Page 44 of House of the Beast

We moved on, but eventually, I noticed the rich, buttery smell of something baking wafting through the streets. My stomach rumbled enthusiastically. Aster looked down at it with a laugh.

“Let’s take a break,” he said. “You must be hungry—there’s someone selling food over there.”

The scent of flavored meats paired with fresh pastry beckoned me toward a street vendor.

There were fluffy breads, and pies glistening with glaze, and rolls stuffed with fillings both sweet and savory.

The vendor himself refused to take my money as soon as he saw my metal arm—instead he began to bow, wide-eyed and flushed with pleasure yet unable to stop wringing his hands.

As he stammered praise for the Beast, and then Avera itself, I realized that he must have already heard of what happened last night—that the bastard daughter of Lord Zander Avera had left the First Hand mortally wounded and then been named his heir.

With how many people had attended the banquet, I was not surprised that news had traveled so fast. But it still made me uncomfortable, especially as his bowing and scraping began to draw a crowd.

I quickly took the steaming potato pie he was offering me, free of charge, thanked him, and left.

I walked a couple of streets down until I was far enough away from any lingering onlookers before making my way to the steps of a nearby entryway. There I sat down, facing the canal to watch the passing boats as I ate.

I had kept my journal on me all day, making notes as I walked to study later.

I took it out now to review with one hand, matching my research to the things I had seen.

Seeing the city firsthand had allayed some of my nerves; with how everything was structured, I was fairly confident now that I could manage my way around the umbral plane without getting lost.

“How do they keep everything so organized?” I wondered as I flipped through the pages. The streets were all meticulously connected, and clean to boot. It was a stark difference from the noisy disarray of Merey, where everything had been at least a little dirty or broken.

“This is the holiest place in all of Kugara,” answered Aster, watching me with his chin in his hand.

All through the day, he did not seem interested in seeing the sights at all, instead keeping his eyes on me as I gawked and marveled.

“They built everything to match the umbral gate above, and it’s easy to organize a city when you have a plan to follow.

It didn’t used to be like this, you know. ”

I paused mid-chew to look at him. “What do you mean?”

He smiled and gestured to my notes and then to the buildings around us.

“All these buildings, I mean. When the gods formed their pacts with the Houses, the leaders wanted to make this place worthy of their settlement. So they tore everything down and built it anew, following the pattern of the gate until it was all neat and orderly. All that’s left of the old city now only exists in the umbral plane. ”

“You mean—the city that existed before Sorrowsend. During the reign of the Despot Queen?” I asked, surprised.

“Of course.”

Hastily, I noted that down in my journal. I hadn’t known that parts of the umbral plane still reflected the past. Nor had I ever really thought about the fact that Aster must have known what it was like, having been here when the modern age of divinity began. “Which parts?”

“The western quadrant,” said Aster, amused as he watched me scribble. “I believe that is now the least economical part of the city—which makes sense, as that used to be where the Pyres were located.”

I stopped my writing long enough to stare.

The Pyres were where the Despot Queen had sacrificed her people by the hundreds in order to lure down the elder gods.

A place so inundated by the stink of fear, of death, had been low on the list of desirable places for citizens of Sorrowsend to settle—hence that was where the less fortunate had ended up.

“Are the Pyres still there?” I asked. There was little information about that area of the umbral plane to be found, as very few Pilgrims ventured so far.

That was where the terraforming stopped, where the clean streets and canals devolved into umbral wilderness.

Aster shrugged. “They don’t say anything about it in your books?”

“The books only say that the umbral plane is terraformed by memories of Sorrowsend brought in by the Pilgrims. And the Pilgrims prefer to stick to the parts of the city they’re familiar with, which means only the richer quadrants have been fully constructed,” I concluded.

Aster’s mouth quirked. “How sad. Once the holiest place where gods had been called, now neglected on two planes of existence.”

At least it saved me time. There was no point in documenting the western quadrant, as it would be different in the umbral plane anyhow.

