I woke with a start. For a moment, I didn’t know where I was. Mieka’s workshop? The Book Man’s? Milady’s mansion? Images fluttered like shuffled playing cards. No. Patrick, it was Patrick bending over me, holding a candle, his shirt hanging open to the waist, so close that I could feel the heat from his skin. In the candlelight, his eyes looked almost unearthly. I propped myself up on my elbows. My dyed Hair hung lank and lifeless down my back, a dead weight.
“What it is?” I murmured, still half submerged in my dream.
“He’s here.”
I nodded and groped for my cloak. Patrick passed it to me, and I shrugged it on over my clothes. I had not undressed the night before, knowing that we would be rising in the early hours.
“Ready?”
I tripped a little getting out of bed, and Patrick reached to steady me. The little monk was waiting for us in the doorway, carrying a shuttered glim that cast only a small, focused light. Patrick set his candle on a little table—we would have more than enough light without it. The monk put a finger to his wet lips for silence.
We walked down the long corridor as quietly as possible, following the little monk. It was odd, dreamlike. I was still half asleep, and our procession down the dark hallway mingled in my mind with the processions of the dead down the Corpse Roads. I remembered the snaking line of embroidered figures traversing the great tapestry, shepherding their dead to their final resting place. The light of the little glim the monk carried was a single yellow point in the darkness, barely illuminating anything, firefly-small. I stumbled again, and Patrick took my hand, pulling me out of my reverie. His hand was cool and firm; his many rings little points of sharpness and cold against my skin, like needle pricks. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. Just … not quite awake yet.”
“Are you sure?”
His face was very close to mine. Involuntarily, I remembered the Plaguenight kiss. My face burned, and I pulled my hand away.
“I’m sure.”
We had come to another door, which the monk unlocked, revealing shallow stone steps disappearing into darkness. A light breath of cold, stale air from below raised goosebumps on my arms. I could hear something dripping, far away, and smell wet stone.
“The wine cellar,” said the monk briefly, starting down the steps.
“Monks drink wine?” I asked.
He gave me an odd look. “Yes.”
We descended. It seemed like a very long way down, and we had to be careful where we placed our feet—the wine cellarhad been hollowed out of the stone foundation of the monastery, and the surface was uneven. Water dripped here and there from the ceiling above. At last, the texture beneath my shoes changed from rock to the rasp of sand as we reached the cellar floor. The monk swung his glim this way and that to show us the great barrels stacked high against all the walls.
“Clearly monks drink a great deal of wine,” Patrick murmured in my ear.
The monk bent down to open a trapdoor in the floor. It did not creak or shed any dust: Obviously this was used often.
“An old smuggling tunnel,” he said, almost apologetically. “We keep it very clean.”
“Oh. Good,” I said faintly, my heart pounding at the thought of that dark, cramped space. “Wouldn’t want it to be dusty.”
A hinged wooden ladder was folded under the trapdoor opening. The monk opened it up with a creak and clatter that sounded very loud in the silence, and then clambered down. Patrick followed, reaching up with an odd formality to help me down as well.
If it had been cold in the cellar, it was a hundred times colder down in the tunnel. It might have been clean, as the monk said, but it smelled ancient and dank.
“It’s not too far,” said the monk. The glim barely illuminated his face, but I could tell he was grinning. “We’re right under the scriptorium’s nose, so to speak.” He reached up and closed the trapdoor overhead, sealing us in. I felt a sick lurch of anxiety and grabbed at Patrick’s arm.
“It’s all right,” he said.
“I just don’t like small spaces.”
“Takes a bit of getting used to,” said the monk, who seemed quite cheerful and much more relaxed now that we had left the scriptorium itself. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d started whistling as we walked along. “These tunnels have been here for hundreds of years. Used to be that every Temple had themunderneath, and supposedly they’re all connected, but you’d be a fool to wander too far.”
“The Corpse Roads again,” I murmured.
“What?” said the monk.
“Nothing.”
After a time, we came to a heavy door set in the side of the tunnel. The monk knocked a complicated rhythm, announcing his presence, then took a key from his belt and unlocked it. Inside was the scriptorium, but in miniature. The same scents, even the incense; the same equipment; the same assortment of inks. Here, however, there was much less organization. Everything seemed jumbled, haphazard: jars, bottles, and crates everywhere. I picked up one of the jars, peered into it, and almost dropped it when I realized what was inside.
