“Sometimes,” she added, with a shrug, “I worked at night. No one’s careful at night except the people who are down on the streets. I didn’t know Barren as well as—as the other fief. But I knew it well enough. I was almost always in the same area. Morse didn’t like it,” she added. “But I was beyond caring at that point.
“I stopped asking what they had done. The victims. My victims. I stopped asking questions, because I didn’t want to know. Knowing, needing to know, had only killed three people—or four—who’d done nothing to deserve it. I think—I think that’s what Morse was trying to tell me when she got so angry.” She inhaled, and in the silent space of breath, she heard distant thunder.
“I was never as good as Morse. But I would have been, had I stayed. I don’t know if I would have ever been as scary.” She exhaled. “I would have been hunted, in the City, had I lived there. I would have been a dead man had I crossed the bridge, if the Hawks had any idea of what I did.
“And Barren ordered me to cross the bridge, in the end. The Hawks still lingered, choking off his money. He had trouble, near riverside, from the men who ran some of his operations, because they weren’t making enough money, either. They wanted him to do something about the Hawks.
“He decided to send them a message.” She shrugged. “I would have been just as happy to hit the men who were giving him trouble; I think Morse was sent to take out at least one of them. But that wasn’t for me. He never trusted me,” she added softly. “I—I don’t know that he ever trusted Morse, but he trusted her to kill them.
“Me? He sent me across the river. Morse argued with me. I didn’t have much to say.” But she did, and she could remember the conversation, playing out as if the years had unwound the moment she had entered the Tower. “Well, not much that was useful,” she added.
“I don’t know why he sent me. I know that he didn’t intend me to survive it.” She shrugged. “I didn’t really think about it, then. Later, yes. But even if I had, I don’t think I would have cared.”
The thunder was closer now.
“Kaylin,” Tiamaris said. “The shadows are moving. I can see some light, now.”
“Is that a good sign, or a bad sign?”
“It’s generally safest to assume anything you see in the Tower is ambivalent. You see a storm of some kind, as well.”
“Yes. It looks natural. For a value of natural that would give hives to the harbormaster.” Her grip on Severn’s hand tightened, and she realized that she had been speaking to Severn. It didn’t matter who else might hear.
He turned to look at her. “You can see me clearly?”
“Yes.”
“Can you see the rest of the City?”
He frowned, his eyes narrowing in something that was like a squint, but more subtle. “Not clearly. And it’s not much of a City.”
She shrugged. “It’s what’s left of a City. Is that better?”
“Is there a way out?”
“How should I know? We’re surrounded on all sides, as far as I can see.” She frowned. “You think I should know because it’s all fashioned on my experience somehow.”
“It’s fashioned on the way you hold on to your experiences.”
She nodded. “Can I make a way out?”
He laughed. “I think only you can.”
“Ugh. Welcome to my life.” She tried to smile, and found half of one; it was awkward.
“I told you,” he said quietly, “I don’t care what you did when you ran. I half expected you would die—” He looked away. “Because you weren’t in Nightshade. I looked. I knew everywhere you might go. You didn’t die. Whatever else you did doesn’t matter to me.”
“It matters to me,” she said quietly.
“Yes, and it should—but I’m not you.”
“I noticed.” And sometimes, she was grateful for it. “It’s different, for you. You wouldn’t change anything. And me? I would change it all.” She took a deep breath, and wiped dust off her hands. “But I can’t.”
“No. You can only do what the rest of us do—move forward.”
“Tell that to the shadowstorm.”
He laughed again. It helped.
“I’m not sure what we do next,” she said.
“Get wet.”
She grimaced, because the thunder was much closer. “We might be able to outrun it.”
“Not unless you’ve gotten noticeably faster in the past few hours.”
Had any of the standing structures had reliable roofs, it would have been no problem; they didn’t. Ducking behind walls helped with the winds that the storm dragged in, but made it much harder in other ways. Tiamaris and Nightshade were still blind; Severn, less so—but his vision was dim compared to Kaylin’s.
It would also have helped if the storm had been a natural one. The thunder and lightning weren’t particularly ominous; the wind, however, was. It was, for one, as cold as winter wind, which made being soaked to the skin much less pleasant. The cold, however, wasn’t as much of a problem as the force of the wind itself, which made it hard to stand upright. When they managed, stray rocks and flying debris hit them, knocking them off balance.
“If you can’t see the City—”
“We can see the storm,” Tiamaris replied curtly.
