Moonlight follows us into the tunnel, but stops a few feet past the entry. Then Daiyu shuts the doors behind us, and all the light in the world seems to shrink toward the lamp swinging from our eaves. My eyes adjust slowly. There aren’t many spirits here, so we move through the long dark like a falling star drifting through an endless void.
The silence between Leo and me is deeper still. I knew he had contacts on the black market—but so do we, back in our little valley. Everyone always needed something, a little iron to fix a plow, a bit of dye for wedding silks. And so many plantation mansions are lit at all hours by kerosene lamps . . . and the owners’ extravagant parties fueled with rationed liquor. Buying contraband was one thing—smuggling it was quite another.
Rumor is, the smugglers fund the rebellion, routing sapphires stolen from the mines in Le Coffret to buyers in Nokhor Khat. The offense was technically punishable by imprisonment, but the more likely penalty was an armée bullet. I wet my lips and look once more to the violin case at Leo’s feet, half intrigued, half afraid. Is there anything in there aside from the violin—anything else that could get us in trouble? “You never told me why you need to go to Nokhor Khat.”
“Didn’t I?” He follows my gaze down to the violin. “Maybe I’m going to seek my fame and fortune.”
“You’re smuggling something in the case.”
He laughs then—sudden, surprising in the dark. “Are you going to turn me in?”
I blink. “You’re not even going to deny it?”
“Why should I? You’ve made up your mind.”
“But . . .” I falter. “Am I right?”
“No.”
“Are you lying?”
“Yes.”
“You’re impossible!” I say, throwing my hands in the air.
“For someone who won’t answer many questions, you expect a lot of answers.”
“Shall we trade?” I say then. “One of mine for one of yours.”
“A fair deal,” he says, appearing to mull it over. “Though I suppose you want to go first.”
“What’s in your violin case?” I ask, triumphant.
He grins. “A violin.”
“That’s cheating.”
“It’s true,” he says, nudging the case closer with his foot. “Go on. Open it.”
Suddenly less sure, I take the case, placing it across my knees. It is carved of mahogany, and the hardware is faded brass. I flip the clasp and lift the lid. The violin gleams back at me in the low light, nestled in a bed of red velvet. “There must be a secret compartment.”
“There’s a slot for the bow in the lid. Some rosin, wrapped in the handkerchief there. And sheet music underneath. Careful with it, please—it’s precious to me.”
Reaching beneath the instrument, I find the folded sheaf of paper. I flip through it gingerly, looking for a secret letter tucked into the packet, or a set of plans—something worth smuggling, but it’s only music, written in a delicate, graceful hand. I don’t recognize the song titles—they’re all in Aquitan—but beneath them, a woman’s name. “Mei Rath,” I say, sounding it out.
“My mother.”
“She wrote these?”
“It’s my turn for a question.”
“Right.” Gently I tuck the music back into the case, feeling a bit ashamed of myself for not believing him. And worse, I am certain he will ask about the puppets again, and now I will have to answer with a lie. I run the line in my head—the one Maman always gives: strings, the thinness of a spider’s web. But Leo surprises me.
“Why do you really want to go to Aquitan?”
I take a breath, taken aback; to cover, I close the violin case, tucking it carefully at his feet. No one has ever asked that before—fame and fortune are too believable a tale. My mind races, trying to formulate a new story, but nothing comes. The silence pulls at me—an empty stage, a waiting audience. How many secrets am I keeping? What was the last true thing I said? There is so much danger in being myself, and danger always draws me. Who better to tell than a boy I’ll never see again? “I’m told there’s a spring in Aquitan,” I say at last, speaking slowly—testing these new lines. “Just outside of Lephare. Le Roi Fou makes a monthly trip there to take the water.”
“Les Chanceux?” Leo nods, his expression a mystery. “I’ve heard of it.”
“You have?” The revelation is a surprise; I only learned about Les Chanceux last year, from a painting at Madame Audrinne’s plantation. Then again, General Legarde was Le Roi Fou’s bastard brother . . . perhaps it’s not so strange that Leo would know the family stories. “I’m told it’s magic,” I say, eager for confirmation. “That anyone who bathes there is cured.”
“Not just anyone,” he says. “Le Roi Fou is insane. Les Chanceux is supposed to cure madness.”
The word is sibilant—a hiss in the dark. I swallow. “That’s what they say.”
There is a long silence. He cocks his head and glances at me. “Are you sick, Jetta?”
I open my mouth to give an answer—a single word. It should be simple, easy, but it sticks in my throat. “It’s my turn for a question.”
“So it is.”
