Fallen Magic

I stay there until I’ve stopped shaking, which takes a couple of minutes. My mind is whirling. I don’t know what to think.

I’ve failed. Have I? Or was there never a prospect of success? Maybe if I hadn’t had that Malaina episode, if I’d been able to make a coherent argument for sparing Lord Cavendish, he might have listened. Or maybe he wouldn’t, because he’d already made his decision and wasn’t going to change it for my sake or Mildred’s.

I’ll never know now.

And he thought – I’m still furious at the memory – he thought I was using Edward – I would never –

I take a long, deep breath and step forward away from the door. Run my hands through my hair to check my braids are intact. Stretch my arms up towards the Abbey’s great ceiling.

“Right,” I say to myself. “Let’s go find Elsie.”

That isn’t too hard to do, fortunately: I just walk over to the chapel where the priest must be, hoping to find the way out, and there she is kneeling beside the priest at the altar. I hang back, not wanting to disturb their prayer. Elsie looks quite different praying: calm and confident, without any of the awkwardness I’m used to seeing from her. It’s strange how easily a person can change.

The priest must sense my presence, because he rises smoothly and turns to face me. “You must be Tallulah,” he says.

It takes me a second to realise that Elsie must have told him that and that his knowing my name isn’t at all suspicious. “Yes. I’m sorry to have kept Elsie waiting – “

“You’re all right!” says Elsie, getting to her feet. “Thank the stars! Now promise me you’ll never do that again.”

“I… what?”

“Tallulah. That man was clearly dangerous, and you just stayed there with him and didn’t even tell me to fetch help! Who knows what could have happened?”

I hadn’t even thought of that, too caught up in what did happen to think about all the horrific possibilities. I imagine Elsie praying at this altar, desperately worried for me, while I panicked at the thought of trying to save a man’s life and listened to the Black Raven recite holy texts.

“Sorry,” I say. “But he couldn’t have done anything in front of the High Royal Guard, anyway.”

I’m probably lying, come to think of it. It’s only now I think to wonder why he sent his own magical operatives away but was quite content to have them standing below us and overhearing our conversation. Their loyalty can’t be to him, surely.

Elsie nods grudgingly. “Still. Don’t do that again, please.”

I’m not sure I even did anything. It was all Lord Blackthorn. “I won’t,” I say. Not if I have a choice, anyway.

“I’ll show you to the way out,” says the priest. He’s younger than I expected: maybe twenty or thirty, with slick dark hair. We follow him from the chapel down a set of stairs and back into the crypts. It doesn’t seem much like an exit. I’m still on edge from my encounter earlier, so I can’t help wondering where I could run and hide if I needed to – but there’s no way out of the Abbey except through the protest or whatever way he’s supposed to be taking us –

The priest stops suddenly by an innocuous-looking section of stone wall, near the Martyr’s Tomb. He hums a tune to himself and traces a hand absently along the wall – and it vanishes to reveal a dark tunnel beyond.

“Is this – “ I begin.

“The assassins’ tunnel?” finishes Elsie.

The priest gives us a disdainful look. “The tunnel was never theirs, for all that they used it. There has been a network of tunnels below the Central Ring since long before the Usurper, as far back as history goes, scarcely used except in emergency.”

His tone makes it clear that he doesn’t consider our being besieged by the protestors much of an emergency.

But the actual assassins’ tunnel, the one through which they crept centuries ago to murder Elizabeth the Martyr – I’m not quite sure I want to go in there right now.

The priest doesn’t care about that, though: he mutters an incantation and conjures a ball of bright white light in his palm, then steps unhesitatingly into the darkness.

Elsie and I glance at each other.

“You first,” she says.

“What happened to not doing dangerous things again?” I ask playfully, but I take a step towards the entrance. I need a light of my own, but after what just happened I don’t know if I’m in a fit state to cast.

One way to find out, I suppose. “In the ugly darkness,” I whisper, staring into it. The starlight-silver light appears in my hand. I step over the threshold, Elsie behind me conjuring her own light.

My light isn’t bright enough to let me see the priest, only the white glow hovering a short distance ahead, waiting impatiently for us. I lower my hand toward the ground so I can see where I’m putting my feet and proceed slowly forward.

The priest doesn’t speak, just keeps walking quickly and steadily, pausing every so often for us to catch up. Every so often we pass another tunnel leading off in a different direction, and we take two left turns and a right.

I’m hopelessly lost. How far do these tunnels stretch? We’ve surely walked further than the breadth of the Central Ring now. I turn to see Elsie’s warm red light just behind me and dimly make out her face. “Okay?” I ask.

“Keep walking,” she replies tersely.

I keep walking.

After what could have been a few minutes or an eternity, the tunnel begins to slope upward, and a faint glimmer of light is visible ahead. So at least the priest isn’t planning to get us lost in the darkness. The end of the tunnel is blocked by an old wooden door, the light slipping through the gaps between the door and the tunnel walls.

The priest takes a key from the chain around his neck and unlocks the door. It leads to what seems like another crypt: stone walls, dim light, ornate carvings on the pillars that hold up the ceiling.

“I shouldn’t leave the chapel unattended for too long,” he says. “You can find your way from here.” And without another word he disappears back into the tunnel, shutting the door behind him.

