Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (84)

The story so far.

Mykel is on his feet in an instant. “Inside the control room?”

Scoti nods. “I saw him go,” she admits. “I thought about waking you, but–”

A low rumbling sound begins, from an indeterminate direction. The others stir in their blankets, looking up with confused expressions.

“Where’s Symond?” Jolorie asks.

“Up in the control room,” Scoti says. “And the door is closed and locked.”

Pya looks confused. “Why would he do that?”

Scoti says nothing, waiting for Mykel to answer Pya’s question. For anyone else to.

“Scoti?” Mykel says. “You saw him go in.”

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (83)

The story so far.

The noise of the door slamming echoes all the way down the stairwell.

Scoti stares at it. Then, though she has a sinking feeling it’s no use, she tries to open the door as she did before.

Nothing happens.

She backs away and nearly falls down the stairs. There’s a muffled noise coming from inside the room. Some sort of alarm.

There’s no time right now to untangle the meaning of all of this. Scoti runs back downstairs and back to the group, who are all still asleep on the floor. The klaxon isn’t audible this far, and the rest of Mountainfoot is quiescent.

That seems wrong, too, but there’s no time to think about it. Hurriedly, she shakes Mykel awake.

“What is it?”

“It’s Sy. He’s inside.”

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (82)

The story so far.

She’s careful to stay well back. The dimness of the light helps. She ghosts after Sy into the stairwell.

It briefly occurs to her to go and wake Mykel. But a bigger part of her is curious to see Sy follow through with his attempt.

The door at the top of the stairs is open, which is rather surprising. Sy goes inside. Scoti halts on the landing, letting the door and its shadow hide her presence. Waiting, as Sy slits his hand with a bigger knife than seems strictly necessary, and drips some of his blood onto the sensor.

And then the iron door slams shut.

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (81)

The story so far.

Scoti lies very still, after that first movement when she heard him getting up and lifted her head to look for the source of the sound. She watches Sy disappear through the doorway and into the large entrance corridor.

Once he’s gone, she sits up and looks around. No one else seems to be stirring. She slips as quietly as she can out of her bag, rises on bare feet, and follows Sy. The floor is gritty with the sand and dust of centuries.

She peers out into the hallway. The light here is as attenuated as ever, but she squints and can see Sy making for the stairwell.

Instantly she knows what he’s going to do.

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (80)

The story so far.

That more or less quiets things down for the evening. But Scoti still feels uneasy. She doesn’t want to go to sleep around these people, but she doesn’t want to wander too far away from their light, either. It’s gotten dark outside and Mountainfoot’s inside lights have dimmed as well, unless any of them walk into one of the nearby rooms. Then the lights come up.

“Amazing they’re still working after all this time,” Pya says. No one else replies. On a more personal and immediate level, Scoti is more impressed that the plumbing still appears to be working as well.

She beds down as far from Symond as she can get, and still be in the circle of light from their lamp. But she can’t sleep.

And so, much later, she sees Sy quietly get up and leave.

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (79)

The story so far.

“Not…really,” Scoti says. It sounds like a lie as she says it.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You saw the same thing I did,” she flares. “That block of black stone. What did you think it was?”

“We’ve settled all that,” Symond says. “What I want to know is, how long’s it been known that silverbloods could do this? And why haven’t you done it before?”

“It’s been theorized,” Jolorie says slowly. “But never proven. We’re the first expedition to Mountainfoot in years, and…”

“And, the first to include a silverblood,” Mykel says. “So settle your rockets, Sy. It’s not a coincidence, but it’s not whatever you’re making it out to be.”

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (78)

The story so far.

“What’s up?” Scoti asks.

“We were just talking,” Symond says. His tone is belligerent.

“Sy,” Mykel says, mildly.

“No. I wanna know. I wanna know why she’s here, why they sent her on this trip. It wasn’t any goddamn special skill of hers, was it? No. It’s because the project knew what they’d find here. Didn’t it.”

“Well, if they did, they didn’t tell me,” Scoti bursts out. “I’m a historian, that’s all. I had no idea what would happen.”

“But you knew what to do,” Symond says. “Didn’t you?”

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (77)

The story so far.

The light from where they’ve set up for the night is warm and inviting. There’s a lamp, its incandescence even brighter and warmer in comparison to the greenish dimness. Jolorie has set up a stove and begun making dinner. Good thing she thought to grab both when they had to abandon the crawler.

For the first time, Scoti finds herself wondering how they’re going to get back from here. If the crawler was fouled with dust before, it’s likely irretrievable now. She wonders if that’s occurred to Mykel, if he’s tried to call home yet.

As she comes back up the corridor toward the rest of them, it feels as though they’re the only people in the world.

As she approaches, their conversation falls silent.

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (76)

The story so far.

Before, she was just the low man on the research team, not particularly welcome, but there to meet quota.

Now, she’s something more.

Now, she’s a reason for the team to be here.

She comes to another room. All of them are empty–not only of the physical objects that would speak of Myrrine occupation of this place, but of that sense of presence that she only felt in the control room.

How does that work?

Right now, she doesn’t have the energy to go back up there and find out. Just the contemplation of climbing the stairs is enough to tire her.

But they’ll want her up there again in the morning.

She’s sure of it.

Ten Kingdoms: The Green Castle (75)

The story so far.

It’s one thing to think that it might be a possibility. There are lots of human beings out there who like to talk about how they’re 1/16th simin on their grandmother’s side, or whatever.

Scoti’s never had the luxury of having to say it for anyone to know. Her eyes aren’t silver, which is the best-known telltale, but they’re gray with silver flecks. She’s so pale that people ask whether she gets enough sun. And her hair was white when she was born, just like her mother’s. The simin aren’t albinos, though they’re sometimes mistaken for them.

But Myrrine blood is something else again. Plenty of simin claim that they have it, but always as sort of family legend. There’s no way to test for it because no medical facility anywhere in Kinsec has a sample for comparison.

Until now.