“Whew! That’s a lot nicer,” said Kemp, fanning himself with his shirt. “What kind of place is this, though? Doesn’t look like the rest of the house.”

“It’s not. Part of the house, I mean.” Nikha glanced about. The corridor was built of rather rough stone, its color a forbidding dark gray. Threadbare rugs covered the floor, age-darkened tapestries the walls. The only light came from torches sitting in high pewter sconces. “There used to be a castle here, though. Long before the house was. My ancestor Vanya the Ironheart built it.”

“A castle?” He sounded impressed. “What happened to it?”

Nikha thought about it, trying to remember. “Maghtal steppemen razed it, I think. Matron Fulgin says they did a lot of that back then.”

“Mmm.” For a few seconds they walked in silence. “Wait, so you think we’re in that castle? Even though it got burned down centuries ago?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know what to think. It would kind of make sense, though. Oh, look!” An old banner hung on one wall, pocked with holes. Nikha stopped and pointed up at it. “Bendy argent and murrey, a mountain leopard rampant proper.”

“…What?”

“The von Kranssov family arms.” She sighed. “I know it’s ridiculous, but that’s how you’re supposed to describe it. All it means is that the flag’s a mountain leopard over maroon and silver stripes.”

“Why not just say that, then?” he asked skeptically.

“I don’t know, it’s some Cymdwish tradition. Stupid just like almost everything else from there. But that’s not the important part! If my family banner’s here than we must be in the Ironheart’s castle! Somehow.” She squinted up at the flag, one hand on her chin. “Actually, I’m not sure if that part’s important either. It’s not like it matters.”

“So we’re in a castle that hasn’t existed for hundreds of years…” He fell silent, seemingly deep in thought. They kept going.

Though they saw no sign of man or beast, the castle halls were far from quiet. She heard water sluicing behind the walls, a stony grinding noise that came and went, something like rattling chains. The source of these sounds was never evident, and it was putting her on edge. Once they passed through a high hall with a pointed-arch ceiling, lit by a great oak-and-iron chandelier. The room was empty but for a metal grate set in the floor, ten feet to a side. Nothing but blackness could be seen beneath it. As they walked past a great clanging suddenly issued from the hole in the floor, making Nikha jump what seemed to be halfway to the ceiling. She managed not to squeak this time, though Kemp still smirked at her a little.

Kemp occasionally checked the pathfinder, and it kept them in the windowless castle halls. It was chilly, sometimes damp, and the walls were often patched with niter. Where the tapestries were not too old and moth-eaten, their content was disturbing- though such old art often was, so Nikha had no idea if they’d been changed like the paintings. The images woven into them were done in the slightly crude, almost childish Old Empire style, which made them antiques indeed. The naive art almost made the pictures more unsettling.

There, a crowd pierced by steppemen’s arrows. Here, a woman devoured by wolves as she shielded an infant with her body. There, a row of naked people collared with black iron, flesh searing in the Blazes as they stoked the fires of Eschaton. One she was almost certain didn’t belong. It was a depiction of a cavalry charge, but the riders were multi-armed, inhumanly tall and thin. They rode not horses, but blackish blobs studded with eyes and teeth. Their lances were a golden color, multi-pronged tips limned in wan fire, and in the sky above them hung a great closed eye weeping black.

“I don’t know how you stand to look at these things,” said Kemp with a shudder.

“They’re scary, but I’m curious.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll find something useful.”

“Have you?”

“No. I mean, not yet.”

He shook his head as he checked the path once more. “That’s odd…It’s pointing right at your awful wall-hanging.” He gave it a poke and met no resistance.

Nikha pulled the edge aside. “A secret passage!” It had a low, arched ceiling and was and utterly lightless. She had to get out the lantern to proceed, shaking it to get the phlogiston flowing. After a short trip in the dark it seemed to end at a wooden wall. “Hmm…” She moved the light around, looking for a knob or latch.

“Here!” said Kemp from where he crouched near the door’s base. He’d found a small lever of wrought iron.

“Go ahead,” Nikha told him. He gave it a yank, and the wooden blockage swung open with a precise click. Light streamed into the tunnel. They stepped through to find themselves in a modern, well-lit sitting room. Nikha glared about, then sighed. “I’m not even going to ask.”

The room was clean and well-appointed, with fancy cabinets and display cases along the walls and overstuffed chairs in the middle. The door they’d emerged from was cleverly concealed as part of the paneled wainscoting. The low table in the center was bare except for a brass orrery. This she eyed with especial suspicion; it seemed to contain far too many planets.

Kemp was already by the door. “Only one way out, huh?”

