Noxia Shade's Arc

Chapter 6 of 15

The grove room held its quiet behind her. Noxia stepped close to the carved stump and ran her fingers along the scored name. The wood gave under her touch. A seam. She pressed harder and the back of the stump swung inward on a hidden hinge. Cold air spilled out, carrying the faint scent of someone who had passed through not long before her. Boot prints sat fresh in the dust beyond. She tightened her hand on the file at her ribs and stepped into the passage. The tunnel opened onto a wide stone arch, its cracks filled with hardened resin that glinted like green glass. The boot prints stopped at its base. Noxia crouched and pressed her palm to the dust. Warm. The walker had paused here, then gone through. She slid off one boot and set it beside her. The scent of her sole bled into the cold air, a quiet warning thrown ahead of her. If the walker waited past the arch, he would breathe her in before he saw her. She stood, picked up her boot, and stepped under the resin-veined stone. The passage to the spymaster's deeper rooms was hers now, and someone inside it already knew she was coming. Past the arch, a small shape hung from a hook driven into the stone. An amulet. Cut crystal in deep blue and purple, shaped like a flower at the center of a star. It swung once when her shoulder brushed it. She lifted it off the hook and turned it in her palm. The back was warm. Worn against skin, and only just set down. She had seen this piece before, at the throat of the woman in the fur coat who had passed her the warm key. The woman was ahead of her now, inside the spymaster's deeper rooms, and she had left the amulet where Noxia would find it. Not a trap. A marker. Noxia closed her hand around the cold points of the star and walked on, the file at her ribs and the amulet in her fist. The passage was open. She was not alone in it, and the one ahead of her wanted her to know. Ten paces in, the passage widened into an alcove. A spiral rack stood there, wooden trunk strung with hooked blades that caught the low light and threw it back in pale blue. The blades were ordinary steel. Plain edges, plain weight. Noxia counted them with her eyes. One hook stood empty. The walker had taken a blade and left the rest for her to see. A message, set as plain as the amulet. Noxia did not reach for a blade. She had never needed one. She rested two fingers on the empty hook to mark it in her memory, then turned away. The passage bent left past the rack and dropped into deeper dark. Noxia tugged her boot back on, set her shoulders square, and walked into it. She had crossed the threshold. The woman ahead of her was armed now, and waiting, and the next room would not be a test of who she was. It would be a test of what the two of them meant to do with the spymaster between them.