We ride for a while in silence as the packed earth walls turn to rounded stone. Chakrana is riven with old lava tubes, formed by hot rock flowing beneath the crusted, cooled surface centuries and centuries ago. Years ago, back in our valley, the rainy season exposed a shallow section of an old lava tunnel; we would dare each other to stand ever closer to the crumbling edge, to spit into the water rushing by, as though into the face of the King of Death himself. “Are you a rebel, Leo?”
“No.” He says it simply, and for once I believe him. “But I don’t side with the armée, either. Which is good for you, all things considered. As for my question: how are we on food?”
I laugh a little, startled. “Food?”
He gives me a knowing smile. “Well, with everything I’m smuggling in the violin case, I just didn’t have enough room for rice.”
It is a reprieve. I relax against the seat as I consider our inventory. “We have maybe a quarter bag left. Some yams. A little dried mango.”
“Not a lot, then.”
“How much do you eat?”
“It’s hungry work, fleeing for your life. No matter, we can get some supplies.”
I cock my head. “Are there markets in the Souterrain?”
“Two questions in a row?”
“I thought we were done playing.”
“No matter, I’m feeling generous. There are no markets, but there is forage just up ahead.”
I wrinkle my nose. Forage? In the earth? My mind calls up white grubs, red worms, black beetles; staples of the Hungry Year. But my speculation fades into curiosity as I notice a light far down the tunnel, distant but growing brighter. I almost ask about it—almost. But wouldn’t Leo say something if he could see it too? Besides, I’ve already had two questions. Three might push my luck. And as I watch the patterns eddy and swirl, I’m glad I kept my mouth shut.
The tunnel opens up into a wide stone cavern lit with souls. Most of them are vana, but there are arvana too. They crouch in the corners . . . they scamper across the floor . . . they perch like bats along the vaulted ceiling. The spirit of something hungry lands on my shoulder, sidling close to the blood drying on my throat. I shrug it off as surreptitiously as I can, but another soul starts climbing the hem of my sarong. There are so many of them, an incandescence, illuminating the cracked carvings along the wall. Dancing demons, laughing gods. . . . “This is a temple.”
I can’t keep the awe out of my voice. I have never been so close to one. I have only seen them from a distance, smoldering with soullight; hundreds of spirits, drawn in as though the buildings were the King of Death’s lamps. They say the temples were built three days apart as a person walks—so no matter where you die, your soul can find its way to the gods.
“It was.” Leo speaks so casually as he pulls Lani to a halt. He slips down from the bench, barely glancing around. “Come on.”
“The temples are forbidden by the armée.” And by Maman, I do not add. What dangers wait in these walls? What wonders?
Leo only grins. “So is our entire trip, so far. But you can stay with the wagon if you like. I’m taking the lantern, though.”
He lifts the lamp from the eaves and starts toward a stair leading up. A smattering of moonlight spills down from above, almost eclipsed by the light of the dead. I can see perfectly well without the lamp, and part of me wants to stay and wait in what Leo thinks is near blackness. I could even search his violin case again to pass the time, to see if there is anything I missed. But the draw of the temple is stronger. This is my best chance to see one—maybe even my last. Gnawing the inside of my cheek, I peek through the scrollwork; both my parents are fast asleep. I send my thanks to whatever god this temple used to honor. “Leo?”
“What?”
“Wait.”
I slide off the bench, and my bare feet sink into the loamy floor. But beneath the layer of dirt, carved stone shows in patches: a bold, graphic pattern that shifts in the soullight. It takes me a moment to recognize it as writing—old Chakran—though I don’t know how to read it. Few people can. It is a language for prayers, for spells. For monks. But here and there, the symbol of life stands out. Though I suppose that is a spell too.
My footsteps quicken; I fall in with Leo on the stairs. They are patterned as well, though the center of each step is worn thin by the tread of hundreds, thousands of feet. All gone now. After La Victoire, the monks who did not flee were killed or imprisoned—not just Le Trépas, but all across the country, from every temple. Those who predicted the floods and harnessed the rains, who tended the ill and brought new life into the world—all were tainted by association . . . at least according to the royal edicts, signed by the Boy King, written by Legarde. The general did not want anyone left to step into Le Trépas’s role.
In our village, there were people I was sure had been monks, once—midwives now, or teachers, or healers, or the ones who washed the dead. No one ever admitted it, but you could tell by what they wore: shirts with high collars and long sleeves, even on the hottest days, for monks tattooed their sins on their backs, to bear the weight of them.
A few months after I started seeing souls, I had gathered my courage along with a bunch of bananas and gone to ask Auntie Rael—not my real aunt, but the quiet, nervous woman who taught reading and writing, the edges of her long sleeves always stained with mulberry ink.
“Were you a monk once?” I’d whispered as I’d put the fruit in her hands. “Do you know about spirits?” I was close enough to hear the breath catch in her throat, but she acted like she hadn’t heard me. She only put the bananas on her table and shooed me back out the door, tugging on the ragged pink edges of her cuffs. Never show, never tell.
