Smoke and Iron

by Rachel Caine

  Annis shut her eyes briefly and then opened them again. The shine had taken on a hard quality. "He has Keria's son? You're sure?"

  "Yes."

  "She died to protect Christopher, you know."

  "I know. I was there." Morgan swallowed hard. "I wanted to like her. But I only ever knew her as my jailor. Seeing her with Wolfe . . ."

  "She never wanted to give that boy up," Annis said. "She hated that he was taken away. Once she became Obscurist, she bent the rules regularly to keep children with parents as long as she could, even when there was no hope that they would test as talented. She wasn't a monster, Morgan. She was a woman trying to do her best, under tremendous pressure."

  "What about Wolfe's father?"

  Annis fell uncharacteristically silent. She rose and walked to the tall mirror in the far corner of the room, adjusting the fall of the warm robes she wore. "He broke her heart."

  "Is he still here? In the Tower?"

  "Oh yes, he's here, though he's not been seen in many years. Self-imposed exile, though I suppose Gregory will make it more official than that and lock him in for good one of these days."

  "Is he as powerful as they say he is?"

  "Aye." Annis turned slowly to regard her. "And that's what you really wanted to know, isn't it? About him?"

  "I'm just curious," Morgan lied. "What's he like?"

  "Like? Like a wild, mad bastard who never accepted his fate. He loved Keria. Too much, I think. When he turned down the chance to become the Obscurist and she took it instead . . . that was the end of them. That, and how she let their son be sent away, or at least, that's what he came to believe. We all thought he'd come crawling out, sooner or later; few seal themselves away and mean it, you know. But he did. He shut the door and never left those rooms again."

  "You're sure he's still alive?"

  "Dead men don't take deliveries of food and supplies, have their clothes cleaned, and all the other mundane necessities of life. But he's put wards on his doors that only Keria could break--and I know others, including Gregory, tried."

  Morgan was desperate to ask exactly where Eskander's room was located. The Tower was large and complicated; she'd explored some of it before, but hardly all, and though the whispers about the Hermit of the Iron Tower had come to her attention, she hadn't been interested then in following them.

  She'd pushed Annis enough, though. There was no doubt Gregory was forcing the older woman to spy on whatever Morgan did, and while Annis would likely cover for her out of sheer dislike for the Obscurist, if it became too obvious, she wouldn't have too much of a choice.

  "I'm going to turn the ears back on," Morgan said. "Pretend they're not there. But don't mention Eskander or anything we talked about. All right?"

  Annis nodded. "You said there's a word to speak to turn it off. What turns it on again?"

  Morgan said, "Presta atencion." Pay attention. "Thank you for the medication, and letting me rest. I think it's starting to help. I think I might be a little hungry."

  Annis stumbled a little but finally said, "Well, then, we'll be having something to eat. Come on. I'll refresh your memory on just how good the cooks are here."

  She seemed relieved when they left the room, and whispered, "So they're listening? God help me, I say the most indecent things."

  "Pretend they're always listening," Morgan said. "And if you want to have private conversation . . ."

  "Yes, I understand. I told you, I'm brilliant with Spanish." Annis winked at her and led the way to the winding stairs. "And with Spaniards, too."

  Morgan was sure that was at least partially true.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Annis escorted her to the Iron Tower's dining hall, where Morgan forced herself to smile at Obscurists who welcomed her back--some even meaning it--and ate her food in silence. She'd choked down most of it when a hush came over the large room--and over the fifty or so Obscurists gathered in it--as a High Garda soldier wearing the symbol of Iron Tower dedicated service strode in, scanned the room, and headed straight for the table Morgan and Annis shared. Others in the room averted their gazes; in such confined spaces, privacy was paramount, just as gossip was king. The soldier was a man of native Australian heritage, with solid features and deep-set eyes. He nodded to Annis, who silently took her cup of tea and left the table, leaving Morgan quite alone in the midst of a crowd.