“Unless there’s more hidden doors,” Nikha muttered. She followed him out into a perfectly undisturbed hallway. “I know where we are!” she exclaimed. “That’s King Bignose!” She pointed across the hall to a portrait of of a crowned and beruffed man who indeed possessed a very impressive proboscis.

“Not his real name, I’d think.”

“Very astute. Now, this means that the main kitchen is off to the left, and the fencing hall to the right. Which way?”

“One second.” Nikha watched over his shoulder as he worked the pathfinder. The vessel of golden phlogiston grew ever emptier.

“Right.” Kemp pointed. “Do you know how to fence? It’s sword-fighting, right?”

She shook her head. “No. It seems kind of interesting, but swords are on the way out, I think.” She patted the stock of her rifle where it hung from its sling.

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“Mm. I guess so.” The halls they proceeded down now were completely, almost aggressively normal. Not a wrinkle in the carpets, not a speck of dust on the picture frames and small chests of drawers lining the walls.

“I feel like I’m getting the place dirty just being here,” Kemp grumbled.

“It’s not like I’m any cleaner.” Nikha glanced down at herself. She was variously spotted in mud, blood, algae, tree sap, steppe dirt, soot, and who knew what else. Her boots left a blackish trail across the carpet. The smoky-sulfur smell of burnt gunpowder clung to her, and she was glad of it for it covered less pleasant odors. Kemp was perhaps slightly cleaner after his dip in the alligator pond, but not by much. “I should think I’ll be burning these clothes once we’re done.”

“I wouldn’t go that far. You could definitely salvage those with enough elbow grease.” Nikha raised an eyebrow. “I help my ma with the washing, sometimes. She can bring a shirt back from the dead, seems like. Showed me some tricks.”

She looked ahead, a small frown on her face. She hadn’t the faintest idea how to do laundry. It was a reminder that while she knew more about some things than Kemp, she definitely didn’t know more about everything.

The pair marched down bends, through intersections, up a short flight of stairs. Another right turn revealed a stout oaken door blocking their path. “Get your gun ready,” Nikha cautioned. “I’ll open it.” After he drew, she grabbed the doorknob and turned-or tried to. Frowning, she wiggled the knob back and forth, yanked at it a few times. “It’s locked!”

“What? Let me just…” Kemp swapped his pistol for the pathfinder and checked. “Yeah, this is the spot. Hmm…”

“I’ll just shoot out the lock.” She shrugged the rifle into her hands, checking the load. More than an ounce of hard-cast lead alloy, backed by a full four drams of slow-burning target powder. It ought to be more than enough to destroy the lock-

“Wait!” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know if…what if there is something nasty in there or something, and shooting it just makes it angry? Or wakes it up? We can look for a way around.”

She narrowed her eyes at the door, but lowered her gun. “I suppose we won’t risk it if we don’t have to.”

They turned around and went back to the last intersection. “This way, maybe?” said Kemp as he pointed left.

Nikha shrugged. “Why not?” It wasn’t that easy. The path doglegged this way and that, coiling around itself. They passed rough-hewn statues of black stone that she didn’t recognize, faceless figures twisted into poses of agony and ecstasy, supplication and fear. Once it led them into a small, round room with a high-domed ceiling, one that Nikha also hadn’t seen before. A single pillar of reddish light streamed down from a tiny skylight at its apex, illuminating a spot on the floor. It was a parquet of bleached maple and ebony, its design forming geometric patterns and runes neither of them recognized. On the walls hung banners, black cloth embroidered with magic stave-signs in thread-of-gold.

“Do you know any of those staves, Kemp?” Nikha asked. He’d recognized the one they’d seen in the basement earlier. She herself had no idea- Matron Fulgin disdained such things as peasantish superstition.

He looked this way and that, giving the banners a once-over. “Those two almost look like wards,” he said. “Meant to keep evil spirits out- except they’re not quite right. Like they were drawn upside-down in a mirror. Other than that…only that one.” He went over to the banner on the left, slightly larger than the others. The diagram upon it was complex, with jagged, branching arms reaching upward and tight circles of runes about its center. “That’s one Ma told me never to use.”

“Whyever not?”

“Sorcerer’s mark. Calls spirits and binds them so you can make a deal- and it’s always a better one for the spirit, no matter how well you think you did. She only even told me about it ‘cause I saw it in her grimoire.”

At any other time she might have laughed at him, but after all she’d seen…She’d always assumed that witchcraft and sorcery were just myths, things the priests hollered about to scare people into obedience. War summoners were patently real, of course, but that was a different, almost scientific phenomenon.

They kept walking, avoiding the circle or red light on the floor by unspoken agreement. “A grimoire? Like a spellbook?” Nikha kept her voice more curious than scandalized. The heroes in her fantasy tales were always running afoul of magicians and their books. Erzabet the Red Countess was a mage herself, though she used her powers for good.