Past the stairs, Leo and I emerge into the shattered ruins; the moonlight falls around in a silver curtain. The shrine has been broken like old bones scraped for marrow: a heap of rubble, grown over with vines and saplings, the carvings defaced with chisels, the statues facedown on the ground. The gold was rubbed from their faces and hands, the gems pulled from their hollow eyes. Now the gods are only celebrated in shadow plays. And isn’t it strange how the Aquitans devour our stories but silence our prayers?
Still, official edicts could never banish the souls. There are so many here! Vana, swirling with the breeze; arvana, flying in circles between broken pillars and piles of black rubble. And akela, drifting through fallen archways in the silvery light of the moon. “Beautiful, aren’t they?” Leo says.
I stare at him askance. “What?”
“The carvings.”
“Oh! Yes,” I say, looking anew at the tumbled stone as we pick our way across the floor. A pang hits me; despite the desecration, I can tell the work was art, once. “I’ve never been inside a temple.”
“Yes, yes,” Leo says. “You’re a very upstanding citizen.”
“Hard for a smuggler to understand?”
“Especially the part where in spite of it all, you’re on the run from the law.” Smiling, he offers me his hand to help me over a fallen pillar, but I remember the spark I felt before. Though the temptation is there, I keep my hand to myself.
We have reached the heart of the shrine; like the eye of a storm, it is oddly unaffected by destruction. No . . . looking closer, I see the black block of the altar is cracked into three pieces; they’ve only been pushed back together. The statue of the deity is harder to repair—it was too large and heavy for the armée to topple, but the faces were smashed into blank stone.
Still, I recognize them: the Keeper of Knowledge. The deity of many faces and all genders, the unraveler of mysteries. Between death and birth, a soul whispers its past life into the Keeper’s ears. Before the armée came, the brightest jewels in Chakrana were set in their eyes.
Laid at the Keeper’s lap are the offerings—long orchid stems and strands of red chrysanthemums draped over piles of knobby tamarind and spiked jackfruit, glossy mangos and bumpy lychee. Souls swirl around the fruit, as if remembering what it was to taste, to smell, to enjoy, to consume. Such a bounty—and all of it fresh. A chill breeze stirs in my hair, prickles the skin on the back of my neck. Who has left the offerings? Are they still nearby?
I glance around the ruins, but we are the only living souls I see. Beside me, Leo sighs, shaking his head at the pile of fruit. “Sometimes I wonder why people believe in gods when the gods do not seem to believe in us.”
Spirits flit between us, cold and silent fire. I smother my smile. “There must be something you believe in.”
“I believe in family,” he says softly. “But it doesn’t always believe in me either.”
I shift on my feet. “I’m sorry if I’ve made things worse between you and your . . . capitaine.”
Leo’s sudden laugh echoes in the empty temple. “No. No. It would be hard to make it worse than I already have.”
Then, in a motion so quick it startles me, Leo shrugs off his jacket and pulls his shirt over his head. I gape at him until he tosses the shirt at my face. The smell makes my heart beat faster—molasses and vanilla and the tang of iron. Still, I sputter as I struggle free. “What are you doing?”
“Knot the arms over the neck, will you?” He’s putting his jacket back on over his bare chest. His muscles flex and ripple in the soullight, and a thought boils up, unbidden, unwelcome: what would his skin would feel like against mine? “So it makes a bag.”
“What?”
“Forget it, I’ll do it.” He takes the shirt back from me and ties the sleeves together. Then he plucks a ripe orange right off the pedestal and puts it in his makeshift pouch.
My mouth drops open—am I appalled, or impressed? “Leo!”
“People bring more every day.” He gathers more fruit—mangos, bananas, even some rambutan, tucking them all into the shirt. “They’ll rot otherwise.”
“But . . . they’re for the spirits!”
“Strange, isn’t it?” Leo plucks a red rambutan from the pile and holds it out to me with a smile. “When hunger is for the living?”
I bite my lip—in truth, the ripe smell of the fruit is making my mouth water, and rambutan are my favorite. So after a moment, I take it, and when I do, my fingers brush his. An accident—but the spark I’d felt before kindles into flame, hot in my belly, warm in my cheeks. I draw back as though burned, clutching the fruit, but Leo only raises an eyebrow. Does he know what I’m thinking? Can he see it on my face?
Is he thinking the same things?
Our game of questions is over, but asking is not the only way to get an answer. Tossing aside the fruit, I take his hand in mine. But as I pull him toward me, tilting my face to his, the cocky look in his eyes fades to uncertainty. “Jetta—”
“What?” The word is just a breath through my parted lips, but he’s close enough to hear it—almost close enough to taste it. Almost. But he only stands there, back stiff.