  "Captain wants you," the soldier said. "Now." His Greek was excellent--better than Morgan's--and she nodded and got up without a word. Resisting would only bring more of the guards, and this wasn't the time for a meaningful fight. Besides, she was curious what possible interest a captain of the Iron Tower High Garda could have in her.

  Her answer was even less clear when she was presented to the captain, who proved to be a tall, severely dressed woman. Skin the color of the bark of an olive tree, and a prominent nose that looked to have been broken at least once. In her middle age, with threads of gray beginning to dust her dark, sleek hair. The High Garda captain's office was on the ground floor of the Tower, temptingly close to the exits, but it wasn't the time to consider running, either. So when the captain nodded to a chair in front of the plain desk, Morgan took it.

  "Morgan Hault," the captain said. "That's your name?"

  "It is."

  "Mine is Captain Nofret Alamasi." The captain had a Codex open on her desk, and Morgan suspected that what was written there contained reports of her prior behavior and misconducts--and escapes. "I am known for two things, Morgan. I am not friendly, and I am loyal to the Great Library beyond question. Which is why this is my posting. The last High Garda captain had a tendency to befriend Obscurists. I do not have that failing. If you keep faith, I will treat you as an honored guest in this tower. If you break it, you will be a prisoner."

  "I'm already a prisoner," Morgan said. "We all are."

  "It doesn't have to feel that way unless you make it so." The captain closed the book. "I wanted to see your face, and for you to see mine, when I give you this message: if you seek to escape this tower again, I will confine you to a single room, feed you through a slot in the door, and you will never see the light of the sun again. Are we clear?"

  "Clear," Morgan said. "Captain Alamasi, how long have you held this posting?"

  Alamasi gave her a level stare before she said, "Not long. Why?"

  "You might look into how long your predecessors lasted. Your new Obscurist Magnus is not a patient man, and he isn't a good man. You'd do well not to put your faith in him."

  "I don't," the captain said. "I put my faith in my orders. Which I will carry out without fail. You may count on me to do that. I don't need warnings, and I don't need conversation. I've warned you. And that's all the grace you'll get."

  Interesting. It sent Morgan's mind careening down a path she hadn't thought of before, and she was a little distracted when she said, "Yes, Captain. I understand."

  The captain nodded at her waiting soldier, who ushered Morgan out again, up into the lifting chamber that rose through the levels of the Iron Tower. He was returning her to her room, she realized, and not to the dining hall. She didn't object.

  Annis was waiting for her, and when the door swung open, the older Obscurist jumped from the bed, where she'd been sitting, to stand in awkward silence, looking from Morgan to the soldier. Not sure of what her response should be.

  "It's all right," Morgan told her. "I've just met the High Garda captain. She seems nice."

  The soldier gave her a look that told her he almost appreciated the joke, and then he turned and marched away, leaving her to Annis's care.

  "Christ above, I thought they were marching you off to . . ." Annis didn't finish the thought. "Well, at least you're safe. Just a warning, then?"

  "A warning," Morgan said. "I've gotten nothing but warnings since I stepped into this Tower. What exactly are they afraid I'm going to do?"

  "What aren't they afraid you'll do? Here. Orders came for you." Annis handed her a Codex. The first page held a message from
Gregory in the man's cramped, inelegant hand. It read, Tell Morgan Hault to report to the Master Copyist. She will serve there until I decide she can be trusted with more vital duties.

  Serving under the Master Copyist was one step above kitchen duty--mind-numbing work, hand copying scripts developed by more gifted Obscurists. It was reserved for those who were too low powered to do anything more creative.

  "Annis," Morgan said thoughtfully. "You work under the Master Copyist, don't you?"

  "For my sins," Annis said. "Why?"

  "We are going to the same place."

  "No!" Annis looked horrified. "He wouldn't! You? What a waste of talent that is!"

  "I expect it's to teach me humility and make sure that I understand how to obey," Morgan said. "I don't suppose it'll be very effective at either, but I'll copy for him. As much as he likes."

  "Will you, now?"

  Annis's regard this time was steady and interested, but Morgan didn't satisfy her curiosity. She simply couldn't afford to do so. Annis might be an ally in what was to come. Or she might be a dire problem.

