Crown of Midnight (16 page)

Hours later, the King of Adarlan stood at the back of the dungeon chamber as his secret guards dragged Rena Goldsmith forward. The butcher’s block at the center of the room was already soaked with blood. Her companion’s headless corpse lay a few feet away, his blood trickling toward the drain in the floor.

Perrington and Roland stood silent beside the king, watching, waiting.

The guards shoved the singer to her knees before the stained stone. One of them grabbed a fistful of her red-gold hair and yanked, forcing her to look at the king as he stepped forward.

“It is punishable by death to speak of or to encourage magic. It is an affront to the gods, and an affront to me that you sang such a song in my hall.”

Rena Goldsmith just stared at him, her eyes bright. She hadn’t struggled when his men grabbed her after the performance or even screamed when they’d beheaded her companion. As if she’d been expecting this.

“Any last words?”

A queer, calm rage settled over her lined face, and she lifted her chin. “I have worked for ten years to become famous enough to gain an invitation to this castle. Ten years, so I could come here to sing the songs of magic that you tried to wipe out. So I could sing those songs, and
you
would know that we are still here—that you may outlaw magic, that you may slaughter thousands, but we who keep the old ways still remember.”

Behind him, Roland snorted.

“Enough,” the king said, and snapped his fingers.

The guards shoved her head down on the block.

“My daughter was sixteen,” she went on. Tears ran over the bridge of her nose and onto the block, but her voice remained strong and loud. “Sixteen, when you burned her. Her name was Kaleen, and she had eyes like thunderclouds. I still hear her voice in my dreams.”

The king jerked his chin to the executioner, who stepped forward.

“My sister was thirty-six. Her name was Liessa, and she had two boys who were her joy.”

The executioner raised his ax.

“My neighbor and his wife were seventy. Their names were Jon and Estrel. They were killed because they dared try to protect my daughter when your men came for her.”

Rena Goldsmith was still reciting her list of the dead when the ax fell.

Celaena dipped her spoon into her porridge, tasted it, then dumped in a mountain of sugar. “I much prefer eating breakfast together than going out in the freezing cold.” Fleetfoot, her head on Celaena’s lap, huffed loudly. “I think she does, too,” she added with a grin.

Nehemia laughed softly before taking a bite of her bread. “It seems like this is the only time of day either of us get to see you,” she said in Eyllwe.

“I’ve been busy.”

“Busy hunting down the conspirators on the king’s list?” A pointed glance in her direction; another bite of toast.

“What do you want me to say?” Celaena stirred the sugar into her porridge, focusing on that instead of the look on her friend’s face.

“I want you to look me in the eye and tell me that you think your freedom is worth this price.”

“Is
this
why you’ve been so on edge lately?”

Nehemia set down her toast. “How can I tell my parents about you? What excuses can I make that will convince them that my friendship with the
King’s Champion
”—she used the common-tongue language for the two words, spitting them out like poison—“is in any way an honorable thing? How can I convince them that your soul isn’t rotted?”

“I didn’t realize that I needed parental approval.”

“You are in a position of power—and knowledge—and yet you just obey. You obey and you do not question, and you work only toward one goal:
your
freedom.”

Celaena shook her head and looked away.”

“You turn from me because you know it’s true.

“And what is so wrong with wanting my freedom? Haven’t I suffered enough to deserve it? So what if the means are unpleasant?”

“I won’t deny that you have suffered, Elentiya, but there are thousands more who have also suffered—and suffered more. And they do not sell themselves to the king to get what they, too, deserve. With each person you kill, I am finding fewer and fewer excuses for remaining your friend.”

Celaena flung her spoon down on the table and stalked to the fireplace. She wanted to rip down the tapestries and the paintings and smash all the silly little baubles and ornaments she’d bought to decorate her room. Mostly she just wanted to make Nehemia stop looking at her like that—like she was just as bad as the monster who sat on that glass throne. She took a breath, then another, listening for signs of anyone else in her chambers, then turned.

“I haven’t killed anyone,” she said softly.

Nehemia went still. “What?”

“I haven’t killed anyone.” She remained where she was standing, needing the distance between them to get the words out right. “I faked all of their deaths and helped them flee.”

Nehemia ran her hands over her face, smearing the powdered gold
she’d dusted on her eyelids. After a moment, she lowered her fingers. Her dark, lovely eyes were wide. “You haven’t killed a single person he’s ordered you to kill?”

“Not a single one.”

“What about Archer Finn?”

“I offered Archer a bargain: I give him until the end of the month to get his affairs in order before he fakes his death and flees, and he gives me information about the
actual
enemies of the king.” She could tell Nehemia the rest of it later—the king’s plans, the library catacombs—but mentioning those things now would only bring up too many questions.

Nehemia took a sip of her tea, the liquid inside the cup sloshing as her hands shook. “He’ll kill you if he finds out.”

Celaena looked to the balcony doors, where a beautiful day was dawning in the wide-open world beyond. “I know.”

“And this information that Archer is giving you—what will you do with it? What sort of information is it?”

Celaena briefly explained what he’d told her about the people involved in putting Terrasen’s lost heir back on the throne, even telling her what had happened with Davis. Nehemia’s face paled. When Celaena finished, Nehemia took another trembling sip of tea. “And you trust Archer?”

“I think he values his life more than he values anything else.”

“He’s a courtesan; how can you be sure you can trust him?”

Celaena slipped back into her chair, Fleetfoot curling between her feet. “Well,
you
trust
me
, and I’m an assassin.”

“It’s not the same.”

Celaena looked to the tapestry along the wall to her left, and the chest of drawers in front of it. “While I’m telling you all the things that could get me executed, there’s something else that I should bring up.”