“I was thinking. . . .” He glances down, avoiding my eyes. “What you said earlier. About Les Chanceux . . .”
Now I am the one to draw back, and the flush on my cheeks is not excitement, but shame. Of course. Who would want to kiss a mad girl? I should have known not to tell. “It isn’t contagious,” I say bitterly, but now I sound like a beggar. I push away from him, but he takes my hand again.
“It isn’t that,” he says, but I don’t want excuses. I pull free and start back toward the stairs. Then I jump, muffling a scream.
There is a woman standing there in the shadows.
She wears a red sarong, tied to leave her back bare. The soullight gleams on the writing tattooed across her shoulders. A monk, and unashamed of it. How did she get so close so quietly? My heart is in my throat, but she only inclines her head. “Welcome, lailee,” she says—little sister. Akra used to call me that. “Have you come to join us?”
“Just leaving,” Leo says, coming up behind me. His voice is more calm than I feel. But he holds the bag of fruit in his left hand; his right hovers so casually near his gun.
Though she is unarmed, the monk only smiles, her expression unconcerned. “I wasn’t asking you.” She turns to me; her black eyes are depthless. “The dead are coming, lailee. You’ve sent us so many. Won’t you help us bless them?”
I wet my lips; my mouth is dry. “What dead?”
“Soldiers. From the camp outside the city.”
Leo frowns. “What are you talking about?”
She doesn’t answer—she doesn’t even look at him. I open my mouth to ask her, but before I can, her voice comes close and soft, like a whisper in my ear, though her lips don’t move: He doesn’t know what you are, but I do.
I reel backward; Leo steadies me. I can almost feel the heat of her breath stirring my hair. But the woman hasn’t moved a muscle. And though Leo couldn’t have heard, he’s looking at me now, his face troubled. Was it only in my head? Hands shaking, I draw myself up. Then the night shatters in a scream.
Maman’s voice—and she’s calling my name. Is she in trouble, or am I? Whirling, I race through the rubble, and Leo is right behind me. We leap over the stones and down the steps as her cries echo from the heart of the temple. I glance back once—I can’t help it—but the monk has disappeared.
Are her fellows downstairs? Or the rebels? Or a band of smugglers—thieves or bandits?
But there is nothing in the belly of the temple but the roulotte and the souls, and Maman can’t see those. The back door judders as she pounds on it. My heart sinks, but I lift the latch and she spills through the doorway, furious.
“Where were the two of you?” she shouts. “What were you doing alone together?”
The implication is jarring after the run-in with the monk—though it isn’t as ludicrous as I wish. The shame of Leo’s rejection covers me like a mantle; I want to throw it off along with her accusation. But she knows me better—or at least, she knows my malheur, and the rush and temptations it brings. And what can I tell her? That we were robbing the altar? That we met a monk? That the monk claimed to know my secrets?
In the silence, Leo straightens up, buttoning the jacket over his bare chest. “I assure you,” he says. “Nothing happened.”
The reminder makes it even worse, but Maman doesn’t respond. Already her anger is faltering as her eyes sweep across the room; her face falls—she stares wide-eyed at the carvings in the light of the lantern. Then Papa emerges just behind her; he realizes a moment after she does. The look he gives me is practically a snarl. “You’ve brought us to a temple?”
“I have,” Leo says quickly, but Papa’s expression does not change. He grabs the lantern.
“Get inside the wagon, Jetta. Meliss, you too.”
“Samrin . . .” She grabs his arm, but he herds her gently inside. She scrambles through the door and I follow, knowing better than to argue.
Papa shuts the door behind us and heads toward the driver’s seat, Leo hurrying after him. His voice drifts in through the scrollwork. “I swear to you—” he starts again, but Papa cuts him off.
“Spare me your promises. Just steer us out of this place.”
Leo doesn’t respond, and they climb in prickly silence to the bench. In a moment, we’re off once more through the tunnels.
The soullight dims and fades as we leave the temple behind. Maman huddles in the dappled pool of lamplight that shines through the scrollwork. The air in the tunnel is not cool, but she is trembling. And in the silence, the monk’s whisper echoes. He doesn’t know what you are, but I do.
But he knows enough, doesn’t he? A mad girl, out of control. And what else? What could the monk see just by looking? Or was her voice just another hallucination?
“Maman,” I say at last. “What am I?”
She looks up at me as though startled. “You’re my daughter, Jetta. Mine.” And then, to my surprise, she takes my hand and pulls me close. I can still feel her shaking, but she holds me like she’s unafraid. Her arms are so warm. After a while, the monk’s voice fades, and I let the rocking of the roulotte carry me off to sleep.