I was about to tell Aster this when something made me pause. A distant memory that I had half-buried under my many long hours of research.

The western quadrant. For so long I had equated it to the wilds of the umbral plane and subsequently dismissed it.

But Aster’s comment reminded me that this part of the city, neglected as he said, had once been of some importance to me.

Because the school I had written to, the school that might have once saved my mother, had been located there—among the downtrodden people of Sorrowsend, where the Pyres once loomed.

And now that I had thought of it again, I could not help but wonder what had happened to it.

I had to see it for myself.

Aster craned his head quizzically, noting the change in my demeanor. “What is it?”

Brushing crumbs off my coat, I stood. “I’m going to the western quadrant,” I announced.

He blinked. “Oh? But I thought you said it wasn’t—”

“Terraformed, yes,” I said, now determined. “There’s something else I have to see.”

***

FOR YEARS, I HAD WONDERED IF MY MOTHER TRULY WOULD have survived if my father had sent for help from the school of medicine like I had beseeched him to instead of trusting that the Sorrowless Disciples could heal her.

Perhaps I should have pestered him more.

Though I doubted that he would have valued my opinion over his own conviction, if I were persistent enough, he might have relented.

In my darkest moments, these thoughts would churn in my head, and the guilt about my mother’s death would fester until Aster somehow dragged me out of it.

It was with a racing heart that I made my way past the elegant white buildings of the southern quadrant and into gradually more ramshackle streets.

Here, the thoroughfares were still hung with lanterns in House Metia midnight blue or House Goldmercy gray and copper, but the buildings had less of the uniform elegance I had marveled at, and eventually the streets began to slope downward to spill the dregs of the city down the side of the peninsula and up to the seafront.

Now that the memory had been uprooted, the address of the school appeared fresh in my mind, as if it were only yesterday that I had mailed the letter written by my mother and me together, asking for aid.

I followed my mental map of the city—the map I had copied into my journal and studied for years and years, preparing for the day I would use that knowledge to triumph against my father—and hastily checked every street we crossed as we drew closer and closer. I was lightheaded with anticipation.

When I finally found the right street, I had to stop.

It was the most derelict place I had seen in Sorrowsend so far.

Boarded-up buildings stood on either side of the road in lonely silence, as if someone had prepared to fix them up and then forgot ten them.

The babble of celebration, which had kept me company through most of my journey today, died away here.

Only the ominous sea wind whistled mournfully past.

“Sad indeed,” confirmed Aster at my side.

I began to walk, knowing he would keep pace with me.

We were the only ones here, save for an old woman carefully picking through abandoned furniture in the distance.

My eyes were fixed on the largest building, constructed to resemble the lovely stone structures in the other parts of Sorrowsend, perhaps in an effort to fit in, but now covered in grime and left to rot over the years.

Large, rusted metal letters above the entrance read: Sorrowsend School of Medicine.

Like many of its neighbors, the building’s windows were boarded up, only darkness showing between the cracks. I went slowly up to the entrance, looking at what had once been a beacon of hope for my mother and me.

“When my mother got sick,” I said quietly, “we were told by the town physician to write to this school. They were researching a way to cure her illness—something that was apparently outside of the Weeping Lady’s power.

I’d heard that the city didn’t like having the school here, but.

..” I trailed off, unsure of what to say.

There were flakes of old paint still clinging stubbornly to the stone.

Someone had written HERETICS in large, black letters across the entrance.

“You wanted to see it for yourself,” concluded Aster.

I shrugged, somehow keeping the movement casual. “I suppose so. I used to wonder what would have happened if they had taken her in.”

Curious, I pushed at the doors—and they creaked open to reveal a dusty, dilapidated lobby.

Late-afternoon sunlight puddled on the floor from gaps in the ceiling.

The air smelled of dust and mold. I tried to imagine this place as it once was—perhaps host to a slew of hopeful doctors, rushing to their offices or to check on patients.

