Isabella was through the hatch before the mooring lines were fast. The engines stopped. After five days, she hadn’t realised how much she needed them to.
The cavern received the silence. It had been here long before ships and would be here long after.
Cold and salt, and underneath both, the water: dark and motionless, glazed like obsidian in the lanternlight, the Nautilus sitting on its surface without disturbing it, and beneath it the sea, and beneath the sea the Trench, an unimaginable distance down and somehow present anyway, a weight she could feel in her sternum.
There it is.
She breathed through it. The ocean hadn’t let her go yet. Some part of the deep still pressed at the edges of her, the cold, the dark, the pull downward as though the water remembered her being in it and hadn’t finished. The Recall. That was what they called it. It simply resumed, the way a tide resumes. She had known women who never came back from that.
? The Gallian Maritime Council had classified the Recall as a psychological complaint in 1731 and referred it to the Church of Invictus. The Church had classified it as a maritime complaint and referred it back. The correspondence was still ongoing.
Wylan came through the hatch behind her.
“Dry land,” he said mercifully.
The crew came up after. They distributed across the quay in ones and twos, made the lines fast, settled the gangway, and then stood for a moment, looking at the ceiling that was not the ceiling of the submarine.
Guillaume was already at the quay when Navarro came down the gangway.
He was standing at the cavern’s edge where the stone met the water, his coin turning between his fingers. He was still watching the hull when the gangway met the quay, and he crossed the quay with his arms open. This caused Navarro to check his step, barely; but he did and accepted the embrace. He had no idea what to do with it.
Guillaume spoke against his shoulder, quietly enough that Isabella caught only fragments: the call sign, came directly, Pharelle.
There were pleasantries. There was Guillaume moving through the family, with embraces so complete it was impossible to verify their warmth. Isabella accepted hers and gave nothing away and hoped he hadn’t noticed.
For a few minutes the cavern held reunion: people who had been apart too long, taking stock of each other.
Then Laila said, quietly, “There have been complications. Someone came back with us who shouldn’t be here.”
Guillaume looked at her, then at the Nautilus. “Aboard still?”
“In the locker. He’s secured, but I’d rather not discuss it here.”
He glanced at the crew moving across the quay, and at the open mouth of the staircase. He almost sighed. “Upstairs then,” he said. “My office.”
They went.
The staircase wound up through brine-smell and old rock. Isabella emerged into Guillaume’s office behind the others. The air had not recently been inside a submarine. She hadn’t anticipated, until now, how much she needed that.
Guillaume followed her last. He set the device on the desk and turned the dial. A low hum, and then the quality of the room changed: sound turned inward, became deliberate, stopped going anywhere.
“We can now speak freely.”
He settled behind his desk. The coin reappeared.
“Captain Navarro, your signal mentioned a vampire,” he said. “Could you please start there?”
Navarro set it out plainly: a vampire, one of Seraphina’s court, part of Lampetia’s escort alongside a turned siren called Callion. They’d brought him aboard unconscious and hadn’t put him ashore.
“He’s been detained since,” Navarro said.
Guillaume was quiet for a moment. “And when you fled—he was still aboard?”
“Yes,” Navarro said.
“He has some knowledge of Lampetia’s operation,” Wylan said. “Enough to be useful, not enough to be certain of. She kept the details from him. He knew they were in the Trench for something, and knew it was connected to the egg.”
“And what did he know of the Blood Pearl?” Guillaume asked.
“He didn’t seem to understand what it was or what it could do.” He paused. “During the confrontation on the bridge, Lampetia spoke through him. His voice, her words. We don’t know whether that was willing.”
Laila was standing at the far end of the room, not pacing.
“Navarro can manage him.” Her voice was flat. “The crew knows what’s in the locker. They’ve been managing it for two days.”
“They’ve been managing it at sea,” Lambert said, “with us aboard. What we’re proposing now is rather different.” He looked at his hands. “It’s the duration, Laila. Not Navarro’s capability.”
“I can look in on him.” Wylan was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, already decided. The flatness went deeper than his expression. “His requirements are modest. Once was enough for the whole voyage.”
Laila’s gaze moved to him and held.
“You’re still pale.”
