One of the Avenor Guard men stepped up to Matthias and offered him his arm. Matthias raised the key, and only then did Calya realize that each of the Guard had thin bands around either their upper arms or wrists.
The sight and sound of the band being unlocked, of their colleague being freed, galvanized the rest into action. The Grae U man and the Vreshan women were already headed toward a different wall in the cavern, disappearing down a cleverly hidden path that blended into the rest of the rock.
As each member of Avenor Guard was freed from whatever controlling magic had been imbued into the bands, they followed the others. When only Matthias was left, he gestured to Calya. She’d started toward him, noting how the Coalition agent still breathed, when a gust of wind came howling through the cave. It whirled around her, filling her ears, her lungs, until a whisper of the wind even seemed to touch inside her head.
* * *
A doorway filled her mind. Similar to Matthias’s underground office, but her mind knew this wasn’t the same. The door blurred, the image resolving inside the office. Brint stood across from her on the other side of a desk. A real one, not hastily slapped together scrap lumber and rocks forced by magic to become nails. A small lockbox, barely larger than the thin journal tucked inside of it, lay open on the desk. A half-folded letter sat on top, the contents blurry but the signature at the bottom crisp. Atria, one of the seven councilmembers for the Coalition. A silver wax seal still clung to the top of the letter, the scales and coins and key in sharp relief to the rest of the obscured scene.
Brint added the wax seals Matthias had saved, tossing them in before closing the box’s lid. It didn’t have a conventional keyhole but a flat tab that slotted into place on the front. Brint touched it with a glowing fingertip, and a loud, ominous click echoed in Calya’s head.
Her hand came into focus as it reached for the lockbox. As her fingers brushed the surface, the lid sprang open, and fire came out. Flames everywhere, filling her vision until she couldn’t see or think of anything except the crackle and hiss of fire. She could taste the smoke in her mouth, feel it clogging her airways as she inhaled. But she didn’t choke. Didn’t cough. The smoke kept coming, relentless, and though a distant part of her mind clocked the danger, her body wouldn’t respond.
A voice filtered through the roaring blaze. She couldn’t discern words, but it sounded achingly familiar.
Lowe. Her heart constricted at the thought.
Through her pain, a new sound broke through. Not Lowe. Hers. Calya’s own voice, clear despite the sensation of smoke in her throat, and she was screaming.
“Stop!”
* * *
Calya blinked, stumbling as the wind loosened its grip.
“Lowe?” she whispered.
He wasn’t there. The wind unraveled from her, a faint trail of yellow-white light fading before her eyes. She turned, following the trail. It arced back toward the ramp leading to the observation room before disappearing completely.
“Calya,” Matthias called.
She glanced back to where he stood at the mouth of the hidden path. A road that held no flames, and though there would be signs of devastation below, if she went with him, at least she wouldn’t go alone.
If only she could take that path in good conscience.
Shaking her head, Calya turned back toward the ramp and followed the wind.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Calya had never been one for thinking much about death or the myriad ways a person could die. It had always seemed a pointless exercise to her. If her headstone should read anything other than her name and the title of Director of Helm Naval Engineering, followed by dates spanning multiple decades, then hers had been a life wasted.
Yet, as she retraced her steps toward Matthias’s office, she could admit that death by fire sounded like a bad way to go. What had Lowe said of the wind and his divinatory magic? It represented possibilities, what could be. But was it a warning of what would happen if she stayed her current course? Or had it been urging her to go with Matthias and the other mages to escape a fiery fate?
“Why the fuck does anyone seek out divination?” she grumbled.
The office door loomed in front of her. Steeling herself, Calya held her breath and reached for the handle.
A wry laugh escaped as she surveyed the room. Little had changed since the last time she’d been there. How long ago had it been, a couple of hours at the most? Aside from Matthias’s secret journals and stash of wax seals—which were missing—everything else was as she remembered. But then, the vision of her maybe-but-maybe-not future had left her with the impression of another door. Similar in appearance, so it had to be around here somewhere, but not Matthias’s office.
The damning journals were gone, but neither Brint nor Ervin had had anything of the like on them. The Avenor Guard men hadn’t, either, their labor spent on hauling out equipment and supplies. Anyway, Brint wouldn’t have trusted them with such sensitive materials. Incriminating.
Calya walked back out of the room and continued down the hall. It narrowed, spiraling down, the air growing colder and… odd. Almost charged, a strange, intangible current becoming stronger as she continued deeper into the mountain. The hallway ended with another door looming before her, but this one was already ajar. She nudged it farther open with her foot. Her lips parted with a small gasp.
It was undoubtedly the office that the wind had shown her, and undoubtedly Brint’s. Unlike Matthias’s office, which had appeared hastily scooped out of the existing rock, Brint’s was comprised of large, tidy bricks. Whether they were individual stones or just nicer interior detailing, Calya didn’t know, but the semi-circular room certainly had the fanciest touches of anything she’d seen at the site, above or below. Multiple bookshelves of different sizes. Wall hangings, some artistic and others that were concept drawings for the site. He even had throw rugs to soften up the rock floors.
Finally, along its back wall stood a large window overlooking a pit. Calya went past Brint’s desk and out to the short balcony and tight staircase that led down to the floor.
Here, she realized “pit” was too crude a word. The crater made in the stone below was a perfect circle molded from the rock. What Calya had at first glance thought were cracks in the otherwise smooth surface were actually channels—as purposefully wrought as everything else about the indentation, the channels flowing from multiple directions across the floor, running up and out of the crater to the cavern’s walls.
