Page 37 of Zenith Tower

We kept to the stretches of darkness between the lamps and followed the sound of the cart.

At each occupied room, one healer called the resident’s name before sliding a covered bowl through a low opening. The other marked the delivery sheet. A few voices answered. From the other rooms came only the scrape of bowls being pulled across stone.

Near the end of the corridor, the healer stopped at a door marked nineteen.

“Delphine Moreau.”

Silence.

He waited, then crouched and pushed the bowl through. “Still not speaking.”

His companion made a mark on the sheet. They moved on toward a descending passage at the far end.

I stared at the brass number after they had passed. Delphine had been one of the only people at Zenith Hall who was kind to me when I arrived. She had pushed bread across the table when she was barely eating herself, warned me about Cosima, and told me her name twice so I would remember it if she disappeared. The initials in the tunnel had proved she survived the west door. Door nineteen meant she was close enough to reach.

Caspian touched the back of my hand. “We found her.”

A door opened behind us.

A third healer stepped into the corridor carrying folded linen. He saw us before we could reach the shadow of the next lamp.

“You’re not permitted down here.”

He dropped the linen and pulled a cord beside the door. A bell clanged beyond the checkpoint.

The supply stewards turned at his voice. One reached for the keys at his belt. The other seized the cart and began pulling it back from the descending passage.

Caspian moved first. He caught the cart by its wooden rail and drove it sideways across the corridor. Bowls slid from the shelves and broke against the stone. The cart struck the wall between us and the stewards, blocking the narrow passage.

The man with the keys lunged across it. Caspian caught his arm. While they struggled over the cart, I tore the ring from the steward’s belt.

“Astra, go.”

The gate clanged open behind us. Guards were already coming through the checkpoint.

I ran for door nineteen.

The first key would not turn. Behind me, wood scraped across stone as the stewards dragged the cart away from the wall. Caspian drove it back into them.

“Astra, now.”

A long iron key slid into the lock. I turned it, threw the door inward, and pulled the keys through with me.

Caspian shouted as the door slammed between us. I locked it from the inside just as someone struck the other side.

The room was small and dim. A lamp burned behind a metal screen near the ceiling. The narrow bed, washstand, and chamber pot had been fixed to the floor. The ration bowl lay on its side beneath the hatch, broth spreading across the stone.

A woman had risen from the bed.

Confinement had pared her down until her shift hung loose at the shoulders. Her hair had been cut unevenly at her jaw, and she needed the wall to stay upright. I knew her anyway.

“Delphine.”

She stared at me, breathing hard. “Astra.”

She tried to cross the room. Her knees gave before she reached me, and I caught her beneath the arms. For an instant she went rigid. Then her hands closed in the back of my coat and she held on.

I had watched her walk to the basin with her fading Mark bared to the whole school. I had watched Quill call it a Dimming and Caswell put a hand on her shoulder. The west door had closed between us before I understood that no one intended to let her come back.