AI Rory caught Isolde by the wrist as the standing stone split open.
A hand pushed through the crack, long-fingered and slick with amber sap. It closed on the empty air where the seer’s throat had been.
“Cut it,” Isolde said.
Rory drew the dagger from her coat. Cold bit through her glove as she slashed at the hand. The moonsilver blade passed through flesh and stone alike. The fingers fell into the grass, and the crack widened with a sound like a tree pulling its roots from the earth.
Nyx flowed out from beneath Rory’s feet and gathered beside her. Their violet eyes fixed on the opening.
“That was a welcome.”
“Your manners have improved since we met,” Rory said.
The fallen fingers twitched. She ground them beneath her boot.
Wildflowers bent around the fragments. Beyond the ring of ancient oak standing stones, Richmond Park stretched between dark trunks. Within the ring, the grove held its own close air, fragrant with crushed leaves and damp soil. Isolde stood on a patch of bare earth without leaving a mark.
Rory released her wrist. The silver chain of the Heartstone pendant had slipped outside her collar. Its crimson gem pulsed against her throat, each beat warmer than the last.
Isolde watched it.
“The door knows its key.”
“Then tell me why it keeps sending hands.”
“A key can open a prison as well as a home.”
“Which is this?”
Isolde looked into the crack.
“I have never crossed this threshold.”
That made three of them. Rory had counted on the seer knowing where the stone led.
Nyx drifted closer to the gap. A faint shimmer stretched across it, visible only where their shadow touched the air.
“The Veil is thin here,” they said, their voice a whisper that seemed to come from beneath the stone. “Something has fed on it.”
Rory thought of the kitchen at the Golden Empress. A cleaver lay on the floor beside Mina’s chopping board. Her apron hung over a chair, still tied in a knot, and the sauce she had left on the hob had cooked down to a black crust. Yu-Fei had found one thing on the board: a receipt, folded into the shape of a mouth.
Rory took it from her pocket. She had unfolded it so often that the creases had turned soft. On one side sat the restaurant’s name and a list of ingredients. On the other, Mina had written three words in thick pencil.
DON’T LET ME SIGN.
Below them stood a thumbprint in amber.
“The print matches the sap,” Rory said.
Isolde held out her palm. Rory passed her the receipt, and the seer touched the mark with one silver-nailed finger.
“The hand that took her has touched this.”
“Can you see her?”
“I see a table. I hear a bell. I smell bread.”
“That narrows it down to half of London.”
“There is no London beyond that door.”
The pendant grew hot enough to sting. Rory tucked it back beneath her shirt and stepped towards the opening. The crack stood no wider than her shoulders. She could see a strip of pale floor on the far side, and the edge of something moving across it.
Nyx stretched into a thin ribbon of darkness and slipped through first. Their eyes vanished.
Rory followed, holding the blade in front of her.
The stone pressed against her coat. For one breath she felt the weight of it on both sides, then the pressure gave way and she stumbled onto a polished floor.
A dozen faces stared up at her.
She jerked back. The faces moved with her, brightening beneath the surface of the stone. They had no bodies, only pale heads drifting under the floor as fish drifted beneath ice. One opened its mouth. Rory heard a faint clink of cutlery.
Isolde emerged behind her. The crack closed, and the sound of the grove vanished.
They stood in a hall so long that its far end disappeared behind a row of columns. Each column rose from a carved platter and branched overhead into ribs of dark wood. Between the ribs hung chains of silver cups. They swayed without touching, giving off a low, clear hum.
Rory crouched beside the nearest face. An old woman’s eyes followed her hand.
“Can you hear me?”
The woman opened her mouth again. This time Rory caught the scrape of a chair, followed by laughter and a man calling for more wine.
Nyx took shape beside a column, taller than either woman. Their edges trembled against the pale floor.
“Echoes,” they said. “The hall has kept them.”
Rory stood. At the foot of the column, letters ran around the rim of the carved platter. She recognised none of them, but the pendant grew warmer when she put her hand near the inscription.
Isolde laid her palm on the wood.
“The First Table,” she said.
“You can read that?”
“It has grown the words I needed.”
Rory looked again. Fine roots had pushed through the grooves, forming the letters beneath Isolde’s fingers. They shrank back as soon as she took her hand away.
At the end of the hall, a pair of doors stood ajar. Light spilled between them, amber and thick as honey.
Rory started towards it. The faces followed beneath the floor, gathering under her boots. Their mouths opened and closed. A woman’s laugh rose from the stone, then broke into a cough.
“Did the people at that table leave those behind?” Rory said.
“Not all of them left,” Isolde said.
Rory stepped around a cluster of faces and pushed through the doors.
A staircase descended through the hollow trunk of an immense tree. Its inner walls had been carved with scenes of feasts: rows of guests, platters heaped high, musicians with instruments shaped from bone. The figures grew larger as the stairs curved down, until Rory passed a carved hand as tall as her shoulder. Gold leaf clung to its fingernails.
Between the carvings, sap ran in narrow channels. It smelled of apples and hot sugar. Rory kept her hands in her pockets.
