I can smell the midden long before I see it. At first it is just a hint of rot, the touch of decay—though still far too familiar after Dar Som. But as we trudge on and the afternoon lengthens, the scent swells like a poisonous mushroom, like a tumor. By the time we reach the fork in the road, where refuse wagons from the capital turn off the main route and trundle into the jungle, the taste of putrescence is sticking to the back of my throat.
We left my parents at the crossroad; they continued toward the long lines and the shantytowns outside the city gates while Leo and I waited for a dung cart to pass us on the track. Now we’re trudging after it. My feet ache, and my shoulders are red under the weight of the guns. Another early rain has left the road muddy and the air thick with steam. I hope for a cool breath as the green tunnel closes in above us, but it only traps the putrid humidity.
The cart moves slowly, pulled by a Chakran man under a wide-brimmed hat. His shovel and broom are thrown over the detritus piled high on the wagon—horse dung and rotting vegetables and the fly-specked carcass of a dead dog. It was a fine animal once, with a wide jaw and muscular shoulders, the sort the Aquitan aristocracy use for hunting. Now just another bit of trash.
“Walk slower,” Leo says. “The smell of that dog is about to knock me off my feet.”
“But the slower we walk, the longer we’re here,” I say, and he makes a face.
“Good point.”
So we plod after the cart, but when we pass a rumdal tree, I pluck a handful of blossoms, tucking one beside my ear and holding another up to my nose. Leo takes one and does the same, but it does little good. The smell only intensifies as we walk, until at last, we emerge again into the hot sun and a swarm of flies, both living and dead.
The midden is in a massive clearing at the base of the caldera—a swampy, stony field where instead of rice or sugar, the refuse of the city has been sown. Broken things, dead animals, waste, and detritus. And more souls than I expected. Things die here. Rats by the dozens; I might have guessed about those. But other things too—a handful of kittens, playing with the ties of the bag they were discarded in. Gulls and vultures, picking over the heaps just like their living comrades. Even a n’akela—cold fire—walking round the edge of the clearing. I try and fail to suppress a shudder. What must its death have been, here in the middens?
The street sweeper doesn’t stop to watch them, of course. He only trundles along a path that skirts the trees—the heaps near the main road are piled too high to climb. But when he peels off toward a collapsing mass midway along the glade, Leo and I continue on the little road.
We are not the only others here. People roam through the hazy air, through the clouds of insects, picking over the piles. Scavengers dressed in rags, some with long sleeves that make me wonder what’s beneath. I reach up to adjust my own shawl over the scar on my shoulder. These people are thin, desperate, but not dangerous. They keep their heads down as we pass, never meeting my eyes.
As we walk, the piles get smaller and older—bones instead of bodies, dirt more than decay. At last the clearing ends in a scattering of gray trunks and green vines climbing steeply up the side of the caldera that borders the city. As we step through the scraggly jungle, I see the rocky outcrop Maman told me to look for: a black pile of stone streaked with guano and sewn with thick roots.
The passage is there somewhere—a slender crack in the slab, leading beneath the city. I scan the stone, looking for the entrance, then stumble over a rounded rock. Unbalanced by the heavy pack, I fall to my knees with a grunt.
“Are you all right?” Leo takes my arm, helping me up. My stubbed toe stings, but I nod, glaring at the earth. Then my frown softens. There, in the grass, the stone that tripped me. Not a worn chunk of lava rock, but something smooth, the size of a cat. Carefully I lean down to look closer. Brushing back the leaves, I reveal a familiar sign carved into the rock—the stroke and the dot, like the sun rising: life.
A chill takes me; I step back. Leo furrows his brow. “What is this?” he asks.
“It looks like a grave.” Now that I’m looking for them, I can see stones dotting the earth—tucked between roots, peeking from under fallen leaves.
He follows my gaze. “So many.”
