The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (36 page)

It was a daunting realization. Brother Froderic’s beheading
would be covered up as if it had never happened, his and Brother Mortial’s
disappearances chalked up to a failed excursion into the city. Perhaps Gallica
was already spreading the misinformation that would make that lie become truth
someday in the near future. Maybe Brother Mortial had already returned, and they’d
disposed of him like a mismatched shoe.

Before Bastille could continue her search for knowledge, she
had duties to attend to. She came down a back staircase and through one of the
dusty storage rooms, the same way she’d brought Father Kassic just the other
day, and gave a sigh as the cellar air washed over her, drying the sweat
beneath her prosaics. Today there was something sour in the air, a stench that
spoke of a stopped-up privy or a dead rat. Both were commonplace enough, only
the smell had never been this strong before. She hurried down the narrow
hallway and into her examination rooms, hoping the odor would be weaker once she
had distanced herself from the privy. But the smell only grew clearer and sharper.
Yes, she knew that smell—perhaps better than she knew any other.

It was the smell of death.

When she closed the heavy door and lit the lantern, a shape
moved among the shadows. Bastille jumped. The lantern slipped from her hand,
clattered to the floor and flickered out. She backed up against the wall and
froze there, listening.

“Sister Bastille? It’s me, Nor—Sister Adeleine.”

Bastille let out a breath. “Adeleine? You frightful creature.
What are you doing all alone down here in the dark? Classes haven’t nearly started
yet.”

“I know, kind Sister. I’m sorry. I came early, to study. I
didn’t think—”

“You certainly didn’t, did you?” Bastille began to feel
around on the floor, deciding on the choicest words to unleash on the acolyte.
Then she remembered how condescending Gallica had been to her, and she
softened. “What was that you just said?”

“What? When?”

“When I came in. You started to call yourself by a different name, I think.”

“My apologies, kind Sister. That was a mistake. It was my…
before-name.”

“What was it, did you say?”

“Nora. Nora Freeminster.”

“Best you forget that name, once and for all. Others aren’t
as forgiving about that kind of thing as I am.”

“Thank you, kind Sister. That’s very gracious of you. It
won’t happen again.”

Bastille could almost picture Adeleine rolling her eyes as
she said it.
She must think me about as forgiving as Infernal’s heat
.
Bastille retrieved the lantern and relit it. The flame sprouted on the wick,
and its glow spread across the chamber and over the stained concrete slab.
Adeleine was seated on the floor, leaning against the adjacent wall. There was
a short scroll in her hands, which she rolled up before getting to her feet.

“So tell me… how does one read down here in the absence of
light?” Bastille asked.

The acolyte shrugged. “My eyes have always been good at
night. I was never scared of the dark when I was a girl because I could see
what the other children couldn’t. Sometimes I cover my bedchamber window with a
sheet to make it darker. It’s soothing to me, that way.”

“The cellars are a good place for someone who loves the dark.
However, I am not such a person,” Bastille said, hanging up her lantern and
rounding the chamber to light the others.

When the room was bright enough, she beckoned Sister Adeleine
to help her unload a new corpse from the cold lockers. This one was in poorer
shape than the last few, a heathen who’d ventured too close to the basilica
walls last week. The body was perforated with holes; one beside the navel,
another in the right shoulder, a third through the top of the left breast, and
a fourth in the left buttock. There were splinters from one of the broken
crossbow quarrels in the latter. Sister Adeleine greened as she hoisted her end
of the steel tray onto the slab, then wiped her hands on her prosaics.

“You shouldn’t be wearing that,” Bastille said. “Neither of
us should.”

Both women slipped their robes over their heads and hung them
on the wall hooks. Adeleine began to shiver. Bastille was glad of the cold, but
the smell was still troubling her. It wasn’t coming from her lockers, she knew.
Her corpses were well-preserved, dissected and disposed of before they could
put off a stench that was anywhere near this bad. Even when Bastille cut the
dead woman open, it didn’t seem to contribute much to the smell.

“Did you notice the smell when you came down?” Bastille asked.