Far below, crockery rattled. Someone shouted for a knife. Another voice answered with a string of words Rory did not know, but the anger needed no translation.
They reached a landing where the trunk opened onto a terrace. Rory stopped at the threshold.
Orchards rolled away beneath a warm amber sky. Trees bore fruit in colours she had never seen on a market stall: milk-white pears, black globes striped with gold, clusters of translucent berries with seeds that moved inside them. Vines climbed trellises taller than houses. Beyond the gardens rose a palace built in tiers, its walls crowded with balconies and arched windows.
The terrace overlooked a broad courtyard. Hundreds of people worked at long tables, washing leaves, plucking birds and rolling dough. Some wore aprons over ordinary shirts and trousers. Others had horns, or skin that shone like polished copper. A cart passed beneath the terrace, drawn by a beast with six legs and a snout buried in a sack of grain.
Rory gripped the rail.
The stone felt warm. From somewhere among the trees came the scent of roasting meat, followed by a burst of music, pipes and a drum beaten fast enough to set her pulse against it.
A child ran between two tables carrying a bowl. She wore a paper crown that slid over one eye. A cook caught her before she collided with the cart, took the bowl and sent her back with a piece of bread.
Rory had expected screams. The bread troubled her more.
“Dymas,” Nyx said.
Isolde stood beside them, her silver hair stirring though Rory felt no breeze.
“Whose palace?”
“Belphegor rules this realm.”
“And the table?”
Isolde’s gaze travelled over the courtyard.
“Older than his crown.”
A bell rang below. Workers left their benches and formed lines at three doors in the palace wall. The child with the paper crown disappeared among them.
Rory scanned the crowd. No Mina. She checked the terrace and found a set of steps leading down to the courtyard.
Nyx caught her sleeve. Their hand had substance now, cool and firm.
“The kitchens will have shadows. The courtyard has fewer.”
Rory glanced at the open space below, then at their feet. Nyx’s shadow spread across the terrace but stopped at the edge of the steps.
“Can you cross it?”
“In this shape. Not unseen.”
“Then we give them something else to look at.”
A woman in a stained apron came through a door beneath the terrace. She carried a tray stacked with small loaves, and a chain ran from a brass collar at her throat to a ring on the tray. The woman set it on a bench and went back inside.
Rory went down the steps, picked up the tray and followed her.
“Bread,” she called to Nyx and Isolde.
Nyx took the hint. Their shadow stretched beneath the tray, while Isolde fell into step at Rory’s side.
The door led into a passage lined with ovens. Heat struck Rory’s face. Bakers moved between the open mouths, pulling out loaves with long paddles and loading fresh dough in their place. The woman who had brought the tray stood by a sink, scrubbing flour from her hands.
She looked at Rory’s coat, then at the dagger tucked into her belt.
“You’re lost.”
“Where do these go?”
The woman pointed with her chin.
“Second door. And take that thing off your neck before someone sees it.”
Rory’s hand flew to the pendant beneath her shirt.
The woman had already turned back to the sink. Water ran over her wrists, carrying flour into a drain. Beneath the white paste Rory saw red lines where the brass collar’s chain had rubbed her skin.
“Have you seen a woman called Mina?” Rory said. “Black hair, about my height. She has a burn on her right forearm.”
The baker stopped scrubbing.
“Second door.”
“I need to find her.”
“You need to move before the steward comes back.”
The baker took a loaf from the tray, broke it and pressed half into Rory’s hand. Something hard sat inside the bread. The woman closed Rory’s fingers around it.
“Second door,” she said again.
Rory went. Isolde opened the door for her, and Nyx slid through the gap under the tray.
The next room held shelves of herbs, jars of spice and baskets of fruit. No one else stood inside. Rory set down the tray and tore apart the bread. A brass key dropped into her palm.
A paper label hung from its ring. On it, in cramped English, someone had written LARDER.
“She knows Mina,” Rory said.
“She knows the cost of saying so,” Isolde said.
The chain around the baker’s neck had run to the tray, not to a wall. Rory had taken three steps with it before she understood.
She shoved the key into her pocket and reached for the door. It opened before she touched it.
A man in a dark coat stood on the other side. His hair lay flat against his skull, and a row of tiny bells ran along his cuffs. He looked at the tray, then at Rory’s boots.
“Where is Hester?”
“At the sink,” Rory said. “She sent me.”
“Did she?”
He stepped into the room. The bells on his cuffs remained silent.
“She gave me the wrong door. I was looking for the larder.”
The man held out his hand.
“Her key.”
Rory kept her hand in her pocket. The cold hilt of the dagger pressed against her knuckles.
“You can fetch it from her.”
His smile showed teeth filed to flat edges.
“I can fetch her from the sink.”
Nyx rose behind him. Their shadow poured up his back and covered his mouth. His bells gave one sharp jangle as he clawed at his face.
Rory caught his wrist and drove him against the shelves. Jars toppled and burst around their feet. Isolde touched two fingers to his forehead, and he went still.
“How long?” Rory said.
“Until he hears his name.”
Nyx eased away. The man remained upright, his eyes open.
