CHAPTER 86

“Father,” I answer him slowly, softly, as I stand.

Only silence flows from the cells around us. The prisoners are waiting, expectant and unsure. I know also that this will not last. Soon they’ll be clamoring for release, begging us to lead them out of the catacombs, and already my shiftiest, sneakiest self is supplying reasons why we can’t, why they’d become liabilities, how they’d die anyway.

But that doesn’t matter right now. Right now, all I feel is a peculiar sort of awe and need for stillness. Medrein is present, my body tells me. We better act accordingly.

His face is still in the half-light. His eyes shine amid the blood.

“Is it truly you?” he asks suddenly, gruff, with a voice that’s seen little use in the past month.

“It’s me, Father,” I say.

Medrein opens his mouth but hesitates. His hand twitches, covered in gore.

“I’ve seen things,” he says in a whisper. “Lofty paradises and deep hells. I’ve seen you and your sister and your mother before. I’ve seen Reach. You cannot be here. You went into the Challenge.”

“And I came back again,” I say. “I passed through the White Door, and I—” My voice catches. I look around to find the prisoners watching us intently, scared and weak. People who never went beyond any Door. “I saw what there was to see. I won my levels.”

“No,” Medrein shakes his head. “You were hurt. You didn’t stand a chance. It cannot be.”

My arm shoots up in the air.

“I was. I made it out all the same.”

Medrein takes a long, pained look at my stump, covered in dirty bandages.

“It cannot be,” he mutters, but it seems not to come so easy this time.

I do not know what to say to that, and thankfully I’m spared the need to answer. The spell begins to crack around us, the prisoners to shift uneasily in their cells.

“Please,” says one.

“My husband,” another.

“My sons,” a third.

“Please let us out,” say they all.

The voice catches in my throat. I’m forced to be pragmatic and find that I can’t. Desperately, I cling to options, to alternatives. Perhaps if I let them go, a few will reach the surface and their families…

And perhaps not.

If I release them, there will be confusion in the keep. The guards won’t know what to do, where to turn to. It will give us an opening.

If you release them, all the guards will have to do is follow the trickle of human refuse and shame to find you. Perhaps they’re coming as we speak.

Maybe—

“Please.”

“My mother…”

“Please.”

“My apprentice depends on me…”

“Please.”

“A small child…”

“SILENCE!”

Medrein’s voice echoes like thunder in the small space, shutting every mouth, paralyzing every spine, mine included. I find myself looking down, away from his eyes.

“Your sister?” he asks.

“I… I do not know,” I admit.

“How do you not know?” he demands. “Did she come out, or didn’t she?”

I shake my head, and tell the story as succinctly as I can. How I sent her through the Golden Door in hopes of saving her, and have known nothing of her since.

Medrein listens to the story with head bowed and menace radiating from his body. Filthy and emaciated as he is, there’s still plenty of strength left there, as he just proved with the jailer.

After a pregnant, silent moment, he nods.

“Come, then,” he says, and turns on his heels.

“C-come?” I ask as I find myself following all the same. “Come where? Do you believe me?”

“I believe that if this is a dream, then it is a good one and I intend to make it last. If not…” he doesn’t finish the phrase.

“But then we must escape!” I say.

“Yes,” Father agrees. “But there is a matter I must settle first. For all our sakes.”

Medrein walks through the open iron door, and my arguments are silenced in the same instant. Inquisitor jumps to the fore, urging me on. Meriana’s Secret lies beyond that door, and it’s like my legs move by themselves, propelled by something deeper than reason.

Beyond the door, the cramped corridor curves immediately, blocking the sight of anyone looking in from where the common prisoners are kept. Another twist brings us to a larger room, barely illuminated by a magical flame adorning a single pedestal out of four identical ones.

The room is low, arched. Four tables are spread out in the bleary space; tables with straps for hands, feet, necks. A string of sharp metal implements hanging from a wall leave no doubt as to the purpose of this place, though plenty to be imagined.

My eyes are dragged to Medrein standing in front of a large cage. His body blocks whatever is inside it.

“…understand, Medrein. I never wished you harm. You know why I did it,” says a calm, collected, well-mannered voice.

I walk along one wall until finally I see it. Him.

I do not recognize the species. He looks elvish, but the ears are thin and overlong, and his skin too pale – no, white. Long, unkempt red hair falls around his shoulders, and his pupils are ragged tears within yellow eyes. He sits, dressed in tatters, and a chain extends from the wall to a collar around his neck, forcing him to keep to a restricted area even within the limited confines of the cage. His head turns sharply as I come into sight.

“Who’s this?” the man asks. I find the eyes unsettling above all else. They’re reptilian. Predatorial. “Ah—no. Malco, of course. I see the resemblance. Something about the cheeks, no? Though the boy did not inherit your strength, Medrein.”

“Be silent,” Medrein says. “You speak to me only, beast.”

“No more beast than you,” the man says, shaking his head and jiggling the chain. “And equally unable to both speak and be silent.”

“Stay there, Malco,” Medrein says gruffly. “This will be quick.”

As Father walks to the row of sharp implements, the man comes to his feet in a blink, grabbing the bars with hands dirtied by time, long, dark fingernails shining in the magical light.

