“One, two, three, four.” Aidan waved his gloved index finger theatrically, and on the count of four, a door in the middle of the street flew open, letting warm light into the rain’s monochrome. Three men stepped outside.
Aidan brushed his wet hair from his forehead. “Patrick! Patrick!”
The tallest silhouette turned like a puppet in a shadow theatre.
“We’re here, Patrick.”
There was a moment of chaos, voices coughing and barking. Then the figures began toward them.
There it goes. Shea wiped the water from his face. He should’ve felt adrenaline, revenge’s foretaste—but it was all unclean, the lead-pregnant clouds, the half-burnt village, even ambushing the man who’d tried to kill him.
“Aidan!” Patrick called out from the rain. “What are you doing here?”
“What does it look like?”
Was he enjoying it?
The duke’s counselor stopped a few feet away, gray threads stitching the air and turning his face into a featureless mask. Another thing was tangible, though, and crude: the heavy crossbow the fellow to Patrick’s left held at the ready.
“Hello, Ashcroft.” The voice was featureless, too. “It looks like a setup to me.”
Aidan smiled. “We need to talk.”
“So, who has whom on the leash? Ashcroft you, or you Ashcroft? I should’ve known better than to trust a Dumian.”
Aidan’s smile morphed into a frown—but only for a second. “Nothing wrong with having regrets, Patrick.”
“I don’t have regrets—in case you haven’t noticed, there’s an arbalest pointed at your smug face.”
“For how long, is the question.”
Without saying a word, the man with the crossbow stepped through the rain, walked over an invisible line, and froze next to Aidan.
“Colm, what the hell are you doing?”
Aidan whistled. “Oh, the sweet power of gold.”
“You’re all dead—you too, Colm.” Despite his words, Patrick took a step back. “You’re still with me, Duane?”
The fellow he’d called Duane visibly hesitated, shifting his weight from one leg to another.
“Duane?”
At that moment, on an impulse, as though observing himself from the outside, Shea said, “Duane isn’t an idiot. He knows how unpleasant an injury—any injury—would make his way back to the border.”
Did I really say that?
“Duane!”
“Your choice, Duane,” Aidan said.
The man shrunk his head into his shoulders, lurched forward. Hurried past them. In a second, his stride went from andante to allegro: he broke into a run.
“Now we can talk odds.”
“What Ashcroft said about the injuries—the same applies to you. I don’t do surrender.”
The rain turned into a drizzle, as abruptly as it had started, revealing Patrick’s face, the face of a sad spaniel, the slightly hunched shoulders, bony legs. For the first time, Shea saw him, really saw him.
“I won’t hurt you, Patrick.”
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m not a threat. I’ve no idea why you haven’t understood it by now. If it’s your position at the duke’s court you fear for, don’t—I couldn’t care less.”
Patrick studied him and smiled with the corners of his mouth. “You know what I hate the most about you? Your self-righteousness. You capital types, you’re infallible, aren’t you?”
If only you knew, Shea thought, if only…
“You do realize, Ashcroft, that you’ve said goodbye to your own honor? I want to hear you rationalize this from your moral high ground, luring a man into a trap, bribing his companions.”
“Companion,” said Aidan. “I’ve only bribed Colm here.”
“I’m talking to the intendant guy. How do you rationalize that?”
“How do you rationalize trying to kill me?” Shea asked.
Something changed in Patrick: a wave traveled from his feet through his body, straightening the back, unfurling the shoulders, pushing forward the jaw. “Because you deserve it. You all do. Every single one of you at the Red Hill. You live off of us, and when you make a mistake—no, even when you disregard a direct order from a ruling monarch—you don’t really go away, do you? You get another assignment. You come to issue orders to us.”
“It’s your own choice to—” Aidan began.
“And you’re how old, Ashcroft—thirty-five?” Patrick squinted. “I’m almost fifty—I’ve served the duke for the most of my life. I make one mistake, one tiny mistake with you, and that’s it.”