Rory searched his coat and found a folded list. Names filled the page, each beside a number and a mark. Halfway down she found Mina Shah. A small drawing of a bell sat beside it.
At the bottom, in another hand, someone had written: FINAL COURSE.
Rory showed the others.
“The bell I heard,” Isolde said.
“Where?”
The seer pointed through the wall.
Rory put her ear to the plaster. Beneath the clatter of the kitchens came a slow, steady thud, followed by a thin chime.
They left the steward among the broken jars. Rory locked the door behind them with his own key and dropped it down the drain by the sink. Hester kept her eyes on her work as they passed, but her shoulders dropped when she heard the key strike the pipe.
The larder lay at the end of a narrow corridor. Rory fitted the brass key into the lock. It turned with a heavy click.
Inside, shelves rose from floor to ceiling. Hams hung in rows, and glazed jars held fruit suspended in clear syrup. Cold air brushed Rory’s face. At the back of the room, a door of woven roots stood beneath a brass bell.
The pendant pulsed once, hard enough for her to feel it through her shirt.
Rory pulled the root door. It held fast. A strip of black script ran across it, shifting beneath her fingers.
“A ward,” Nyx said.
Rory drew the Fae blade. Its cold travelled up her arm as she slid the point beneath the first line of writing. The script curled around the metal, tightening until her wrist shook. She pressed harder. The blade cut through, and the letters fell to the floor like dead insects.
The door swung inward.
A long table filled the chamber beyond. Only one person sat at it.
Mina wore the same green shirt she had worn at the Golden Empress. Flour streaked one sleeve. A sheet of parchment lay before her, with a pen balanced across it. On the plate at her elbow sat a slice of cake, untouched except for a single crumb on her finger.
Her head snapped up.
“Rory?”
Rory crossed the room and pulled her chair back.
“Yu-Fei sent me.”
Mina caught her arm.
“Don’t touch the paper.”
Up close, Rory saw ink beneath Mina’s fingernails. The parchment bore lines of tiny writing and, at the bottom, a space for a signature.
“Did you sign?”
“No. They keep bringing food. They say I owe them for every bite.”
“You wrote the note.”
“I got it out with the first tray. The woman who took it had flour on her hands.”
Rory looked at the crumb on Mina’s finger.
“I didn’t eat that.” Mina wiped it on her trousers. “The plate tipped when they put it down.”
Isolde came to the table and read the parchment without touching it.
“What does it say?” Rory asked.
“The meal is offered freely. The guest accepts a place in the kitchen for each course she takes.”
Mina pushed her chair farther from the table.
“They said the first course was a gift.”
“It was.”
Rory looked at Isolde.
“You said she’d owe them for each course.”
“The contract says so. The first course is not listed.”
Mina stared at the cake.
“Then why bring it?”
Nyx’s eyes brightened. Their shadow reached beneath the table and returned with a small brass bell. It had no clapper.
Rory took the bell. A smear of amber sap marked its rim.
“They wanted you to touch it,” she said.
The chamber door slammed behind them.
The bell rang in Rory’s hand.
Mina seized the parchment and tore it in half. The sound stopped. For an instant, nobody moved. Then the two pieces of parchment folded themselves together, and the ink ran across the torn edge.
A voice came through the closed door.
“Hester.”
Somewhere beyond the larder, glass shattered . The steward’s bells began to ring.
Rory dropped the bell and pulled Mina towards the door. Roots burst through the cracks around its frame, knotting across the wood. She drove the Fae blade into them. Sap sprayed over her hand, hot enough to make her cry out, but the roots parted.
Nyx thrust through the opening first. Rory followed with Mina, and Isolde came behind them.
Hester stood at the far end of the larder, held by the steward. He had one hand around her chain. The other held a knife against her neck.
“Bring me the girl,” he said.
Rory kept the blade low.
“Let her go.”
“I have a better use for her than you do.”
Hester’s hands gripped the chain. The steward pulled it tight, and she rose onto her toes.
Mina stepped forward.
“No,” Rory said.
“He’ll cut her.”
Rory’s gaze flicked to the shelves. Jars packed every row between them and the door, their glass thick, their contents heavy.
She raised her free hand.
“You can have the pendant.”
The steward’s eyes dropped to her collar. His grip on the chain slackened.
Rory ripped the Heartstone from beneath her shirt and flung it at the shelf beside him.
The gem struck a jar. Glass burst, and a cascade of syrup and pale fruit hit the steward’s shoulder. He staggered. Hester wrenched the chain from his hand and ducked under the knife.
Nyx swept across the floor. Darkness climbed the steward’s legs, pinning him against the shelves. Rory snatched up the pendant and caught Hester as she stumbled towards them.
The larder doors flew open.
Servants crowded the corridor beyond, carrying platters above their heads. Their aprons were white. Their faces were hidden behind smooth gold masks. As Rory watched, they lowered the platters together, revealing rows of fresh brass collars.
Behind them walked a figure in a cook’s coat, tall enough that he had to bow beneath the doorframe. His face wore no mask. A crown of small bones rested in his hair.
He stopped when he saw the pendant in Rory’s hand.
The servants parted.
“Malphora,” he said.
Every collar on the platters sprang open.