The stone smelled of stale turnips and lime. Branya patted the wall until her palms found cold seams, her ribs heaving against the stays of her uniform. Dark. Thick, soupy dark. But darkness was just unlit daylight, wasn't it? A blank slate waiting for a scrub brush. A lovely, peaceful intermission where nobody threw silver chalices at anyone. "Right," she whispered, teeth clicking together like dry twigs. "Right. Step one: find the hinges. Step two: find Lesko. Step three: pull that insufferable boy out of whatever iron meat hook Koldan has hung him on. Simple. Delighfully manageable chore list." A laugh escaped her—high, thin, fluttering like a bat in the crawlspace. She bit her tongue until copper flooded her mouth, pinning the hysteria under sharp pain. Mirovan had locked the latch from the exterior with black filament, but shadow magic woven in haste decayed without a living anchor. She probed the frame with her scraper tool. The brittle crust gave way with a dry hiss, spitting flakes of dead frost. Outside, iron boots paced the lower gallery. Two templars, their breastplates clinking with every step. "The boy offered no struggle," one grunted. "Pater said the witch-girl is hidden down here somewhere. Search the bins." "He surrendered like a dog on a leash. What's a scrub-wench going to do? Bite our greaves?" Branya smiled into the gloom. The smile hurt her cheeks, stretching so taut her skin felt ready to peel, but she kept it clamped there. She unhooked the tin cannister of tallow-based floor wax from her utility belt. High-grade lard and boiled linseed oil, distilled for the Conservatory’s grand ballroom. One tub cost three silver groschen because it could make mountain granite slicker than buttered glass. She uncapped it with her teeth. Silently, she crept to the landing atop the cellar stairs. The steps were narrow, cut sharp and steep from Vrostan black slate. Below her, the two armored men carried whale-oil lanterns, their visors tipped downward as they inspected storage crates. Branya dumped the entire tub across the top three steps, smearing the amber grease with the bristle head of her short broom until the stone gleamed wetly. She kicked an empty iron scrub bucket down the flight. *CLANG-BANG-CLATTER.* "What's that?" The first guard pivoted, broadsword half-cleared from its scabbard. "Up there!" Both men lunged up the stairs, heavy boots pounding three at a time. The first boot hit the lard. The templar’s heel shot forward into the rafters as if yanked by an invisible winch. His helmet bounced off the edge of the fifth riser with a hollow *thunk*, his bulk hurtling backward into his comrade. The second guard tried to brace, but four hundred pounds of panicked man and plate armor crashed into his chest. Greaves slipped. Gauntlets clawed at bare stone. Together, they formed a roaring tangle of steel, tumbling, pinwheeling, and crashing to the flags below with the sound of a falling cutlery cart. Branya slid down the banister, skirts tucked, landing neatly on the heap of groaning soldiers. "Pardon me! So sorry! Daily maintenance!" she chirped, bringing the heavy ash-wood broom handle down across the temple of the struggling guard with both arms. Wood cracked against helm; the man went limp. She stripped the brass ring of keys from the other guard's belt while he was still retching into his collar, grabbed a lantern, and darted down the vaulted corridor leading to the lower Choir dormitory. The Conservatory was emptying out toward the central cathedral for the solstice rites. The corridors smelled of frankincense and damp snow drifting through arrow slits. Every window showed torches flickering across the main courtyard, priests gathering in procession, their white robes billowing like burial shrouds in the northern gale. She had less than an hour. Branya slipped through the choir-boys' washroom, ducked beneath the hanging cassocks, and tapped three times on the laundry chute door. Long-short-short. A nursery rhythm they had shared in the sod hut before Koldan had dragged them here. The wooden panel slid back an inch. Pale, watery eyes peered out through tangled bangs. "Branya?" "Lesko!" She yanked the hatch open, hoisting him out by his armpits. His limbs were stick-thin, his tunic gray with dust, but his grip on her pinafore was ferocious enough to tear the seams. For three seconds, she buried her face in his scruffy hair, inhaling the scent of dried tansy and starch, before she forced the bright set of her teeth back into place. "Look at you! You haven't lost an ounce of that awful stubbornness!" "He gave me sulfur for my chest," Lesko whispered, his voice dry and rattling, but his eyes sparkled with sharp malice. He pulled a drawstring bag from his oversized sleeve. Inside were half a dozen hollow lead seals, packed tight with yellow powder and tallow-soaked rags. "I didn't take the medicine. I scraped the nitrate off the walls and mixed it with the sulfur. If you light the twine, it chokes everything for thirty yards." Branya stared at her ten-year-old brother. A bubble of pure, unhinged pride welled in her throat. "You magnificent little criminal. You absolute menace." "Where is Mirovan?" Lesko asked, glancing around the empty washhouse. "Did the shadows take him?" "The idiot let himself be caught so I could reach you," she said, grabbing a pry bar from the laundry shelf. "Because boys with big magic have zero practical sense. We have to go through the flues. The main cloister is packed with templars." Lesko unrolled his wrinkled greasepaper map. "The chapel sits above the old crypts, but Koldan had masonry crews working near the sub-foundations two months ago. The heat pipes run directly beneath the sanctum altar. We can crawl the flue from the boiler cellar." "Lead on, general." They squeezed into the iron maintenance shaft behind the wash boilers. The chute was narrow, lined with decades of soot that coated their skin in charcoal grime. The metal grew hotter with every foot they crawled, vibrating with the deep, bass thrum of hundreds of voices chanting overhead. *Hymns of the Cleansing Dawn.* The prayer to burn out the dark. Branya’s palms blistered against the hot rivets. Behind her, Lesko coughed into his sleeve, pushing his small satchel ahead of him. Ahead, an iron ventilation grate spilled amber radiance into the duct. Sinuous heat waves distorted the view. Branya pressed her face against the crossbars, squinting down into the private sanctuary beneath the cathedral apse. Mirovan was there. He knelt on the flagstones, stripped to a linen shirt, his wrists locked behind him in runic manacles that glowed with white-hot script. Black veins pulsed up his neck toward his jaw, resisting the metal, but his head hung low, breath misting in the freezing air of the crypt. Pater Koldan stood over him, an ivory-hilted harvesting spike raised in his right hand, reciting the ritual of extraction. "Behold the vessel drained," Koldan intoned, his face flushed with holy ecstasy. "That the Hearth may drink and endure." Branya shifted to find an angle to drop Lesko's sulfur bombs. Then her gaze tracked down from the blade to the altar upon which Mirovan’s knees rested. She froze. The structure wasn't carved marble. It wasn't granite. The entire rectangular plinth was constructed of interlocking, faceted crystals, each the size of a human heart, pulsing with sickly, suffocated hues of violet, indigo, and soot-black. Embedded within the lucent facets were calcified fragments of bone—small skulls, rib segments, the delicate finger bones of dozens of children who had preceded him, their harvested souls frozen forever into masonry to fuel the cathedral’s eternal light.

Floor Wax and Smoke Bombs