“You’re talking about my life here,” Shea said.
“One mistake. And he tells me he’s already preparing a replacement.”
The honeycombs of the palace towers, the guy in the orange jacket jumping around the theater stage. I understand the poor bastard. The man who tried to assassinate me, I know how he feels. “I didn’t choose to come. If I could unburden you—”
“Fuck off!” Patrick spat on the ground. “I didn’t get the second chance you got—and I haven’t even disobeyed the duke. You’re—”
“I’m sorry. Not about the things you’ve done, but about your situation.”
“—bastards. I would choke you all at the Red Hill if I could, even the children, even the children.”
He wasn’t lying, Shea thought, and it wasn’t a hyperbole. Patrick was too simple to put up a facade, and—this much had been clear from their first conversation during the ‘reception’, back then, in the yellow room—he possessed a large capacity for hatred. Who knows what his story was; abused as a child? his peers didn’t like him enough?—but there he stood, in his current state, hating himself and, by extension, the universe.
And sometimes, the universe obliged hate with a target.
“Hand me the crossbow,” Shea said to the guy—what was his name? Colm?
The black glove patted him on the shoulder. “Glad to see you’ve finally come to your senses.”
Shea raised the weapon and aimed it at Patrick’s face. “Walk.”
“What?”
“Walk. Turn around and walk. Down the street, to the end of it, out of my sight.”
Patrick pursed his lips. Took a few steps backward. Turned.
As he moved away—from them and from the border—the sky cleared up, the stars brighter and closer now. Under their light, the tall figure receded between the mangled houses and the whole ones. He glanced back only once, at the very end of the street, the hunched shoulders, the spaniel face, barely discernable now.
Then he disappeared into a foreign land.
“This was a mistake. You’re banking too much on patrols stumbling upon him,” Aidan said. “My decision to support you—”
“What the hell do you mean?” Shea hurled the crossbow into the mud. “What are you talking about? Tell me at last why you’re here.”
“Let Colm go.”
“I don’t care—he can go.”
Without a word, the man who’d betrayed Patrick turned and left.
“I’m here because you have the keys to my future.”
Shea chuckled. Somewhere in his belly, laughter uncurled, growing, working its way up. “What future? Look at me.”
“I’m looking. I—”
“Look at me!” He shook his hands, palms up. “What future? Where? I’ve been exiled. Reduced to nothing.”
“You still think of this as an exile? Did you not hear anything I said to you back then, at the theater?”
“Consider this a wonderful opportunity—oh yes, what a mockery.”
“Mockery? Listen, Daelyn has sent three people to the provinces. The intendancy system is brand new. She wants to see which one of you can control the local lords better.”
The tingles crawled up to his throat, making Shea giggle.
Aidan scowled. “What’s wrong with you? Owenbeg’s the most important assignment of the three, for obvious reasons. The tower. Queen was impressed with y
our defiance, heaven knows why, when you spared those protesters. I guess the last time someone defied her was decades ago. Hey, are you listening? Do you understand what I’m saying to you? Daelyn is grooming her potential successors.”
Laughter bent Shea in two, his knees sinking into the brown mash.
“What in the… We don’t have time for this, Shea. I’m here to help you.”
He managed to slip a word between bursts: “Why?”
“Damn it, stand up. Because, to quote you from a minute ago—look at me. I’m Duma. I’ll always remain Duma. Remember what Patrick just said, that one should never trust a Dumian? Remember what you yourself said about my accent? I’m an émigré, and that’s my ceiling. But with you, I’ll rise. We’ll rise. We’ve taken care of Patrick. We’ll take care of the duke, if needed. We just need to get the bloody tower done.”
And then the dam broke, everything Shea had been trying to lock away burst free, poured out of him in a soup of sobs and laughter.
“Have you gone mad? Stand up!”
“I can’t.” Shea stared at his palms. “I can’t. I’ve destroyed it.”
