His tone was solemn, but the glint in his eye was not. Not bothering to answer, I took the steps two at a time, extracting the key that was one of my birthrights. The steel was heavy in my gloved hand as I inserted it into the simple lock, the oiled mechanism turning with a soft click, the metal bars of the gate swinging open to reveal the yawning darkness of the labyrinth beyond. “After you,” I said, waiting for my friends to pass before closing the gate behind us.
We traveled in silence through the upper reaches of Trollus, the crushed homes and cracked paving stones testament to what happened when the tree’s magic failed. What would happen if Tristan’s magic faltered and Forsaken Mountain finished its destruction of our city. I thought about what my father had said regarding bearing such a burden, wondering, not for the first time, what it felt like to hold the lives and fates of all of our people in his hand. I didn’t know how he could walk through the labyrinth as though he hadn’t a care in the world. Although he could have all the cares in the world, be plagued with every fear, and I knew he wouldn’t show it. The persona he’d created to hide his true feelings, true intentions, was too important, and he never let it down completely. Not even around us. Little did he know that the act he employed to protect our cause had nearly been the downfall of it.
“You’re thinking so hard I can practically hear it,” Tristan said, voice echoing through the tunnels. “It’s distracting.”
“So sorry.” I extracted the book I’d retrieved from my room, along with my armor and weapons, and handed it over. “Esmeralda brought this, along with the next set of pamphlets.”
“Which are being distributed?” He plucked the book out of my hand and flipped it open, light moving behind him to illuminate the pages.
“I’m not sure we can distribute this batch,” I said, my mind whirling as it tried to come up with an explanation that would deliver the necessary information without inciting any questions. “What we’ve had printed can be tied back to a certain press in Trianon – including the decoy lot we had the twins take delivery of.”
“How?”
I explained the streaks and flaws as Pénélope had explained it to me. “I didn’t notice before,” I admitted. “But when you hold them up next to each other, it would be obvious to anyone with an eye for detail.” I all but held my breath, praying he wouldn’t ask what had caused me to finally notice it myself.
But he only swore and kicked a rock. “I think it’s fair to say that the Duke is possessed of the required eye for detail.” He shook his head sharply. “If nothing else, Pénélope will have proven her worth to him on this one.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks, saying nothing.
“Destroy this batch of pamphlets and switch printers,” he said. “This looks bad for the twins, but they’re protected by the fact that they can truthfully say that they’ve never ordered pamphlets or attended any meetings.” His eyes flicked to me. “You have no such protection. You need to be on your guard. Stay away from Pénélope for the next while.”
“I don’t see why–”
“You make mistakes around her, that’s why. Think of what would happen if you got caught. It wouldn’t just be your life on the line.”
“You know I’d take everyone else’s identities – including yours – to the grave,” I snapped, growing angrier with him by the second. Tristan loved the plotting. The planning. The spreading of propaganda, the drafting of new laws, the secret meetings where we discussed a new Trollus. But sometimes I wondered what it would take to push him past the planning and conspiring into taking actual action. What would be his tipping point. Whether he even had one, or whether we’d find ourselves old men and women who’d talked a great deal, but done nothing.
“And I’d rather it didn’t come to that,” he replied.
Ana?s’s soft whistle pulled us from our conversation. She had stopped a dozen paces ahead of us, spear held at the ready. Lifting a hand, she tapped her nose, and a second later, I caught the stench of sluag waste. Tristan set his book on a ledge to be retrieved later, and I nodded at the twins, who squared up behind us. We might be here for their entertainment, but their duty – and mine – was always to protect the heir. Even if he didn’t like it.
Ana?s in the lead, we branched off the main tunnel, bending and squeezing and crawling through tight spaces and under low ceilings. She threw the occasional orb of magic forward, watching to see if it faded or flickered before proceeding, Victoria doing the same behind in case a sluag was tailing us. No one spoke, ears peeled for the telltale slither of a heavy body or the click of shifting rock, but all I could hear was the steady thud thud of my friends’ hearts, quick with anticipation and not nearly enough fear.
Ana?s’s hiss of disgust echoed back over us, and I stepped into a small chamber to find her crouched next to a pool of greenish slime, a skeleton draped in tattered fabric floating in its depths. She lifted a piece of the fabric out with the end of her spear, eyed the golden thread on the patch stitched to it, then let it drop. “Half-blood. Miners’ Guild.”
Tristan let loose a blistering string of oaths, slamming his spear against the rocks with no regard for the debris and dust that rained down upon us. Then he knelt next to the corpse, staring at the skull as though it might reveal its identity. “How many?” he muttered. “How many have been sent here over the years for no fault of their own other than a bad month of luck in the mines?”
I didn’t answer. One of the duties I’d inherit from my father was opening the labyrinth gates for the sacrifices to missed mining quotas, for aristocrats wishing to rid themselves of old or undesirable servants, for the King, when he wished to make a point. I’d have to stand there and do nothing while they were sent to their deaths. Some might last days, even weeks, but there was no escape from the labyrinth. It was the cruelest form of execution.
“I will end this practice,” Tristan snarled, the weight of the promise in his words making my head buzz. “I don’t care what I have to do or what it costs me, I will–”
Whatever he was about to say was drowned out by a piercing scream.
He was after it in a shot.
“Damn it, Tristan!” I reached for his arm, trying to drag him back so that Ana?s could go first, but he was too quick.
He chased the screams through the tunnels, and we chased him, the labyrinth shuddering as he carved through tight spots, rock and dust raining down on the magic we cast above our heads.
“Tristan,” Ana?s shouted. “Let me go ahead. You need to let me go ahead.”
He ignored her.
The light above his head winked out.
I swore as my own globe of light vanished, my magic present, but numb and unusable like a deadened limb. Reaching blindly in the dark toward the sound of my cousin’s breathing, I jerked him back, stepping between him and the sluag that could see us perfectly well in the blackness.
“Help me. Please help me.”