“I was wondering whether you’d mention it,” said the acolyte.
“It’s stronger than usual.”

“Yes, I know. Hand me the forceps. It’s the privy, most
likely. You know, I was just speaking with Sister Gallica this afternoon. Hold
the light a little higher. I wish I’d known of this then. Remind me to notify
her or Brother Lambret when we’re done here.”

“I don’t think so, kind Sister.”

“You don’t think what? You’re refusing to remind me?”

“N-no, kind Sister. I don’t think the smell is coming from
the privy.”

“Well where, then?”

“Somewhere in the scriptorium. Did you notice the stains on
the ceiling?”

Bastille put down her scalpel. “Stains, you say. Show me
these stains.”

Together they donned their prosaics and left the chamber with
Sister Adeleine leading the way. They reached the end of the hall and turned
into an alcove, the joint between the east tower and a straight staircase that
led up to the basilica’s main level. It was a different route than the one
Bastille had come in by. Sure enough, the alcove’s ceiling was stained the
color of dark wine, a damp splotch that ran the width of three floorboards and
half the length of the alcove. The smell was unbearable.

Bastille dug her nose into the crook of her elbow. “The
Mouth
,
that’s absolutely horrid.” As she thought back over the events of the past few
days, she remembered being aware that the east tower was above the room where
Brothers Soleil and Froderic had been keeping their slaves.
It only stands
to reason, then, that
…

“What do you think it could be?” Adeleine asked, her voice
muffled by the hands cupped over her face.

Bastille knew what it could be. “Stay here. Or better yet, go
back to my room and shut the door. I’m going to find Brother Lambret.”

“Are you sure there’s nothing I can do to help, kind Sister?”

“I’ve just told you what you can do. Now go. I’ll return
shortly.”

Adeleine trudged down the hall, dispirited.

The top of the staircase opened into a side hallway that ran
between the athenaeum and the scriptorium—the basilica’s venues for reading and
writing, respectively. Brother Ephamar didn’t look up from his book as Bastille
passed the athenaeum’s open doors, though she slowed for a moment to see if she
could catch his attention.
Engrossed in those fairy tales of his, as always
,
Bastille thought, and continued down the hall. Ephamar had a love of all things
bizarre and fantastical, including the sensationalist histories of the Aionach
he often read, whose content was probably more fiction than fact.

The scriptorium was an L-shaped room with windows on five of
its six sides, providing views west to the cloister, south to the lower
courtyards, and east to the morning parapet. Domed ceilings spindled like
parachutes into the round pillars along the walls. At each end of the room sat
an empty hearth, bare and unused in the decades since the Heat. Rows of angled
writing desks for scribing, copying, and illuminating texts were spread across
the floor, each with its own uncomfortable wooden chair. And in the back
corner, where the curve of the east tower wall abutted the room, a set of
bookshelves and a pair of storage cabinets stood collecting dust in the
afternoon light.

Those cabinets had collected something other than dust, by
their smell. Bastille checked down the hall both ways before she entered the
scriptorium and made her way toward the back corner. The entrance had no door,
and there were many windows through which curious souls could peek in from the
outside.

Standing next to the cabinets, the smell was as bad as it had
been downstairs. Bastille held a handful of woolen sleeve over her face as she
opened each cabinet and checked each bookshelf. There were stacks of parchment
paper, along with inkwells, quills, books, and half-completed illuminations,
but she found nothing that would’ve caused such a smell.

There’s an entrance to the labyrinth in here somewhere
,
she surmised. But after shifting each book and tapping on every shelf and wall,
she hadn’t found the trigger.
It would have to be something less obvious,
like the counterweight in the walk-in freezer. Something that doesn’t
immediately stand out
. She ran her fingers along the sides of each piece of
furniture, then knelt to feel along the bottoms. Beneath the second cabinet,
she felt a faint draft of cooler air.

Her heart raced. She closed the cabinet doors and slid her
fingers beneath it, feeling around until she came across a wooden tab about the
width of a clothespin. It clicked when she pressed it. She tried pushing, then
pulling, and finally, lifting. The entire cabinet slid upward along the wall as
though it weighed only a few pounds. It stopped at about waist height to reveal
a tiny nook no larger than a closet. Out of the nook wafted half a dozen flies
and the most overpowering concentration of stench Bastille had experienced yet.