“And so small.” I turn back to look at the middens—the trash heaps, the refuse of the city. Beside it, the tiny graves, just outside the tunnel that leads to the temple. With a sick feeling in my stomach, I realize why Maman knew about the path. Swallowing bile, I try to keep my voice steady. “Leo . . . what do you know about Le Trépas?”
His face twists. “Enough.”
“Did you ever hear the stories about his brides?”
“That’s a nice word for it,” he mutters. “I heard they were girls from the street. He’d give them food and shelter and money. In return all he wanted was the souls of their children.” Leo’s voice falters; he glances around the clearing again. “Though maybe they weren’t just stories.”
His words settle like ashes around my head. “Do you think they knew?”
“The girls? No.” His voice is firm. “How could they?”
“How could they miss it?” I cry, suddenly shouting. In the trees above, a pair of pigeons startles, taking flight. “How could they not know, with a man like him?”
“Men like him never tell the truth about what they’re really offering.” Leo’s jaw clenches; he speaks through his teeth. “And even if some of them suspected . . . Jetta. You know what it is to be hungry. And desperate. And to gamble on paying a price later for survival now.”
There is truth in his words, but I don’t want to admit it. So I turn and start toward the cleft in the rock, but Leo reaches out and grabs my arm. “Jetta, wait.”
“What?”
“You’re angry and I don’t know why. I . . .” He takes a deep breath and lets go of my arm, but I don’t try to leave again. “I don’t know if it’s a mood, or something I can fix.”
I stiffen—how casually he mentions my malheur. “It’s not your responsibility to fix me, Leo.”
“I know, but I . . .” He smiles a little, awkwardly, and taps his chest, still bandaged under the shirt Papa gave him. “I’m just trying to pay a debt.”
I hesitate, remembering what else is there under the bandage—his tattoo, his sin. Life. What debt is he truly trying to repay? And all of these stones in the clearing, marked with the same symbol—graves for those whose only sin was being born. My sin too, but I survived. Maybe that’s why I’m cursed. Is there any freedom in bearing your marks? In telling the world?
Or if not the world, then the ones who will listen?
“I know how Maman knew about the passage,” I say at last, nodding to the cleft in the rock. “She lived in Hell’s Court before she met Papa. She escaped during La Victoire. I was newly born at the time.”
Leo takes a deep breath, digesting the words. Overhead, the leaves rustle in a rare breeze. At last he takes the white flower from his pocket and drops it on the grave at his feet. “I’m glad you both got out. So many others didn’t.”
I gape at him. “That’s not the point.”
“Then what is?”
“Le Trépas is my . . .” I trail off—I don’t want to finish the sentence. But Leo only smiles a little.
“You forget who you’re talking to.”
“Legarde isn’t evil,” I say, and his smile falls away.
“You weren’t the one who found my mother.” Leo sighs. “These men—they are nothing. Your real father—he’s a kind man. A good one. He loves you. You love him.”
“But this . . . thing I’ve inherited.” I clench my fists in the fabric of my sarong, as though I could reach inside my own flesh and pull out the offending parts of me. “It’s his. It must be.”
“Your madness?” Leo quirks an eyebrow—and though that is not what I meant, I cannot correct him. “Madness doesn’t make you good or evil. Actions do. And those are all your own.”
“I know,” I say, but it is small comfort. I cannot stop thinking of my actions—of watching Jian writhe on the ground, of giving Eduard over to the vengeful dead. The way power felt—like sugar on my tongue. But Leo only frowns, and glances through the trees.
“We should go,” he says softly, and something about his tone raises the hair on the back of my neck.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know,” he says, no louder than a whisper. “But it just got very quiet.”
I blink—but he’s right. No longer do the birds call, or the rats rustle. I glance around the clearing, but all I see are little souls drifting. Then I frown. The n’akela is here too, standing at the edge of the trees. Had it followed us across the middens? And if so, what does it want? I wet my lips, recalling Maman’s words. Fallen monks, restless souls. “Let’s go.”
