Hotel Magnifique(64)
I dropped to my knees, shaking.
When the door did open, Des Rêves stood there, a cage in her hand. Inside, a small golden bird began to keen; one wing slumped. Blood leaked from a row of missing feathers near the edge. Zosa’s dark eyes watched me as tears slid down my cheeks.
Alastair held up my sister’s severed fingers. Des Rêves made a face but bundled them in a silk handkerchief. “Give one to Yrsa,” he said, wiping off the blood.
I looked up in disbelief. “I thought Yrsa only took eyes.”
“Fingers don’t work as quickly as eyes, but they do the job.” When he flicked out his pointer finger with the same action as Bel’s switchblade, a new wave of horror crashed through me. “I take it Bel never told you?”
People might believe Alastair to be the greatest suminaire in all the world, but he was nothing but a monster.
He pointed to the cosmolabe. “A midnight has passed. You have three more to draw me a map to that ring, so I suggest you head out now and purchase supplies. Fail to draw my map and it won’t be you I punish.” He took the atlas and walked away after Des Rêves, leaving me with nothing but the page from his ledger, the entry for that horrible ring.
When the door shut, I slid down the length of it. I wept until my eyes were bloodshot and swollen, until the tears ran dry and my mind was clear enough to think.
My knees threatened to give out, but I forced myself to stand. I faced the portrait. The woman stared back at me, teary eyes similar to my own.
“Did he threaten you, too?” I asked, half expecting her to flash her teeth and laugh. I probably looked as pathetic as I felt.
If I found Alastair’s ring, he would have more power. He said he wanted to use it for good, but after everything I’d seen, there was no chance of that happening.
I squeezed my eyes shut and pictured that infinite ledger tucked away in the third desk drawer on the right. If I could get to it and void our contracts, this would all be over. We could walk out the door and never look back.
But even though I knew where the contracts were kept, getting there still seemed impossible. And once I was there, I didn’t know how to void Alastair’s ink. Bel had said it wasn’t as simple as rending the contracts in two, that it required powerful magic that I clearly didn’t have.
“How do I get out of this god-awful mess?” I asked the painting. “How do we escape?”
The catalogue page sat crumpled on the table. That description of the ring: Bestows and erases magic.
Erases magic.
The words raced across my mind. There was no way to know the specifics of what that meant. The ring might only remove magic from a suminaire, but there could be more to it. If the ring erased magic, it might erase the magic binding our contracts. If that were the case, I didn’t need to know how Alastair voided them. I could use the ring instead.
I turned that thought over until the room clock chimed.
My eyes stung so badly it was hard to keep them open. But I had only three days left, and I didn’t know the first thing about using magic or how to work the cosmolabe. Whatever might happen after this moment, I couldn’t give up until I drew a map to that ring.
I checked the wardrobe. No cloak to cover my blood-flecked frock. Only a single dress. I dragged a nail down the bodice and shivered. Black as midnight, a hundred little moons purled across its waist in silvery thread. The material was exquisite, fitting for a suminaire of the same ilk as Bel.
You’re not nothing to me, he had said. This whole time he knew what I was, and yet he’d kept it from me. He betrayed me and tried to send me home, away from everyone I cared about. But I had magic thrumming through my veins. Surely I could have done something, helped him find a way out of this mess, but he clearly didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth.
A mixture of hurt and anger struck me so forcibly, I bit down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from kicking over furniture. I needed my wits now more than ever. Failing, unfortunately, was not an option.
Quickly, I changed and shoved the cosmolabe and the silver disks in my dress pocket.
“I’m going out for supplies,” I muttered to the liveried worker stationed outside my door. His eyes were bloodshot and barely open, but he followed at my heel.
Silver disks jangled as we raced across the hotel. At the front, the doorman opened the black-lacquered door.
“Welcome to Ahnka, the heart of Preet,” he said between yawns. “We suggest a scarf for the wind.”
Ahnka was a small city high in the mountains east of Verdanne. The elevation and thin air made my ears pop and the world tilt the moment I stepped across the threshold.
Here, the hotel’s fa?ade swooped with a sharply angled roof that blended in perfectly with the carved stone buildings on either side. They all hugged a cliff, tethered to the vertical rock face with copper cables that were green with verdigris. Around me, a network of carved footpaths were lit by bronze lanterns.
Hot wind slammed up the dusty gorge. I licked my dry lips and tasted the salt from my tears. If I thought of Zosa, the tears would undoubtedly come again, so I took a long breath and concentrated on the heat, on the silver in my pocket, on the task at hand.
A switchback of narrow steps led to a series of connected buildings perched precariously along a cliff edge. Thankfully they weren’t dark. Oil lamps bobbed from nearly every tall window. Shapes danced behind gilded shutters. String music drifted down from above, along with other strange sounds—including one very long, distinctive moan—that meant I could wager a guess as to what was up there.