13 Otto

13

Otto

It's already so much worse than I expected.

There had been a glimmer of hope, I realize now, a faint belief that perhaps our fears were unrealized. That maybe Dieter wasn't as strong as he'd been before, that Fritzi's possession was no more than a dying gasp from a withering man.

But no.

He has consolidated all of his power and strengthened his grip, choking the city in an iron-tight fist. The murders have continued. The terror has continued.

Focus.

I can grieve, or I can act. And Fritzi needs me to act.

We need to get to the aqueducts. The passages the hexenj?gers know about—such as the one outside the arena or under the Porta Nigra—are too risky. I don't love the idea of returning to the housefort I used before. Our stunt to free the prisoners in Trier last year will no doubt have caused Dieter to take a closer look at the old tunnels that remained, and the routes that were once secret may be compromised. But it's still the best option.

By which I mean, it's the only option.

I pull Fritzi under the arched entryway of the narrow alley leading to the Judengasse. I'm on edge, intently focused on every detail, looking for the swish of a black cloak, the flash of a silver brooch.

A pebble bounces off my shoulder.

I suck in a breath, my heart hammering. I want to whirl around, but I can't cause a scene. I don't see anyone else on this street, but hidden eyes may watch me from covered windows. My fingers tighten around Fritzi's, and we both pause. I look casually over my shoulder…

There.

A mass of dirty rags huddles in the corner, shadowed. The lump almost looks like refuse, but I see bright eyes shining in the darkness.

Mia, an orphan who lived with her brother in the Judengasse and watched over my housefort when I was away. She's better than any spy; no one looks twice at an orphan, not in a city with so many mothers burnt.

The bundle of cloth shifts, and Mia stands up. Ignoring me completely, she steps deeper into the alley, behind another building. I wait a beat, then follow, Fritzi breathless with anticipation beside me.

Mia leads us into a tiny shack leaning against one of the buildings, chickens rooting among the muck behind sticks woven into a crude pen.

"You came back," Mia says when Fritzi and I round the corner. I cannot tell if there is relief or accusation in her sharp tone.

"I thought—I thought it would be over," I say. Emotion chokes my voice. Can she tell how sorry I am? I should have come back so much sooner. I should have made sure Trier was safe. I should have made sure she was safe, and her brother, and the other orphans and destitute people. There was so much more work to do, and I let myself celebrate a false victory instead, I let myself revel in joy when there was still so much grief left in the wake of the city I abandoned—

Fritzi presses her weight against my shoulder, grounding me. I can almost sense her admonishment to not feel guilty through the touch.

"It's not safe for you here," Mia tells me.

"Where is your brother?" I ask.

Mia shakes her head. "Not here. He found work on a farm past the city walls and—"

My shoulders sag in relief. Mia and her brother were among the first I saved; their father had wanted to make way for a new wife, and Mia's brother had been born with one arm much shorter than the other, something his ass of a father considered a flaw. The witch trials had given their father an easy way to start a new life, and while I'd been able to save them from the stake, I had not been able to find them the home they deserved.

"Why didn't you go with him to the farm?"

She rolls her eyes as if to say, Because obviously there's still work here to do. "What do you need help with?"

"Is the housefort safe? I need to get to the aqueducts, and—"

"He told me to give you a message, if you ever came back."

Her words stop me, redirect my thoughts. "Who?" I ask. I exchange a look with Fritzi. Mia can't mean Dieter, can she?

"Johann," she says.

Johann. The young hexenj?ger who dared to warn me about Dieter's approach. The one who escorted Dieter back to Trier with the promise to oversee his execution. Johann—perhaps the only ally I have in the hexenj?ger units now.

"He's alive?" Fritzi asks, hope sparking in her voice.

"He's been helping us since you left," Mia tells me, and guilt twists around my gut again. I know Mia means more than just her brother and herself; the us in her statement refers to all the victims.

Johann stepped up to help when I left the city behind.

"We do what we can. There's a…" Mia flaps her hands, looking for the word. "A group of us? We don't all know each other, just the signs. We try to warn the people the hexenj?gers target, free prisoners, undermine the Kommandant…"

Johann isn't just helping.

He's started an underground network of rebels.

"He told us that you may come back," Mia said. "If you found out that things were bad, still."

I kneel, ignoring the disgruntled hen that flaps against my leg as whatever muck it sought seeps into my trouser leg. "I am so sorry I left you, Mia."

She glares at me. "We don't have time for your apologies."

"I like her," Fritzi says.

"He told us to tell you to go to the church."

I shake my head, confused. "Which church?" There are dozens, from the grand cathedral to the church of Porta Nigra, from the chapels attached to the monastery in honor of Saint Simeon to the little parishes scattered around.

"He just said that you need to find the star before you can see everything."

I suck in a breath.

"What does that mean?" Fritzi said.

Mia shrugs. "It wasn't safe to be too obvious. If one of the j?gers caught us and found out what we were doing…"

Coded messages.

"I think I know where to go." I say, then turn to Fritzi. "Johann knows the aqueducts too, and if he's been tracking Dieter, he can point us in the direction we need to go."

