Cruel Beauty

Of course I went straight to the mirror room. But neither of the keys would even fit into the keyhole at the center of the mirror, so I set out to find a new door. Today the house seemed to look kindly on my quest: I found room after room I had never seen before, and door after door I had never opened. But none of the new doors would open to my new keys.

Finally, I found a room full of empty golden birdcages, hung from tree-shaped iron racks in a forest of delicate captivity. I saw no extra doors, and I turned to leave—but then I heard a chitter of birdsong, so faint that for a moment I thought I had imagined it.

I remembered the sparrow Lar. Astraia was the one who liked to see omens in every flight of birds, not me; but I still turned and looked over the room one more time. And then I saw a door in the far left corner of the room, behind the biggest pile of cages, where there had been only empty wall a moment before.

It was such a normal little door—short and narrow, barely large enough for me to fit through without bending, made out of wood and painted pale gray—that for a heartbeat I stared at it without fear.

Then my skin prickled as it always did when I saw one of the house’s transformations. This was not the most unca

But it hadn’t pleased. Most likely, Ignifex would not allow it to do so. And if the sparrow had meant to make me turn around, then . . . I still had no guarantee it meant me any good, but it had given me a few minutes’ peace and that put it ahead of the house.

I picked my way through the birdcages to the door and tried my key. It didn’t work. Then I tried the steel key, and it started to turn but caught. So I tried the gold key.

The lock clicked and the door swung open.

I stepped inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smell of wood and dusty paper: the smell of Father’s study. This room seemed to be a study too, though grander than any I had ever seen; it was round, paneled in dark wood, with swirling dark blue mosaics on the floor. Several tables piled with books, papers, and curios stood around the edges of the room with short bookcases between them. The ceiling was a dome, painted parchment like the sky; the lamp even hung from a wrought-iron frame shaped like the Demon’s Eye. Around the base of the dome was written in gold letters “AS ABOVE, SO BELOW”—the great principle of Hermetic workings.

But it was the center of the room that drew my eyes, for there was a great circular table, covered in a glass dome, on which sat a model of Arcadia.

I approached it slowly; it was so delicately detailed, I felt it would crumble if I breathed, despite the glass. There was the ocean, crafted of tinted glass so that it glimmered like real water. There were the southern mountains, pocked with entrances to the coal mines; there was the river Severn, there the capital city of Sardis, still half-ruined by the great fire of twenty years ago. There was my own village, sitting on the southern edge, near to the crumbled ruin that Ignifex’s house looked like from the outside.

I leaned closer. Through some trick of the glass, as I focused on my village, it grew larger; I saw thatch and tile roofs, the fountain in the main square, my own house, and the rock where I had been married. It was all perfect, down to the last detail, and I stared hungrily at my home until the magnification made my head ache.

I turned away from the model. On the nearest table sat a little chest of red-brown cherrywood. It had no lock, only a simple latch; no decorations but a tiny gold inscription set upon the lid. I picked it up and peered at the glittering miniature cursive: “AS WITHIN, SO WITHOUT.” Another Hermetic precept.

“What are you doing?”

I slammed down the chest and spun around. Ignifex was at the door; I barely had time to gasp before he was at my side, gripping my arms like iron, his face only inches from mine.

“What did you think you were doing?”

“Exploring the house,” I said shakily. “If I’m your wife—”

My voice died. The red in his eyes was not a simple flecked pattern like any human or animal eyes; it was a swirling crimson chaos, ever-changing as a living flame. I realized how foolish I had been to feel anything but terror for him. I had remembered that he was my enemy, but I had forgotten that he was a danger, my doom and likely my death.

“Do you think you are safe with me?” he snarled.

“No,” I whispered.

“You’re just as foolish as the others. You think you are clever, strong, special. You think you’re going to win.”

Abruptly he turned and dragged me out of the room.

“I knew who your father was when he came to me.” His voice was icy calm now, each word bitten off with precision. “Leonidas Triskelion, youngest magister of the Resurgandi. When he asked my help, he could barely say the words for shame, but he did not hesitate an instant when he sold you away.”

We turned down a stone corridor I had never seen before.

“Of course he was a fool to think he could bargain with me and win. But his plan to send you as a saboteur was not so foolish. Nor any of his choices since. He’s gotten his wife’s sister in his bed, he’s kept the daughter who looks like his wife at his knees, and he’s sent the daughter with his face to atone—humans can’t ever undo their sins, but I say he’s done pretty well.”

He stopped and shoved me against the wall. “You were sent here to die. You are the one that was not needed, was not wanted, and they sent you here because they knew you would never come back.”

I couldn’t stop the tears from sliding down my cheeks, but I glared back at him as best I could. “I know that. Why do you need to tell me?”

“The only way you see tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that, is if you do exactly as I tell you. Or you will die just as quickly as all my other wives.”

He reached past me; I heard a click and realized that I was leaning against a door, not the wall. The door swung open behind me and I stumbled back into cool darkness until I hit the edge of a table.

“Think on it awhile,” said Ignifex, and slammed the door.

For one moment I thought I was left in darkness; then, as my eyes adjusted, I realized that faint gray light filtered in through a little slit of a window set high in the wall. I still couldn’t make out much. The air was cold. I turned, groping at the table; it was stone, not wood.

My fingers found cloth, then something soft and cold.

I shuddered, but my mind refused to recognize it until I groped farther and my fingers slid past teeth into a cold, wet mouth.

With a scream, I bolted back against the door. I rubbed my hand viciously against my skirt, but the fabric could not wipe away the memory of touching the dead girl’s tongue.

The dead wife’s tongue. Because now my eyes were growing truly accustomed to the light, and I could see all eight of them, laid out on their stone blocks as if stored for future use.

When I was ten, Astraia and I found a dead cat while playing in the woods. It was half-buried under a drift of leaves; we did not realize until I poked it that it was dead and swollen. It released a noxious stench that made Astraia run away wailing, while I sat choking and weeping with horror. Now, as my breath came quicker and quicker, I thought I could smell that stench again, just a hint of it floating on the cold, still air.

My nails dug into my arms, my harsh breaths the only noise amid dead silence. Ignifex would put me here. When I made my final mistake, he would kill me and put me in this room, and I would lie on the cold stone with my dead mouth hanging open.

With a great effort, I took a deep, slow breath. And let it out in a great shriek. I slammed my fist into the wall, then turned and kicked the door twice, still yelling. Though the door shook in its hinges, it held fast. But when I fell silent, panting for breath, I was no longer panicking. I was furious.