A familiar figure emerged from beneath the canopy of the trees. Linn would have recognized that erratic gait anywhere.
Sorsha wore her regular Sea Court livery, but even in the semidarkness, Linn could see that there was something different to her posture. She cut through the stone paths of the courtyards with a brisk efficiency that Linn had only seen her display in Godhallem.
And she was making straight for the walled courtyard.
The guards saluted her as she approached. Sorsha held a hand up and barked a few orders at them in Bregonian. They leapt to her command, pulling open the doors into the courtyard and bowing her through.
Linn watched as Sorsha stopped before the second set of ironore doors inside, retrieving something from her waist. Keys, by the sound of their clinking. With a series of complicated clicks she unlocked the doors and dragged them open. She stepped inside and vanished, the doors slamming shut behindher.
Linn hesitated. It was long past dusk, and Ana would be waiting for her. Two more bells, and she’d be at her negotiation.
The doors yawned wide open, beckoning to her. It wouldn’t take two bells for Linn to quickly look inside.
She stood from where she crouched, assessing. Walls and guards might keep out everyone else, but they weren’t a problem for her.
She backed to the end of her veranda and took off at a run, summoning her Affinity as she did so. With a kick, she launched herself off the edge, the breeze at her feet rising into a sudden gale, propelling her forward.
She landed on the crenellated wall as silently as a cat, and the breeze fell. Voices of the Royal Guards drifted up from beneath her, probably commenting about the weather. To them, she would have been nothing but a shadow in the night.
Linn dropped into the empty courtyard. In five steps, she was at the ironore doors. She wrapped her fingers around the bronze knockers, sent a quick prayer to her gods, and tugged.
They opened with a resounding creak that set her heart stuttering. Linn quickly lifted a gust of wind that rattled the alder trees, but even as she did, she heard the guards speaking, the grating of the ironore doors outside.
Linn pushed more wind against the door, so that it clanged open against the opposite wall. She had to hope that the guards would think Sorsha hadn’t closed the door properly, and that it had blown open in the strong wind. Blades in hands, she darted inside and pressed herself against the wall, holding still.
Outside, she heard a guard calling to his companions, the grind of metal as he heaved the heavy door shut, trapping her inside.
It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust. She was in a corridor of the Naval Headquarters that appeared to be quite deserted. The walls were made of actual stone, and the entire place felt older than the polished halls of the Livren Skolaren or Godhallem that gleamed with ironore or searock enhancements.
There were doors on either side of the hallway, which stretched so far, it seemed to swallow itself into an expanse of darkness.There was no one here, but Linn sensed a shift in the air as the currents settled back into the space a body had just moved through, almost like the wake of a ship. Sorsha had come through here.
Linn followed the trail to a door that looked the same as the others she had passed. Cautiously, she opened it.
Stone steps descended into a yawning stretch of darkness below. The air here was cold, but as Linn pressed her Affinity to it, she found a swirling trail leading forward.
Sorsha had gone down here.
All of her senses rang in warning against the dark, the stillness, the silence, the enclosed space behind the door. Her mind leapt to memories she’d tried to keep buried—the chafe of chains against her wrists, the taste of sedatives on her tongue, the bouts of consciousness and the blurred in-betweens.
Linn shook her head.You are overreacting,she thought sternly. Bregon was not Cyrilia, and she was here of her own free will, supporting a cause that would fight against inequality and oppression, that would ensure that no other young girl from a foreign kingdom went through what Linn had gone through.
This was her way of fighting. She would need to be stronger than her fear.
Linn palmed a dagger. She drew a breath, as though to steel herself, and then entered, drawing the door shut behind her.
It was pitch-black inside, and she kept a hand on the wall next to her as she began to descend. Here, there was only the sound of her own breathing, the slight swirl of air currents before her as the trail Sorsha had left began to close. Several times, she could swear she saw shapes moving—but, she reasoned with herself, it was merely the effect of fear and darkness on her imagination. She kept one hand on the wall as she counted her steps, her Affinity sorting through the heavy tangle of air before her, searching for any disturbances.
Gradually, she thought she began to see enough to be able to distinguish shadows around her, blurred shapes. And then she began to make out the outlines of walls and steps before her, and at last, flickers of torchlight.
She was close.
The stairs ended abruptly, before another set of doors. Light emanated from the cracks beneath them, but when Linn grasped the handles, she let go immediately, as though she’d been burned.
Blackstone. These doors were made of blackstone. It was unmistakable—the unnatural coldness, the way her Affinity seemed to fade beneath a pounding pressure in her head when she touched it.
She swallowed. She hadn’t expected to find blackstone in a highly guarded section of the Naval Headquarters.
Holding her dagger before her like a torch, she reached out, turned the handle, and slid the door open a crack.
