“Here I was, thinking you’d have a fun little side mission for me.” Mort sighed.
“Can you do it, or are you refusing?”
He smirked. “I’ll do it, if only to see that pretty little smile of yours,” he said. “I’ll come back tomorrow, as soon as it’s done. You can expect a call from Doctor Ulani—I’ll just pretend I want to check up on the one with all the purple puke, or something.”
“Her name’s Lorela.”
“Whatever,” he muttered.
“If you want to pass as a doctor, you need to remember the names of your patients. Especially ones as high up in Gianne’s standing as this!”
Mort looked confused. “Why? As long as they think you can cure them, it doesn’t matter.”
“Just remember Lorela’s name, please!” I opened the panel and led Mort into the basement. To my relief, the wardrobe was still unlocked, giving us an easy path out.
We walked along quietly. As we reached the steps that led up from the basement, I gestured for Mort to stop. I crept up first, peering around the corner to make sure the coast was clear. The hallway beyond was empty, and I couldn’t hear anyone nearby.
“Come on!” I hissed, and Mort hurried up the stairs behind me.
We moved quickly along the corridors of the mansion’s ground floor, with me staying a few steps ahead, to scour the connecting hallway for any unwanted attention. I was convinced Sarrask was going to materialize, wanting to know what I was up to. However, he was nowhere to be seen.
Satisfied that nobody was going to spot us on our escape, we pressed on, until we reached the final stretch of hallway between us and freedom. I sidled up to the entrance of the kitchen. It was empty, too.
Gesturing for Mort to hurry up, I beckoned him into the vacant kitchen and dragged him over to the back door, where Ronad and I had made our escape two weeks ago. Flipping the latch, I opened the door and let him out into the bitter Vysanthean air.
“Tomorrow?” I whispered.
He nodded. “Tomorrow.”
With that, he set off through the gardens of the Idrax house, before ducking under the silver archway at the very bottom. I watched until I couldn’t see him anymore, praying it wouldn’t be the last time I saw him.
Closing the door behind me, I sprinted across the kitchen, through to the entrance hall, and up the stairs, not stopping until I reached the sanctuary of my bedroom. I’d expected Ronad to be there when I arrived, having extricated himself from Lorela’s cupboard, but there was nobody around when I stepped inside.
Feeling disappointed, I wandered over to my bed and sat down on the covers, taking a deep breath. I was about to lie down, to try to calm my racing mind, when there was a knock at the door. Hurriedly, I stuffed the silver box under my pillow, my heart thundering as I tried to look as unflustered as possible.
“Who is it?” I called.
Sarrask opened the door poked his head around it. “Can I come in?”
I stood up sharply and went to meet him at the door. “I think it’s probably best that you don’t.”
“I just wanted to come and see how you were,” he said, his cheeks reddening. “I checked under the bed for you, but you’d vanished. Where did you go?”
“I managed to sneak out while you walked Doctor Ulani down the hallway,” I lied.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
An awkward tension bristled between us, with Sarrask not daring to look me in the eye. I wondered if I should bring up the kiss and ask Sarrask what the hell he’d been playing at, but it didn’t seem like he wanted to be reminded of what had happened.
“How’s Lorela?” I ventured.
“She’s better. She’s awake, and asking for something to eat,” he replied. “I was just on my way to the kitchen when I passed by your room and thought I should check in on you.”
I didn’t want to remind him that my room wasn’t exactly on the way to the kitchen. In fact, it was nowhere near the route to the ground floor, but he seemed embarrassed enough as it was, and I didn’t feel like dredging up something that would only mortify us both.
“Is someone with her?”
“Yeah, Kaido and Ronad are with her right now,” Sarrask replied. “I think she’s going to need more one-on-one sessions with the doctor. Kaido thinks she just needs stronger medicine, but I think she’ll be fine without it. Her body will fight the sickness—that’s why Vysanthean immune systems are so strong. We can recover from most things.”
I realized he was avoiding using the word “therapy,” or anything that related to the ups and downs of mental health. He wasn’t even referring to it as a mental illness, but something that could be cured by sheer willpower and natural antibodies alone. The stigma surrounding it really was a big deal here. I only had to look at the way Kaido was treated to know coldbloods didn’t appreciate things they couldn’t see or understand.
“Did you ask the doctor to come back?” I asked, not knowing what had gone on between my disappearance through the passageway and my encounter with Mort in the lab.
Sarrask grimaced. “Yeah, we asked him to come back as soon as he was available.” He paused uncertainly. “Although, I have to say, I’m not much of a fan of Doctor Ulani.”
I smiled. “I imagine he grows on you.”
Chapter Seventeen
“Are you insane?!” Ronad hissed. “What if Jareth notices it’s missing?”
“We’re going to have to hope he doesn’t,” I said.
Ronad paced around the bedroom. “He’ll probably notice the minute he goes back into his lab. As soon as he sees that it’s gone, he’ll kill us both on sight!” He ran a hand through his hair. “No, we have to take this back now, before he gets home!”
