I crumpled up her letter and threw it as hard as I could across the room. Orma, who had placed himself near the door, standing with hands folded, said placidly, “I take it there’s no reply?”
There was no point asking if he remembered me; he clearly did not. I said, “Are you the one Jannoula visits at the seminary? Her spiritual advisor?”
“It would be inaccurate to call me an advisor,” he said, looking mildly puzzled. “She comes to the seminary to dictate her memoirs to me. Her handwriting is terrible.”
So I’d been right about one thing. It was cold comfort. “But why are you at the seminary to begin with? You’re not a monk. I know you’re a saarantras.”
He ran his tongue over his teeth. “And how do you know that?”
“I used to know you,” I said, my heart pounding. Was it wise to talk to an excision victim about the things he couldn’t remember? I nervously twisted his ring on my pinkie, and then suddenly it hit me: What if the ring he’d sent me was the trigger for his mind-pearl? I hardly dared hope. I held out my finger and waggled the pearl ring at him.
He stared blankly at my hand, then at my face. Nothing changed in his expression.
“You may be mistaken,” he said. “The human mind produces an astonishing variety of false memories—”
“You were excised!” I cried, furious and frustrated. “You’ve got the scar. I’m one of the things they took from you.” I racked my memory for anything else Eskar or the exiles had told me about excision. “Do you take destultia?”
He recoiled a little from my vehemence. “Yes, but again, you are mistaken. I have a heart condition called pyrocardia. When I am full-sized, my heart overheats until it catches fire inside me. Human form is safer, but I still could suffer an infarction. I was prescribed destultia, and they excised my memories of catching fire, because those are traumatic.”
“You used to be a musicologist,” I said. “Do you remember none of that?”
He shrugged. “I study monastic history. You have clearly confused me with someone else.” He paused, as if this conversation were too boring to sustain. “If that’s all, I should be getting back.”
And then he was gone. He took the lantern. I was too shattered to protest.
I fell asleep at some point. Another knock dragged me from my dreams. I buried my face in the feather mattress. The knocking continued. I had no idea what time it was, only that I was furious and exhausted. I pulled myself out of bed and threw open the door. The leering guards from earlier had been replaced by a gray-haired, wiry man in the Queen’s livery, with pox-scarred cheeks and a large jaw. Illuminated from below by a lantern, he looked sinister. He held out a scrap of palimpsest. I took it with trembling fingers.
This is Alberdt. You can trust him, I read in Glisselda’s graceful writing.
He was the Queen’s deaf bodyguard, who’d lurked behind her during that awkward tea in her study. His eyes were kind, like Nedouard’s. Still, when he gestured for me to follow, I balked. This had to be a trick. Glisselda wouldn’t want to see me, not after that disastrous breakfast. Jannoula was making more mischief at my expense.
It was better to be out of confinement, however. There might be some opportunity for escape. Reluctantly I came out of the room and closed the door.
Alberdt carried a bulky satchel, which he handed to me; the hilt of a short sword protruded from the top. He led me up a northerly corridor. Along one wall was an alcove containing a statue of Queen Rhademunde. Alberdt sidled up to the old Queen and reached behind her. A narrow panel to the left opened soundlessly; Alberdt waggled his grizzled brows at me. Together we plunged into the dark, secret guts of the castle.
This passage comprised nothing but a spiral stair. We descended for many stories, finally emerging in a vaulted passageway, the castle’s subbasement. At the bottom of the stairs, the young Queen waited with a lantern, a dark cloak thrown over her long chemise.
Her face had been scrubbed pink, and her eyes were rimmed in red, as if she had been weeping. Her hair was in a simple plait for sleep, though various golden curls had escaped. We stared at each other a long moment, my face burning with shame. She was surely furious with me; I didn’t know what to say.
She signed at Alberdt before speaking to me; he answered her in kind, saluted, and climbed back up the stairs. “He’s been so helpful,” she said, turning toward me and smiling wanly. “He’s not immune to Jannoula’s glamour—none of us are—but it’s harder to manipulate where she can’t communicate. She hasn’t bothered to learn his finger speech, thank Allsaints in Heaven.”