Nehemia followed her line of sight to the tapestry. After a moment, she let out a gasp. “Is that—that’s
Elena
in the tapestry, isn’t it?”

Celaena smiled crookedly and crossed her arms. “That’s not even the worst of it.”

As they walked down to the tomb, Celaena told Nehemia about everything that had occurred between her and Elena since Samhuinn—and all the adventures that had befallen her. She showed her the room where Cain had summoned the ridderak, and as they approached the tomb, Celaena winced as she remembered one miserable new detail.

“Brought a friend?”

Nehemia yelped. Celaena greeted the bronze, skull-shaped door knocker. “Hello, Mort.”

Nehemia squinted at the skull. “How is this—” She looked over her shoulder at Celaena. “How is this possible?”

“Ancient spells and nonsense,” Celaena said, cutting off Mort as he began recite the story of how King Brannon created him. “Someone used a spell with the Wyrdmarks.”

“Someone!” Mort sputtered. “That
someone
is—”

“Shut it,” Celaena said, and flung open the tomb door, letting Nehemia inside. “Save it for someone who cares.”

Mort huffed what sounded like a violent stream of curses, and Nehemia’s eyes twinkled as they entered the tomb. “It’s incredible,” the princess whispered, gazing at the walls where the Wyrdmarks had been written.

“What does it say?”

“‘Death, Eternity, Rulers,’” Nehemia recited. “Standard tomb posturing.” She continued moving through the room. As Nehemia strode about, Celaena leaned against a wall and slumped to the ground. Sighing, she rubbed her heel against one of the raised stars on the floor, examining the curve that they made across the room.

Do they make a constellation?

Celaena rose to her feet and stared down. Nine of the stars made up a familiar pattern—the Dragonfly. Her brows rose. She’d never realized it before. A few feet away another constellation lay on the floor—the Wyvern. It sat at the head of Gavin’s sarcophagus.

A symbol of Adarlan’s house, as well as the second constellation in the sky
.

Celaena followed the line that the shapes made, weaving through the tomb. The night sky passed beneath her feet, and by the time she reached the final constellation, she would have collided with the wall had Nehemia not grabbed her by the arm.

“What is it?”

Celaena was staring down at the last constellation—the Stag, Lord of the North. The symbol of Terrasen, Elena’s home country. The constellation faced the wall, and its head seemed to be pointed upward, as though it were looking at something …

Celaena followed the stag’s stare, up through the dozens of Wyrdmarks that covered the wall, until—

“By the Wyrd. Look at this,” she said, pointing.

An eye, no larger than her palm, was etched into the wall. A hole was bored in its center, a perfectly crafted puncture that had been carefully concealed within the eye. The Wyrdmark itself made a face, and while the other eye was filled in and smooth, this one held a hollowed-out iris.

It is only with the eye that one can see rightly
. There was no way she was that lucky—it was surely no more than coincidence. Calming her growing excitement, she lifted onto her toes to see into the eye.

How had she not noticed this before? She took a step back, and the Wyrdmark faded into the wall. She stepped back onto the constellation, and it appeared again.

“You can only see the face when you stand on the stag,” Nehemia whispered.

Celaena ran her hands over the face, feeling for any cracks or slight
breezes that might suggest a door into another room. Nothing. With a deep breath, she rose onto her toes and faced the eye, her dagger held aloft in case anything leapt out at her. Nehemia chuckled softly. And Celaena conceded a smile as she put her eye against the stone and peered into the gloom.

There was nothing. Just a distant wall, illuminated by a small shaft of moonlight.

“It’s just—just a blank wall. Does that make any sort of sense?” She’d been jumping to conclusions—trying to see things and make connections that weren’t there. Celaena stepped away so Nehemia could see for herself. “Mort!” she hollered while the princess looked. “What the hell is that wall? Does it make any sense to you why it would be here?”

“No,” Mort said dully.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Lie to you? To
you
? Oh, I couldn’t lie to
you
. You asked me whether it makes sense, and I said no. You must learn to ask the right questions before you can receive the right answers.”

Celaena growled. “What sort of question might I ask to receive the right answer?”

Mort clicked his tongue. “I’ll have none of that. Come back when you have some proper questions.”

“You promise you’ll tell me then?”

“I’m a door knocker; it’s not in my nature to make promises.”

Nehemia stepped away from the wall and rolled her eyes. “Don’t listen to his teasing. I can’t see anything, either. Perhaps it is just a prank. Old castles are full of nonsense intended only to confuse and bother later generations. But—all these Wyrdmarks …”

Celaena took a too-short breath, and then made the request that she’d been contemplating for some time now. “Could you—could you teach me how to read them?”

“Oho!” cackled Mort from the hall. “Are you sure you’re not too dim to understand?”

Celaena ignored him. She hadn’t told Nehemia about Elena’s latest demand to uncover the king’s source of power, because she knew what Nehemia’s response would be: listen to the dead queen. But the Wyrdmarks seemed so
connected
to everything, somehow—even to that eye riddle and this stupid trick wall. And perhaps if she learned how to use them, then she could unlock the iron door in the library and find some answers beyond it. “Maybe … maybe just the basics?”

Nehemia smiled. “The basics are the hardest part.”

Usefulness aside, it was a forgotten secret language, a system for accessing a strange power. Who
wouldn’t
want to learn about it? “Morning lessons instead of our walk, then?”

Nehemia beamed, and Celaena felt a twinge of guilt for not telling her about the catacombs as the princess said, “Of course.”

When they left, Nehemia spent a few minutes studying Mort—mostly asking him questions about his creation spell, which he claimed to have forgotten, then claimed was too private, then claimed she had no business hearing.