I explained.
“The remains of infants were placed here in dedication to the gods.” Bee sank onto a moss-covered stone bench as if exhausted. “But it was closed when my papa was a child, forty years ago. There were riots in the city after rumors spread that the Phoenicians were sacrificing children on Hallows’ Night and mixing their blood with wine and bread to keep away the Wild Hunt. Here in the tophet.” She sighed. “Just give me a moment. My legs are shaking.”
“I don’t think blood and wine would taste well together,” said Rory. “Why drink that?”
“It wasn’t true, you imbecile,” she snapped. “It was a pernicious lie!”
A gust of wind stirred my hair, like an unwanted premonition. “Bee, why did you notice the sign on that clockmaker’s shop?”
“The clock-faced owl? I saw it in a dream. I sketched it. When I saw it today, I knew we had to go there.” Her gaze, on me, looked so weary and worn that I wanted to tell her it would be all right, but I knew such words would be a lie. When I did not reply, she shook her head as if shaking off her fears and offered a teasing smile. “By the way, Cat, I saw a man’s face in the Fiddler’s Stone.”
“Who?” I demanded, remembering the woman who had told us girls went there to see the faces of their future husbands in the stone.
“Knives,” she said cryptically, mouth creasing down as if she was herself not sure.
Footsteps crunched on gravel. I should have heard sooner. A figure appeared where the gravel path hooked around a gaudy monument which was crested by a weathered representation of the lashing, intertwined sea monsters known as the Taninim.
“So here they are, the Hassi Barahal cousins.” Leaning on a cane and accompanied by his assistant, the revered headmaster of the academy Bee and I had attended regarded us with an expression whose depths I could not fathom. Even though I knew he had sent his assistant to find us, I stared at his regal features, seamed face, and silver hair as surprised as if I had been cast adrift on a wave-tossed sea to confront the toothy maw of a sea wolf.