Glisselda paused, the lantern light illuminating her from below like a statue in the cathedral. I was seized with guilt. “I am so very sorry—” I began.
She held up a hand to stop me. “Don’t. Lucian confessed all. I don’t mind about that—he’s like my own brother—but I need to know, do you love him?”
“Yes,” I half whispered, terrified to admit this to her even now.
“Then there is nothing else to say,” she said, her smile turned sad. “Lucian wins. Long live Lucian.”
I stared at her in bafflement. She sighed loudly. “I was angry—but it was all to the good. It has been so hard to resist her, Phina. I put on masks and erected walls, but still there were cracks for her influence to shine through. Anger, though, dispelled the mists from my mind and let me see Jannoula’s cruelty clearly for once, which is a rare and beautiful blessing. Then last evening she had Orma brought in, and I saw what she’s done to him,” said Glisselda, tears in her voice. “Oh, Phina, how I hurt for you.
“That’s why I’m here now. I’m releasing you. You, in turn, must find some way to help us from outside.”
Outside the walls. The castle walls were easier to breach than the ones in my mind, it seemed.
She offered me her arm, and together we walked through twisting passages, north and west, toward the sally port.
“Alberdt is upstairs guarding your empty room,” she said. “Other guards will take his place, but I’ll have him deliver your meals. I don’t know how long we can keep this up—days, at most—so you need to act quickly. Free us from her. This war is bad enough on its own, but she has made everything worse.”
“She told the Old Ard about Comonot’s gambit,” I said as we reached the first locked door of the sally port. “They’ve sent reinforcements to the Kerama.”
Glisselda, fumbling with her key, emitted a sour laugh. “And she’s sabotaged the communication box in my study, I suspect. We haven’t had contact with the Ardmagar in days. I will try to reach him through General Zira, but it may already be too late.”
We passed silently through the network of caves, the cool, damp breath of the predawn hours on our cheeks; she was escorting me all the way out. When we reached the cave mouth, I faced her and said, “Thank you. And I’m still sorry.”
“Feh,” she said, waving off my apology. “Just remember, Seraphina, as if it could change anything: it was me who rescued you, not Lucian. That silly boy is upstairs, convinced that he has resisted Jannoula’s charms and that he can save her—and you, and everyone—if he can make her see reason. She uses our best qualities against us.”
“Which of your qualities has she used against you?” I asked quietly.
She lowered her gaze. “My heart, alas. She talks about you, and tells me how sad she is that you despise her, and then I pity her, because it would be a terrible thing to lose your … I mean …”
Her cheeks had gone very pink. I waited for her to gather herself.
“Bah!” said Glisselda, stamping her foot. “You and Lucian are so very smart, but you walk around with your eyes closed.”
Glisselda rose on her toes and kissed me on the mouth.
And then I understood why she’d been the first to flee the breakfast table; why she cared more about whether I loved Lucian than whether Lucian loved me; why she’d always been so happy to hear from me, whatever else was happening. I understood something about myself as well, even if I didn’t have the will to examine it just then.
I managed merely an “Oh.”
“Oh, indeed,” she said. Her face in the twilight looked unexpectedly old. She valiantly tried to smile. “Go now, and stay safe. Lucian would never forgive me if I sent you out to be killed. He has his faults—like not obeying my simple request to stay out of the city—but he would’ve insisted on accompanying you into the unknown.”
“You could come,” I said, and meant it.
She laughed in earnest then, like welcome rain. “No, I could not. You’ve witnessed the full extent of my stupid bravery. But please, if there’s to be peace in our time, bring yourself back whole.”
She retreated into darkness. I turned to face the slate-blue world. Abdo was out there somewhere. We’d find the way to free my mind-fire. In any case, he was my last, best hope.
I hefted my baggage and picked my way down the rocky, weedy slope.