Chapter 15: The Vault - The Night Market

The elevator felt slower this time.

Quinn swiped her security card without flourish. A tiny chime. The floor button, which remained unlit to Pepper’s own access card, glowed a cobalt blue, and lit up under her fingertip. The number: 65.

They ascended in silence at first. Pepper shifted slightly, fingers curling and uncurling at her side. The soft whoosh of their ascent wasn’t enough to steal the awkwardness.

‘Miss,’ Pepper said finally, ‘are you sure you’re not needed at the party?’

Quinn didn’t look over. Her gaze was fixed upward, watching the lights above the lift door tick away floor after floor.

‘Who needs me more?’ she murmured. ‘The pretend faces who know me by reputation and just want to play nice? My parents who hang me like a portrait on the wall at things like these? Or my endlessly capable, endlessly dull brother?’ She smiled, slow and cat-like. ‘Or maybe the little flame beside me in the dark, trying to build a fire without knowing what she’s trying to burn . . .’

‘Point taken,’ Pepper replied. ‘I just wouldn’t want to get you into trouble.’

Quinn’s laugh was brief, and gone before it could catch. She rubbed the lizard on her shoulder. ‘Trouble and me are bedfellows, my love. And I am far from gentle.’

The lift didn’t ping. Instead, it let out a deep, resonant bong, like a cathedral bell that had been struck to mark their arrival.

The doors parted with a mechanical sigh onto a simple corridor. Smooth stone floors, pale and bare. Metal trims. No opulence. No decoration. A narrow security desk bisected the space like a confession booth. Its owner jerked upright from hunching over a monitor, looking at the arrivals.

‘Patrick,’ Quinn sang, stepping forward, arms loosely swaying by her sides. ‘Look at you. Desk duty on a night like this? I do hope they’re making the overtime worth it. The rest of us are being terribly irresponsible upstairs.’

The man, lean and cautious, stood firm as they approached. His eyes flicked from her to Pepper, then back again.

‘Someone has to behave themselves, Miss Cavendish. The short straw was mine, but I’ll be making up for it when I clock off,’ he said carefully. ‘What brings you here?’

‘A little peace and quiet from the hustle and bustle.’

He looked to Pepper, uncertain. ‘And your guest?’

‘She’s on the level,’ Quinn said, without hesitation.

There was a pause. Patrick’s hand hovered over a scanner mounted into the desk. ‘I’ll need you both to sign in, please.’

Quinn tapped her card on the reader, shortly followed by Pepper, whose motions were much more deliberate. Patrick rested a hand on his hip while the computer monitor flashed up the request, a hip that Pepper noticed sported a black holster and the chunky handle of a firearm . . .

‘All this used to be done with pen and paper, once upon a time. Can you believe it? Now it’s these stupid machines,’ Quinn whispered, ‘so uncivilised.’

Patrick watched the screen as a flash of green glinted off his eyeballs. He nodded once and reached under the desk.

‘Ladies, have a good evening.’

A hiss. A thunk.

The doors ahead were huge, arched, made of something darker than wood but not quite metal. Above them, carved in deep relief, was a castle turret haloed in flames. Battlements cracked. Windows open to nothing. Fire climbing over stone like ivy.

The Cavendish sigil, representing a history barbed and burning.

‘Those are bloody big doors . . .’ Pepper whispered, unable to contain her observation.

The doors split apart with a hiss from pressure locks, gliding far too quickly for their weight and design. Warm light spread across the plain floor before them as Quinn paused in thought.

‘Well . . .’ she began to walk inside, ‘they don’t call it a vault for nothing.’

The air shifted cooler the moment Pepper crossed the threshold; cooler, denser. It wasn’t the temperature that made her shiver; it was the knowledge of entering somewhere sacred.

And tremendously dangerous.

The floor spread out before her in two great levels, the upper balcony encircling the lower like a crown. Beyond a shallow landing, the Vault opened into a vast reading hall.

Bookcases towered fifteen feet high, black wood kissed by age and wax, packed from floor to laddered ceiling with tomes bound in everything from tooled leather to stitched vellum. Some had no visible titles. Most had no recognisable language.

The ceiling arched above, forming ribs of stone. Lanterns hung at intervals like suspended stars. They cast a golden sheen on the long reading tables that stretched through the centre of the room, each with lamps of brass and green glass that glowed low and steady.

