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She took it from his fingers, then brought out a jeweler’s loupe and began inspecting it.
“You . . . carry one of those in your pocket?” Lopen asked.
“Doesn’t everyone?” she said absently. “Hmm. I can’t be certain, as I’m no expert. But I think . . . Lopen, I think this is a fake. Quartz, not a diamond.”
He frowned, taking it back. Quartz couldn’t hold Stormlight, and it could be made by a Soulcaster. “You think . . . they might all be fakes?”
“It’s possible.”
Lopen gave a mighty sigh. “And thus, my great fortune evaporates like a man’s beauty upon the weathering shores of time. Like how that one time I, sure, almost had a chasmfiend pet that would—”
“Yes, you’ve told me,” Rushu said. “Six times.”
“I have a new joke though,” Lopen said. “For the end of the story. I’m going to say, ‘And that is why I let it eat my arm.’ Funny, yes? Well, it will be. Eventually.” He tossed the fake gemheart up in the air and caught it again. “So . . . why make these? Why set this place up to appear so rich?”
“I’m wondering the same thing,” Rushu said.
“They wanted to wow us, maybe?” Lopen said. “Perhaps they thought we’d be so distracted by the riches that we’d be stunned and confused. They did not know that I am accustomed to such incredible sights, for I experience something even more impressive each morning after I awake.”
“Is that so?”
“When I look in the mirror.”
“And you wonder why you’re still single.”
“Oh, I don’t wonder,” he said. “I’m fully aware that so much of me is difficult for any one woman to handle. My majesty confuses them. It’s the only explanation for why they often run away.” He gave her a grin.
Surprisingly, she grinned back. Usually people threw things at him when he said lines like that.
She led him the rest of the way to the raised section of the city, which did kind of look like an Oathgate platform. She pointed to a structure in the near distance that looked like it might have been a palace.
“If this is like Kholinar,” she said, “then . . .”
They turned and walked to a solitary structure—one of the few that still had a roof—near the center of the raised platform. Inside, they found what they’d been searching for. Kind of.
This had obviously once been an Oathgate chamber. It had the remnants of the same mural on the floor as the ones in other cities, but the mechanism had broken or decayed. There was no place to put a Shardblade, no way to rotate it. The structure had been destroyed by the elements. All that remained was dust and corroded bits of metal.
Lopen frowned, picking up some of these and feeling them with his thumb. He glanced at Rushu, who stood with her hands on her hips, her forehead wrinkled in thought. Something about this place felt wrong. Like it . . . like it had lodged in his throat as he tried to swallow it. And he couldn’t get it down. He had to cough it back up instead.
“This is fake too, isn’t it?” he said.
“What makes you say that?” Rushu asked.
“Well, the Oathgate on the Shattered Plains sat there, sure, for thousands of years—and it still worked when we found it. This place is better preserved. But here, the Oathgate mechanism has disintegrated?”
“I agree,” she said. “I might have bought it, but those gemstones . . . And then finding this next to the palace, like in Kholinar? It’s too obvious.”
“So where’s the real one?” Lopen asked.
“Go fetch the sailors,” she said. “See if they can locate a set of stairs. Or a trapdoor. Or anything in this rubble that would let us go down.”
That seemed strange to Lopen. People didn’t often build down, since basements tended to fill with water. Still, Rushu was a smart one, so he shouldered his spear and walked out to do as she asked. He gathered the sailors and had them, in pairs, start searching for steps.
He couldn’t banish that feeling of wrongness as they did so, and he kept seeing things at the corners of his eyes. Storm him, but this place had him jumping at shadows.
But Rushu was right. It didn’t take too long before they found a stairwell hidden by some debris in one of the least impressive buildings on the outskirts of the central plaza, not particularly close to the palace at all.
“It’s probably a stormcellar,” Lopen said, following Rushu down and holding a gemstone for light.
“Probably,” she agreed.
“Or . . .” he said as they reached the bottom, “it’s just a dead end.” Indeed, the stairwell ended abruptly at a stone wall.
Rushu took a small pouch off her belt, one that clinked as she moved it.
“Why did you want us to find steps anyway?” Lopen asked.
“It’s not uncommon for ancient cities to be buried over time,” she said. “Crem builds up. While modern cities keep chipping at it to prevent being swallowed, many older towns were built on top of the submerged ruins of ancient ones. It’s not uncommon to discover an architectural site when digging a mine, for example.”
“All right . . .” Lopen said. “So . . .”
“So I have double the reason to believe that city above is fake,” she said. “The real Akinah probably sank into the crem years ago.” She held out her hand—which glowed suddenly with a fierce light. The ardent wore gemstones on it, connected with silver chains.
“Storms!” he said. “A Soulcaster?”
“Yes,” she said. “Let me see if I can remember how to use one of these. . . .”
“You know how?”
“Of course,” she said. “The Soulcasting ardents use them all the time. I went through a phase when I was very keen on joining them, until I discovered how boring their work was. Anyway, plug your ears and hold your breath.”
“Why—”
He cut off as smoke filled the stairwell, making his ears scream with sudden pressure, as if he’d dived deep beneath the ocean. He shouted, then coughed. Then drew in some Stormlight.
Ahead of him, the stone wall had vanished. Rushu was wiping the soot from her face with a rag and grinning.
“You’re crazy,” he told her.
“Well, I suspected that if an Oathgate was here in Akinah, we’d have to cut through stone to get to it. I didn’t anticipate this one being underground—more that it would be covered over like on the Shattered Plains. Regardless, I demanded that Navani send me with either a Shardblade or a Soulcaster to get through. Alas, she picked the less exciting option. I do like being right though. It makes my stomach flutter.”
Lopen stepped up beside her, holding out his gemstone to reveal what she’d opened up. An underground cavern, somewhat shallow—maybe twelve feet high—and expansively wide. Like . . . a plateau.
“Storms,” Lopen said. “The Oathgate is down here.”
“It must have taken extraordinary effort to hide it,” Rushu said. “Whoever did this could have simply buried it, but they wanted to leave it functional. So they built a room around it, then let the crem pile up over the years.”
“But why?” Lopen asked, stepping into the place, squinting. His light barely revealed the control building at the center. Yes, this really was an Oathgate. “Why hide it, then go to all that trouble to construct fake buildings?”
