The oubliette of the dome, she finds, is located in the center of the building, down a long, dark hallway snuffed short by a dead end. Two crumbling doors lead to the right or left. She chooses the left-hand door, opening to a small cavern lit only by the two lamps hung beside the entryway. Inside, cells line each side of the room, all filled with the men, women, and children of Xelinac. The air inside is stagnant, the stench of human life filling the crevices in the walls. Lark, covering her nose against the reek with the sash around her waist, steps into the gloom looking for dark hair and dark skin, and every captive fits the bill.

  She’d made it through the building by luck alone, her hand glued to the sword at her waist, though she knew the walls were too tight for swordplay. Her blood surged through her eardrums as she’d crept the halls, past the mess room in which she was sure one of the four acolytes had seen her, and slipped around the corner of the first bisecting hallway, her breath hitching in her chest. The clatter of dishware had continued, and the blood rushed back to her knuckles as she released the death grip on her pommel. Down the hallway, several voices could be heard on the other side of the dead end, and she whispered a curse before pressing through the door to the oubliette.

  “Drair?” Her voice feels too large in the space, its echoes dragged into the dark beyond the entrance.

  An answering cough, a gasp, shuffling. In the cells nearest the entrance, the movement of dark forms sends a shudder down her spine.

  “Hello?” A female voice unlike Drair’s throaty drawl calls out.

  Lark shifts her shoulders back. “I’m looking for Drair Abidan,” she says, realizing too late how crass it sounds to ask for a name in the prison of many whilst wearing the cloak of a savior. She scoffs, and it echoes. “I suppose a better question to ask is who holds the keys to the cells?”

  “Who are you?” The female voice again.

  “My name is Lark Viet. I am a Guard to the King of Larynth, Taeg Kerrich.” His title feels like wool in her mouth.

  Murmuring follows, and then the voice again. “I am Orain.” A pause. “Of Xelinac. Why are you here?”

  “We believe our cohort was captured by the alchemists.”

  “And her name is Drair Abidan?” Orain asks. “Is she... Xelani?”

  “Xelani?” Lark whispers the term. The Xelinites’ name for their people. She realizes then that none of them had asked about Drair’s past. Did Nathis know? “Yes,” she says finally, quietly. The room fills with more murmurs, and this time, the lapse in communication makes her squirm. “I just need to know who holds the keys.”

  “I remember the Larynthian soldiers,” the gravelly voice of a man comes from deep in the dark, and Lark shuffles further from the safety of the light. “Watched my father’s curse pull the bones from their flesh as they ran us down with their horses,” he continues. A racking cough follows. Lark winces. “I was six years old.”

  Lark is silent, studying the floor, the sandy dirt packed hard from the footfalls of a thousand prisoners. She recalls her father talking of the war, how the Xelinites--the Xelani--were “a savage people,” how they “burrowed in holes in the sand, breeding their child army of magic users.” She swallows hard, the sound louder in the small, dark space. She knew her grandfather had murdered hundreds of Xelani, seen his portrait in the sitting room of their estate, holding the rapier he’d used against their throats, bellies, and backs.

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  She licks her lips, dry in the desert air. “The country of Larynth no longer supports the ideologies of our fathers’ fathers. We understand the deal that was made that set into motion the slaughter of your people, and the hunt of those left behind. The castle is making efforts to reverse the damage done.”

  Mocking words travel through the cells, scoffs, and cackles. Her cheeks flame. She can hear the old man chuckle.

  “And how are we to know you speak the truth?” he sneers.

  She groans, throwing up her hands. “If I had the time, I’d tell you a story, but if you’d tell me who holds the keys to your cells, I can show you instead.” Her blue eyes stare heavily into the dark, waiting for a reply, hands frozen in midair. In the silence that follows, she can feel the agitation crawling up her sternum.

  “If you get caught, it’s no skin off our back-”

  The low buzz of the elderly man is cut off by a woman’s voice. “Prior Aarin,” she calls. “He’s the Leviathan’s right hand.”

  There is a scuffle of voices and a smacking sound like the back of a hand thrown hard against flesh, then dead silence.

  “Thank you,” Lark says, turning.

  “Don’t forget about us.”

  She creeps up the hallway again, taking the outer chamber, traveling away from the mess hall. She slips past what looks like a library where two bookies have their noses pressed into the pages of large tomes. She comes across another exit, on the eastern side of the dome, and curses herself for not finding it sooner.

  As she glides down the hall, the sand at her feet is silent and she begins to hear the chatter of quiet voices, just around the northern curve of the dome. A shadow moves across the wall ahead. Lark stills. Concentrating on her breath, Nathis’s rumbling voice repeats through her head: “Your breath carries the weight of your movements. If I see that you’re holding your breath, a good smack to the sternum ought to remind you of its importance.” She smiles despite herself and, as the shadow moves away, starts back up the rounded hall.

  When she spots the next doorway several yards ahead, fear grips her chest, a pulling in her lungs and heart. Her palms are sweating. She readjusts the hilt in her grip, swallowing hard. Shame floods her thoughts as she recognizes stiff, cold anxiety in her muscles. She’s alone. No intel. No plan. Just her and her sword.

  She turns back the way she came, tip-toeing down the hall, up the steps of the eastern entrance, her knuckles scraping cold sand walls, and slips out the doorway into the blazing sun, her lungs pulling in panicked breaths. She squints into the glare, shielding her eyes with her left hand. A figure appears, dark skinned in the blaze of light, and she sheaths her sword.

  “Found you,” Tygoh growls.

  From behind him, “What did you find?” Anarah.

  Lark scowls.

  “Someone named Prior Aarin has the key to the cells, but Drair wasn’t there.” She pulls her shoulders back, shoving the shame down into her belly.

  “Good work,” the general says, his voice strained. His dark eyes avoid hers as he gazes down the entryway. He steps into the dark of the archway, hands scraping the ceiling as he descends.

  Lark jumps as Anarah lays a soft hand on her shoulder. “Ready?” she says, eyes sparkling in the sun.

  Lark swallows hard, bobbing her head. She touches the scar across her eye, feeling the familiar divots where her skin had been sheared away. A call from the darkness of the dome signals Tygoh’s impatience and she takes a shuddering breath, an unsettling buzz seeping into her back.

  “Taeg didn’t make you Guard for no reason,” the swordswoman says, dropping her hand from Lark’s shoulder.

  When Lark looks up, the woman is smiling.

  “Nathis knew you were ready, even if the rest of us didn’t.” Anarah huffs a laugh through her nose, skin wrinkling. “Come on.” She turns down the archway to follow her fiance.

  A retort crawls up Lark’s throat, burning like acid, and she swallows it back down, spitting it into the sand at her feet instead. She runs a hand along the back of her neck, feeling the veiny ridges of the Crown Mark, remembering the searing pain that had come with the injection.

  “Lark!”

  A sigh rises through her chest, still caged in fear. She turns her feet in the sand and grips the pommel of her sword, following her fellow Guardsmen into the dome.