“How about we just read whatever’s on it and get it back to the lab as soon as we’re done? If we do that now, we can return it before Jareth notices it’s gone.” I leaned back against my headboard. “With what’s happened to Lorela today, I’m sure he’ll be too distracted to hide away in his lab tonight. I know it was a big risk, but we need to know what’s on it. Otherwise, what was the point?”
After kicking Sarrask out, unable to bear the awkwardness a moment longer, I’d retrieved the device from under my pillow. Ronad had found me sitting on the edge of the bed, turning the silver box over in my hands. He’d spent the time since Doctor Ulani’s departure sitting at Lorela’s bedside, feeding her ice cubes.
I’d gotten him up to speed on what had happened after my quick dive under the bed—the alchemy lab, and the unexpected entrance of Doctor Ulani himself, who turned out to be Mort, the shapeshifter. Now, we were both coming to terms with the secret device I held in my hands.
“I just can’t believe you stole something from him!” Ronad muttered.
“For the last time, I didn’t have a choice!” I insisted. “We heard footsteps outside the lab, and I made a split-second decision. It might not have been the best one, but I can’t take it back now.”
“And you trust this shifter?” He sounded doubtful.
“I trust him as much as I can trust anyone who used to work for Orion.”
“As long as you’re approaching this with some caution,” he murmured, his tone anxious.
“Of course I am!” I sighed. “I took an opportunity to gain some information. We haven’t exactly been rolling in intel since landing back on Vysanthe.”
Ronad frowned. “He really promised to get in touch with Navan?”
“He said he would, as proof of loyalty. I guess we’ll have to find out how trustworthy he is when he comes back tomorrow.”
“If he comes back tomorrow,” Ronad corrected me.
“Look, can we just find out what’s on this thing?” I asked, feeling frustrated. “If I’d left it in there, we’d never have been able to unlock it again. Mort had something with him that hacks into devices, but he wouldn’t give it to me. If we don’t read this now, we’ll never have the chance again.”
Ronad stopped pacing
and moved over to where I sat. “Fine, but let’s make it snappy.”
“You’re going to have to read it out to me. I can’t understand Vysanthean writing,” I said, handing him the silver box. He took it anxiously, his mouth set in a grim line. I leaned in, glancing over his shoulder at the jumble of symbols on the screen.
His fingertips danced across the controls as he shifted things around, opening and closing files and folders, until he found something interesting. It took longer than I’d expected, but at last Ronad froze on one particular page. None of it made any sense to me, but Ronad looked surprised.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“It’s a list of incoming and outgoing transmissions,” he replied. “They’re pretty much all to and from the same comms device.”
“So, he’s contacting someone he shouldn’t be?” I mused. It was the only reason I assumed someone would stick a comms device under a workbench in a hidden lab.
Ronad frowned. “I think you might be right.”
“What else is on there? Are there any messages?”
“Yeah, there are a few… but they don’t make any sense.”
“What do you mean?” I leaned closer, hating the language barrier in the writing. It made me glad that Navan had that nano-chip in his head, so he could understand me, and I could understand him. Yes, he’d made a point of learning some English the old-fashioned way, but I was glad the chip was there to do the extra work for us. This was infuriating.
“One says: ‘The warring snake with two heads will fight in the water, drowning itself, and the battle songs will be sung. A step toward the future, without a single step back,’” Ronad said, his brow furrowed in confusion. “There’s another one, which says: ‘The fighters come together in a clash of twin blades, in the shadow of the mountain where the poles repel. Eyes turned forward, no turning around.’”
I huffed out a deep breath. “Well, I’ve got no clue what any of that means. Do you?”
Ronad shook his head. I let the words sink in. No matter which way I looked at the messages, I couldn’t get them to make sense. Closing my eyes, I let everything slow down, urging my mind to focus on the words. If someone was trying to hide a device, it made sense that they were trying to hide the contents, too. So, the words were intended to be cryptic. But what would be that important, that someone would need to go to all this effort?
“You used to live here—do those words mean anything to you? What images do they conjure up in your mind, if you think about them?” I coaxed.
He closed his eyes, his lips moving silently as he mouthed the words. “Warring water snakes… Battle songs being sung… Water… Song… Songs by the water?” His eyes flew open. “The concert hall by the lake! Water and song—it makes sense! These are locations!”
I nodded excitedly. “The fighters in the shadow of the mountain, where poles repel—that’s talking about the fighting pits! Why would Jareth need to go to the lake, or the fighting pits?”
“Maybe they’re drop-off points, for… information, or some sort of trade. They might have something Jareth wants, or vice versa.”
“Is there anything more comprehensible in there?” The cryptic nature of the messages was almost more infuriating than the language barrier, but I supposed that was the point of secret communication.
Ronad sifted through the files and folders again. I supposed we could go to those locations and figure out why Jareth might have met someone there, but any evidence would probably be long gone. Plus, with Sarrask still watching us and Jareth as suspicious as ever, we could never get out of the house for long enough to check it out.
“There’s one more message, but it’s just as cryptic as the others.”
“What does it say?” I urged.
“‘Blood spills across the land in a billow of silk, while silver glints in sunlight. A delicious sight awaits the hungry warrior, who watches from on high. Lesser evil is an untruth; metamorphosis is honesty.’”
