Pendour ran her tongue over her teeth as she found herself once again looking from one knight to the other. She listened to Scholomance first, and even though something inside of her felt like it was flickering when he seemed like he didn’t want to go on, she understood. He and Irving were just at each other’s throats for some reason. She wouldn’t wish the two of them together in a smaller space, so she gave the Saturn knight a solemn nod and a proper hug, and then she turned away with a soft smile, an
I’ll be fine that turned into gritting her teeth after a few steps.
She took a deep breath, her hair bouncing along on her back as she stepped across marble floors and under yet more grand, breathtaking arches. For a little bit, she looked at Irving’s back.
Don’t worry. He’s only a ghost. He can’t hurt you, and he probably wouldn’t want to, anyway. Just because Scholomance is being a little bit judgemental doesn’t mean that you need to. He’s your guide. Over a matter of seconds, whispering these things to herself, she more or less closed the distance between them.
When she had almost calmed herself down, she took a moment to peek out across the empty cove, and that was when she saw it. The bottom was covered in something bleached and broken by the ages- coral, she wanted to think, and that was what she let herself believe for a few seconds, and she dreamed of how she could maybe find some way to breathe life back into it, have a living carpet, that would be just lovely, and…
There was a no questions asked human skull. It was too round to be anything else, and the empty eyes stared up from the bottom of the empty basin, maybe twenty feet down now, as they were getting towards the deep end. There were ribs, too. She saw another set of ribs, and then the other shapes formed into femurs and the small bones of the arms, some of them broken and sticking up in spikes. There were a lot. They did not cover the bottom, but there were still too many to easily count.
The feeling of something wrong went from something small and silent to spikes through her throat. She looked back, just for a moment, but that wouldn’t do. Scholomance was so far away now, and hadn’t she just been telling him that sings of death were nothing to fear? If he saw them, which he might, he would see them, but either way she would not ask for help. Not now. She tried to swallow as Irving led her to an outcropping.
This was the glimpse of green she’d seen when she first arrived. A mass of algae bubbled up and dripped down from the overhang above. That was different, that was worth looking into, but at the moment, she followed Irving behind it to a door. She stopped outside of it, twisting the charm of her bracelet.
“Irving,” she said, trying his name in her mouth. There was something not quite right about it, she decided.
“Yes,” he said, looking back. He smiled softer, now.
She tried to think of how to phrase this with breath caught in her throat and bones staring at her back.
“What is this place?”
“Paradise,” he said. He smiled bigger and reached out, standing taller, and Sadie did think that he looked proud. “A place for listening to music or relaxing by the waters, a place for rest and healing of the mind.” He leaned in closer, nose to nose. Sadie resisted the urge to step back. He whispered, “In truth, it’s a secret weapon.”
He looked so happy saying that, so proud, and with a smug nod he turned and walked inside. She stood, frozen in a grimace for a few seconds. It wasn’t as much of a punch in the gut as actually seeing those skulls, but first finding that her powers were tied up in blood and legacy, and then finding out that they were tied up in violence, too, well, it shouldn’t have been surprising, but it was still a lot.
She stepped in after him and found herself impressed again in spite of herself. It was a large bedroom as lovely as the rest of the wonder. The mosaics had fared a little better in here, and she looked around at the shimmering, abstract designs illuminated by a round skylight in the ceiling. The furniture was old, dusty, and nondescript, but that was something she could do about. This room. This room she could fix. In time.
It did not stop her concern for the moment, and she licked her lips and asked, “What was responsible for the deaths of those people outside?”
He was too smooth and too quick in his smile and his reply. “They were enemies, Granddaughter.”
The spike in her throat grew sharper.
What happened to them, she could not ask.
“There were many spies, sometimes traitors, always threats,” he continued, and something softened in his face even as she balled her hands tightly at her sides. “They found rest here. It was the most merciful fate they would have received in the entire solar system.”
“Okay,” was what she managed, even though that was not true, not true at all. She breathed in for five seconds, out for five. “Please give me the ring,” she said.
Maybe he saw how she breathed, but he did not hesitate. With a flourish of his hand, he pointed at a small bowl on a dusty dresser by the door. She reached inside, fished out a silver signet ring, and slipped it onto her finger. “Thank you,” she said, and before he tried to tell her more or her emotions got the better of her, she simply turned around and walked out the door. He did not follow.
She took the path back quickly and kept her eyes glued on the sea above, although her breath still caught. It was so much that her thoughts seemed frozen and yet tears started coming from her eyes.
She arrived back where she’d started red-eyed, drained, and tense, but she held her hand up to Scholomance, showing off her ring with a little smile and a little pride. “I found it,” she said, quickly followed by, “I think that we should leave now.”
