Free Red Palace by Sarah Dalton

change my clothes. The dressings will need to be changed and I should check the wound on my side. I’m relieved to see there is no infection, and I find proper bandages in the bathroom. Then I take another tunic from her majesty’s wardrobe and hope that she does not have my head on a spike for theft.
    Before leaving the bathroom, I run my fingers over the notches, memorising their size and frequency, before heading back to the door. The loops face me. I shudder at the memory of the mechanical spider lunging through the door, its pincers biting into my side. I shake the memory away and work on the rings, bringing the symbols together. When it’s over, the mechanism gives a quiet click, and a cool breeze spreads through the chambers.
    “You did it, Mae,” Allerton says. He nods his head as though impressed.
    “Beardsley helped in my vision.”
    Allerton’s impressed expression fades into a frown.
    “What is it?” I ask.
    “It could be nothing,” he says. “I just have a bad feeling in regards to those visions.”
    We head into the tunnels, pulling the lever to close the entrance. The lantern is in exactly the same place, and I light it and hold it aloft. It is exactly the same as in the vision, so alike that it is uncanny.
    “Beardsley said there was a viewing place. That there was something I needed to see. What do you think that means?” I say. “It has to be connected to the queen in some way. There must be a reason for her to have a secret door to this tunnel. Beardsley adapted the old castle and used his inventions to customise it to how the king wanted it. He said the queen asked for these specifications in her chamber. He said that he presumed she wanted an escape route for her family. But why would she keep it from the king?”
    “Perhaps she is afraid of the king,” Allerton suggests.
    “That makes sense, he is scary. But he is the father of her children. Why would he hurt his own children?”
    “Why do men do anything? For money or love, and I can’t imagine th at man loving so much as a kitten, let alone his own children. I imagine he could stamp on a disabled duckling and feel no remorse.”
    I try to hold back my chuckle but fail miserably. “He would have us beheaded if he heard us. The first thing he did to me was shoot me with an arrow.”
    Allerton chuckles this time. “Imagine if he knew the truth. If he learnt that he had shot the craft-born with an arrow… after his utter obsession with finding the craft-born… well. What a fool he is. If there is one thing more dangerous than a tyrant king, it’s one with an empty head.”
    We press on through the damp tunnels. The mouldy stench drifts up to my nostrils as I walk, turning my empty stomach. How long has it been since I ate? The memory of steak pie and chocolate cake makes my mouth water. We should take a detour to the kitchens soon. Perhaps there is something untouched by the curse that I can eat.
    “Do you know where you’re going?” Allerton asks.
    I’d been following the same path I walked with Beardsley in my dream, but now we came to the point where the vision had ended and I’d been brought back to the queen’s chambers. It was here that we talked of the king, and of how Beardsley has done bad things for him. My gut tells me that there is some significance in the words Beardsley said to me.
    The things I have done…
    All the secrets…
    And these things he has done, they were for the king, for something he requested. If the Nix is showing me the vision, and then inside that vision Beardsley brings up the king, then surely the king is the key to all this? But the other visions showed me different things, like Cas and Ellen and her father… all of them seem to involve bullying in some way. My head spins as I try to make sense of it all. There is no sense.
    “This is as far as we came,” I say. “I don’t know where to go from here.”
    “But you know the basic structure of the castle. You can follow the tunnels in a