  Either way, Morgan didn't intend to involve her any further than necessary.

  * * *

  Settling in as a copyist was ridiculously simple, and it gave her time to construct advanced formulae in her mind, which she wrote out on a mental Codex in letters of fire while her hand copied down simple mirror scripts, over and over, for inclusion in the bindings of Blanks. There were about fifty Obscurists set to the task, all copying the same mindless string of symbols and imbuing the scrap of paper with a brush of talent to link it to Aristotle's universal liquid. He'd been right about this, if wrong about many other things: there truly was an undercurrent of power in the world, one that those with specific skills and gifts could access to shift the nature of a thing from one state to another.

  I could write one symbol down, pour power into it, and kill everyone in this room, she thought. For just a moment, she could feel the trembling possibility of it in her fingertips, a dark power like shadows brushing her skin. I could take all this away from the Archivist. Every one of his Obscurists. It seemed so simple in that moment, so breathtakingly easy, that when she realized what she was thinking of doing, she flinched and ruined the script she was copying. The Master Copyist--a nasty little beetle named Fratelli--looked sharply in her direction, and she disposed of the ruined paper in a bin beneath her desk and pulled another slim scrap onto the copy surface.

  She wasn't here to kill anyone. She was here to save them. Her power had been twisted and came from darker places now, but that didn't mean she had to give in to the impulses it fired in her mind.

  She copied the script. Flawlessly. And the next, and the next, until the Master Copyist's attention wandered away.

  Then she began to alter the scripts.

  It would have taken a sharper eye than his to realize what she was doing, and fooling the older man who sat beside her to double-check her work was even easier. All of the scripts appeared to work perfectly; when he brushed his thumb across the inked symbols, they rose from the paper in glittering images.

  But there was one tiny difference in the scripts from the standard she was supposed to be duplicating . . . and each script stored a single letter into a message she was composing. It took a great deal of concentration, and more than two hours to do even the brief message she intended, but at last, she wrote the final symbol, and imbued it with the last piece of punctuation. Then she tapped pen to paper, a seemingly innocent gesture, and all the scripts flared into power at once in a single burst.

  Somewhere in Alexandria, there was a Codex that Brendan Brightwell had been assigned, and if she knew Jess, he had already picked it up and read through it, and some of his essence had marked it. Her message sought that essence and directed itself not to the Codex--which was sure to be monitored--but to the nearest Blank to it.

  She indulged herself by wasting a total of seven letters at the end to say I love you.

  Unnecessary, but she couldn't resist. She felt a wild, sudden yearning for him, for his easy smile and the clarified light in his eyes when he looked at her. She needed to feel his arms around her, and to hear his voice tell her that however unlikely it seemed right now, it would succeed. Her breath seemed to swell in her chest, like tears, and she closed her eyes for a moment and imagined herself somewhere else, far from here, with him in a place of sunlight, silence, warmth.

  A hand rapped sharply on her desk, and she opened her eyes. "Stop lagging," the Master Copyist snapped. "Keep writing."

  Morgan bit back the impulse to suck the life out of him in one convulsive, wonderful pull, and put her pen back to paper to draw the same symbols, over and over and over.

  The day was almost done when a hand fell on her shoulder, and she looked up into the face of the Obscurist Magnus. Gregory. Her skin tightened, and she resisted an urge to strike his grip away. Did he know? Is he better than I thought?

  But there was no awareness in the Obscurist Magnus's face that she'd been slowly, carefully manipulating the simple task she'd been set. No, this was something else.

  And she felt needles of alarm sweep through her at the sight of the cold focus of his gaze.

  "Come," he said. "Walk with me."

  Across the room, Annis was just rising from her copy desk; the older woman caught sight of Gregory, and there was no mistaking the alarm on her face, but she did nothing but avert her gaze and hurry off. No help from her.

  No help from anyone, as the room quickly emptied, and Morgan debated whether it was time to mount a resistance. Not yet. Of course not yet.