A flicker of something registered in my mind. “What date was it sent? Does it say?”
He nodded, casting a curious glance at me. “It was sent two weeks ago… on the morning we escaped out of the house, during the executions.”
“It’s Aurelius!” I whispered. “He’s talking about the towers next to the gallows. They must have met there on the day we escaped. The billow of silk is his robe; the glint of silver is the scythe blades; the on high part is the tower.”
“What about the delicious part?”
I shuddered at the memory. “I overheard Aurelius saying that to Seraphina—he said she looked delicious.” He had sounded like a snake, wrapping himself around her. “I bet he couldn’t help himself. Jareth probably didn’t even know what that part meant, but Aurelius will have wanted to rub it in that he was marrying her instead of Jareth’s son.”
“What reason would those two have to meet?”
I shook my head, trying to come up with a logical explanation. Asking Ronad to repeat the messages aloud, I let the words drift in and out of my mind, focusing on the parts that made less sense. I could formulate an idea from the descriptive sequences, but the latter sections of every message were baffling. They all seemed to be about looking ahead, or change. Combined with the mention of twos and twins, it all came together.
“They want to overthrow the queen,” I murmured in disbelief.
“What?” Ronad gasped.
“They want to overthrow Gianne and put someone else in her place. In this case, either Jareth or Aurelius himself,” I explained, feeling a grip of dread seize my chest. “My money’s on Aurelius.”
Ronad shook his head. “Jareth might seem power-hungry, but he’s a logical guy. He’d never do something like that. He knows that his position at Gianne’s side is the one thing that keeps his family safe. He wouldn’t risk all that for a near-impossible coup.”
“You heard him say it—he thinks Gianne is losing her mind. He said that. Those words, more or less, came from his mouth!” I insisted. “I mean, he’s built an escape tunnel under the house, for God’s sake! What more evidence do you need?”
Ronad looked shocked. “But… Aurelius?”
“I know it sounds ridiculous, but who else would fit the bill? He knows politics, he has some popularity among Gianne’s court, he’s about to marry one of Southern Vysanthe’s most well-respected noblewomen, and he’s the queen’s closest advisor.”
“I didn’t think anything could shake Jareth’s loyalty,” Ronad murmured. “He must be pretty sure of succeeding. Otherwise, why the hell is he doing this?”
My mind drifted back to what Lorela had said the last time I’d seen her lucid, just before the sleeping tonic had put her into a dreamless slumber. She’d said that Jareth held the key that could change everything. What if Lorela knew of Jareth’s plan? What if Jareth knew more about the immortality elixir than he was letting on? What if he was holding on to that information because he no longer wished to give those pieces of information to a woman he deemed mentally unfit to rule? After all, if he knew the secret to the immortality elixir’s formula and offered that to an unstable queen, that meant having an insane tyrant on the throne of Southern Vysanthe forever.
I didn’t think Jareth had fully cracked the code, per se; otherwise, he wouldn’t have feared death. He would have used the elixir on himself and everyone he loved, but he hadn’t done that yet. Instead, he’d built tunnels, in case everything went awry and he needed to get his family out. It wasn’t quite what Mort had suggested, as Jareth wasn’t selling his formula to the highest bidder, but there was some truth in the shifter’s theory. Jareth was ensuring he had enough leverage to get his family out, with an offer any coldblood would find irresistible.
“He’s putting everyone at risk, doing this,” Ronad said through gritted teeth. “He’s putting everyone’s lives on the line for a creep like Aurelius. If he were standing in favor of someone we could all get behind, then things might be different, but how can he back someone like that?”
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I took a deep breath. “I don’t know, Ronad, but I’m sure he has his reasons. I just hope he doesn’t get a whole load of people killed because of them.”
“As if a war wasn’t bad enough—let’s throw a coup into the mix!” Ronad grimaced. “Plus, if Aurelius does get into power, he’ll just want more of it. He’ll go after the North, too, just like Gianne. He won’t be satisfied until he has the whole cake, the slimy little worm.”
Ronad was right, but there was no point discussing it while we still had the silver box. I needed to get it back to the lab before Jareth noticed it was missing, especially now that we knew why he’d been hiding it. If he found out that we were on to him, he’d have no choice but to kill us.
I stood up. “I’m going to get this back to the lab. Don’t go anywhere! We’ve still got a lot to talk about.”
“Where would I go?” He laughed tightly.
Tucking the silver box into my waistband, I slipped out of the bedroom door and headed down the hallway, pausing at the top of the stairwell. I heard voices downstairs, prompting me to creep back along the landing and make for the attic instead.
In my previous explorations of the house, when Ronad and I had had nothing else to do all day but roam around, I’d come across a small doorway that opened onto a narrow set of steps. Heading up them, I’d discovered an attic room at the very top of the house, though it was in a similar state to the basement, full of junk and disused furniture, with everything covered in dustsheets. Back then, I’d thought nothing of it, but now I knew there was a secret doorway with a spiral staircase leading down to the main entrance of the alchemy lab.