“I’m fine.” Wylan produced a small vial from his coat, uncorked it and drank it without ceremony. “Blood regeneration can be achieved with the right reagents.” He looked at her. “I’ve got this.”
“His incarceration would be easier to monitor,” Lambert said, “if we were not about to be on the other side of the nation. We might consider relocating him. We have the facilities.”
“You mean inquisitor cells,” Wylan said.
“I mean somewhere secure.”
“And since when is he a prisoner? You sought them out as allies, Lambert. That was your recommendation.”
“And they attacked us.” Lambert’s voice was even. “Which changes the calculus somewhat. Besides—you were the most sceptical of all of us only a few weeks ago.”
“Not Augustine. He’s different.”
Isabella looked at Guillaume, who was examining his coin. Navarro had found something interesting in the wall.
“Wylan.” Laila’s voice was low. “This is a dangerous dalliance.”
“I can synthesise blood faster than most people produce it naturally.” He looked at her. “We are, objectively, made for each other.”
“Wylie.” Isabella said it before she thought about it. “Maybe you’re a little too close to this one.”
“Just—” He stopped. “He didn’t attack anyone. Not once.”
A note of anger hung in the room. Guillaume let it sit for a moment.
“Let’s put aside the matter of Augustine for now,” he said. “The far greater priority is the egg. Where is it now?”
“Secured on the vessel,” Navarro said. “More tightly guarded than Augustine.”
Guillaume probed him: the route, the timeline, the state of the egg when they retrieved it. Navarro answered plainly, and slowly the account broadened: the Blood Pearl, the kraken, Lampetia, the escape back to Gallian waters. Guillaume listened without interrupting. When Navarro reached the limits of his direct knowledge, Guillaume turned to Lambert, who filled in what they had learned in Fairhaven: a figure whose blood, shed into the sea, had formed the pearl and been placed where Malothar’s creatures nested.
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“I can see I’ll need a full briefing on that,” Guillaume said. “If you would oblige me, Captain, later.” He turned his coin over once. “Naturally, I had expected the Black Corsair. And considerably fewer complications or guests. However, it does beg the question.”
The de Vaillant family regarded him quizzically.
“What was Lampetia after,” Guillaume said, “if the egg wasn’t the objective? Based on your account, she went for the pearl instead.”
“We are not certain,” Navarro said. “What we know is that it had been placed in the kraken’s nest alongside the egg—presumably by Lampetia, some time before we arrived. Long before, I would wager. We didn’t know what it was at the time.” He looked at Lambert.
“Then who is she?” Guillaume asked. “Another vampire?”
“A vampire, yes.” Lambert’s voice was even. “We think she may have been a Titan once, though we’re not certain. What we know is that she’s considerably older and more powerful than Seraphina, and that she is connected to this family.” He paused. “She appears to be my biological mother.”
Guillaume stopped. He looked at Lambert. A proper look, top to bottom. And then said, evenly: “I really did marry into the strangest family imaginable.”
Guillaume reached for the coin.
Isabella looked at Lambert. His voice had been level through all of it: the Titan, the connection, the biological mother, delivered to a near-stranger as though working through an inventory. She had been in the chapel at Fairhaven. She had seen his face when the carving resolved into something he recognised. He was not working through an inventory. He was just very good at this by now.
Lambert glanced at Wylan. “The working theory is that the pearl is meant for one of Lampetia’s own designs. Its creation predates the Church, perhaps. Certainly R?zvan’s ambitions for ascension.”
“And she’s connected to R?zvan?” Guillaume asked.
“We believe so,” Lambert said. “He seems to be an echo of Valère, a dark copy, though we’re not fully clear on the mechanism. She serves his interests, or works alongside them. In spite of potentially being considerably older.”
Guillaume was quiet. “She’s doing something separate from the Eclipse, then. Or alongside it. Something that doesn’t touch R?zvan’s ritual but matters enough to go into the Trench for. That’s a significant gap.” He paused. “You said you saw her standing on the kraken during the fight. Did you see her holding the pearl?”
Lambert, Laila, and Wylan exchanged a look.
“I had a clear line of sight on her,” Lambert said. “And no—she definitely did not.”