Perhaps my mother would have been among those patients, still weak but recovering slowly.

Drawn in by the ghost of this imagined scene, I stepped through the doors, the soles of my shoes making prints in the dust as I walked.

The floor was littered with dirty newspapers and assorted rubbish.

My foot disturbed one of these piles as I walked, and out scuttered a spider the size of my thumb.

Startled, I stomped down on it, crunching it beneath my heel.

“I suppose it wouldn’t have done her any good in the end,” I said, disgusted as I dragged its innards off my sole, onto the floor. My voice echoed through the empty building. “If they closed this place down.”

Warm fingers took hold of my own as Aster joined me. “But it might have given you some more time with her,” he said, his voice quiet, his eyes gentle when they met my own.

My throat went tight. The edges of my mouth pulled down in a terrible, helpless way at the thought. “Yes,” I managed. “That would have been nice.”

“We’ll make your father pay for taking that from you,” he promised me.

I nodded. All these years, that promise had kept me going.

When the grief became too heavy, when my own guilt welled up and threatened to choke me.

I had been the one to write to my father and leave my mother behind.

If I hadn’t, perhaps things would have turned out differently.

For that, I could mete out my own punishment in time—but first I was going to ruin my father’s life.

I was going to take what he wanted most, and I was going to do it in a manner so absolute that nobody else would be able to deny that I had triumphed over him.

It didn’t matter what the other members of House Avera thought of my right to inherit the title of leader.

He would once again be relegated to second place and would remain there for the rest of his existence.

The door behind me creaked again, jolting me from my thoughts.

I whirled around as a matronly woman in a shimmering gray dress with delicate patterns of copper flowers embroidered upon the skirts pushed the door open wider.

Beside her was a childlike figure wearing an unmistakable knight’s helmet, and waiting in front of the entrance of the school was one of the sleek carriages taken by the nobility of Sorrowsend.

Olissa Goldmercy, the Mother Meister of House Goldmercy, smiled at me.

“Why, hello there,” she said warmly, as if we were having a conversation over tea. “I’m so glad to have finally found you, Alma.”

I narrowed my eyes. The last I had seen her, she had been conversing with my father like old friends.

How had she known to find me here? This wasn’t exactly a place where noble ladies liked to gather.

I recalled my father’s warning, about the enemies I would have if I were to oppose him.

Discreetly, I moved my hand to rest on the hilt of my sword.

“I wasn’t aware that you were looking for me. ”

“Oh, sweetheart,” said the Mother Meister.

“You’re the talk of the town. Everyone knows about the little altercation between you and dear Maximus, and of course, we also know of your dispute with your father.

He’s been quite vocal about it to me, in fact.

So I told him, why don’t I try convincing your daughter to change her mind?

I have more experience managing children, after all. ”

The small Thing at her side seemed to shrink in on itself at her words. Even though I knew it was a construct, I felt a pang of pity for it.

“Change my mind?” I said, ignoring her pointed comment about children—clearly it was an attempt to rile me up. “I assume you mean about being a Pilgrim. I’m afraid I’m not inclined to do that, even if you’re the one asking me.”

Certainly not now, right after Aster and I had renewed my vow of revenge together.

Instead of accepting my rejection and walking away like a sensible person, she only smiled wider. Picking up her skirts so they wouldn’t drag against the dusty floor, she began to stroll toward me.

“I thought you might say something like that,” she commented idly. “At least I can tell Zander I tried.” Her eyes flicked above my shoulder.

Something sharp pricked my neck—and even as I brought my metal hand up to crush it, I knew it was too late.

Smeared across my fingers were the remains of another spider, only now I could see among the entrails that there were tiny bits of metal and clockwork.

A Goldmercy contraption, and it had just injected something into me.

She had planned this, I thought. She had followed me, perhaps all day, and I had fallen into a trap.

The edges of my vision wavered and the air in my lungs turned sluggish; the last thing I heard before everything went dark was Aster’s voice calling my name.