The Emperor's Bone Palace (Infernal War Saga Book 2) by Hailey Turner

Author:Hailey Turner [Turner, Hailey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-09T18:30:00+00:00

Two

BLAINE

The laboratories where tithes were turned into wardens over the course of years were built below ground, in the rocky earth, the walls of the rooms and halls smooth, seamless metal that Blaine couldn’t help but take a second look at. It reminded him of the catacombs in Amari and the oldest civic buildings in Glencoe. Architecture from a long-ago Age that had somehow survived by way of engineering lost to them.

The spaces were lit not with gas lamps but with clarion crystal chips at the tips of wire encased in thin blown glass. The flameless lights ran on aether power from a generator deep below the labs, the earth blocking the sound of it. The invention was one Blaine wished he had time to study.

“The generator runs much of the power for the island. We built it underground to protect it from winter storms,” Delani explained as she led them down a windowless hall.

Some doors to laboratories were propped open, giving them the chance to peer in at the wardens working on alchemy experiments with poison. Some doors were closed, with colored lights over a warning sign indicating an experiment was in progress.

“Tithes taking on a round of poisoning,” Delani said when a high-pitched shout startled them as they passed a room.

“Poisoning?” Honovi asked.

“Yes, how else do you think we become tolerant? It takes years to build up resistance.”

Blaine hadn’t given much thought on how wardens were trained, but the idea of being poisoned for years in order to survive in the poison fields and take on revenants left him feeling ill at ease. “Isn’t most of Maricol cleansed?”

Delani shook her head. “Spores ride the winds and seep into ground water. A land can be cleansed for a generation, and the next will find it tainted again. We are always striving to record the poison levels in every quadrant we are assigned along borders to ensure Maricol’s children do not succumb to the land. There are frontier towns that are here in summer and gone in winter because of poisoned mist and fog. Cleansed doesn’t mean safe.”

No wonder the Poison Accords was the oldest set of treaties on record. Wardens might not have a country, but they were a people still, one everyone else looked to for survival. That skill with poison and alchemy and dealing with the unknown was why they’d brought Nathaniel to them.

Still, it was a shock to see Nathaniel strapped down on a lab table, bared to the waist, putting the vivisection scars on full display. A warden was tending to the burn wounds on his arm and side when they entered the laboratory. Blaine had to grab Caris by the shoulder to hold her back from approaching the lab table, keeping her there by the wall with him and Honovi.

“What are you doing?” she cried out.

“Figuring out a puzzle,” a warden wearing a leather apron said as she approached the lab table. She wasn’t tall, her build wiry, and her features favored a Urovan ancestry even though Blaine knew wardens called no country home.

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