Celie had to get rid of the passageways, get rid of Arkwright, and give the ship some Arkish lumber. To make things fair.
“I have to,” she said aloud. Rufus clacked his beak in agreement.
There was a twisting sensation in the back of her brain, which meant that the Castle was moving.
The door to Bran’s rooms swung open.
“You’re my witness,” she said to Rufus. “If Bran gets mad, you saw the Castle open this door, right?”
Rufus clacked again, and butted her with his head to make her walk forward.
Bran had two private rooms: his workroom and his bedchamber. The workroom was first, and the lockbox was right in plain sight on a long table where Bran had left it amid a clutter of other wizardly things.
“Hello?” Celie called, still standing at the threshold despite Rufus’s urging.
When there was no answer, she dared to step into the room. She half expected to be struck by some sort of spell to repel burglars or nosy siblings, but nothing happened. A few more steps, and she reached the table. She wiped her sweaty palms on her skirt and picked up the lockbox with shaking fingers. She hadn’t been nervous about using it the first time, but that was before she’d found out about her grandmother, and before her wizard brother had taken the box for everyone’s good.
Celie walked out of Bran’s room as quickly as she could without actually running, which she reckoned would attract more attention if anyone saw her. She hurried along the corridor and into her own room, holding the lockbox in the folds of her skirt on the left side, the side Rufus was walking on. They didn’t see anyone, though, and whisked into Celie’s room without incident.
In her room, Celie sat on a stool and studied the lockbox. It looked harmless enough: just a brass box with a knob on one side. Of course, she didn’t know what bad magic would look like. What she did know was that this box had worked once before, with no ill effects. She breathed deeply, then looked at Rufus.
“Where shall we go first?”
She knew where she should go first: she should go to the passageway where Arkwright had attacked her father and his men. They must have been close to the wizard’s lair, or he wouldn’t have risked it. But Celie wasn’t ready to take that on yet. What if he caught her and put her to sleep? How long would it take for someone to find her?
“Let’s start with Mummy and Daddy’s room, shall we?” Celie said to Rufus.
Rufus sneezed, and Celie took that as agreement.
In her parents’ bedchamber was a secret passageway that led to a tunnel that ended at the moat. The underwater passage also went back under the Castle, but it was too narrow to swim up for very long. Celie hurried across the main hall to her parents’ room, heart pounding as she waited for Bran to catch her and ask what she was doing.
But she didn’t see Bran, and no one else spoke to her. She ducked into her parents’ room and locked the door with a sigh of relief.
Rufus prowled the room, sniffing at the rug where his own parents liked to sleep when they weren’t holding court in the stable. But Celie went straight to the fireplace and opened the secret passage, putting her hand on the carved bit of the mantel that was really a cleverly hidden latch. A section of the hearth swung open, revealing a tunnel that smelled faintly of moat water.
Celie used a lamp to look down the tunnel, but couldn’t see any sign of Arkwright. She closed the door and put the lock on top of it, turning the knob with a flourish as Rufus looked over her shoulder.
Nothing happened.
“Work! You have to work!”
She turned the knob again. She moved the lockbox so that it was directly over the little hidden latch of the trapdoor. Still nothing.
“What am I doing wrong?”
There was a telltale tingle in her brain, and the trapdoor opened. Celie was crouched so close to it that she nearly fell in. She managed to check her fall, but then she tucked the lockbox into the front of her gown and lowered herself into the tunnel. Rufus screeched and crowded in behind her.
“Rufus,” she hissed. “You can’t follow me!”
But he did anyway. And it turned out that he could follow her. Rufus was large enough for her to ride, but he was lean and could slink like a cat when he wanted to, which he presently did. As Celie looked back over her shoulder, she saw him fold his wings tight to his body and bend his legs so that he was creeping along behind her without even touching the walls of the tunnel.
“All right.” She sighed.
As they crawled deeper, the smell of moat increased, and so did the dampness of the tunnel. Finally they were at the underground stream that ran out to the tunnel. Celie looked around, not sure what the Castle wanted her to do. Lock the grate between the stream and the moat? But then the water from the stream would build up and flood the Castle!
Rufus, who enjoyed baths greatly, had plunged right into the stream and was splashing around. His happy cries echoed, and the faint light glimmered on the roof of the tunnel. Celie looked up, noticing for the first time that the ceiling of the tunnel was smoothly fitted stone, like the rest of the Castle.
“This was made by the Builder,” she said with surprise.
This tunnel, and the stream, had been part of the original Castle. Could she only use the lockbox on the things the Arkish had added? Or maybe the Castle didn’t want her to get rid of the original tunnels and hidden passages. Master Humphries had told her that running out of water and food was the number one reason why a castle under siege had to surrender.
Had the Builder of the Castle included an underground well or stream to make sure that this never happened? It seemed very likely.
“All right,” Celie said. “I won’t close this tunnel.”
She turned to start back up the tunnel, chirping to call Rufus. But Rufus ignored her. He was paddling upstream, away from her, and farther into the narrow darkness.
“Rufus, no!”
He kept swimming.
