“Meet back here at the center in thirty?” I suggest. Halfway through seems like a good check-in. With any luck, we’ll all have tokens by then and can wash our hands of the Tribunal.
They both nod, and we split up, our start a little delayed compared to the other supplicants, but I’d always rather move with purpose and a plan than frantically. I sprint over to the shelves of silver boxes as fast as my legs will carry me. My whole body is still exhausted from my time in the basement. One fretful night in a bed and one solid meal isn’t going to fix that.
Compared to all the other supplicants, I’m slower and frailer. Lucan might have been able to mend us with his sigil, but the toll on my body is more than cuts and bruises. But what I lack in physical ability, I’ll make up for in skill and sheer determination.
I grab one of the silver boxes off the shelf at random to investigate. Every side is fused together with no apparent opening. The sides have lines painted upon them that don’t connect over the edges—each side is different. But as I turn it over in my hands, something inside rattles.
In the center of the shelves is a table with all manner of tools. Cindel and her friends are wasting no time trying to smash into the boxes to see what’s rattling around inside. Mikel succeeds, and a plume of noxious gas hisses out from the split seams. He backs away, gagging and wheezing, eyes watering. Blood streams from his nose, and he falls lifelessly to the floor.
58
Mikel’s face is purple. The veins in his throat bulge. But he wheezes, eyes fluttering open.
At least he’s alive.
Cindel walks past him without so much as a glance to get to the split box. Raising her shirt over her nose, she pries open his box the rest of the way. Much of the smoke is gone, and from within she produces a small, purple token.
“On to the next!” she declares triumphantly. The rest of her group follow her away even though she’s the only one with the token.
Just one from Cindel’s pack looks back at Mikel on the ground, still clutching his shirt over his chest. The girl ultimately leaves him behind.
I’m not surprised. Even though I don’t like the guy, I go to Mikel. He looks at me, confused but scared. “I just want to see if I can help,” I say, loosening the laces of his jerkin. He breathes a bit easier and wheezes thanks. He’ll probably survive. The swelling is already going down. But it looks like it’s going to be an awful next couple of hours for him.
I turn back to the puzzle boxes on the shelf as other initiates struggle to force them open now that they have confirmation tokens are inside. This is certainly not the way this was intended to be solved. Artificers don’t build their creations only to have them smashed to bits.
I stare at the box in my hand, then back at the shelf. There must be some clue here. Some pattern.
A bead of sweat rolls down the back of my neck at the relentlessthunk-thunk-thunkof the hand moving on the clock above. What I thought would be a comforting way to check on time isnow a distraction.
Think, Isola,think. What would your father do?
My father was the master artificer. He could sense Etherlight better than any. He’d make a sigil.
Is that it? Could the lines form a sigil if arranged correctly? No, it’s against the law to allow a sigil to be seen. But there could be a sigil hidden on theinsidesof the boxes, since they’re hollow. And if the lines match up in a certain way, that sigil is completed.
I rush over to the table, grabbing the remnants of the empty box Mikel left behind. No one stops me. They all must think it’s useless. When I glance inside, I see etchings, just as I suspected.
Triumph surges through me, and I look back to the shelves—all the boxes and their different-colored lines. There’s some pattern to it, I’m sure. But I’m not going to waste time on it.
Moving off to the side, I set one box on the ground and then grab another. I place the other box around the first, lining up each of the sides. Nothing. I grab another, flipping it three ways until there’s a spark of Etherlight between the edges. The sides don’t seem to line up perfectly—one box has yellow lines, one blue. But it doesn’t matter. I know it’s right. I can feel it.
I repeat the process with a third box, then a fourth; the fifth has another spark of Etherlight, and the box pops open harmlessly.
Others take note as I retrieve the purple token. But my focus is on the clock above. Twenty minutes gone. I can get the other two in ten.
I grab another yellow-lined box to start. Then a blue one. But the blue one doesn’t work this time. It’s a red one that sparks Etherlight. I’m sure there’s a pattern here, but figuring it out will be up to the other supplicants.
By the time the clock chimes that we are halfway, I’m back at the center, three tokens in hand. But neither Sipha nor Lucan are here.
Lucan has nearly scaled his wall. He’s two thirds of the wayup. I can’t see past the haze of the pit to find out what Saipha is doing.
Before I can decide which of them to help, Cindel and her cronies catch my attention once more. The inquisitors on either side of the door gesture for the others to stand back. I can see some heated words flying between them and Cindel, but I can’t hear what they are. Cindel just shrugs and approaches the doors, inserting the three tokens into the slots.
The massive doors at the far end of the stadium open just a crack, enough for one person. Daylight on the other side is so blinding that I can’t make out what’s there. But distant cheers reach my ears, and I imagine all our families right on the other side, waiting for us to emerge. To see us safe and sound after three torturous weeks. Cindel crosses into the light that’s so bright it feels like the Font.
The doors close behind her, and her cronies stare at one another like bees at a loss for what to do without their queen.
That’s what you get for throwing your lot in with someone like her, I think bitterly. The three of us will be going together.
