Keeping his voice down, s’Ex said, “Reach out ahead of you.”
As she followed the command, she felt something rough.
“Walk to the left,” he commanded. “Keep your hand on the wall to guide you.”
When she did, she slammed right into his chest. “Sorry.”
He turned her around. “Your other left.”
Shuffling along, she could barely breathe. They must be going parallel to the corridor outside, she thought, this inner space a shadow of the outer, public one.
“I built these passages,” he whispered. “I know them by heart.”
“Very smart of you—”
“Stop.”
Obeying him, she dropped her hand. “Now what.”
“Look to your right.”
At first, when she did, she saw nothing save more blackness. Except . . . no. There were tiny fissures of glowing red in the wall, as if some ghostly hand had drawn a pattern of dots with a mystical pen.
Tiles, she thought with awe. They were on the opposite side of a tiled partition.
Reaching her hand back out, she touched them.
“Let me go first,” he said. “And do not come out until I say so.”
Stepping aside so that he could trade places with her, she watched as his tremendous palm cut a swath into the subtle cubic pattern. . . .
When he pushed, the tiles broke apart on a seam that was uneven. Except nothing cracked or crumbled; there was no structural damage. It had been built to accommodate such access.
And beyond was a strange, overwhelming light source.
s’Ex walked forward into the circular chamber beyond with that serrated blade up in front of him, ready to attack.
“Clear,” he hissed.
Taking a deep breath, she left the darkness for that amazing light.
Except it wasn’t anything magical. It was normal candlelight, housed in a room of magnificent red marble.
Wait, no, the illumination wasn’t from wicks. It was the sun, pouring through an immense, curved sheet of glass in the ceiling. And when it was nighttime, she reflected, one would be able to keenly observe and monitor the stars from the transparent oculus.
They moved in silence across the space, their soft-soled shoes lending themselves to muffled footfalls over the red marble flooring. In the center of the room, there was a circle cut in the floor, perhaps for a dais that lifted up like the one in the reception area at the palace? There was no furniture, no wall hangings, nothing that would impede one’s devoted concentration.
More importantly, there was nobody else around.
Three doors. There were three doors . . . one that opened to the concourse. One that was probably the private residence of the Chief Astrologer. And the other . . .
“The record room is through there,” s’Ex said, pointing at that third door.
Denoted by its gold jamb, and the inscribed words above it, the sacred place could not be mistaken, and she felt a shimmer of awe even with the pressures of time and circumstance dampening all her emotions.
Striding forward, she put her hand out—
“No. Your palm won’t work.”
s’Ex placed his on the correct spot on the smooth, unmarked panel and . . .
Nothing happened.
He tried again. “They’ve removed me from the computer. And chances are I’ve just set off an alarm.” Turning to her, he said, “We have to get out of here. Now.”
“No! I need to see—”
“We don’t have time to argue.” Grabbing her hand, he began to drag her back across to the secret passageway. “I don’t want your death on my conscience.”
Yanking against his far superior strength, she blurted, “I think my mother has engineered the birth records!”
s’Ex froze. “What?”
Catra kept pulling against his hold and got nowhere. She might as well have been tied to a tree. “I can’t be certain until I get in there. But I believe she may have deliberately altered birthing records to her own ends. I need to get in there to be sure. Please.”
s’Ex reached up and removed his headdress, and as he let it fall to the smooth red floor, his eyes narrowed and flashed peridot.
“How sure,” he demanded.
“Willing to put my life on it. And yours.”
His decision was announced as he looked at the locked door—and then, without making any fuss, he took two leaps toward it . . . and buried that serrated blade right into what turned out to be a seam.
Either that, or he simply made one.
Placing both hands on the knife’s hilt, he put his tremendous weight to the side and crack! He made an entry into the small gold room.
“Make it fast,” he said grimly.
Catra wasted no time. Running over the chips of stones, she jumped inside and slid on the gold floor, throwing her arms out to balance herself.
Numbers. She saw a thousand gold drawers marked by numbers.
It was all arranged by birth date, not name.
Closing her eyes, she cursed. She had no idea when Trez had been born.
Except, wait—up high on the right, there were two drawers that were not gold. They were white.
Heart pounding, hands shaking, she rose up on her tiptoes and pulled out the top one. The drawer was as deep as her arm, and she had to catch the back of it lest the contents spill out.
No, it had a lid.
Putting the thing down to the floor and opening the top, she found four rolled sheets of parchment, each tied with a ribbon of silk and sealed with red wax that bore the Queen’s star. Other than that they were not labeled. One was smaller than the others.
She took out the first she came to and broke its seal, unrolling the document on the floor. It was so old, the parchment cracked in places and so resented the flattening, she needed to put a lip of the thing under the drawer and kneel on the other end to keep it flat so she could look the chart over.
Sacred symbols and writing in black pen were interspersed with countless red and gold dots that, when she leaned back, formed a constellation.
It was her mother’s birth chart.
She let the thing curl up on itself and put it aside. The next . . . was her chart, and it, too, resisted an awakening from its slumber. The third . . .
The third unfurled itself as she released the bow and broke the seal, and as she leaned over to read it, she smelled the sweet scent of the fresh ink and paint that had been applied to the parchment. This brand-new chart was the infant’s, and the ritual death was marked in each corner with black stars—showing that the soul had been returned to the heavens. Or at least that was her interpretation.
After a moment of sadness, she set the thing aside.
The fourth one, the smaller one, had to be Trez’s. And indeed, when she unfolded it, she was right. For one, in the scribing, there were notations that it was a male, and born with a twin—it was this momentous birthing occasion that had first sparked interest in Trez and iAm. Catra could remember all her life palace staff remarking about the unusual and special occurrence.
His chart was not as big as the other three because he was not a royal, but in the corners of the parchment there were golden stars, showing an ascension to the heights of the Shadow court.
Sitting back on her heels, she read through its notations and symbols.
Then shook her head.
She had been so sure . . . and yet nothing seemed amiss.
“Stand down,” she heard s’Ex say out in the circular room. “Or, as much as it pains me, I shall have to kill you all.”
Wrenching around, Catra looked through the messy portal s’Ex had made for her.
Three guards, dressed in black, had surrounded the executioner, and they had their knives out.
Oh, stars above . . . what had she done?
She had made a terrible mistake coming here. What arrogance to think she had ascertained some secret that would save them all.
And now, there was nowhere to run. No way to win against what was surely just the first squadron of many that had been sent for them.
She did not want to die.
Reaching forward, she picked up the long, thin, heavy drawer. It was the only weapon she had—