Fritzi nods tightly, and I'm aware that the direction we need to go gets us one step closer to confronting her brother.

To killing him.

Before I leave the little girl, I dump the contents of my purse into her hands. "Get out of the city," I tell her. "This will buy you and your brother passage south." I tell her about Baden-Baden, and that there are friends in the Black Forest.

She takes the money, but I can see she's not happy with me. "I'm not leaving," she says sullenly. "Why would I?"

I gape at her. "To be safe."

A smirk twists her lips. "I don't care about that."

I feel awe as I stand before her. Maybe Fritzi's right, and I'm too noble, too guilty, too everything. I want to save everyone. But Mia reminds me that not everyone wants–or needs–to be saved.

And I'm not alone in my fight.

"So, where are we headed first?" Fritzi asks me as I lead her back out of the Judengasse. I don't want to pass through the square, but it's the most direct route. The Porta Nigra looms to my left; the burnt corpses of Dieter's most recent victims smolder to my right. Fritzi and I rush past, turning up a street before Fritzi stops in her tracks, her eyes wide.

"The cathedral?" she gasps. The seat of the archbishop is there, the man who signed off on all of Dieter's evil. Likely no more than a puppet of that demon , I think sourly.

I shake my head, pulling her to the side as a man with a cart full of hay lumbers past. "There's another church, beside the cathedral, but separate. The Church of Our Lady."

Fritzi frowns, still unclear, but she follows as I lead her closer.

"I can show you better than I can tell you."

We both pull our hoods up as we approach the church square. The cathedral rises up more like a fortress than a holy place. But, just to the right of it, another little church rests in the shadow of the main cathedral. Our Lady was built by the French—Trier is close enough to the border—and it was often ignored despite its beauty in favor of the archbishop's seat. The buildings are a stark contrast to each other—one a brute, the other delicate; one made of stocky, solid stone blocks, the other with stained glass and carved arching designs that make the rock look like lace.

No one stops us as we go inside the smaller church, even though most pilgrims go to the cathedral to see the relics there.

We are not here for relics.

It's still early enough for the stained glass windows to cast nothing more than flickers of blue and red over the pale floor. I lead Fritzi to the center of the building.

"A star," she gasps.

A gold-colored star with twelve points is inlaid on the stone floor.

"What does it mean?" Fritzi asks me. Her voice is hushed, but sound carries. I raise my finger to my lips, warning her that others could hear us across the room, even if we whisper. There aren't many here, but a church is never empty. And this building was designed to amplify sound in the center.

Standing on the star, I point to each of the twelve pillars holding up the soaring roof of the church. Pictures are painted on the columns, but it's impossible to see all of them lined up unless we stand atop the star. It is an optical illusion, a brilliant use of the building's structure to force worshippers to pause and contemplate the heart of the church if they want to clearly see each image. Moving just a little to the left or right would throw the whole effect off; only when standing in the exact center of the church, marked by the star, can the entire series of paintings be seen.

I pull Fritzi to the side of the building, where the acoustics are not quite so echoing. "This has to be what Johann meant—the church with the star where you can see everything."

Fritzi nods. The clue makes sense. "But where is Johann?"

I cross over to one of the pillars. In addition to a portrait—each pillar showcases a different apostle—there are lines of text painted onto the stones. "The Apostles' Creed," I tell Fritzi.

She squints at the text. "In Latin?"

I nod. "But look." I point to a line that reads, Creatorem caeli et terrae. "Creator of heaven and earth," I translate, but as I do, I trace the chalky line someone faintly sketched under the word terrae.

"A clue?" Fritzi says. "We're looking for earth?"

"Let's see if there are more."

We split up, each of us going to a different pillar. I find another chalky line under the word sub, which means under. Fritzi motions for me to come to her, and she points out a third word underlined: mortuos. The dead.

"Earth, under, dead," I whisper to her. "We need to find the dead who are under the earth."

Her eyes grow round. The clues all point to one place.

The crypt.

Fritzi looks around the small church, scanning for steps that will take us down to a crypt. I grab her hand. No one would know this route unless they were deeply entrenched in the Church, someone who studied the maps and knew the passages. Someone like me. Or Johann.

I take her through a back door, into the courtyard connecting Our Lady to the archbishop's cathedral. A priest I don't recognize has his head bowed in the cloister, but a light rain has kept the courtyard otherwise clear. I pull Fritzi down another passage and to a dark stone staircase and the filigree door at the base, quickly entering. There's no light here beyond the guttering candles. The scent of petrichor and damp rises up to greet us.

"Could this be a trap?" Fritzi asks, her voice a trembling whisper.

I step deeper into the crypt. I know, only because I have studied the tunnels and maps, that there is a passage from here to the Roman aqueducts, but it collapsed long ago, a century before now. The only entrance to and exit from this part of the crypt is by the stairs Fritzi and I just descended. If hexenj?gers stormed the crypt, we'd be trapped.

I'm just about to grab Fritzi and run to the stairs when I hear footsteps—not from the door, but from deeper in the crypt, in the dark shadows.

"You're here," a voice says. One dying candle flickers at the speaker's breath.

