It was as though a blindfold fell from Sylvertre’s eyes and he could see now that which had lied but a hair’s breadth in front of his face. It was his own complicity staring back at an heir to sin no different than the rest of them. “Then I’m no better, and it’s just every man out for himself?” the questions came tumbling, “then what does it matter that I swore an oath if loyalties mean nothing, if this whole thing just a farce?” He glowered beyond the tapestries, forced himself to his feet, and began hobbling toward the altar—a triangular table—more pagan artifice. Atop it, a candelabra, three candles unlit. He lifted one and rolled it betwixt his fingers, plucked the wick, then snapped it in fragments. Small acts of sacrilege, yet he performed them with the greatest catharsis. “Come on, then. Strike me down if I’m wrong, if there is such thing as God and justice.” Smashing the wax, he thrust it overhead. “Come on,” he hissed.
Nothing.
That’s what I thought. Ogdon tossed the ruined candle aside and felt a chill nibble his ankle. Like a whisper, the swivel of oiled hinges tickled his senses, and for a moment, the church began to lean. Then all at once whirred the slipping of knots; the lames came undone, and the squire’s crutch clattered to the floor in pieces. Immediately he followed, falling belly first trying to catch himself, but the ground came up faster. The wind fled his lungs like a blow from Troy’s lance. He wanted to curse, but had not the air. So there he lay, bearing it till his breath returned, till he could grumble over reassembling his shoddy work.
But there was something calming about the cool, polished wood on his bruising cheek—like the lapping of the ocean and a breeze from the sea. He pressed his ear more firmly against the floor. It wasn’t like the ocean, it was. Somewhere deep underneath, he swore he could hear it. Ogdon climbed to his knees, crawled, listening for the rhythm and feeling for the chill when he found the hinge hidden in a crevice no wider than a knife. Without a thought, the squire went to work, his fingernails scratching the surface searching for cuts between the boards. It wasn’t long before he’d traced the outline of the trapdoor. No handle, yet he felt sure there should be a lever or switch somewhere—just like beneath the Compassionate’s Cathedral. Another scandal right under the church’s nose.
Sylvertre snatched a pent from inside his purse and wedged it in the slit opposite the hinge. Delicately, he levered the bit of copper hoping to pry the ledge high enough for his fingertips to grasp; yet as softly as he pressed, the coin took on a bend. So he tried again, and again, and again, so many times that he worried he’d leave wear marks in the wood. Then at last he got it trying a schill he’d received from the Hibernis slaver. It was stiff as iron, debased down to a silver plating so thin it scratched just lifting the trap an inch off the floor. Ogdon chuckled at his fortune—being exploited by a band of foreigners. Gildmane’s loss to my gain; and if this counterfeit coin is anything to go on, mayhap they’ll seek a reward for turning in those treasonous letters. I won’t even have to get my hands dirty. He rebound his dismantled crutch, giddy at the thought, and stole through the hidden door.
The trap shut like a sun plunging under the earth—into the underworld this passage delved, black and narrow, cut right into the rocky soil and reinforced with mortar. A leviathan’s gullet, every step and groping touch of the walls came away wet with cold and salt, every breath with the rank of spoiled fish. Sylvertre shut his useless eyes and pinched his nose. He listened, the lapping sounds echoing louder below ground, and sought after them, prodding along with his crutch like a cane.
Not a hundred steps in, the black passage faded gray, then around a bend became brighter still at the fork: one path back to darkness, the other to a cove twilit by day. It was an ancient place, Ogdon surmised, a low, costal overhang hollowed out but for sand and dirt. Squinting, he could just make out the black flux of the tide and the outline of a wood-rotted pier. Most of the structure had sunk into the ocean, and what remained intact had doubtless been replaced. A cargo port? No, the passage was too small, and why would they need a secret door? The squire ventured further into the cove. Indeed, part of the pier had been recently replaced, and there was even a boat tied and readied for departure. A smuggler’s vessel, Ogdon noted. Both body and sails were black as midnight, invisible against the ocean in the dark and from a distance—but up close, Sylvertre could see the chains and ropes and pitched tarpaulin awaiting cargo to detain on the deep deck of the boat.
Curious, he surveyed the rest of the cove for clue as to what was being smuggled and found rust-stuffed holes at regular intervals along a wall. And like the pier, a few of those spots had been restored with steel rings and collars and manacles, all oiled and glistening. Ogdon could hardly believe his fortune; he had to clasp his mouth to keep from laughing too loudly. A transgression on par with that of Bishop Vaufnar’s—and it was he who uncovered it, the secret of the abductions.