There is a solution, a voice whispered in his mind. The solution came clearly. It lay in the part of his past he’d tried his best to bury, in the room with soot stains and in the abandoned cellar underneath the rosewood trapdoor. No, he thought, trying to block out the image.
“Destroyed what, damn it? Destroyed what?”
“The tower.” He raised his eyes at Aidan. “It was held together by the Drakiri devices. I had them taken out.”
“What? Hey, hey, listen to me. Shea? Listen to me! Whatever you’ve done to the tower, you need to put it back together, do you understand? Do you understand? Do you realize what depends on it?”
“I can’t. The duke destroyed the devices.”
But you know the solution, the voice whispered, and in his mind’s eye, the rosewood trapdoor opened and he stepped into the cellar filled with purple glow, filled with objects he thought of as ‘tulips’ because someone else, someone he used to know had called them that, in the cellar beneath the ruined workshop, beneath the room with soot stains.
No, he thought, no, I won’t return there, I won’t—but deep inside, a part of him that had been weighing the possibilities considered the scales.
And he knew in whose favor they were tipped.
7
The girl had opened the door for him, and the dance hall’s golden lights momentarily blinded him.
Shea didn’t know her name—she was, after all, just an attendant—but to him, she’d been all the gloss of the capital: blond hair coiled into an elaborate braid, kohl-lined almond eyes, naked forearms.
“First night at the Red Hill?” She gave him a perfect smile.
“Is it that obvious?” he said and added, clumsily, “It’s all I’ve ever dreamt of.”
“You’ll get used to it. Don’t worry—everyone does. You’ll be fine.”
He’d never learned her name, never seen her again—but that moment stayed with him when she’d patted him on the shoulder, nudging him into the hall, toward the golden lights, toward all the beautiful people swirling in a waltz.
At the rain-whipped street, on his knees, he remembered the kohl-lined eyes which looked at him, as if saying: you could have it all back. You could have it all, and more.
III. THE TULIPS
1
In silence, as though overcome with modesty, the doctor hid his instruments and rolled them into a piece of black velvet. A brass syringe, a pristine-white probe-razor, a speculum oculi. Shea wanted to open his mouth, but his face was a rubber mask after all the morphine.
It was his sister who spoke out loud the question everybody in the room must’ve been thinking. “Will he become an idiot?”
And even before the doctor could answer, Mother broke into tears.
“Catherine, please,” Father said, putting his hand—always sandpaper-rough, clay-rough—on Mother’s shoulder.
Undaunted, Lena took a step forward. “Will he be the same?”
“Probably.” The doctor drummed his fingers on the black roll. “He has a concussion, but nothing worse than that, it seems. Pupils are of equal size. It’s a miracle, actually, given the tree’s height. Of course, tomorrow we’ll know more. He should rest—and give him water, but do not feed him or he may choke on his own vomit.”
They filed out of the bedroom, Lena last, her face an oil painting rendered mysterious in the afternoon light.
The next time Shea opened his eyes, the curtains fluttered around a scattering of stars.
The door creaked, letting in blackness from the corridor and, with it, his sister carrying a tray that smelled of warmth and bakery.
“I think…” His head swam, but at least he was able to talk; that was good. “I think the doctor said not to give me food.”
“Who cares?” She lowered the tray, then herself, on the bed next to him. “I bet you you won’t choke. Anyone but my brother. Besides, Grandma made black truffle waffles.”
“Smells great.”
“Tastes, too. Here, open your mouth.”
A few minutes passed in counterpoint to two twelve year-old jaws, chewing.
“I’ve been thinking,” Lena said. “I’ve been thinking. You know what we’ll do, you and I?”
“What?”
“Guess.”
“Ask Grandma to make more waffles?”
“When we’re old enough, I want a beautiful workshop,” she said, and the wind breathed through the window, lifting, thread by thread, the shadow of her hair. “Chairs and tables like on those pictures from the capital. Maybe wardrobes, too.”