His only reply is a curt nod. Adjusting the pack on my shoulders, I stride toward the rocks. Leo follows close behind, his hand on his gun. Here, the tunnel, where a cold wind sighs between stone lips like Death’s whisper. I slip through, into the dark. Maman had walked out this way at least once.
Had she ever walked back in empty-handed?
“Wait. Jetta.” Behind me, I hear Leo fumbling with the lantern—I had forgotten the pretext of needing light. When he catches up to me, the lamp makes my shadow dance on the rocky wall: a girl and her burden in the shadows. But before I can start off again, he takes my arm. “Stay still.”
“Why?”
“Shh.”
Gritting my teeth, I wait as he listens, but there is only the sound of the wind in the tunnel. As last he shakes his head.
“Nothing.”
He sounds relieved, but it doesn’t ease my fears. Souls make no sound. And is that a light, coming down the tunnel, or just the movement of our shadows? “Come on,” I say, starting off again.
Ducking through the narrow passage, we wind our way into the cool earth. The map trembles in my hand; I read its lines by the light of the dead. The volcanic rock of the tunnel is rounded and rippled, like the great throat of some stone beast. Here and there, patches of obsidian line the walls, black and glassy as water in a midnight pond, catching the dim shades of our reflections. Ahead comes the soft rush of wings: bats, mostly likely. Their souls hang from the top of the tunnel like lamps.
And behind us? Still no sound, and the light from Leo’s lamp makes it hard to tell if anything is coming. “Did you hear something?” he says then, and I tense.
“No, did you?”
“No, but you keep looking back.”
“It’s nothing,” I say, praying it’s the truth. Why would a n’akela follow us? And even if it caught up, what could it do? I brush my fear away—it is only paranoia, the sight of the graves, the dark oppression of the tunnel. I take a deep breath to try to clear my head, but is that a whiff of rot on my tongue? It must be the clinging smell of the middens, nothing more.
Crouching under bulky crags, plashing through milky puddles, we make our way through the earth, but the smell of decay only gets stronger. When we reach the end of the tunnel, I see why. The map has led us to the bottom of a damp well, gouged from the earth by human hands. Stairs circle the side, climbing upward into the gloom. But at their base, lying on the muddy ground, is the graying body of a dead man.
Startled, I whirl, but there is no one else here—no lurking murderer, ready to strike. And by the smell, the body has been here a while. There is no soul attending, no spark in this dank hole aside from the lantern, and the souls of the bats spiraling above.
“What happened to him?” Leo says, his voice muffled. He has brought his sleeve up over his mouth, breathing through the cloth of his jacket. With his other hand, he holds the lantern out, though he stays near the wall, away from the body.
“You check, if you’re so curious.” Still, I can’t help but stare. There is no clear sign of death—no bullet wound, no cut throat—though there is a mark on the man’s forehead. A familiar symbol. The dot and the line. Life.
A chill takes me, deeper than the cold of the tunnel: fallen monks, restless souls—or disciples. How had this man died? Had someone marked him like I had marked Eduard? Were there others like me, who could tuck a wandering soul into a skin?
It is a mystery I have no desire to solve. Gingerly, I step around the body to the coiling stairway ringing the well. Then I curse. It ends in a metal grille, far above. The souls of bats fly through, spiraling into the sky.
Leo follows me, squinting. In the low light of the lamp, can he see the grate? “I don’t think Maman knew about the bars,” I tell him.
He shifts the pack on his shoulders. “Maybe we can find a way to get them open. If all else fails, I can go back and make my way here, aboveground. Try to open it from the outside.”
“If you think I’m staying here overnight, alone with a corpse, you’re the crazy one.” I glance back at him, to give him a look, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I see a flicker of blue.
The n’akela. It’s followed us all this way. At my gasp, Leo whirls—but how can I explain what I’m seeing? Then, like a shadow, a massive dog appears just behind the soul, and this, we both can see. The smell hits me a moment before the realization does: I recognize it from the dung cart, fly specked and thick shouldered.
