Page 94 of Mortdale

“Is it possible for me to pay my respects? I truly want to devote myself fully. Since the Cleansing, I’ve found myself…immersed,” I said, smiling like the stone saint behind him.

The exarch paused, forcing me to pause with him. He sent a narrowed glance in Liam’s direction—glaring and glaring as if waiting for my young guard to crack like an egg in boiling water. He slid an easy smile on, turning to me again. “Maybe another time. Someone will escort you out. Have a great day, Lady Duncan.”

Damn it. Onto plan B.

I reached into my pocket and shoved Thomas out. “I’ll get you a juicy chicken if you can keep them busy for at least a good fifteen minutes.”

“Too many feathers. Get me a dog.”

I gagged. “Absolutely not.”

“Then a cat. A big, round one.”

I gasped. “Turkey. Last offer. Or be happy with bugs for the rest of your life.”

“We have a deal. It better be a big one. And alive.”

A full five seconds later, screaming ensued.

I grabbed the young soldier by his lapels. “Liam, you have about five minutes to take me down there.”

He looked like he’d been struck by bouts of neurasthenia as he shakily asked, “Why…why were you talking to your rat?”

“Don’t ask questions you won’t like hearing the answers to.”

He mumbled a very, very long prayer between his teeth as we ran across hall after hall, diving at least three floors down before reaching a locked heavy iron sectoring door sealing the tunnels. The sickly sweet scent was almost caustic, heating my throat with each inhale even all the way across the giant wooden door.

After a few long agonising seconds of fiddling with my hairpin in the lock, I managed to pry it open.

“You’re truly terrifying,” Liam whispered.

“You should see what I can do with a comb.”

I brought my gloved hand to my nose when the sugary, choking vapour filling the tunnels clogged my airway. Light particles floated in the air when I shone the lamp ahead. It wasn’t dust or ash, it was…pollen.

“What in the name of the saintly Hells,” Liam muttered, stepping beside me.

The tunnel walls and floor were leaking a gooey red slime, covered in a layer of burgundy red flowers reeking a scent so cloying it made my eyes water.

Was this why the exarch didn’t want to bring us here?

I tested some remnants of soot between my fingers.

This was what they’d been burning down here? Flowers? Just flowers?

And they’d sprouted again.

Liam grabbed my arm when I reached to pluck a flower. “Woah, crazy witch lady. Are you supposed to touch those?”

“They’re not poisonous. Scabiosa atropurpurea, pretty common flowers, actually,” I said, taking my handkerchief and folding it around the flowers I'd collected. “It’s a genus in the honeysuckle family.” My voice drifted off in the last sentence. “That’s why it smells like…honey.”

The exact same scent I’d smelled in Alfred’s work room. The same scent from the Basilica gardens I’d smelled that day. It had never been cadaverine or putrescine. It had never been the scent of rot. It had been flowers. But it was syrupy, and in a mawkish way.

Liam sniffed the air, turning towards the doors and gagging. “Why is the wall leaking…that? Looks and almost smells like blood.”

“It’s just water and red podzolic soil; it’s high in iron, that’s why it smells metallic and musky,” I said, smearing some between my gloved fingers. “But where’s the damp coming from?” I murmured, glancing around at the tunnel ceilings.

“Pretty sure there’s a well in the Basilica grounds.”