Groaning, Celie waded into the icy stream after him. The last time she’d tried to swim up the tunnel, she’d been barely eight years old, much smaller than she was now. Her feet had left the ground, and she’d had to start swimming instead of wading much sooner.
But as the tunnel narrowed, the water grew deeper, and at last she had to swim. Her head bumped into the ceiling, and the space between the top of the water and the roof was only about as high as Celie’s head. This didn’t seem to bother Rufus in the slightest. He was paddling along, still making happy cries, his head brushing against the ceiling.
“Rufus,” Celie said a minute later, “we have to go back now.”
Water was lapping at her mouth, and her head was pressed against the ceiling. Rufus didn’t know how to swim, not really, and he certainly didn’t know how to swim backward. It was too narrow for him to turn around, and deep enough that she couldn’t feel the bottom, even when she held her breath and dived down.
“Rufus!”
Rufus surged in the water, and there was a dull thud. A hollow sound, like he’d hit his head on something wooden.
“Is there a door?” Celie gasped. She was having trouble keeping herself afloat. Her skirts were so waterlogged that she had to flail constantly to keep them from dragging her down.
Rufus screeched, and then he sank. Celie screamed, but Rufus must have just pushed off from the bottom. He came up out of the water with a leap and bashed into the trapdoor, flinging it open. He grabbed the edge of the door in his front talons and pulled himself through.
When Celie tried to climb up after him, she didn’t have the strength. She was barely able to tread water and hold the edges of the trapdoor. Her skirts felt like they were weighted with lead.
Rufus leaned down to see why she wasn’t following, and she grabbed frantically at the harness strap that ran across his chest. She tried to tell him to back up, but she choked on a mouthful of water instead.
It didn’t matter, though, because Rufus got the message and pulled her out of the water, backing slow
ly away from the trapdoor. Celie was bruised and scraped by the time she’d made it all the way out, and was gasping and coughing on the stone floor beside the trapdoor, but at least she was alive.
“You’re a good boy, my precious boy,” she wheezed.
When she’d recovered enough, she looked around. They were in a narrow passage—an Arkish passage, she was sure—lit by a lamp on a small ledge. Celie closed the trapdoor and looked at it. It was identical to the one from her room, so she fished the wet lockbox out of her bodice.
“I hope this works. I don’t know if it’s not supposed to get wet,” she said to Rufus, who was busy shaking out his wings, soaking her all over again.
When she put the lockbox over the latch, she could feel that it was going to work. She turned the knob and it locked onto the wood. Then she turned it again, and the door came loose from the stone floor. Another turn and the lockbox was free. Celie stuck it back in her bodice and staggered to her feet, gripping the wooden door.
“So that’s how it works,” Wizard Arkwright said.
The shadows peeled back from the wall and revealed Arkwright standing there, close enough to touch Celie.
Chapter
15
Celie screamed and ran.
She shouted for Rufus to follow her, and prayed that he wouldn’t stay to fight. But Rufus must have sensed her fear, because she soon heard him on her heels, his talons scraping the floor as they fled Arkwright. Celie didn’t stop to check if Arkwright followed, she just ran, her ears straining only for the sound of Rufus, not for anyone coming after him.
The passageway ended at a wooden door. Celie skidded through it, slamming it behind Rufus and nearly catching his tail. She put the lockbox over the latch and twisted the knob so hard, she nearly sprained her wrist.
The door fell against her as it came free from the blank stone wall. There was a whoosh, and the tingle in the back of her head flared like a sudden headache. The tingling shot down her back and into her arms and legs before ending suddenly at her fingertips and toes.
Celie staggered back and nearly fell before she managed to prop the door against another wall. She stood there and shook for a while, wondering what had just happened. The trapdoor in her room hadn’t caused such a stir. Rufus looked distinctly ruffled, and was standing with his legs braced, waiting for the next upheaval. When it didn’t come, he shook himself and began to preen.
Celie also shook herself, then ran her hands over the new wall she’d just made, checking for cracks, but the stones were as tightly fitted as the day they’d been built.
“Ha!” Celie said loudly, scaring Rufus, who squawked.
Arkwright was now sealed in that tunnel. If there was no other way out, he’d have to go through the water the way she had. Of course, that would lead him to the trapdoor that led to her parents’ bedchamber . . .
“We have to find a way out of here,” she told Rufus. “We have to warn Mummy and Da—and Bran. And the others!”
She turned and looked around, taking the lockbox off the door as she did so. They were in a small round room, and the only way out appeared to be up a spiraling flight of steps.
“Where on earth are we?”
Rufus sneezed—he didn’t seem to recognize the place, either. So they went up the stairs, and up and up. There were no windows, and Celie was panting from the climb and the musty air when they reached the top.
“Another hatching tower?” Celie asked the question even though she knew the answer.
This wasn’t a hatching tower. It was larger, and didn’t have the sloping floor and enormous windows with sills that were shaped like perches. If anything, it was more like the Spyglass Tower where Celie and Lilah had once hidden from the awful Prince Khelsh.