“Then it seems to me,” Guillaume said, “that the pearl was not the objective. The kraken was.”
“She used the pearl on the kraken,” Wylan said. “That’s what it was for. To turn something that size undead and bloodthirsty.”
“No doubt Malothar would be pleased to see something that fearsome roaming the deep,” Lambert said. He looked at Guillaume. “I would advise you to send word to your ships, and any that would listen to you, to stay clear of those waters. Until the matter of the kraken and whatever is happening in Pharelle is resolved. I have to imagine it and Lampetia are making their way towards the Gallian coastline.”
“A problem,” Guillaume said. “But not today’s problem. The egg comes first.”
Guillaume set the coin flat. “Yes. Let us consider the matter of the egg, which is here in Gallia after the late Alexios put considerable effort and expense into putting it out to sea. What do you intend to do with it now that you have it back?”
“Take it home to Pharelle,” Laila said. “Hold it against Aeloria. Get her to back off.”
“And you intend to do that tomorrow? How will you secure it in the meantime?”
“The family estate will—”
“Yes. The family estate.” Guillaume’s voice was mild. “Which endured an invasion by dragon cultists a few weeks ago.”
“We can put it in the Dungeon,” Wylan said. “It’s safe there.”
“I would question the wisdom of anything kept in the Dungeon being safe.” He looked at Wylan with the patience of someone who has inspected the Dungeon. “No. I would propose another option.” He turned his chair toward the window. “I have a vault in the cavern below. Well-hidden, well-reinforced, built for sensitive items. And there is the question of proximity. The moment you return to Pharelle you bring it closer to the Auvernge Mountains—closer to her range. Her ability to sense it seems variable, but I’m certain distance is relevant.”
“You would have us leave it here?” Isabella said. “In Havralis. With you.”
“The portal connects here to Pharelle. If you need the egg, it is less than a day’s reach. But it stays as far from Aeloria as we can keep it.”
Lambert had been quiet through this. “And why should I trust you, Monsieur Beaumont? I haven’t forgotten your involvement with the egg in the first place.”
Guillaume looked at him. “Because the plan to keep it at sea has failed.”
A beat.
“Say that again,” Lambert said.
“Which part? I’ve said a good deal of things.”
“The plan. To keep it at sea. This was your plan?” His voice was very even. “You knew where it was the whole time.”
“Not my plan. Esteban’s and Alexios’. I saw the outside of it, never the destination.”
Laila stood.
She crossed the room and struck Guillaume across the face.
Isabella went still. Guillaume turned back slowly, his expression composed, his hand not moving toward his cheek.
“You utter bastard,” Laila said. “You knew something. Did it amuse you to watch me send Monsieur Chevalier across the continent looking for missing items? Our home was invaded. The d’Amboise house has burned. We have had legal threats and political threats and people trying to kill us, and you are my brother-in-law.” Her voice had not risen. “What else haven’t you told us?”
Guillaume was quiet for a moment. “Madame la Duchesse,” he said, “the amount I haven’t told you would keep your modest civilian spy network busy for years.” He looked at her steadily. “But you are standing in my office, and you are my guests. I will turn the other cheek, which you so kindly tried to turn on my behalf. I will not be disrespected again in my home.”
“You withheld something that might have given us leverage against Aeloria and her loyalists.”
“And what would you have done with it?” His voice was still quiet. “I suspect no better than what you did with the other gifts you extracted from the Dungeon. By my reckoning you have cultivated mutually exclusive alliances between two dangerous opponents, hoping to play them off against each other.”
“And we have managed rather well as a result.”
“Have you?” He glanced at the window, at the grey winter sky. “Pharelle is a powder keg, Madame. And it is going to blow. The people are angry, and they are angry at the people in charge—at the people you have had a direct hand in putting there. So you might excuse me if I have kept a number of my secrets close, given what tends to happen to secrets when they fall into your hands.”
The silence that followed had edges she could feel from across the room.
Lambert said, with evident effort: “Guillaume. I don’t like you. I think you’re a con and a sneak. It genuinely pains me to say that you have reason right now.” He looked at the table. “I will consent to the egg being stored here. But I would like to inspect the vault before we go through the portal.”
The vault was in the cavern below.
