“I saw her walking down a narrow corridor, dragging the plaques wrapped up in fabric behind her, and she took them into this strange room—all white, with dishes placed in wheeled racks. It was…” My eyes closed and I tried to think back to the room, and Isawit in my mind’s eye as I’d seen it for real. As if I’d been in it myself and not just seen a flash of it in the gallery while I was stillward. “Clean.It smelled clean. There wasn’t a speck of dust in that room.”
The words spun and spun in my mind just like I’d been spinning down that hole…
“The royal palace,” Kohen whispered. “Talik, they have them in the royal palace.”
“Was anybody else with her?” March asked, but I shook my head.
“I saw her twice—once when she was younger, in the Distribution Room, and once when she was older, in that white room.”
Silas was unusually quiet as he stared at the grass. The colors of the sky had brightened, and there was more light to see with now. I could see the calculating look in his eyes as his mind worked.
The others threw ideas around.
“The palace is north,” Kohen said, turning to look beyond the tower and the Great Clock. “Past the Veil Road. We’ve seen it from a distance but never…” He stopped, shook his head. “No one goes there without an invitation.”
“Then wegetan invitation.” Levana.
“From who?” Cook.
“There must be servant entrances, right?” Erith. “Every palace has servant entrances—you know, for supplies and such.”
“We could blend in. We could dress up. That’s not a bad idea.” Mimi.
“It’s an absolutely terrible idea.” Master Talk.
“There must be openings, breaks in the shields, and ways to identify them…” Silas, almost to himself.
Then…
“I’ve seen a white room full of dishes on racks.”
Every person out there on the grass turned to Russ. He was standing there, pale as a bone, scratching the back of his head, flinching. “I-I-I saw a room like that the other nightwhen we were in the palace. The palace in there.” And he pointed his finger toward the Labyrinth fence.
Mouths opened and closed. Eyes blinked, moved from his face and to the Labyrinth, to Master Talik.
It was a long time before I found enough voice to ask, “Where?”
Russ shrugged his shoulders. “In the room beyond the kitchen.”
The room beyond the kitchen.
How strange that those words kept spiraling in my head over and over, even as I ate. Even as I thought through all the things I’d seen, told March all about it while we rested in his room with the glass floor, thinking maybe I’d missed something important. Maybe there was something more to all those scenes I’d seen—maybe none of them had been accidental. Maybe I’d seen what I’d needed to see—and itfelt likeI was missing something.
Even as I told March, and even as we went over the biggest, slowest memories I’d seen, the feeling didn’t go away.
The plan was to rest, to sleep, to eat, and to go back to the palace, to check the room beyond the kitchen Russ insisted was exactly like I was describing it—dark corridor, white room, with racks on wheels lining the walls, all full of spotless white dishes.
It had to be it. How many rooms could there be in the world that looked like that, let alone in Neverwhen? Probably no more thanone,and that’s why we were going to find a way into the Labyrinth again just as soon as things calmed down. Just as soon as we were sure nobody had suspected a thing about that distraction.
So far nobody had, and no alarms had been set off, and one of Kohen’s outside contacts had nothing new to tell us.
Which was…odd.
Only because of those two soldiers we’d left unconscious up there in the hallway outside the Distribution Room.
Silas insisted that his magic would erase the memory ofhowthey’d been knocked out. He insisted—but it was Silas, and I didn’t particularly trust him when it came to this.
We were supposed to be sleeping, and we were supposed to try to break into the Labyrinth again before dawn, but I’d fallen asleep on March’s arm for only an hour before the knock on his door woke me up.