Above, the second level balcony was lined with iron banisters and more towering shelves. Quiet movement could be seen – someone crossing with a bundle of scrolls, another seated and taking notes. They had noticed the pair, but went about whatever business they had.

Pepper couldn’t define the aesthetic, struggling to identify the influences of styles that had given birth to this one. To the woman, it was utterly astounding. Like a fusion of modern and gothic.

Quinn walked a few steps ahead, her footfalls almost silent, letting Pepper take it in at her own pace. Her head turned as if following a shifting, snaking current that ran through the room, detectable only by herself.

‘This,’ Quinn declared with a sweep of her arms, and the crack of a high heel to the floor, ‘is what we call the Vault.’

Her voice echoed slightly in the vastness, bouncing off stone and polished brass.

‘A museum of sorts. Except the exhibits are real, and the curators are weirder than me. Some of our most valuable things are kept here. Important things. Fragile things. Dangerous things.’ She loudly whispered, ‘The dangerous ones are the best.’

She strolled forward, arms lazily swinging, trailing her fingers along the spines of massive leather-bound tomes like a child skipping through tall grass.

‘History upon history upon history. Written, rewritten, embellished, redacted, and then written again in slightly better prose. Did you know the Cavendish line began in East Anglia? Windswept marshes became the home for a tribe of Vikings, superstitious types who relied on bloodletting, which only encouraged our arrival. While they entertained themselves with shadows and stars and smoke, we spooked them enough to abandon settlements. The Romans afterwards thought they were cursed when legionnaires went missing, but nope – just us.’

Pepper trailed behind her, eyes wide, neck craning to catch glimpses of the second floor. Two figures in high-collared cloaks looked from the upper level like perching crows.

‘All our travels recorded. Bloodlines charted like constellations. Tombs mapped in ink. Famous names, infamous doings, both bound in calfskin and forgotten until someone like us comes along to peel back the covers. Look at it, Pepper.’ Quinn spun slowly, arms lifted. ‘Smell it. Breathe it in.’

They passed an arched entry with brass piping and a flickering sigil glowing faintly in red above it.

‘A lot happens here,’ Quinn said, lowering her voice to a theatrical whisper, ‘but we don’t like to talk about it. Everything’s hush-hush. Secrets, see? Can be more valuable than anything in this world, so we make sure ours don’t scurry away. Take that one—’ She gestured toward the arch. ‘The Hemotheca. Everything blood goes on in there. Boiling points, burning thresholds, all very spicy.’

She grinned devilishly as they passed, with Pepper catching sight of machines that would look right at home in a hospital or laboratory.

‘You know why sunlight’s fatal to us, right? It’s not the fire. It’s the betrayal. We die, and the once loving sun, the thing that gives life, shuns us. Our blood revolts in the process. It boils, turns against us. That’s what they’re studying. Poisons, tonics, serums. Drugs. Things to help us. Things that could unmake us. I like to go in and see what they’re cooking up. Poke around. The stuffy ones get cross, but nuts to them, I say.’

They passed under another carved arch, this one colder. The OSSUARY. A dry odour lingered here, like dust and old teeth. Through the entrance she glimpsed curved walls of preserved skeletons and scrolls stored behind glass. Pepper blinked at a long shelf containing rows of preserved femurs and an ornate display of a spinal column so giant that it looked like it very well may have belonged to one.

‘Oh, this, this is one of my favourites,’ Quinn sighed, her voice almost reverent. ‘Bits and pieces of the Family. Bits and pieces of others. Hands that can’t hold, legs that can’t flee, skulls that don’t think no more. You’d be amazed what bones remember. They talk plenty if you know the trick of listening. They tell the future. They reveal the past. They also make a surprisingly good broth if you’re bold enough to try. For obvious reasons, dogs aren’t allowed in here.’

Pepper raised an eyebrow. ‘People bring animals in here?’

‘No,’ Quinn replied simply, then added, ‘I’m just saying, if they did, they wouldn’t be allowed. But they don’t. But if they did – no. No dogs.’

Pepper speedily read the signs for others as they passed: LIBRARIUM, RELIQUARY VAULT, HERBARIUM, RESTROOMS. Each one teasing something fantastic within, with obvious exception to the last.

And then, as if her soul had found its cathedral, Quinn stopped before the grandest arch of all. The RELIC GALLERY.

