He pondered this. “True. Give me a match.”
Zofia struck one and handed it to him. He squinted as he watched the flame eat its way down the wood until the spark extinguished and smoke unspooled from the burnt end.
“Thatisrather calming,” he said, shrugging. “But I’d rather help than scavenge around for flammable things.”
Enrique’s words drifted back to Zofia:If you can, on the way, try and buy us time.
“I know how you can help,” said Zofia.
Hypnos clapped his hands. “Do tell!”
“Makeothersdrunk,” said Zofia. “Delay the Midnight Auction. That will be the greatest help.”
“Help!” Hypnos hiccuped and grinned. “Cause a drunken distraction? Bawdy songs?Impromptu waltzes? I love waltzes.”
“Would you?”
A wide smile tugged at Hypnos’s mouth. “Would I prove that I’d do anything to help my friends?Oui, ma chère, I would.” He waved his hand. “Besides, you know I live for antics.”
ZOFIA USED THE SERVANT ENTRYWAYSto avoid the main atrium. She did not want to see that white tent again. Two uniformed guards protected the hall leading to the ice grotto. An unfamiliar Order of Babel insignia was emblazoned on the front of their jackets.
Zofia considered the various scripts she had memorized over the past two years of working on acquisitions with Séverin. She set her teeth and touched her heart, not out of sentimentality but for the reminder of the letter from Hela pressed against her chest. Sometimes she needed help, but that did not make her helpless.
Zofia marched up to the guards.
“And who are you?” asked one of them.
“I am one of the Forging engineers who supervised the removal of treasure,” said Zofia, in her best approximation of a haughty voice. “I was asked by the auctioneer to sweep the ice grotto for any remaining treasure.”
The other one shook his head. “They already have someone doing that right now.”
Zofia had not anticipated this. Enrique had figured it would be empty. Who was inside?
“I was told to consult with them,” said Zofia.
The guard stared her down for one moment before sighing and stepping aside. Zofia moved past them, down the long, narrow, dark hallway. Inside the grotto, silence met Zofia. Many of the lanterns had been removed, throwing the grotto into darkness. Theleviathan lay chained to the ice, Forged metal straps crisscrossing its neck and propping its jaws open.
“Hello, David,” said Zofia.
The leviathan thrashed, and small fissures of ice spidered out around it. The sight of the chained machine angered Zofia, but it was the silence of the grotto that confused her. The guard had said someone else was here, and yet it was empty. Perhaps they had made a mistake.
Zofia placed one of her lanterns at the entrance to the leviathan. When she touched its metal lip, she felt it thrash, frothing the lake water around it. A pang of pity struck her as she stepped inside, holding out one of her phosphorous pendants for guidance. She thought the leviathan would be cold, but inside its mouth, the air turned humid and damp.
When she peered over the edge of the staircase, she glimpsed a red, wavering glow. The light unnerved her, nearly causing her to stumble backwards when a new image flashed through her mind: the faces of her friends and family. She thought of Séverin, how he walked as if he carried so much more than his own weight. She thought of Laila’s liveliness. Of Enrique’s asymmetrical grin and Hypnos’s glossy eyes. All of it was light. From her father’s tutelage, she knew that light belonged to an electromagnetic spectrum. The light the world perceived belonged to the visible spectrum, which meant there was light humans could not see. But Zofia wondered if they could feel it all the same, the way she could sense sunshine against her closed eyelids. Because that was how friendship felt to her, an illumination too vast for her senses to capture. Yet she did not doubt its presence. And she held that light close to her as step by step, she ventured down the stairs.
Five…
Fourteen…
Twenty-seven…
At the end of the staircase, she saw the room in full glow. Fifty-seven bare shelves stretched down from the ceiling. One water-damaged rug spread across the main space. In the corner on her right, Zofia recognized a podlike capsule containing one steering wheel and two seats. A built-in escape mechanism. Across the ceiling, she recognized a Mnemo bug projection, which showed the ice grotto she had just left. She could not recall such an apparatus in Hypnos and Séverin’s recorded notes.
All of those observations paled before the source of the heat she had felt the farther she walked down the stairs. On a raised, stone altar, hundreds of waxen red candles burned brightly. The red light spread across the sculpted stone faces of the nine muses leaning over the altar. It did not make sense to leave the candles burning. She had seen a similar situation in the past. It could be a gesture of sentimentality, one that she recognized from the time her neighbors left candles beside the family elm tree when her parents died. Perhaps this was meant for the girls who had died. But then she noticed the writing on the wall…
Zofia lifted her pendant, scouring for signs of the symbol along the altar. But the lemniscate was not here. The closer she moved, the more the writing on the wall became legible:
WE ARE READY FOR THE UNMAKING