“It’s murder!” he snarls. “You kill me like a coward, your brother in arms. I passed through the White Door, I met the Arbiter.” His eyes flash in my direction. Is it surprise I find in them? Does it mirror the surprise in mine? “And others. More than most. If my exploits left me like this, what right have you to judge me, Medrein? Only a coward’s right,” he spits. “The right of one who did not dare to go as far as he could. Am I wrong?”

Though Medrein stiffens at the jab, he only turns after he’s selected a long, metallic pole with a sharp end from the line of torture instruments. The butt of the rusty spear drags on the floor as my father approaches.

“It’s not fair,” he says. “But I must do it. If I leave you alive, they’ll use you to find us. One by one.”

“Coward!” the man hisses. “You could release me. You want to kill me because I hurt you. Say it! Say it so your son can hear it. The pain I cause is like nothing you’ve ever felt, and you want me dead because of it. You’re no different from Godtouched.”

“What is he talking about, Father?” I ask, hating the childish timbre in my voice. “He hurt you?”

“Stand back,” my father says, putting the spear up, jagged, rusty tip aiming at the man in the cage.

It’s like his voice has its own power over my limbs, like I’m still, always and forever, a boy. I take a timid step out of the way.

Malco?

I don’t answer Rue’s summons, though I feel him squirm around my wrist.

Malco, I feel your fear, but I don’t know what we’re supposed to be afraid of? Do you want me to turn into a weapon?

It’s unclear if it’s the rumble travelling up my arm or the words, but something makes me stop.

There is nothing to fear, I tell Rue. Nothing at all.

And then I step between Medrein and the caged man.

“Malco,” Medrein says, the beginnings of an avalanche in his voice. “Step out of the way.”

“I passed through the White Door,” I say. “And beyond it I met the Arbiter.”

An irritated trembling crosses his face.

“Step of the way. You don’t have all the information.”

“Then give me the information!” I yell. “I’m not a kid anymore.”

“You are a kid,” Father snaps. “Surviving the Challenge doesn’t change that.”

“If Reva was here to tell you to stop, would you listen to her?” the question explodes out of my lips before I can think of containing it. “Would you?”

“What are you talking about—”

“Rev is not here, Father,” I interrupt. The sting of tears forming behind my eyes is not enough to stop me. This has been a long time coming. “It doesn’t matter if you think of her as the strong one, the capable one. I’m here and she isn’t, and if she’s alive at all it’s thanks to me!” I slap my chest. “I’m as strong as she is. As you are. I deserve to know what’s happening.”

Amid the emotional turmoil of my thoughts, it’s strange to see Medrein, bloodied and hurt, lower the spear a finger. But I’m not done.

“I passed the Challenge. I became an Inquisitor. I defeated a Godtouched in a duel to the death, and I know of the war that’s brewing. I did all that because you gave Katha to them, Father, to get her back. So don’t dare to treat me like I’m only a child.”

The spear is down, and Medrein disarmed in more ways than one. I still see the old stubbornness in his eyes. He’s not letting this go, it’s not that easy. But for a moment, he drops his guard. He looks at me, and for a moment I feel that he sees me.

A moment is all that’s needed. When Hunch, on its last legs, activates, I’m not fast enough to dodge out of the way before a white hand reaches around my forehead and slams me back against the cage.

“Malco!”

“I’m sorry, Medrein. I’m sorry, Malco,” the caged man whispers, voice cracked and dry against my ear. “I’m truly sorry I must do this. But trust is slow to build for you father, is it not? Not a step unless I order it, Medrein.”

The pressure the man exerts against me is nothing short of suffocating. With my head pressed hard against the bars, I feel something move against my forehead. Something on the man’s palm.

“I need you to break my shackles,” the continues, speaking to Father. His voice is commanding, authoritative, brokering no disagreement. “And then the lock on the cage. Do that, and I’ll release the boy. I swear on my l—yeeeaargh!”

As Rue extends from my wrist, shaped into a long, thin dagger, and buries himself on the caged man’s side, he steps back. His hand, however, seems reluctant to let go as I twist, step away, and—

Pain. Enormous, confounding, like a spear thrust directly into my brain. No, not brain. My mind. A cold, steady implement burying itself into the core of my being. And where it enters, everything flows out, like water from a broken jar.

The sensation is accompanied by a sharp, quick pain on my forehead as I fall to the ground. Darkness follows.

When I wake, I’m looking up at Medrein’s bruised and bloodied face. My attention focuses on the open wound on his forehead, a circle of many little holes surrounding a deeper one, angrier one.

“Thank the gods,” Medrein says, standing. “You’ll pay,” he yells and picks up the spear. “You’ll pay, you bastard!”

“No!” the caged man says. “It was a reflex, I did not mean to!”

I sit up to look at him. He’s clutching his side, from where blood flows in a thin, trickling stream. But I cannot draw my attention from his other hand, reaching for Medrein in a show of mercy. In the center of the palm, a small circle of teeth surrounds a completely dark void. The circle shifts, moves into itself, like a permanently open and twitching mouth.

Medrein aims the spear through the bars at the man’s heart. But suddenly he’s no longer looking at my father, but directly at me.

“Lysander,” he blurts out. “You know him. I know what happened to Lysander!”