She stuck her head inside and found a narrow cavity between
two walls running off to the left. At the edge of the darkness, two flour sacks
were joined end-to-end, covering something big and lumpy. Flies swarmed over
the stinking mass, alighting on floorboards stained with coagulant.

Bastille withdrew her head and closed the portal with an
unsteady hand. The cabinet eased to rest without a sound. Strong as her stomach
was, she couldn’t seem to erase the vision of Brother Froderic’s body within
those flour sacks, maggot-eaten and beginning to decay into the floorboards.
But why would Soleil bring the corpse into the basilica instead of leaving it
in a tunnel somewhere for the rats and scavengers? Bastille would retrieve the
key from her room and come back for a closer look, she decided, massaging her
throbbing temples.

“Sister Bastille?”

Bastille opened her eyes to find Brother Ephamar standing in
the doorway, holding a book at his side and marking his page with a thumb.
She pushed herself up and tried not to look as sickened as she felt. “Brother…”
she managed to say.

“Sister Helliot is taking over for me while I go for a
stroll. Stretch the old legs, and all. Care to join me?”

“I… I shouldn’t. I have a class to get to.”

“Afternoon sessions don’t start for a three-quarter hour. You
look unwell, Sister. The fresh air will do you some good.” The librarian’s eyes
began to water as he spoke. He blinked until there were tears streaming down
his face, but he gave her a cheerful grin nonetheless.

The Mouth. He thinks the smell is coming from me
,
Bastille realized. “Of course I’ll join you, kind Brother.”

The air outside was not fresh. It was never fresh, except
sometimes in the cool of the night, if there was a breeze. Bastille and Ephamar
circled the cloister’s covered walkways, discussing whatever came to mind. For
Brother Ephamar, that was always the subject of his readings. He spoke of the
incredible technologies developed before the Heat—the feats of architecture and
science and medicine, many of which were still around today. There were empty
husks of the past everywhere, if you knew where to find them, he said. Remnants
of the Ministry were hidden across the Aionach, and the Inner East especially.
The NewNexus and its accompanying organs, light-powered weaponry, and many
other burgeoning technologies had been on the cusp of mass-acceptance when the
Heat came.

Bastille listened to Ephamar’s enthused digressions with
polite courtesy. The Great Heat had begun before she was born, and small-town
life had exposed her to none of the technological marvels of which Ephamar
spoke. All she knew of the Heat was that it had been the cause of her mother’s
death, and the reason her father had taken up with Carudith, her shrew of a
stepmother. On an average day, Bastille would’ve preferred to discuss the
scriptures, or to debate the character of the Mouth. But there was too much on
her mind today to carry an easy conversation, and she couldn’t very well trust
Brother Ephamar with her concerns.

After their second lap around the cloister, Bastille excused
herself, despite Ephamar’s insistence that she stay. She rushed off to her
bedchamber, locked the door behind her, and found the key right where she’d
left it. She put it around her neck and slid it beneath her robes. If Ephamar
was still circling the cloister, he would be able to see into the scriptorium
from the walkway. Once the afternoon sessions started, the scriptorium itself
would be filled with priests and acolytes honing their literary and
illustrative crafts. Bastille wouldn’t have another chance to examine the east
tower until later.

Walking the halls toward the cellars, she felt the distinct
chill of fear creeping over her. Just by carrying the key, she was breaking the
rules and risking everything. Every noise put her further on edge; every
squealing hinge, every wooden thud and stony click, every echo of voice and
footstep.

In the cellars, she covered her nose and stopped to inspect
the stain on the ceiling once more. Even if she’d come down this way earlier,
she may not have noticed it in the gloom. Sister Adeleine’s eyes were very
sharp in the dark, indeed.

The sound of voices came from down the hall, interrupting
Sister Bastille’s observations. She could see that the door to her examination
room was cracked open, so she crept over to it and listened.