PROLOGUE
A Cryptling
Before the storm cloud
Lena swept the last of the dust into her sack and stood up tall, wiping a grimy hand across her forehead. Her brass lantern flickered across the crypt’s rough-hewn walls as Hunter slunk past, a twitching rat hanging from his jaws. He dropped it and purred at her, before savaging the poor creature’s torso. The largest mouser prowling the crypts, Hunter was vicious, ginger and apparently immortal. For the hundredth time, Lena wondered why he’d picked her bed in which to sleep, leaving dubious gifts of rodents and birds at its foot.
Lena tied the dust sack shut and hoisted it over her shoulder, casting one last look at the empty, fresh-polished sarcophagus where the body would be laid in the morning for its last rites, the Descent. Her stomach twisted and she swallowed hard as bile rose in her throat. Earlier in the afternoon, she’d been allowed to watch while Mortician Vigo prepared the body in one of the special rooms beneath the gardens. She had managed – but only by digging her nails hard into her palms – to stop herself from fainting.
The dead man’s Ancestors lay all around, stretching into darkness. Now, attuned to the scent of the morticians’ special preserving ointments, Lena picked out sharp herbal smells beneath the ever-present musk of her world. The tomb itself was relatively small, and while noble families had the luxury of individual sarcophagi, the stonemason’s family – like most others – had cut long body-shaped niches into the walls, one over another, or shared two bodies to a resting place. Husband with wife. Sister with brother. Baby with mother.
Each body’s empty eye sockets had been sewn open, their eyes replaced with smooth rocks painted as eyes, or sometimes glittering gemstones. Mortician Vigo said that the Ancestors were sleeping, but Lena didn’t think so. They were staring at the ceiling, at the floors of the living world above. Waiting.
Waiting for what?
A chill ran down her spine. She touched her forehead, lips and heart in the old sign of reverence. When she’d been very little, the Ancestors had frightened her – she’d had nightmares about the staring stone eyes, about the way the older corpses’ flesh and skin were shrunken and leathery, but their hair as thick and lustrous as the day they died. How, from certain angles, even the oldest of the Ancestors looked like living people lying in the dark. But now she was eleven, almost a grown-up, and she wasn’t afraid of anything.
Hunter mewed and Lena nearly jumped out of her skin. I’m not afraid of anything, she reminded herself firmly, calming her racing heart.
‘All right – let’s go,’ she whispered to the cat, after a deep breath. ‘It’s a long walk back.’
She tried not to hurry as she started down the passages under the upper town, leading to the network of small cellars beneath the castle that the cryptlings called home. You weren’t meant to hurry – it wasn’t respectful, Mortician Vigo said. Hunter weaved through her legs, in and out of the lantern light, very nearly tripping her up.
For a time, everything was quiet and ordinary, the only sounds the occasional scuttle of a rat, or the snap of one of the mousetraps Lena had set out on her way down – the cryptlings and the cats were supposed to keep the vermin at bay. But as she drew further through the cobwebbed passages, she started to hear something strange … a voice. It grew louder, gradually: a low, rhythmic murmur, drifting from somewhere up ahead.
Lena frowned and stopped. Who else might be down here in the dead of night? As far as she knew, the stonemason’s was the only funeral tomorrow, and she was the only cryptling on duty. No one else was allowed down here.
Suddenly she was frightened. She flicked off her lantern and stood in the dark for a few moments. She didn’t like the thought of being seen – didn’t like the way people’s eyes settled on her, on the black mark on her cheek. She felt Hunter slide past her legs, hurrying ahead impatiently, as she stood listening in the quiet. The voice carried on – distant and musical. A sad song, perhaps … or a poem. But Lena couldn’t make out the words. She wondered if they were in another language.
She continued down the familiar passages in darkness, trailing her fingers along the wall, her footsteps silent in the padded canvas slippers they had to wear in the crypts. The voice grew closer, louder as she neared the passages she knew were directly beneath the castle itself, where the noble Ancestors and their households were interred. But she saw nothing – and after a time, the voice stopped.
Her heart beat faster. Somehow the silence and darkness were more unnerving now that she knew someone, somewhere, was sharing them with her. And that’s when she saw it: the flicker of light. She clutched tightly to the iron handle of her lantern and to her dust sack, half-convincing herself to run. Cold sweat broke out across the back of her neck.
At first, she wondered if it was a trick of her eyes in the dark – she’d known it to happen before, green-purple shapes blooming like strange flowers, disappearing and re-forming at a blink. But this was real, she saw, as it grew closer – a clumsy, winding speck of light, fluttering on and off, bright then dim. A … butterfly?
She watched, her heart hammering. She’d never felt so terribly alert, every sense sharp, nearly painful.
The creature was made of metal – filigree wings, a smooth brass body. It landed on the edge of a sarcophagus nearby, its wings gently rising and falling, rising and falling, like the breath of a tiny animal.
It was beautiful.
Lena set down her things and stepped closer. The light emanating from the creature’s body was flickering, like a sputtering candle. She reached out to touch it … but hesitated, fingers outstretched.
All the rules Vigo had ever told her ran through her mind at once, like a flock of startled birds. Don’t reveal your face above ground. Don’t touch anybody, especially not anybody who’s not a cryptling. Don’t touch the Ancestors, except as your duties demand. Don’t touch the grave goods. Don’t touch anything. To other people, Lena, you are dirty. Everything you touch is sullied.
And yet … she’d never seen anything so beautiful. Lena stopped thinking. She reached out and cupped the butterfly in her hands. She felt its delicate legs like feathers on her palms. It was incredibly light and made a faint whirring sound like a watch as its wings fluttered weakly.
Suddenly its little light extinguished and the crypt was plunged into darkness. Lena shivered. The creature was silent and still, the slight warmth quickly fading from its body, as if it had never been.
Is it broken?
She waited a few moments more, her heart in her mouth. Somewhere, she could hear hurried footsteps, a voice calling – but if they were searching for the butterfly, they were moving in the wrong direction, some way off to her left. Lena opened her palms and ran her fingers along the butterfly’s body. Its wings were fully outstretched, and she liked the feel of the filigree patterns against her fingertips. It was strangely soothing.
But the butterfly didn’t belong to her. She should drop it here and go home.
Even though her mind had decided, her body didn’t move. She shouldn’t take it, should she? She couldn’t. If anyone found out she had removed anything from the crypts, she’d be in trouble. Even if she hadn’t found it on a body, it was still grave goods. Who would believe her when she said it had been flying towards her, as if it had chosen her, as if it had wanted her to take it?