It’s working, said Baldbeak with a pleasedraark.
As I watched, the bone twisted and contorted itself before settling into the rough shape of a key—nothing too elegant, but the teeth at one end looked key-like enough to work. I inserted it into the lock, which clicked.
“You did it!” cried the Book Man.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Baldbeak as I left my cell and stroked the sparse gray feathers around his beak. I turned quickly to the Book Man’s door and felt the bone key contort itself in my palm again, changing itself again to fit his lock. When the door opened, we hugged tightly. He felt very thin and frail.
“The catacombs,” he said. “The Tomb of Kings, as the Pontiff told you. I will come with you to find it.”
“No, please.” I shrugged off my cloak and gave it to him. “Just try to get out. If you keep your head down and covered,you might be able to make it through the palace. You’ll be able to get out.”
He hesitated.
“It will be quicker with just Baldbeak and me,” I said. “Please.”
He sighed. “Very well, my dear.” He embraced me one more time. “But … come and find me, when all this is over, won’t you?”
“How?”
“Oh, we’ll find a way.” He patted my shoulder and pulled the cloak close about him. “Now. Go.”
I kept the bone key clasped in my fist, just in case. There might be more locked doors between us and the book.
There were no guards at the end of the hallway, as presumably the Pontiff had assumed a sturdy door and stone walls were enough. Arrogant, but it would have been true if Baldbeak hadn’t had the idea to use the bone key. I slipped out, Baldbeak clinging to my shoulder, and made my way down the endless staircase of the great marble palace.
I had developed a great distaste for it now, and its pale opulence seemed to reflect the unpleasantness of the Pontiff’s smooth, bald pate and smoother voice. I hoped he had not been lying about there being an entrance to the catacombs beneath his palace, but I didn’t think so. I felt the hum of it beneath my feet, just as I had felt the bones buried in the walls of the Corpse Roads. Of course I would feel the very last and vastest repository of ancient bones; the one that was too enormous to be destroyed. All the Temple could do was seal it off and hope that no malicious bone mage ever gained access to all that raw material.
Did I fall into that category? I didn’t think so, but then I didn’t know exactly who I would be once I had found Mother’s book. Perhaps I was indeed to be feared. But I had to find out.
Chapter Twenty-One
The Wishbone
‘A method of edging a piece with an angled stitch that is both pleasing to the eye and secures against fraying and unraveling.’
—An Exhaustive Compendium of Stitches
Both Holy and Base, 4th Edition
The Pontiff had not been lying, as it turned out.
Baldbeak and I made our way down, down, down into the bowels of the Pontiff’s palace, the air growing danker and colder the lower we went.
I don’t like it, said Baldbeak, shivering his feathers.
“I know. I’m sorry.” I reached up to pet him. “Look at it this way—you’ve been dead. It can’t be worse than that.”
Dead was just … nothing, Baldbeak said.No darkness.
“I’m sorry,” I said again. “Do you want to stay above and wait for me? I would understand.”
No.He clicked his beak and did not speak again as we descended, but I felt the tension in the clasp of his claws.
The entrance to the catacombs, when we reached it, was old—older, perhaps, than the city of Mirthwater itself. Some ancient people had hollowed the tunnel from the smooth,darkly gleaming stone and carved decorative pillars into its sides, but those pillars had long crumbled to little more than outlines.
A glim burned on the wall, casting everything in an eerie light, and I took it down so I could see more clearly. There were suggestions of shapes carved in bas-relief into the walls—creatures of some kind, I thought, with the remnants of eyes and legs frozen in active movement. Too many eyes, and too many legs.
And then there were the doors.
