This Golden Flame Read online

  And immediately he does stop. I wonder if I made a mistake but when he glances down at my hand on his arm, his expression isn’t angry or insulted. It’s just confused. A confusion so raw it gives me a strange pang.

  “Please.” I force my voice to stay calmer. Part of me wants to ask him to take the bracelet off right now, but if he does, the Scriptmasters could very well be alerted. I’d lose any chance of finding my brother. I need to be smart about this. “When I was brought here, I was separated from my brother. The only place that can tell me where he was sent is the Hall of Records and it has a lock rune on its door. But if you could undo it, I could go inside. And then if you took off my bracelet, we could both get out of here. Matthias is the only family I have left.”

  I don’t see how those words could ever be enough, when staying on this island would be so dangerous for him, and I have so little to offer him for taking this chance. But as I speak, a new grief filters into Alix’s expression. There’s loss in that look. A loss I understand.

  I try again. “I know you don’t owe me anything—”

  “You woke me up,” he says quietly. “You gave me my tome back. I would still be asleep if not for you.” He looks down at his satchel, fingering its strap. “After I get you into the Hall of Records, you’ll help me leave this place?”

  “I will, I promise. I don’t want to be here any more than you do.”

  There’s another silence, so long I swear my chest is about to burst. Then Alix looks up at me, and despite the uncertainty still flickering in his eyes, he nods. “All right. I’ll do it.”

  5

  * * *

  ALIX

  Karis leads the way, avoiding the dirt paths and cutting across the scrubby fields, as I follow her shadowy form in the dark. I’m still not quite sure why I agreed to do this. Father always taught me to be cautious and stay hidden. If he were here, he’d want me to get off this island while I still could.

  Except...I lost him, the only person in this world who cared for me. If I can stop Karis from losing someone she cares about, perhaps that will ease the grief that sits like a stone in the center of my chest. I didn’t realize that emotions could feel this heavy.

  Karis gestures to me. We drop to the ground, crawling forward on our stomachs.

  “There it is,” she whispers.

  I look out at the cluster of buildings. Like everything else, the building has hints of the familiar, but it’s wrong: flourishes where I’m used to seeing smooth lines, and intricate carvings where I expect unadorned stone.

  There’s another automaton standing by the gate, inert like the other one. I look up at it, shadowy and indistinguishable in the dark.

  My father spent most of his days studying automatons. I remember him once telling me how he thought that automatons might not have always been used as weapons. He theorized that once they might have been used, and built, for good. I always wanted desperately to believe that, but I’m not sure I ever quite could. Seeing this faceless automaton now, I’m still not sure I believe it. What good could come of such a thing?

  “All right,” Karis says, “see that patrol there? They’re going to do a loop of the yard and then walk around the outside of the wall. That will be our chance to sneak in. Just follow me and if anyone gets close, look at the ground. Don’t let them see your eyes. No one will be expecting an automaton as small as you, so if they only see your clothes, we might still be able to get you away without them suspecting anything.”

  I nod, trying not to show how queasy I suddenly feel. Perhaps this wasn’t such a good idea. I’m not like this strange Scriptorium girl. I’m not used to running headfirst into danger.

  “There,” Karis says, “the guards have turned the corner. Go.”

  I follow her as she takes off toward the gates. We slip into the yard and over to the Hall, passing silently through the colonnade and into an atrium. I see the rune immediately, glowing in the dark in the back of the space. The bronze seal in the center of the doors is the size of my palm and has a complicated lock rune etched into it. The lines are so much sharper than mine.

  Karis looks over her shoulder and then at the door. “Well?”

  I step up to the seal and splay my fingers over its surface. As soon as I touch it, I hear the rune in the seal, the plucked strings of a harp, as if it’s the beginning of a well-known melody that I have to finish. I hum a few notes. It’s not that I need to hum to work on the Script, but I’ve always loved music, and right now it’s comforting, a thin strand connecting me to the world I knew before. A rune flares hot on my side and a line of light shoots through the metal circle, separating it. The door clicks open.

  Ornate bookshelves stand in sentinel-straight lines on the other side, the brass plates with neat print affixed to their shelves. Ledgers and scrolls and sheaves of paper tied with twine fill the shelves in neat order, suffusing the air with the thick scent of parchment. Windows set high in the roof slant light down to pale spots on the pale floor. There’s a deep stillness to the place, like a held-in breath. It reminds me of the library in my father’s house. He spent decades selecting and gathering his collection of works. I remember spending lazy afternoons with him wading through the scrolls in his library, each one a new world.

  I itch to start exploring. I slept away two hundred years of history and discoveries. Now here they are right before me. The books as well. Outside of the tomes, books were so rare in my time, but here there are dozens.

  Only Karis is already moving, her fingers hovering over the brass plates as she goes.

  I follow her, passing information on automatons: on construction and seals and known locations. Then information on the Script: on runes and etching techniques and scribal tools. Right at the back we find information on regiments and initiates and acolytes. Then arrivals. Karis stops. She reaches out and begins flipping through the pages, back through the years until she reaches 531.