There were no spyglasses here, though. Instead, each of the four windows had a different brass instrument mounted in it. One looked like some kind of strange compass, while another looked like a combination of a compass and a clock. There was a squat brass trumpet on the north side, and on the south was a tool that looked just like the one Bran used to chart the movements of the stars.
Celie gave the instruments a brief looking over and studied the view outside the four windows. This tower was on the opposite side of the Castle from the Spyglass Tower, so mostly what she could see was rooftops or the forested slope of the valley on the west side of the Castle.
Once she’d done that, she went back down the stairs, looking for another way out. Halfway down the long stone spiral, she stopped and grabbed for the iron handrail nailed into the wall as the Castle made a shift. When she reached the bottom, she found a door right beside the loose door she’d “unlocked.”
“Huh,” she said to Rufus. “I guess the Castle wanted us to see that.”
He carked in reply. Celie struggled with the loose door and managed to carry it through the working door and out into a wide corridor that led past the guest rooms. She looked around, hopeful, but there was no one in sight who could help her, so she called Rufus over and made him stand still while she balanced it across his back. He looked like a very unusual seesaw.
“Just a little farther, boy,” Celie coaxed him, holding the door on his back as best she could. “Just a little farther, and I’m sure we’ll find someone.”
But before they could find anyone, the door to one of the rooms swung open, knocking into the door Rufus carried and sending it flying. The accompanying twist told Celie that it wasn’t a draft that had blown the door open, but the Castle.
Rufus, meanwhile, was sprawled across the floor gnawing on a corner of the loose door in anger. Celie picked up the door again and leaned it against the wall.
“Sorry, boy,” she said to him. “I won’t make you carry it again.
“Let’s go see what the Castle wants, and then we’ll find someone to help us carry the door.”
The open door led to a guest room that looked just like most guest rooms in the Castle. It had a large four-poster bed, a writing desk, an armoire, and a scattering of chairs and ottomans—the usual odds and ends of furniture one found in the guest rooms. The tall, narrow windows were covered by heavy damask draperies.
Celie ran a hand over the desk and the chairs; she looked out the windows but couldn’t see what the Castle wanted. She turned around to leave, but the Castle closed the door. She sighed and looked up at the ceiling.
“What? What am I looking for here?”
Rufus clacked his beak as though asking the same question, but the Castle didn’t reply. Celie sighed again and reached for the latch of the door anyway. Her chin itched, and she scratched it against her shoulder as she tried to turn the iron latch.
The latch wouldn’t turn, but it didn’t matter. Celie had noticed something.
A panel of the dark wood commonly used in the Castle had been replaced by a lighter, honey-colored wood, which was smoothly polished but very plain. The wood paneling in the Castle usually had some sort of carving on it, even if it was just a band of angular leaf shapes at waist height. But this was as plain as—and the same width as—a door.
“Why, Rufus, I do believe we’ve found ourselves another passage,” Celie said.
Rufus screeched.
Celie wondered why no one had noticed the different wood before. But this was the type of room used for distant cousins who only visited once a decade, cousins who usually wound up getting lost, turning left three times, and jumping out a window. That was the only sure way to find the kitchens, where a kind maid (or often, Celie herself) would lead them where they were supposed to go. They would hardly notice or care that there were two kinds of wood lining the walls.
“Looks like we’d better lock this door, too,” Celie said.
First, of course, she needed to open the door to see what was on the other side. She ran her fingers over the ridges of the wood, feeling for a tiny dent or hidden button that would trigger the latch. She probed back and forth, up and down, with careful fingers, and didn’t find anything. Was she wrong? Was it really just
a wooden panel that didn’t match?
She put both hands on the wood, fingers splayed out, and started to run her hands downward, feeling for anything she might have missed before. There was a click and the door swung open.
“All righty then,” Celie said, but her voice shook a little.
She peered carefully down the passage, but there was no sign of Arkwright or anyone else. Just a narrow corridor, dark and faintly musty. Celie took a cautious step forward, but Rufus pushed past her. He was on high alert: wings arched over his back, head twisting from side to side as he took it all in.
“Stay close to me,” Celie whispered as she went all the way inside.
She closed the panel behind them and put the lockbox in the middle of it. She wasn’t really sure where the latch was, but she hoped for the best. She had to hold the box up with one hand, since there was nothing for it to fasten to, and turn the knob with the other. But it worked, and the lockbox slipped into her hands a moment later. She felt the wall, and found that there was nothing but smooth stone now.
“Huh,” she said to Rufus. “The door must have stayed on the other side. Oh, well, we’ll just go get it later.”
Then she turned around, and the realization struck her like a bolt of lightning. She felt her heart plummet to her shoes and stay there.
“What did I just do?” she whispered.
Chapter
16
She had no idea where this passageway led, or where the next door was. What if it was a dead end? Admittedly, none of the passageways that she knew of were dead ends. But there was always a first time.
“Rawk,” Rufus said. His talons scraped on the stone as he started walking.
Celie fumbled the lockbox into her bodice and then hurried after him. She put out a hand and grabbed one of his wing tips, holding it just tightly enough so that she wouldn’t lose him in the dark. Not that he could go far—the passageway was very narrow—but if it made any sudden turns, she wanted to be right behind him.