She turned in place, letting the atmosphere caress her like the roving hands of a lover. Her eyes fluttered half closed. Her voice dropped to a breathy hush.

‘You can taste the slumber,’ she whispered, ‘Everything in here is dreaming. Some even remember when we were still gods, and those dream the best of all. Oh, it is just divine.’

She brought a finger to her lips, a fang catching the light, subtle and dangerous, but there. She was still smiling, staring at Pepper. But there was something else within the wildness of her eyelids. A hunger. A memory. A madness.

‘You can walk through here, and every step will greet you with something you could never possibly imagine. Or maybe you can! I can. I couldn’t, but I can now.’ She paused, then added with a smirk, ‘And I’m all the better for it.’

And with that, Quinn drifted forward through the archway, her silks swaying behind her like the tail of a comet, and Pepper followed.

Rows of glass-topped cases and velvet-robed pedestals stretched ahead, bathed in the soft glow of antique bulbs. Each display was a fragment of something lost and valuable: curled papers inked in languages long forgotten, fractured stone tablets etched with dreams and warnings, masks with teeth, charms scorched by fire, and weapons whose last purpose had been vengeance. Statues of things, things on plinths, oddities suspended from the ceiling, entombed in glass. It was dizzying.

Quinn moved through the aisles, humming as she walked, low at first, and then, with a flick of her tongue, she added words to her melody:

‘And all, they say, is theirs – but love, that claim is now up for debate.

You turned your gaze when profit came, so your outrage comes far too late.

Some cry ill-gotten, when they were forgotten – your fury’s a hollow mistake.

If you’d cared at all, about the state of it, fool, then their loss would have made your heart break.

You never showed interest as their caretakers.

Left them broken, let them be stolen – then howled as the mistake-makers.

Now you’re bitter that they’ve been protected,

Sheltered far from where they were rejected.’

Pepper, trailing behind, wasn’t sure if the song made her uneasy because of the lyrics, or because Quinn looked far too comfortable singing them.

‘All this,’ Quinn said, waving a hand theatrically toward the gallery, ‘was scraped from battlefields both celebrated and forgotten. Torn from the ground. Plucked from the sky. Bargained for, lost in games, rescued, gifted or bought fair and square . . . mostly.’

Pepper’s eyes moved over the glittering fragments of history, unable to guess which were sacred and which were dangerous.

‘These Relics, they hide in the folds of the world’s history,’ Quinn continued, ‘brought about by epics that time may never reveal: of nations collapsing and rebuilt, of queens betrayed, hymns silenced, plagues unleashed and rebellions of yellow. And now? Now they belong to us.’

She stopped in front of a stone archway carved with interlocking runes. Her eyes glinted.

‘The other Families make noises, sure. Accusations of theft, desecration, all that poetic rot. But it’s always a little hypocritical, don’t you think? Glass houses, and all . . . they do the same.’

They passed a tall glass case. Inside, a lavender tombstone stood upright, beaten but intact, its surface etched with dozens of unwatching eyes.

Pepper didn’t see them.

She only saw the Eternal Rose.

Her breath hitched. There, sitting alone on a low obsidian plinth, removed from its casing, unguarded, like it had simply been placed down and forgotten, was the very thing she’d risked everything to find. It looked a little different from what she remembered: fresher, if that was the best description. Its petals seemed stiffer from the weird, wilted mess that she first laid eyes on. The brown tinge seemed to have spots of pearlescence spreading. But it looked so easy to reach out and take, to run.

But she’d never make it. She’d be set upon before her fingers even lifted the stem.

‘Monsters exist in this world, dear, hidden here and there,’ Quinn said, snapping Pepper back to the conversation, unsure if she had been noticed paying so much attention to the Relic, ‘bitten or not. Each with a purpose. Each with a root. Your brother’s no different.’

‘Why such an interest in him?’ Pepper asked.

‘You grow up in a place like this, a Family like ours, you’re told everything is possible. And it is, I know it more than most! But, and think on this, if you’re constantly told that the world is yours to take by money or influence, then surely you’re allowed to touch it from time to time, right? Not so much for me. They don’t let me out often. My mother worries about what I might say, or do. Fears it! Me! Like, I’ll rubbish our reputation in a flash somehow. So, she insists on stuffy escorts, clinging and suffocating, hiding just out of view – ugh. Shadowing me like, uh . . . um . . .’ She snapped her fingers, struggling to clarify.