  531. A year that was so far into the future, I wasn’t sure I’d ever see it.

  Karis pulls the sheaf of parchment from the shelf. The first page has a name I don’t recognize written at the top. Dane. The next is hers, Karis, but she barely pauses. She reaches the final page in the pile.

  Matthias.

  She scans the page as if she’s starving. I read the thin script over her shoulder.

  Male. Approximately eleven years old. Of Eratian nationality. Delivered on the third day of the month of Octavius in the year 531 along with one sibling. Originally from Heretis.

  Rejected from the Scriptorium due to troublesome behavior. Sent, on the third day of the month of Octavius in the year 531, to the Magistrate’s Library in Valitia.

  “The Magistrate’s Library.” Karis runs her fingers over the words. Her voice trembles. It makes me feel as if I’m intruding on a personal moment and I retreat a few paces away, scanning the nearby shelves to stop from looking at her. That’s when I see the plaque—Masters: 300-350.

  300-350. Some of those are years I remember. They’re years that Father was alive.

  Karis’s brother only had one piece of parchment. The information on my father fills up the shelves in front of me. I pull out a sheet. It’s a fragment, torn from some larger work.

  ...has long been recognized as the single greatest traitor in the history of the Scriptorium. Though acclaimed in his early years, his success turned to greed as he searched for ways to control more of the automatons, desiring their power not for the Scriptorium’s glory but for his own.

  Not much is known of what Master Theodis was working on during those years, except that it was meant to be the most powerful weapon Eratia had ever seen and that he planned to release it on the Scriptorium itself. The magistrate at the time, Reitas, led a force against him and the traitor was successfully killed but not before his weapon had done irreparable damage. No one knows what became of it.

  A weapon. I stare at the w
ords. Is this what Karis had been talking about? I think of my father, of the way his skin creased at the edges of his eyes when he smiled and his soft laugh. He was not creating a weapon. I pull out more records, then more, sure that if I keep looking, I’ll find something that speaks the truth and remembers him like I do.

  Disjointed phrases flash before my eyes.

  ...done in secret in his villa, no one knew what he was creating...

  ...no evidence of the weapon was found, even after Theodis’s death...

  ...he worked for years in secret, honing his plan and his creation...

  His creation. Dread coils around my seal. With everything I read, I’m struck with a deeper and deeper certainty that this creation isn’t a weapon.

  It’s me.

  I pull out another page and this one is merely a slip, with a single sentence on it.

  Due to the actions of Master Theodis, the Automaton Heart was broken beyond repair.

  The Automaton Heart. My fingers hover over the words. That name reverberates inside of me. I struggle to grasp it, even as it slips away.

  “Alix?”

  I jerk. Karis stands behind me, clutching the page on her brother.

  “Are you all right?”

  Am I all right? I thrust the papers at Karis. “Is this what they think of him? My father wasn’t creating a weapon. He wouldn’t have ever hurt anyone.”

  What about me? I can’t say the words, of how they’ve viewed me this whole time. The anger wells up inside of me and I slam my hand into the wall, so hard it leaves a perfect imprint of my palm in the stone, runes and all.

  Karis jumps. “Alix, please calm down.”

  Fear edges into her eyes, but for once I don’t care. I can’t calm down, because this is my fault. My father asked me to do something, and I failed, and he died. Now he’s remembered as a traitor. “This is history now. These lies are history.”

  “Alix, please.” Karis steps toward me, hands held out beseechingly. “I know how upsetting this must be but—”

  A door creaks open and we both freeze.

  “Is someone there?” It’s an old voice, rusty with age. Light falls across the end of a nearby bookcase.

  Karis grabs my hand. She tugs me forward and then we’re running, feet pounding against the ground in sync.

  What was I thinking? I push myself harder and now I’m the one pulling Karis behind me. We fly between the shelves, books and scrolls flashing past us. The doors to the Hall are ahead. We burst out and Karis staggers sideways, against one of the columns. Her body heaves with her breaths. I’d forgotten that she’s a person, not an automaton, and that people need rest.

  “Karis, I—”

  She waves me off. “I’m fine.” She half chokes on the words.

  There’s a shout from the other side of the complex. Soldiers.

  “You need to go,” Karis gasps out. “Now.” She pushes me. She isn’t strong enough to move me, but I let her.

  I dash the short space to the wall and vault over it. I run, away from the Scriptorium and the shouts, into the darkness.

  6

  * * *

  KARIS

  I slip into my room, still panting, my chest too tight. I slide Matthias’s paper into a tear in my bed, then change into my shift. If they find out what I did, if they come, I have to look innocent. I curl up in bed and squeeze my eyes closed, but I don’t sleep. I can’t sleep. The Magistrate’s Library. Valitia. That’s where Matthias was sent.

  For the first time in seven years I know what happened to my brother that night, when he was dragged away and thrown back onto the boat that had just dropped us off. When I screamed until the ship was barely a speck on the horizon. When I collapsed on the beach, numb and cold.

  I thought that once I learned where my brother was sent, everything would look brighter. But it doesn’t. Because the Magistrate’s Library can only mean the magistrate himself.

