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My focus drifted closer to the city beyond the walls surrounding the castle grounds. Fin was down there, likely locked away in his room at theDrunken Stag. And it just so happened that Fin had been raised by Jake, the only remaining Patron who still lived. The only person alive who had actuallyknownBecca. Better yet, she was hissister. Ifanyoneknew where to find the original copies of her prophecies, it would be him.
I turned away from the window, snatched my notebook off the desk, and strode across the study, making my way over to Garath, who still stood in front of the doors. “We need to go into the city come nightfall,” I told him. “To talk to Fin.”
Garath glanced past me, looking at Liam’s slumbering form.
“Not about that.” I held up the notebook, grasping it tightly in both hands. “I’ve found something, and I think it could changeeverything.”
15
Fin
It would take Callon and Lyra most of the day to find Stone, the keeper of secrets, in the Shadow District across the bay. But it was necessary if I was going to collect the favor he owed me.
I searched for Liam in the courtyard while I waited, but I failed to find him anywhere within the castle walls where I might be able to see him again. None of Del’s entourage was outside, and when I called upon my housecat and bird friends, there was no sign of them in her wing of the castle either.
Once again, I was left to stew alone in my room, unable to leave while my friends were sailing across the bay and Del was going about her duties.
Without knowing what was going on back home or what had come of Prince Alastor’s death, I stewed with only my worries to accompany me. It was impossible not to feel like I was locked in a jail cell, rotting away.
Eventually, I couldn’t stand it any longer. Sitting against the wall, I closed my eyes and sought out my ferret friend, accompanying Callon and Lyra on their journey in my stead. It took a moment to find the familiar tingle of his mind so far away, but within milliseconds, I could see the dark tunnels Callon and Lyra walked through in the bowels of the underground city.
I skittered to Lyra’s other shoulder, looking at Callon and then at her, so they knew I was there.
“Oh, good. I thought you were going to miss all the fun,” Callon muttered as his gaze darted around. He wasn’t a fan of the underbelly, neither of us were.
Lyra patted my head. “You’re so cute like this, Fin,” she said mockingly.
I scowled at her, though it probably looked like no more than a blink, making her smile.
They continued down the cement halls of what had once been part of Oakland, a city long gone and forgotten. Though I couldn’t be there in person, my ferret paws clung to Lyra’s shoulder as she and Callon headed deeper into the underground metropolis.
As they stepped into the junction where the old sewers met, the new city burst into view, a blaring light in a colorful maze of holograms, hovels, and ivy-lined alleyways that made up the bustling world of the Shadow District hidden in the old zoo. The jeering grew louder in the distance, and the scent of sin more pungent.
“Holy hell,” Lyra said, holding the back of her hand to her nose.
The cloyingly sweet stench of the latest synthetic drug to saturate the Seven Kingdoms, strix, hung in the air and clung to the cement walls like vines, hitting me like a punch to the face. I buried my ferret face in the collar of her vest. In animal form, I had an inkling of what Lyra’s hyper-senses detected daily, and I didn’t envy her for it.
“Don’t worry,” Callon told her. “You’ll get used to it.”
“Easy for you to say,” she grumbled, and they scanned the vendors lining the alleyways as we hurried through the crowded city.
People hailing from all kingdoms wandered the streets, some on stilts, hoping to make some extra coin, others without legs, driving electric bikes and holding out their hands for spare change.
Skinned rodents hung from bamboo poles, and the cooked meat glistened in the humming, flickering black-bulbed lighting that glowed throughout the merchant tents as we passed. Bizarre animals hissed from cages, and hats made with exotic feathers hung from posts and poles, pelts strung up and displayed for exorbitant amounts of coin alongside them. Vendors levitated their wares, and Elementals flashed their fire tricks, hoping to catch onlookers’ attention.
My eyes fixed on a woman in a kiosk, spinning cones of glowing purple sugar strands with the wave of her finger. It wasn’t a sugar rush that consumers would get but something far more pleasurable and intoxicating—strix. It was everywhere, glowing in one form or another and lingering like a storm cloud above the underground city.
Images of naked men and women were projected on some of the cement walls, advertising services found within. And there were smoke shops, gambling dens, fighting rings, Ability competitions, and animal racing.
But it wasn’t only a place of carnal lust and debauchery. People entered the Shadow District to escape. It was a place where people came to numb their lives away. Or to feel alive again. Because there was one thing the underground city offered that people couldn’t find anywhere else: freedom. Thieves, mercenaries, battle-broken soldiers, and entrepreneurs alike all had a place here in what was easily the richest district in the Corvo Kingdom. The royals just didn’t know it.
I eyed a man smoking a pipe against a brick wall, barely hidden by the shadows. Then scanned the people who looked as if they were barely skin and bones curled on the streets—far more and far worse off than I’d seen before.
“Are they smoking strix like it’s the new water or something?” Callon muttered. “I’ve never seen it this bad before.”
He was right; it was getting bad, but I tried to stay focused on the task instead of on these people’s plight.
We passed a food kiosk, and a man held out what looked like a fried alligator foot to Callon.