Johann straightens, looking from me to Fritzi and back again.

In the space of a few short months, the boy has aged a decade. Pale scruffy hairs scratch at his chin, the barest markings of a man that seem reluctant to catch up with the boy's age. His face is gaunt, his skin sallow. Johann squints up at us, and I think he must doubt we are real.

"I'm back," I say. God, forgive me for leaving. For not finishing what I began.

Johann swallows, the lump in his throat rising and falling against the thin corded muscles. "We must pray it's not too late."

"What's been going on?" Fritzi asks, stepping closer. Johan motions for us to follow him deeper into the crypt. I grab a candle, the wax soft and cheap, denting under my grip, and go with him.

"Dieter's mad," Johann says. "But he somehow…he has sway over people. The archbishop is like a…"

"A puppet?" Fritzi guesses.

Johann nods. "He speaks, and it is his voice, but he says things that he would never say, does things he would never do. He rarely leaves his office, but the decrees he's given… Dieter holds all the power now."

I curse. I had thought Dieter powerless when we overtook him at Christmas, but he's been drawing on Fritzi as a magical source and using that to manipulate those around him. And there are other sorts of power than magic, like the power of control over a diocese.

"I've been in hiding for more than a month now," Johan continues. This is an ancient part of the crypt, deeper than I've ever been before. Rocks are scattered, and Fritzi and I have to go slower, picking our way around them so we don't fall.

This hiding place is brilliant, I have to give him credit. Not only is it unlikely that anyone would look for a rebel within the church complex itself, but the crypt here is rarely used. Unless the archbishop himself died, no one would come down here. The cathedral's crypt is reserved for the most illustrious members of the church; the regular parishioners who die—at least the ones not burned—rot in an ossuary before being packed into graves. They're not given their own chamber beneath the holy floors. Pilgrims to the cathedral worship at the altar, kissing the reliquaries, those elaborate gilded boxes that hold holy relics. The archbishop sits on his throne, and the priest's robes brush the smooth floor above, all without knowing that the one human living in the shadowed crypt beneath their feet plots to free the city of their tyranny.

The only problem is…

"How do you leave the crypt unnoticed?" I ask.

"Dieter has been focused on the tunnels," Johann says. "But he hasn't found this one."

Johann sweeps his arm aside, and I gasp. The old tunnel, the one that had caved in, has been cleared. The rocks piled up around the tombs are debris from the excavation.

"You did this?" I ask, looking into the depths of the tunnel. A thin pile of stones separates this from the main aqueduct; no one in the aqueducts would think the tunnel was open.

"I've had help." Johann turns to me. "It wasn't just you, you know. Lots of people hated the regime of terror. Lots of people have been fighting back, even in little ways."

"And you have united them." I swallow down the emotion welling in my eyes. I should have done what Johann has done. I should have trusted others, formed a rebellion, not a heist. I should have unified the people.

I never had to fight alone.

How different would this all have been had I sought allies instead of plots? Working with more than just my sister and later Fritzi, perhaps we could have toppled Dieter before he ever had the chance to be what he became. Perhaps Fritzi's coven would have been spared; perhaps more stakes would have been unburnt; perhaps…

A world of possibilities is heaped like broken rubble in the corner.

I made this life from my past actions. I can only move forward and attempt to change the future into one that does not bring me shame.

"I saw you," Johann says. "Before. It took me a while to realize what you'd done, how you'd worked. That time you hit me in front of the others, told me I couldn't talk the way I did…you meant that. Not because you wanted me to believe in what the hexenj?gers said, but because I really couldn't talk that way…not if I wanted to stay alive. Not if I wanted to find ways to fight back."

I remember that hit. I hadn't held back. Not only would talk of mercy for the prisoners have gotten Johann killed, but if I had been lenient, it might have blown my cover.

"I started seeing the other people who didn't talk in the same way you didn't talk." Johann takes a step forward, grabs my shoulder, and gives it a comforting squeeze. "I started finding friends and allies. But only because I saw you first."

"Thanks," I mutter.

"I'm glad you're here now," Johann continues. "Because Dieter has been searching for something. At first, I thought he was just trying to reopen the tunnels, but the Kommandant has maps and books and notes. He sifts through the aqueducts. He's seeking…something."

"A stone," Fritzi interjects. "He's trying to find a stone."

Johann shoots her a confused look and casts his eyes around the crypt and all the rocks scattered on the ground.

"A specific stone," Fritzi adds, offering a weak smile.

"What does it look like?" Johann asks. "Is it a gem, or perhaps cut in a certain shape…?"

"We don't know," I say, knowing how unhelpful that is. But part of the security of the stones is how little is known about them.

"It may make him stronger," Fritzi said. "The stone he's looking for… it could give him…powers."

Johann blanches, clearly horrified at the thought of an even stronger Kommandant. "All I know is that he started in the Porta Nigra, going through the tunnels and excavating them from there. And he's ramped it up. Day and night. I can hear them sometimes."

He indicates the pile of rocks used as a barrier to hide his secret tunnel. "Dieter will tear the city apart to get what he wants."

No , I think. You're wrong. He'll tear apart the whole world.