“Would it kill him to be a tiny bit more helpful?” I ask bitterly once I’m fairly sure he won’t be able to hear me.

Elsie doesn’t respond. I turn to see her lying on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and breathing heavily.

“Elsie? What’s wrong?”

“I’m scared of the dark,” she admits.

“And you still made it through that tunnel? I’m sorry – I had no idea – if I’d realised – “

“What could you have done? We still had to get out – “

“We could have just stayed into the Abbey until the protest was over – “

“You’d do that because I was afraid?”

“I… of course.” I can’t work out why that would mean anything to her. Surely it’s what anyone would do for a friend?

“My brothers tease me about it. It’s babyish to be afraid of the dark. I should have grown out of it already. They would have made me go through that tunnel, however afraid I was.”

“That doesn’t work,” I say. “There’s a point where trying to push through things just makes it worse.”

I meant those words to be about Elsie and her fear, but I realise it’s just as much about me. I tried for years to push through Genford, to always keep studying hard and do everything I needed to become a lawyer. And it just made it worse until eventually I couldn’t keep going any more.

If I’d realised that before it was too late, perhaps I could have prevented my Fall.

And then these last few days. I was forcing myself to work through stress and sleep deprivation to research anything remotely connected to the Cavendish case, and it didn’t help anything. It probably made things worse.

“Try telling that to them,” Elsie replies.

“Do you need to stay here for a while?” I ask. “Or – “ I look around. There are steep steps leading up out of the crypt, and the door at their top is open. We have a way out, we just need to figure out where we are.

“Would you mind a couple of minutes? Just so I can catch my breath?”

“Of course.”

Elsie sits up and leans back against the wall, and after a moment I join her.

“Who was that man?”

The tunnel made me forget for a while what just happened, and that I still have no idea what I’m supposed to tell Elsie and what’s a secret. “Edward’s dad,” I say, because that at least explains something.

“You mean – Lord Blackthorn? The Black Raven?”

I nod.

“He followed us to the Abbey to talk to you?” There’s a note of fear in her voice. I can’t blame her.

“No – no, I don’t think so. I think meeting me was just a coincidence. He was there to observe – “

Stars. What was he really doing there?

“…the protest,” I finish grimly.

Before he revealed itself, we deduced that someone must have been organising the protests in an attempt to destabilise the King’s reign. Stars, I even wondered if Lord Blackthorn was the one who could have done that.

And he had his team of special operatives, who he sent to investigate an incident by the Central Bank.

Investigate? Or cause?

How could I have been so blind? How did I not see this back on the Abbey steps?

It’s all circumstantial, though. I have no real proof and no hope of obtaining it. It’s logical for the Minister for Intelligence to want to observe the protest to try and work out who’s behind it. But would he go in person just for that?

“Tallulah?”

“Oh – I just had a thought.” Do I tell her? Do I tell anyone? What am I supposed to do with this? Stars, why is it me who’s had this revelation instead of anyone who could do something about it? “It’s nothing, though.”

I can deal with it later.

“What did he want, then?”

“To threaten me with various unspeakable horrors if I mistreat Edward.” Technically true, but skipping over most of our conversation.

“Seriously?” Elsie asks.

“Seriously,” I confirm. “I guess he’s a bit overprotective.”

Elsie laughs a little, but it’s forced laughter. “What did you tell him?”

“I promised I wouldn’t.”

Elsie is about to reply when we hear footsteps above, and then a woman appears in the doorway.

“You girls come from the Abbey?” she asks.

It’s hard to make out her features when she’s silhouetted in the door frame, the light coming from behind her, but I can just distinguish the thin dark robes of a priestess.

“Yes, sister,” I say, getting to my feet. “I’m sorry for the intrusion, but – “

“Don’t be.” She begins slowly descending towards us. “It is our sacred duty to provide sanctuary to those in need of it. I heard about the protest. A dreadful thing, to disrupt the order of the City like that.”

I offer Elsie a hand up; she takes it and hauls herself to her feet.

“Sister,” I ask, “could you tell us where we are?”

“You don’t know? Who – no, don’t tell me. Claude?”

“The priest from the Abbey chapel, you mean? Twenty or thirty, dark hair?”

“Claude,” she confirms. “I apologise for him. He disdains all duties except that of prayer. You are in the Temple of the Ship. Come upstairs.” She turns gracefully in place on the steps.

I glance at Elsie to confirm that she doesn’t know where the Temple of the Ship is any more than I do, and then follow the priestess upwards.

The Temple of the Ship isn’t named after a physical ship, but after the constellation that depicts one, one of the five constellations for the five Holy Days. All major temples are named after constellations, but the City has dozens of them so it doesn’t really narrow things down.

We emerge into a large chapel. There are a few people here praying, and we get a few curious glances from those not lost in contemplation. I try to ignore them.

“I’m sorry,” I say, “I’m new to the City, and I don’t know where – “

“That’s quite all right. I’ll show you a map.”

It doesn’t take long after that to discover that we’re on a side street near Queen’s Park – under which the tunnel must have passed – and figure out how to get to the market to buy a gift for Mildred.