Guillaume led them down: the de Vaillants, Navarro, and Divina. He knew every step in the dark, and at the base of the spiral the cavern opened around them again: the black water, the Nautilus still against the quay, the ceiling lost in shadow above.
The wall at the far end looked like rock. Guillaume found the seam and the door swung inward: heavy, iron-banded, groaning with the complaint of something that took its job seriously.
The chamber within was cool and dry and smelled of old stone, and large enough.
“Here,” Guillaume said. That was the extent of the commentary.
Lambert walked the perimeter. He pressed a palm to the stone, tested the hinge, checked the depth of the door against the frame. Isabella watched him from the entrance alongside Guillaume, who had his hands in his pockets and said nothing.
Lambert stepped back. “It’ll do.” He turned slowly, looking at the ceiling, the walls, the door frame again. “It needs another layer. This alone won’t hold indefinitely against someone who knows what they’re looking for. We could send some of our household.”
Guillaume’s expression moved slightly. “I’m not certain I want strangers standing in my vault indefinitely.”
“What if they weren’t people?” Wylan said. He had straightened slightly. “The Triplets don’t breathe. They can’t be bribed. They have no opinion about what’s in the vault and no way to form one. Put them inside with the egg—whoever gets past the door still has to go through them.”
Divina looked up from the case she was latching. “Are we sure it’s safe?”
“Of course,” Guillaume said. “That’s why they call it a safe.”
“I will want them back,” Wylan said, after a moment. A studied afterthought. “The Triplets. When this is resolved. I’m sure they’re charming company but they are precious to us.”
“I couldn’t possibly detain them a moment longer than necessary,” Guillaume said.
The vault door groaned closed. The sound died in the cavern and the silence came back.
? The aristocracy had developed an extensive vocabulary for things kept out of sight: in trust, in safekeeping, held in confidence. The vault was simpler. It simply held, and did not speak.
“Fine,” Laila said. “The egg stays here.” She looked at Wylan. “We take Augustine with us. He doesn’t know where the egg is, and he doesn’t know where we’re going.”
Wylan looked at his mother. He held it for a moment, then let it go. He nodded once, carefully.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Those are more than equitable terms,” Guillaume said.
“Then let’s go and collect this man who seems to have caught my son’s attention.”
The family filed out. Isabella caught Laila by the arm and held her back.
Laila looked at her, puzzled.
“You know,” Isabella said, “if you had listened to me in the first place, we might have had the egg some time ago. And I wouldn’t have spent time in an underwater keep.” She held her mother’s gaze. “Maybe next time, listen to the hunter in your group about what to hunt.”
Laila looked at her. “Noted,” she said, and followed the others.
The gangway was still down. Navarro went ahead and called up to the deck.
No response.
He called again. Wylan listened to the silence that came back and felt the wrongness of it before he could name it. The Nautilus was never this quiet with crew aboard.
“We’re coming aboard,” Navarro said, to the dark above the hull. “Right now.”
They came up the gangway and what met them below answered the question: the crew that had remained behind, every one of them, slumped at their stations. Wylan was moving before anyone spoke, pressing two fingers to the nearest neck. Then another. Then a third.
“Alive,” he said. “All of them. Unconscious.”
“The egg,” Navarro said.
They moved to the bridge. The egg was still there, strapped to its seat.
“The prisoner,” Navarro said.
Wylan already knew. He pulled the smelling salts from his coat and crouched beside Mira, held them under her nose.
She came back slowly, blinking, looking at the ceiling, confirming it was still there. He waited until her gaze connected to his.
“What happened?”
“I was on the egg,” Mira said. “Grimshaw had Augustine. There was smoke—coming from the hall, filling it—and then.” She stopped. Her hands moved, trying to find the shape of it. “Something at the edge. And then my eyes went strange. Like—” She looked at him. “Like trying to see through deep water. And then nothing.” A pause. “I don't know. I don't know.”
Wylan stood and walked to the locker. Grimshaw was slumped against the door. He moved him aside and flung it open.
A broken chair. Several restraints. The grille on the far wall pushed out from inside, the gap barely the width of a hand.
On the floor, folded once, his name on the outside.
He picked it up.
Thanks for the memories. See you in Pharelle.