Burn Bright - By Marianne de Pierres Page 0,66

to have time for me before you came along. Now he doesn’t even touch my hair. They say he’s obsessed with you.’ She looked Naif up and down. ‘I can’t see why.’

Naif’s face flushed at both the insult and the thought of Lenoir’s attentions.

She automatically reached for her Seal training to calm her but it wasn’t there. She must trust her instincts now, and they told her to be forceful. ‘Tell me where the vote is or I’ll set the Night Creatures on you.’

‘Naif!’ exclaimed Charlonge from the shadows.

Naïf ignored her. She didn’t have time to debate with either girl.

‘You can’t control the Night Creatures. Only the Guardians can do that.’ Jaime flicked her long hair behind her shoulders with assurance, but Naif heard the tiny waver of uncertainty in her voice.

‘They’ll come and find you, I promise,’ Naif whispered. She pulled the hem of her skirt up and showed her wounded ankle. ‘They almost took my foot off before I learned their secrets. Now I can speak to them – command them, if I wish. Imagine what they would do to your hair out there in the dark among the thorn bushes and the dirt.’

The girl took a step backwards. She pointed to an apse-like alcove lit by a single wall-mounted candle on the far side of the cavern. ‘That way. But I don’t know where. I never go in there.’

Naif ran across the cavern, hoping that Charlonge followed. She must find out if Lenoir survived.

The door in the alcove led into a cave that was lit by torches hung from the walls. But tunnels branched off it in so many directions that she stopped abruptly.

Charlonge bumped into her shoulder. ‘Do you know where to go? If you don’t know we could get lost.’

‘Shhh!’ said Naif. ‘Listen!’ The faint strains of guitar melody reached them, echoing around the cave. ‘Markes. But which way?’

‘The Dominion is a series of concentric circles connected by short corridors,’ Charlonge replied.

Naif stared at her. ‘How do you know that?’

‘It’s in the books. Before the Ripers lived here, the caves belonged to the monks. They drew pictures of it. It’s like a maze.’

‘Is that what you’ve been studying?’

‘I knew my time was soon. I wanted to know more before I … left.’

Naif felt relieved that Charlonge had been acting – thinking – for herself. ‘I’m glad you did,’ she said. ‘Circles mean that we can’t get lost.’

An unbidden confidence surged through Naif like a firm hand in the middle of her back. She took the candle-torch from the wall holder. ‘We just need to follow the music.’

She chose a corridor by concentrating on the sound, letting it draw her.

Charlonge followed silently behind her. They passed countless wooden doors pressed into the rock like dates in dough. Behind each one, Naif knew, would be a sparse, nondescript room like the one she had laid in after her Enlightenment. She resisted the desire to look inside any of them, focusing harder as the music grew louder.

‘It’s here,’ she said, finally. She stopped and gave Charlonge the torch. Then she placed her hands to the wall, feeling for a gap or seam.

‘But there’s no door,’ said Charlonge.

Naif bit her lip and let her hands roam the rock further. ‘It’s behind this wall … I’m sure.’

‘How do we get there?’

Naif turned to the older girl. ‘What else did you learn from the books about the monks? Please think hard.’

Charlonge took a nervous breath, glancing over her shoulder. ‘How can you be so calm? Joel is like that too.’

‘You are capable, Char. Think of all the new ones you’ve managed. Think of how you’ve tended me.’

‘But this is different. This is forbidden.’

‘That’s what they want you to believe. Fear traps your mind.’ Naif knew that now. It was how Grave worked. Joel had worked that out a long time before her. ‘There must be a way through the wall to the music.’

Charlonge pressed a palm to her forehead, thinking. ‘The book says that the monks found bones in the tunnels. They drew pictures of them, piled into corners. I suppose that means it was a catacomb before they came.’

‘Catacomb?’

‘Burial chambers. Crypts.’

Naif knew about crypts too. In Grave they stood amongst the normal dwellings, not separated from the living in the way Suki had described her village’s former cemetery. Some of the crypts in Grave were bigger than her house. Inside each one would be a wall of coffin drawers, and near that a pot stand with dried arrangements. Excepting for