‘Like shadows?’ Pepper offered.

‘Yes! Exactly! It’s for the best according to her, but whose best? Certainly not mine. And your brother, he’s the one they rely on to keep me well behaved. Whenever I go out for a walk, or – God forbid – try and enjoy myself with whatever this city has to offer, he is always the one Mortis tasks to bring me home. Because of the noisy thing inside him. I can argue with Laik and win all day long. But his other? There’s no reasoning with that. Doesn’t wanna listen. Too set in their ways. But you gotta admit . . . it’s sort of incredible, isn’t it? Scary in that nice, tingly way when it gushes on out.’ Quinn inhaled, seeming proud of herself before she got to the point. ‘Frankly, your brother fascinates me. I won’t pretend that I don’t admire what he’s conjoined with, nor deny that it is attractive per se . . . but he is such a killjoy. And I do so miss having my fun.’

‘Have you ever tried to find out what it is?’ Pepper asked, still staring.

‘Out of curiosity? No. It’s hardly my business. I don’t need people messing in mine, so I won’t meddle in theirs. Not unless it’s my business already . . . in which case I cannot help it. It’s already happening, see? I don’t have that luxury of a choice.’ She smiled to herself, drifting behind Pepper, surveying her bare neck with interest, closer than what Pepper felt was a comfortable distance. ‘What is it with the pair of you, hmm? Little puzzle boxes needing a good twist to open themselves before me. What is inside you, I wonder? Whatever do I need to do to . . . find out?’ Quinn looked at Pepper, half-bemused, half-bewitched.

Pepper shuddered as Quinn passed, feeling exposed enough to be threatened by the odd tangle of flirtation in Quinn’s words.

‘I want to know,’ Pepper interrupted. ‘Can I find the answers here? Work out what’s in him?’

‘If not here,’ Quinn said, ‘then I suspect nowhere else.’

‘Miss Cavendish,’ Pepper began.

‘That’s my mother,’ Quinn cut in, stroking Mr Wiggles’ stiff jaw. ‘She’s downstairs, probably disapproving of me this very minute.’

‘Quinn,’ Pepper said, steadier now, ‘I need to ask something.’

‘You may.’

‘The Vault. These archives. I beg you, may I use them to . . . discover, what may be inside Laik?’

‘You want access to the Vault?’

‘I request, on your mercy, that in the pursuit of finding a solution for my brother, an Enforcer to the revered Cavendish Family, that I am aided to remove this—’

Pepper stopped herself, frowning at the words she had just spoken.

Remembering how Quinn reacted the first time they met.

Remembering her sister.

Realising that this wasn’t the way.

Instead, she emboldened herself with a breath and spoke with absolute conviction.

‘I want access to the Vault. All of it. Not just the surface. I want to dig, to study, to understand what’s inside Laik. I want to help him. I want to identify it. Know where it comes from. Know how it functions.’

Pepper’s face darkened.

‘And I know, I know, the best possible chance of doing any of this is somewhere down here. Something will give me the insight or the means. Right. Here.’

Quinn entertained a small smile.

‘And whatever would you do with that knowledge?’

‘When I do find what it is, I will work the solution, or the cure, or however it’s gonna be rectified . . . when I’m capable of doing so? I swear, I will rip the thing from Laik’s insides, with my bare hands, and punish it for every ounce of fucking pain it’s caused us.’

There was a stillness to the moment. Quinn’s eyes drifted to the gold locket hanging from Pepper’s neck and then back up again.

‘Oh, girlie,’ she purred with a slow grin, almost aroused by the outburst. ‘For a second there, I thought you had learned nothing, and I’d have had to say no. But that . . .’

Before she could say a word more, the lights in the Vault snapped from their native tones to a deep, humming red. Noises shifted around them, doors closed, bolts shunted into housing, various clicks, clunks and hisses. The entranceway to the Relic Gallery slammed shut like an iron trap as two feet of solid steel sealed them in.

Pepper looked around sharply, paranoid that she was the cause. All there was, was the deep, slow pulsing red, and thick shadows.

‘What’s happening?’

Quinn remained unmoved. She sang again, softly, like a lullaby meant to unsettle.

‘Lockdown. Some-body has been naugh-ty . . .’