Kemp’s answer was wary. “My ma’s not a witch, if that’s what you’re going to ask. It’s just what she calls her book. It’s got hex signs like these, recipes for medicine and other potions, things like that.”

“Did she write it herself?”

“Some of it. Her mother wrote some, and her mother before that, and on and on. I think some men wrote in there too, though just a few. The oldest pages you can’t hardly read the language is so different.”

“It sounds very impressive.” She let out a little sigh. For a short while the only sound was that of shoes padding across fine carpet. “I wish I had something like that.” The words were quiet, spoken almost to herself.”

“Like- oh.” He cut himself off as they rounded a corner. “Something of…of your mother’s, you mean.”

Nikha very nearly snapped at him, lashed out to stop the conversation there. He meant well, though, and doing that would only hurt them both. “She’s been sick since I was born. A coma, it’s called. She sleeps and never wakes. I’ve never even talked to her.”

“That’s…is there anything to do about it?”

Hair bounced back and forth as she shook her head. “Papa’s tried everything. He’s had doctors, priests, so-called magicians…once a man who could supposedly heal the lame by spitting on them. Another time a psychometrist looked at her- she just went pale and left. Didn’t even take any money. He even let a man from the Hundred Kingdoms put phlogistic power through her head. Nothing worked. She’s still asleep, so long as nothing else has happened to her.”

Kemp’s eyes were downcast. “I’m, um…I’m-“

“I’m used to it. You don’t need to apologize.” She couldn’t help being blunt, but when she glanced over she saw the hurt in Kemp’s eyes. “I’m sorry for being rude. It’s not like any of it is your fault.”

“It’s fine. Imagine I’d act the same if it was one of my parents- wait a minute.” He stopped so short that Nikha almost bumped into him. “What in the world…Nikha, isn’t that the painting you saw before?”

She looked. It was indeed King Bignose in all his glory. “How in the- we didn’t turn around sometime, did we?”

“I never claimed to be an expert navigator, but I think I know how to walk in a straight line.”

Nikha hardly heard him. “No, that doesn’t make sense. We never went down any stairs,” she muttered to herself. “Maybe there’s two of the paintings?” She yanked open the door across from the portrait and found the same sitting room they’d come from. “Martyr’s bones, I hate this!” she snarled, eyes raised to the ceiling. “It’s not supposed to work this way!”

“You know,” said Kemp conversationally, “My da always says that yelling at the sky gets you nothing but hoarse.”

She rounded on him, eyes flashing. “Why in the world would I want a- oh. Like your voice.” She blinked. “I suppose it does make me seem a madwoman.” Her tone was calmer, now.

“You said it, not me.”

“Rude.” She shook her head. “Well? Should we just head back to where we were?”

“We can try a different route.” He shrugged. “Not that I think it matters. Maybe we ought to look for a key.”

“I’ll keep an eye out.” They moved out once again, this time taking the first turn they could. After only a few minutes of zig-zagging halls they were again faced by the locked door. Nikha grit her teeth but said nothing as they turned around. They zagged and zigged back to the main hall- except that upon rounding the final corner, the locked door again stood in their path.

Kemp just stood there, almost amazed, while Nikha’s face grew stormy. “This demons-cursed thing is mocking us!” she hissed, squeezing the stock of her rifle. Stalking up to the offending portal, she gave it a vicious heel-kick. It didn’t even budge. After recovering from her stumble, she yanked her bayonet out and hacked at the doorframe near the lock. Kemp watched thoughtfully as she flailed at it, keeping a safe distance. Whatever wood it was made of barely chipped and quickly dulled her edge. She soon gave up, spitting a string of words that would have seen her condemned to her room without supper under normal circumstances. Kemp’s eyes widened at the tirade.

“Careful, Nikha! I think I smell my eyebrows scorching.”

The profanity cut off, but only because she’d raised her gun. “Stand back. I’m going to shoot the damned thing.” The hammer clicked back.

Kemp stood still a moment longer, hand on his chin. Then his eyes lit up. “Wait, Nikha!”

She lowered the hammer with a frustrated noise. “What is it now?”

“No need to get snippy,” he said levelly. “This’ll only take a moment. One last thing we haven’t tried.”

With a put-upon sigh, Nikha slung her gun and waved theatrically at the door. “Try away.” He padded up to the door, raised a fist- and gave it three firm knocks.

Nikha’s eyes nearly rolled backwards. “I do hope you’re joking, because that might be the stupidest-“

The lock clicked and the knob began to turn. Nikha’s jaw dropped. Kemp looked smug even as he scrambled backward, away from whatever was within.