  She silently stood and joined Gregory as the Obscurist walked out of the copy room and down a winding set of stairs that wrapped around the vast walls of the Tower. It was dizzying, this method of descending, and she tried not to look down. She'd always had a hidden fear of heights, though she knew there were alchemical barriers in place beyond the railings; after the first few times Obscurists had hurled themselves from the highest floors, precautions had been put in place. If she were bent on suicide, she could have easily unraveled them, but she wasn't. Though pushing Gregory over was an interesting thought.

  "Where are you taking me?" she asked him.

  "To meet someone," he said. "Someone special."

  She almost, almost bolted then; Gregory took an unhealthy interest in the darkest secret of the Iron Tower: the breeding of Obscurists. She'd accepted when returning here that they would assign her a partner in the hopes of producing a talented child to add to the thinning ranks of the Obscurists. She'd accepted that they'd try to force her into it.

  She never, ever intended to cooperate . . . though the fact that Gregory had so easily drugged her on arrival was worrying. She'd need to develop defensive scripts to repel any other attempts. I should have done that already, she thought. She felt cold and alone, descending these steps.

  Gregory stopped on the landing for the seventh level, which held the Obscurists' opulent library. An entire wall of Blanks waiting to be filled with requested content, and an array of Codexes to use to select it. But more than that, the Obscurist library also contained an entire wall of original volumes and scrolls, some so ancient and fragile that they were kept in cases with alchemical formulae designed to slow their destruction.

  For a disorienting moment, Morgan imagined Jess here. She could vividly see him sprawled just there on that tufted couch, an original volume in his hands. He'd secured reading material even in their Philadelphia prison. He'd have found this a rare delight.

  But the young man sitting on the couch--not sprawling--was reading a Blank, and he quickly put it aside and rose at the sight of the Obscurist Magnus.

  Then he looked at her, and she stared back without a single flicker of expression. She didn't dislike him, not at all; his name was Benjamin Argent, and he was a kind, smart, intelligent soul.

  "Morgan," he said, and extended his hand. He was taller than she was, and slender, and she thought she could see both resignation a
nd resentment in the brief eye contact they shared before both looked away. "You're back."

  "Evidently."

  "I didn't expect to ever see you again." His tone was neutral, but she easily read what he meant: I hoped I'd never see you again.

  "It came as something of a surprise to me, too."

  Gregory was smiling at them both. A cold, knowing smile. He said nothing, but the silence said everything he needed to convey to her--no, to both of them. Morgan knew that Ben already had a lover within the Iron Tower, but not the one that had been chosen for him. Ben had politely, calmly, pointedly refused to submit.

  "I have a question for the two of you," the Obscurist said. "Do you recall the last time an Obscurist was executed for disobedience in the Iron Tower?"

  It was such an unexpected question that Morgan glanced at Ben, mystified, and he seemed just as puzzled. "No, sir," Ben said. "Punishments, yes. Execution, no."

  "Exactly," Gregory said. "Obscurists have been exempt from execution for a very long time. We have always been a rare breed, and over the past thousand years there have been fewer and fewer of us. A few hundred years ago, Obscurists were free to come and go from this place, you know. Free to marry whomever they wished. The folly of this became obvious over time. We are, and always will be, a valuable resource. So every possible effort is made to rehabilitate Obscurists who fail to comply with their expected duties. Correct?"

  "Yes, sir," Ben said. "I'm not sure what you--"

  "The rules have changed," Gregory said. "And none of this is for your benefit."

  He cut the young man's throat.

  It was so sudden, deliberate, and shocking a move that for an instant, Morgan didn't even understand what she was seeing. A flash of a knife Gregory had held casually at his side. A sudden, violent burst of red across Gregory's robes (plain robes, he planned this, he wore things he could afford to have stained). The sharp, copper smell flooded over her, and she felt trapped in it, off-balance and slow with horror.

  She looked down, still not comprehending what had happened. Benjamin had collapsed, his lifeblood pumping out and soaking the rug he lay on. He was gasping for air, and she thought wildly, stupidly, that she should do something, anything, and her shock broke with an almost audible snap inside.