“Mon dieu.” Leo’s whisper echoes in the well as the mastiff pulls black lips from yellow teeth. “I thought that thing was dead!”
It was—I’m sure of it—but I cannot tell him so. I can barely comprehend it myself. New life in a dead body? Then again, isn’t that what I do? The difference is I paint the skins first.
A wave of revulsion overtakes me as the dog steps closer. But as Leo fumbles for his gun, I cover his hand with mine. “There might be guards above,” I say, nodding to the grate. Then a low growl rattles like gravel in the dog’s throat. Leo shrugs me off.
“I’m more concerned about what’s down here,” he murmurs through his teeth. But how can you kill what’s already dead? The answer comes after another moment: fire. So before he can shoot, I snatch the lantern from Leo’s other hand and hurl it at the animal.
The glass breaks at the dog’s feet in a shower of burning oil; the creature yelps, wreathed in flame, and flees down the tunnel, the firelight fading as it goes. Only I can see the blue blaze of the n’akela as it crosses to the corpse lying at the stairs and crawls inside as though it is a suit of skin.
A flash of soullight, and the dead man opens his milky eyes. I gasp, the scent of death sour in my throat.
“What is it?” Leo says, his own eyes wide as he casts about in the sudden blackness. What can I say? Never show, never tell. But I am still reeling. I have never seen a soul take a body without my help—my blood. Now I know why Maman was not assuaged by the thought that all Le Trépas’s monks had been killed in La Victoire.
Had they leaped from body to body for the last sixteen years? There is no shortage of bodies in Chakrana. I clear my throat, trying to steady my voice. “Up the stairs, Leo. Check the grate.”
But in the dark, the dead man laughs. “Light or no, I can smell your blood, my sister.”
At the word, I go cold. Sister? But Leo jerks his gun toward the sound—the muzzle weaves in the air like a snake’s head. “Who is that?”
“I guard the path.” The body pushes itself to its feet, and turns to me. “Welcome home.”
“What do you want?” I whisper.
The corpse grins—bruised lips, white teeth . . . and bright blue eyes. “You should be dead.”
“Get behind me, Jetta!” Leo cocks his weapon. His hand is trembling, but the dead man does not flinch.
“Just go, Leo!” I say, pushing him up the stairs.
“Not without you!” Blindly, he reaches for my arm. The dead man does too.
Wrenching away from the both of them, I make a fist, smashing my knuckles against the rough stone wall. Then I drop to my knees at the corpse’s feet. All around me, crawling souls creep closer—grubs and bugs and creatures that burrow in the earth. As the dead man’s gray fingers twine in my hair, I draw a worm into his shoe. “Down,” I whisper, and the vana pulls his foot into the muddy earth.
Thrown off-balance, the corpse lurches sideways. I wrench free of his grasp and scramble back toward the stairs.
“Jetta?” Leo’s eyes are wide in the dark. When I take his hand, he hauls me up. But as we race up the slippery stone steps, a rasping rattle of laughter follows. It flies like the souls of the bats, up to the grate—where Leo and I stop. He puts his shoulder against the iron and heaves, but though the bars shake, they don’t open.
“It’s locked,” Leo says, but I push him aside.
“Move.” Slipping my hand through the bars, I feel along the rusted rim of the grate. My hands close around the lock: solid, heavy. Crooking my finger, I trace the symbol with my bloody knuckle. I do not see what soul slips inside, just the small flash, and I whisper, “Open.”
The metal groans; the tumblers turn. I pull the lock away and toss it to the ground. Air hisses through Leo’s teeth as I heave the grate wide on rusty hinges, but he says nothing as we climb up into the light. Looking back into the well, I see the dead man gazing back at me.
Before it can follow, I shut the gate behind us, and though I do not know if it will help, I lock it up tight.