  Agathon.

  The Scriptorium doesn’t teach us orphans much, but we learned about him. The man took power twenty years ago, when tensions with Eural were running high. The previous magistrate was said to be a weak man, and one night, Agathon seized power in a coup. As soon as Agathon was declared magistrate he decreed forced conscription and sent our navy against Eural. He managed to beat them back from our shores, despite severe losses.

  Some say he brought peace; and maybe he did. Our little archipelago of islands sits between two powerful nations, Eural to the north and Anderra to the east. It’s a dangerous place to be. But I’ve also heard the whispers where the masters can’t hear that when Agathon took over he killed the old magistrate, the entire inner council, anyone loyal to the old order, in cold blood. That even now, those who disagree with him simply disappear. I don’t want my brother anywhere near a man like that.

  Hours later, I jolt out of restless dreams to shouting and the heavy pounding of feet. I bolt upright in bed, disoriented, a cold sweat clinging to my temples, before it comes back to me. Waking up Alix. Sneaking into the Hall of Records. Coming so close to being caught. I scramble out of bed and fling my door open, tumbling into the hallway. There’s already a crowd there of other acolytes, bleary-eyed and mumbling to one another, with mussed hair and shifts. All of them huddled in groups that right now I’m glad I’m not a part of.

  “Karis.”

  Dane strides toward me down the hall. Whatever is happening must have reached the barracks first because he’s already dressed in his uniform. Worry flashes in his eyes, so quick and sudden that if I didn’t know him so well, I might have missed it. My gut twists. Dane doesn’t spook easy.

  He takes my arm and tugs me into a nook.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “All of the guards have been called out, but I had to talk to you first.” Dane’s voice is low and tense. “Karis, someone broke into the Hall of Records. Whoever it was had an automaton. The masters found some evidence... An imprint of a hand in the wall.”

  They know. Which means soldiers will already be spreading out, covering this island, cutting off our only escape from this place.

  And Alix. He’s out there alone, right now. If the Scriptorium gets his tome...

  “They can’t know it was an automaton,” I say.

  “Karis, the imprint showed runes. Somehow, a small automaton must have been built. Small enough to get through the halls. Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with this.”

  I need to lie to him. Just this once, when it really matters.

  But I can’t.

  “I found an automaton, down in that cave,” I whisper. “I found its tome. And I woke it up.”

  Dane squeezes his eyes shut. For once I have no idea how he’s going to react. He could leave me, right now.

  He holds out his hand. “Give me the tome. I’ll plant it somewhere and no one will know it was you.”

  My heart lodges in my throat. He isn’t leaving. Even now he’s trying to save me from myself. “I don’t have it anymore.”

  A bit of the tension eases from his shoulders. “Good. Just stay here and stay low.” He glances back. “I have to report now.”

  He turns to go, and panic claws into my gut. I need to find Alix and get out of here, which means this will be the last time I see Dane. My best friend. More than my best friend: my family.

  “Dane...”

  I reach out to him, but the voices of the other students cover my own and my hand only catches air as he slips back around the corner.

  Pain slices through me. I’ve known for years that I wanted to go and that it would mean leaving him, but going always felt years away. All this time, while I was hating this place, I didn’t realize I was putting down those roots or that pulling them up would be this painful. This is exactly why I didn’t want to build connections here.

  For one moment I think of going after Dane,
of not leaving this life I’ve known since I came here. But Matthias is waiting for me.

  And I made my choice a long time ago.

  I run back into the hallway, dodging the others until I get to the safety of my room. I shove things into my pack, making myself keep moving because then I don’t have to think about losing Dane, about the fact that I don’t have any supplies except what’s in my room right now. A spare outfit and blanket. My water skin. My lamp and a small jug of oil. That’s all I have. To cross oceans and islands and to find my brother.

  I wriggle the Hall of Records paper out from my pallet and wedge it into my pack before turning to the shutters. They’re all locked in the acolytes’ quarters. I grab the hardest thing I own, a hunk of bronze I found broken off an automaton, and slam it against the lock. It snaps off with a crack and then I’m through, slipping into the shadows of the building.

  Soldiers mill about in the yard. I’ll have to risk the wall. As soon as I’m sure I can’t be seen, I scrabble up it. My heart lurches as I reach the top, completely vulnerable if someone chooses to look, but the soldiers must not be expecting to find the automaton on Scriptorium grounds because no shouts go up. I drop down on the other side.

  Normally the island is quiet this late. Now, I hear the crisp, shouted commands of soldiers. Dark storm clouds have gathered in the sky, blotting out the moon and stars and leaving only torches dotting the black.

  I steal off across the island, trying to stay on the rocks as much as possible to hide my footprints. I scrub at my bracelet. Master Vasilis could be checking on the acolytes right now. He could be checking on me.

  By the time I reach the cliffs, rain has started to fall, cold drops splattering against my head and shoulders. Grab the ropes and get down. That’s all I have to do. And then Alix and I can get to the boats and I’ll finally be off this island.