Crouching down, she addressed her fellow prisoner once more, “Old man, what are you doing?”
He continued on as if she were less than a shade in his perception.
Not used to being ignored in any shape or form, Zofiya grabbed him by the shoulder, and gave him a little shake. “Do you want to get out of here or not?”
His eyes now darted up to meet hers. They were perfectly clear pale blue, like looking into a sparkling mountain stream, but they were not focused on her. She noted how his hands still traced the symbols in the dust. “You are here.” His voice was sweet and light for such a wizened-looking man.
She glanced down to where he was tapping. She couldn’t see her name, her personal sigil or anything else, but a shiver ran up her spine. It was completely illogical, but she felt that he was right. Somewhere in the twists and turns he had mapped out, the little Princess of Delmaire and the determined sister of Kaleva was sketched.
Zofiya shook her head; maybe it was the blood loss and whatever del Rue had pumped her full of. A thought followed soon after. If her captor had seen fit to capture this old man as well, then he had to have some real value. It would undoubtedly be bad for the Empire and her brother.
Rising, she hastily examined the man’s restraints and immediately saw that he’d been here a lot longer than she had been, and was far better secured. The bolt that fastened his chain to the wall was sturdy and screwed into the beam of whatever house they were in. Turning her attention to the other end, she accidentally stepped through the old man’s creation.
He immediately stopped, like a puppet whose strings had been cut, staring at the floor without saying a word.
“No time for this,” Zofiya muttered to herself, while tilting his head forward. “This has been on a long while hasn’t it, old sir.” The flesh on each side of the steel collar was covered in scars where his neck had rubbed against it and then healed.
Nothing in this room was going to break this piece of the blacksmith’s art, nor were her bare hands. For some reason, tears sprang to her eyes at the thought. Ridiculous that a man of such short acquaintance could bring such emotion out in her, but Zofiya wanted to protect him. He reminded her of the quiet nuns of Hatipai in the temple in Delmaire—the ones that had never realized they served a geistlord. She pressed her hands around his, for a moment stilling his reconstruction of the design on the floor.
“What is your name?”
He looked up at her with those incredible eyes. “Ratimana,” was all he said, before returning to what he was doing. As if that was enough explanation of everything.
She had to go. Del Rue or one of his cronies could return to check on her at any minute. “I will send someone back for you, Ratimana. As soon as I am back with my brother. I promise.”
He did not glance up, not even when she reluctantly walked toward the far door. Zofiya glanced back once, but he still drew on. Many times in her life the Grand Duchess had wished for some of the talents of a Sensitive Deacon, but never more so than now. Something about that old man suggested he was more than he seemed. She would send her best Imperial Guards back to retrieve him, and a brace of Deacons just to be sure.
The next door was also unlocked, the final chamber in what she guessed had to be a root cellar of some house somewhere on the Edge of Vermillion. This one was unoccupied and much larger. The first thing she saw that raised her hopes immediately was a set of crooked stairs leading up. Scrambling up them proved to be dangerous as they lurched most alarmingly, but Zofiya reached the top, and felt a grin spread on her face. A pair of cellar doors.
She pushed on them. Then when that did not work, she applied her shoulder. Nothing budged. Taking a calming breath, she examined them more closely. With her fingertips she traced the outline of the doors. They seemed sturdy, and the gaps were packed with dirt and rocks.
As she sat back on her heels, Zofiya realized that the cellar door had been most effectively sealed shut on the other side by a thick application of rocks and dirt. How were del Rue and his minions coming and going through?
Carefully Zofiya climbed back down the stairs and set about searching the rest of the room. It was larger than the other two, but not big enough that another entrance could be effectively hidden. She’d given up on stealth now. Desperation and frustration were growing. In her nightmares she had dreamed of her brother caught in a situation like this—but never herself. All those years of putting his safety first, and the worst thing she’d imagined was getting killed. Being turned into a pawn in someone’s grand game had never figured. Perhaps she needed a larger imagination in the future. Depending on what that was.
She reached the far side of the cellar, and found only a narrow tunnel. This looked freshly constructed, because the brick walls on each side were ripped apart. Holding her broken bit of bed frame before her, Zofiya followed it.
The air in the tunnel suddenly became very close, and her skin began to itch frightfully. One summer in Delmaire she’d spent an uncomfortable hour by the lake while her father examined the latest addition to his river fleet. For three days after she’d itched to the point she’d wanted to rip her own skin off. This moment reminded her uncomfortably of that one. Every part of her body wanted her to stop moving forward and just go back. Maybe that cellar door wasn’t as blocked as she thought. Maybe she hadn’t checked all the corners of the last room thoroughly enough?
These thoughts made no sense, but felt so compelling. She’d been exposed to magic before, she knew the signs, so Zofiya kept plowing forward, one foot in front of the other.
The end of the short excavation ended in strangeness. An oval was described in the dirt, as tall as Zofiya was. It was outlined with the gleaming opalescence of tiny weirstones. That could not be good. Still she had a feeling this had to be the way del Rue was traveling. When she was within a few feet of it, she extended her hand cautiously.
The surface was icy cold like she’d plunged her hand into a lake, but after only an inch, it did not yield any further—no matter how hard she pressed. She had to get to Kaleva. He must be turning Vermillion upside down to find her. What was he imagining happened to her?
However as Zofiya stood there thinking those things, hand still clamped to the surface, the darkness began to resolve itself. The Grand Duchess frowned and peered closer. Was she imagining it, or could she actually see Kaleva? His face was coming into focus in the darkness.
His expression was one however that she had never seen on her brother before. He looked angry; not just slightly annoyed, but truly and deeply angry. It reminded her of some of the expressions she had seen on the faces of men about to go into battle. Her father had some island folk that went into a maddened state before heading into a fight. The bulging eyes and clenched teeth had frightened her as a child, and seeing a similar look on her brother’s face was worse.
“Kal!” she shouted, keeping her hand on the surface, lest she break whatever magic was allowing this to happen. “Kal, I am here!”
He didn’t move at all, so not even a whisper of her scream was getting through. Then the scene around the Emperor began to make itself known, and she saw him. Standing at her brother’s side was del Rue. Zofiya howled again, trying to pound her way through the barrier with her other hand. She even kicked at it, but nothing broke.
Taking a long breath she bottled her frustration back inside her, and concentrated instead on what was happening on the other side. It looked like the interior of one of the aristocratic chambers in the palace, and she surmised that this was the room del Rue had been given. It was luxurious, more like something a visiting Prince could command rather than a minor noble.
Kaleva was speaking to del Rue, waving his finger and pointing in a totally uncharacteristic manner. Zofiya’s stomach clenched. She hated seeing her brother like this, and most especially knowing that she was the cause of it. Abruptly she had an idea.
Cautiously she pressed the side of her head against the surface. One side of her face grew numb, and her ear felt like it might break and fall off, but she was able to make out faint noise from the other side.
“…and the Arch Abbot says he will not hand over that cursed Deacon for questioning.” Kaleva’s voice cracked with rage. “I never should have let them take him in the first place.”
“You were in shock, Your Imperial Majesty. You cannot blame yourself for what happened then. What is important is what happens now.” He gestured Kaleva to sit, and after a moment the Emperor did. “Have you given