“A carpenter princess.”
Even in darkness, he could guess a hint of her smile. “Go on. Sneer all you want—I’m the one with the waffle tray.” She paused, and he saw a reflection in her eyes—perhaps the moon, perhaps the starlight, perhaps the future. “I just don’t want Ma to feel sad anymore when she buys new furniture. And I want it to be yours and mine, brother. I want that place to be yours and mine.”
“This is not really a betrayal, is it?”
In the courtyard of the Owenbeg castle, a thin dash of white: a woman Shea didn’t know, waiting—for something or someone.
He leaned against the window frame. “Sis, I need to talk to someone. I already know the answers they’ll give me—Aidan, Brielle. So I’m going to pretend she…” He waved the bottom of an empty whiskey bottle at the woman. “…she is you. Tell me if what I want to do is forgivable.”
His mind’s eye spun figures under the golden lights, men and women coming together, coming apart.
“I want to be there. At the royal court, at the Red Hill. I’ve always wanted to. We both wished for things in our lives, haven’t we? You understand. I had no idea my exile was a test, sis.”
In his eight years at the Hill, had he ever seen anyone break the waltz? Funny how, in dance, you take each step of your own volition, Shea thought, and yet all the while you’re following a goal somebody set up for you.
“Damn it, sis—I can be a successor to Daelyn, can you imagine that? If I only play my cards right, if I rescue the tower. If I revert what I did earlier. Listen, can we, can we do it in the following way—”
The woman turned and looked in his direction. He straightened—had she heard him?—and pulled lightly at the curtain.
“Let’s do it like this,” he whispered. “It’s different, now that I’m here. I know the risks. I’ll personally make sure everyone using the tulips is properly trained. There’ll be no accidents, no chewed walls, no more blood. Can we do it, can we do it like this?”
Am I striking a deal with my own conscience?
A man strode into the courtyard below, ran up to the woman, and spun her around in his arms.
2
“I can get us new Drakiri devices.” Shea turned to Brielle. “But I need you to promise you won’t allow junior artisans to work unsupervised.”
“I
promise. I promise.” She sat on the sofa, at the same place he’d found her two weeks ago with a half-finished bottle of wine. None of that old desperation remained, though, no mocking smile, no slouched posture. All straight shoulders now, straight back, full of hope. “What made you change your mind about them?”
Shea didn’t answer, looking at Aidan—who, from the window, said, “You still haven’t told us where you’re planning to get the devices.”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me.”
From under the rosewood trapdoor, Shea almost answered. “From an abandoned workshop in Musk Valley.”
“Musk Valley?” Aidan slid his gloved fingers between the curtains and peeked at something outside. “There’s that city—what’s its name?—Oakvale?”
“Oakville.”
“How many devices are we talking?” Brielle asked.
“Thirty or thirty-five, I don’t quite remember.”
The black glove let go of the curtains. “Will this be enough?”
“Well, it’s a fraction of what the duke has destroyed,” she said, “but if we concentrate all of them at one place, at the top of the tower, I think we can create a sufficient upward pull that would stabilize the structure. I must do the calculations, of course.”
“Wouldn’t it be dangerous, putting all eggs so close to each other?” Aidan asked.
“Yes, but also easier to supervise. However, we’ll still need to convince the duke.”
“I have a few ideas there.” Aidan shifted his eyes to Shea. “What’s Oakville to you?”
“Am I under interrogation?”
“And what if you were?”
“In that case,” Shea said, “I would choose not to cooperate.”
“Listen, I’m trying to help,” Aidan said. “We simply don’t have the time. I’d like to understand if you’re at risk of running into a Patrick Number Two in Oakvale.”
“Why would there be a Patrick Number Two?”
“Because I feel there’s more to it than you let on. This workshop, was it yours? Your family’s? Why was it abandoned? Did something happen there?”
“What’s Oakville to you, Shea?” echoed Brielle.
Tower of Mud and Straw Page 7
