I fastened my arms around Vale’s lean waist and settled my cheek against his back, inhaling deeply and willing the beast to run faster toward Cherie. Back in the caravan, I had ached for a goal, an adventure, for something to care about. My wish had definitely been answered but not in the way I had hoped. The adventure wasn’t important anymore, not until I got my best friend back.
“Aren’t you afraid I’m going to rip you to shreds?” I asked, trying to cover the fact that I’d all but nuzzled the hard muscles of his back through the worn black shirt.
“I’m half Abyssinian. My blood would drive you mad and kill you,” he shouted into the wind. “But please, bébé, keep trying.”
I snuggled against his back as the bludmare thundered toward Paris, my cheek nestled up to his ribs, hoping he couldn’t feel my tears soaking into his shirt. I might have shown him my brave face before, but inside, I was falling apart. Cherie had trusted me, and I had brought her nothing but disaster. I let out a racking sob, and Vale tensed in the cage of my arms, muscles taut as the horse leaped and skidded across the road. Finally, he exhaled in a sigh I felt more than heard, and his hand reached down to squeeze mine where it held on to him for dear life.
He didn’t let go.
5
We didn’t talk much, which I appreciated. Staying on the horse’s wildly undulating rump was a struggle, even with my performance-honed muscles. The cacophony of hoofbeats made conversation almost impossible, and every time I opened my mouth, I got a face full of shirt scented with woodsmoke and herbs, which wasn’t so bad but definitely distracted me from my strategizing.
“Not much longer.” His words thrummed against my chest before the wind snatched them away from my ears. “Are you perhaps scared of dark, dangerous places full of bones?”
“Not if Cherie is waiting on the other side.”
Thunder vibrated the clouds, and the mare tossed her head and screamed a dare at the sky. It was darker over Paris, and a bolt of blue-white lightning arced from the gray thunderheads to the Tower and briefly lit the stark black skeleton of iron beams like a neon sign. A fat raindrop plunked on my cheek, and I burrowed further against Vale’s back, glad for my hat’s wide brim and annoyed with all the layers of my Pinky costume, which would soon be soaked and weighing me down when I wished to be fast and unencumbered.
The road turned from hard-packed dirt to a slick slurry that slid beneath the mare’s hooves. When Vale turned her off the road and into the waist-high grass, I was glad to be on more solid ground. The wall was finally in view, but we were galloping swiftly away from the grand iron gates. Vale angled the mare toward a dark, boggy area surrounded by cattails. An enormous pipe jutted from the earth like a fallen Tower of Pisa, broken and overgrown with moss and filth. I smelled it then—deep, old death soaking up through the ground. Even closer, jagged tombstones poked up from the sludge like black pegs of rotten teeth. No one but the richest families in Sang buried bodies anymore, thanks to the lack of land within the cities and the possibility of a funeral party being eaten by a troop of bludsquirrels. Cremation and pretty urns were the fashion. Not surprisingly, the graveyard was long abandoned, untended, and falling back into the earth.
So this was the door to the famous catacombs, the portal into the decaying underbelly of Franchia’s greatest city. The stories were true.
“Are you sure this is the path you wish to follow?” Vale asked, slowing the horse to a trot.
My teeth clacked as I jounced behind him, wrapping my aching thighs more tightly around the mare’s barrel belly and against the backs of his legs. I dashed away old tears and ran fingers under my eyes, hoping to clean up the kohl I’d smeared all over his back.
“Looks like fun. I’ve been needing a vacation.” In my mind, it sounded jaunty and brave, but it came out with a hitch that I couldn’t hold in. Poor Cherie. She had to be terrified, if she was in there. She hated being dirty.
The bludmare picked her way through bunches of cattails, sometimes plunging into a boggy bit as we aimed for the yawning mouth of the pipe.
“Oddly enough, it’s not so bad once you’re inside. The rain and sewage collect and pool out here over the graves, but underground it’s channeled through rock. The threat of horror keeps most people out, though. Not to mention the blud creatures. Just remember not to touch any of the bones. They’re cursed.”
“You actually believe that?”
He chuckled. “Let us consider. Touch moldy bones and see if I’m cursed forever, or keep my hands to myself? Not a difficult decision.”