She crept past the Lady’s downcast gaze and into the dimness of the Cathedral. She had expected priests, but there was no one. Light flickered from the tiny candles lit by the faithful during the day and a shaft of light came from somewhere in the height of the vault, making dust motes dance in its beam. She’d heard they kept what she was looking for in its own shrine, towards the back. She went up between the huge pillars, a small swift shadow.
The shrine was locked behind a grille, but she could see it now. It sat on a small stand on the altar. Its jewelled sides glinted in the candlelight, sparking green, gold, a deep shining black. Scrolls and filigrees of silver and gold, impossibly fine and delicate, wrapped around the jewelwork. There was a thick metal band around the middle, and in the middle of that was an ornate ring, enclosing a kind of spiralling motif. The egg was smaller than she had been expecting, but at the same time more delicate, more visibly precious in appearance. She opened the grille. There would be an alarm, surely, electricity or hidden tripwires. But she could see nothing to prevent her taking the egg. She cast a coin across the floor, it skittered and rattled to a stop. Nothing moved, nothing sounded.
Lune stepped into the shrine, and for long moments it was all she could do to slow her breath. It was one thing to break into the cathedral, another still to stand this close to the egg. Caught now, she could always claim that she had only come to admire the fabled thing. But to hold it, to take it in her hands, to smuggle it out of the shrine: There could be no excuses then.
Lune reached out and hefted the egg from its stand. It jerked up, as if she had made to lift a goblet in the expectation of its being full, only to find that it was empty. She knew then that the expedition had been in vain, for the egg could not possibly be authentic. It felt no more substantial than if it had been made from layers of papier maché, a cleverly-done fake to fool the gullible and the ignorant. Which surely made sense: The egg in the shrine must be a decoy, with the real one—if it even existed—cloistered somewhere much more secure. No wonder there were no priests to guard this fake: It wasn’t worth anyone’s bother. Bitterness flooded into her mouth: She had failed Bezile, failed the debt that she owed her, failed the mother who had left Lune beneath Bezile’s dark wing. The feeling that now she would never be free brushed over her skin like moths.
But then she felt the cold, even through her gloves. The chill reached her fingers and stayed there, like the first tingle of frostbite. This was more than just the coldness of something that had been kept in a dank vault for a long time. It emanated from the egg itself, a fierce, ever-renewing coldness.
And who had ever said that the eggs were heavy, anyway? Now that she gave the matter due consideration, Lune thought it likely that she had assumed this detail herself, rather than being told it by anyone who might have known better.
She fingered the ring set into the egg’s waist-band, and felt an edge of metal, like a tiny sprung lever. The lever budged against the pressure from her finger, and curiosity compelled Lune to push it all the way. She heard a tiny metallic rasp and saw the spiral motif reveal itself to be a shutter, whose elegant curved blades retracted to expose the dark faceted red of a ruby, or a stone very like it.
She released the lever. It sprang back, and the shutter snapped closed again. It was only then that she felt the second lever, set under the ring. It did not yield when she applied pressure to it. Perhaps the first lever had to be held back first, or perhaps the second lever was jammed with age.
Nervous—conscious that she should have resisted the urge to tamper with the egg in any way—Lune swaddled it into the pouch under her cloak. Immediately she felt its cold insinuate its way through the fabric, into her belly. How, she wondered, could something so cold bestow warmth and light and power, when used properly?
She had not even retraced her steps past the statue of Our Lady of Winter when the priest emerged from the gloom, blocking her way.
“You did well, child, to get this far.” He was a young churchman, barely old enough to shave, but his face was so drawn—and the shadows so deeply accentuated by the gloom—that there was something grim and skull-like about his countenance. “Well, but not well enough. I take it you were sent by the Château, to steal what is rightfully ours? To prove yourself, I don’t doubt?’ His eyes flashed with avaricious interest: She wondered how long it had been since this young acolyte had seen a woman, or anyone from outside the cathedral.
“It meant nothing to you,” Lune said. “You weren’t using it, just keeping it locked away down here.”
“Because it is holy. Because it is not a thing to be ‘used,’ or made into a gaudy spectacle.” He was blocking her exit. Although the priest appeared unarmed, she thought little of her chances of overpowering him. The Château had not given her a weapon: not even a dagger, let alone a discharge pistol. Soutine carried one; he’d let her fire it once, in the Château’s courtyard, just so she knew how it would one day feel to be trusted with that power. But the point of this errand—as the priest had rightly deduced—was to prove that she could take the egg by wit and stealth alone, not force of arms.
Well, on that score she had failed miserably, hadn’t she?
But Lune remembered something the Madame Bezile had said, in their last moments alone in the Château, before she had put on her skates and run the gauntlet of the Aftmen. “If you are trapped, my good Lune, and the egg is in your possession, you are never without an ally.” She had paused to wrap another layer of fur around her body, against the chamber’s cold. “But call on that ally sparingly. The light of creation can never be put back, once it is loose in the world.”
Lune had only been half listening, preoccupied as she was with the task ahead. Her mistress was fond of cryptic utterances, and it didn’t pay to dwell on them all.
“Give me the egg,” the priest said. “Do it now, and you will be treated with leniency.”
“I came for it,” Lune said. “I’m taking it.”
At last she recognised the apprehension in the churchman’s face. It wasn’t just that he was worried about her dropping or damaging the egg. Something else: the same apprehension he might have shown if she held a blade against his throat.
He moved. Lunged toward her, reaching out to snatch for the egg. But Lune was faster. She brought the egg out of the pouch. Cradling it from underneath with her right hand, she used the forefinger of her left hand to work the lever on the shutter: this time pointing the ruby at the priest. With the thumb of her right hand, she pressed hard against the second lever, the one that had felt stiff before. This time it moved, but only grudgingly, like very old clockwork that had nearly seized into place. Yet as she worked it back, she felt other things—subtle geared mechanisms—click and whirr inside the egg, moving within layers invisible to the eye. Each successive movement seemed to trigger another, deeper and deeper into the egg’s heart. And from the ruby eye in the middle of the ring came light. The needle of brightness that skewered the darkness of the underground chamber was whiter than anything she had ever imagined, without the slightest tint of pink or red. Lune nearly dropped the egg in surprise. The priest raised his hands to his face, but he was not nearly fast enough. Lune doused the rapier of light across his eyes, the priest screaming, and then released the two levers. The shutter snapped tight, and inside the egg mechanisms unwound hastily. The light was gone, though the memory of it was seared across Lune’s vision.