“But there’s nothing in it that should be able to hit you; there are no rocks, walls or rubble where you’re walking—”
“Congratulations. You have now been exposed to the logic and causality of the merely magical.” He grimaced, and tried to wipe the edge off his very wet expression. “We do not doubt what you see. And given the number of flying items and the distinctly heavy weight of their blows, I do not believe that the shadow itself is attacking. Shadow usually takes a more ambulatory form.”
“Meaning?”
“There are rocks, and we can’t see them.”
Severn, however, could. His vision had been clearing as the minutes passed. He couldn’t see as far as Kaylin could, but at this particular moment, it didn’t matter; visibility was less of an issue than trying to get out of the damn wind.
They’d stopped briefly to get the rope out of her backpack. It gave them a bit more freedom when linked to each other—though they still stayed close for fear of being separated.
Tiamaris, cursing, gave up and armored himself. Kaylin had seen him do it once before, in non-Dragon form—in Dragon form, armor wasn’t really optional. Scales grew out of his body, enveloping—or shredding—cloth; they looked, when they finished emerging, like a very ornate set of strangely interlocked plate. The lower membranes of his eyes were high, but she could see that they were now bronze; he was no longer worried. Or angry.
Nightshade and Severn didn’t have that option, and neither Nightshade nor Tiamaris had been willing to risk magic in the Tower. In the end, Kaylin weaved around walls as much as she could, trying to orient their passage so the walls provided a break from the flying stones.
She had crossed one familiar bridge to get here, and it had led to unfamiliar terrain, populated by corpses that only Kaylin could see and recognize. But they were half buried by this damn rubble in places they hadn’t died. So: the rubble, the ruins, the stretch of uninhabited land—those were all somehow her.
And right now—she heard Nightshade grunt, and she felt the sharp pain in his left forearm through the bond of name that shouldn’t have existed this far back in the past—what she needed was a solid structure in the middle of what was, for all intents and purposes, a desert or a wasteland.
She managed to find a corner of thick stone that rose into the sky like a wedge on two sides, and she drew Severn, Tiamaris, and Nightshade behind it. It helped, but the windbreak was small, and the noise of rock striking rock—and Tiamaris, who kept his broad back to the outside of the group—was loud enough that she would have had to shout to be heard, if she’d had much to say.
What do you damn well want? she thought, cursing in Leontine. What do you want from me?
The storm answered, and th
e answer was about as much use as she expected it would be. Rock struck her shoulder, sending her into Severn’s chest. Clearly, questioning the Tower’s motivations was not on the list of useful things Kaylin could do.
“I don’t have a choice, Morse. If I don’t go, I’ll suffer for it.”
“If you do go, you’ll die.”
“Tell me Barren won’t kill me if I stay.”
Morse shrugged. “He won’t kill you if you stay.”
“Say it as if you believe it.”
“He won’t kill you.”
Elianne met, and held, Morse’s gaze. Given the expression on the rest of Morse’s rather reddened face, this took effort. She did stand far enough back from her that she could avoid either a snap-kick or a fist if it came to that. Morse wanted to hit something; she didn’t want to hit Elianne. When Morse got angry enough, it didn’t matter.
“I want to go,” she said, more forcefully. “The Hawklord is perched at the height of his damn Tower while the rest of us are living in the dirt on the ground. I want him to have to deal with the ground.”
“Why?”
“You know why—his damn Hawks are still lurking by the bridge. It’s costing us—”
“That’s why Barren wants to send a message. Why does it have to be you who carries it?”
“Because I’m good?” Elianne snapped, stung.
“Because you’re stupid,” Morse snapped back.
Fair enough. Kaylin wiped water out of her eyes, and pushed wet strands of hair to either side of her face. She had a bump on her forehead, and her arm now ached. If they couldn’t get out of this storm, they would die here. Everyone, she thought, but Tiamaris.
There was enough flying debris that it was hard to see the sky clearly; it was impossible to see what lay across the broken horizon. She kicked the wall in frustration, and her foot slid across slick ground, unbalancing her. Severn caught her.
She looked at the ground beneath their feet, and frowned. It was wet—everything was, even Tiamaris—but it was the wrong consistency; nothing else had caused her boots to slide. Severn looked down, as well, and then he nodded.
“Help me clear the junk out of the way!” she shouted, because she had to shout to be heard.
He began to kick stones and dirt out of the way; the dirt was now mud. To her great relief, he didn’t also kick a random exposed limb; there was no corpse where they were standing. But there was something that looked suspiciously like a very well-crafted trapdoor.
A trapdoor in the middle of the open air, in a howling storm, in the corner of the only standing walls at this edge of what had probably been a very large building. Down had not been the direction she wanted to go. But up required a building that was actually standing and in good enough repair that the floors hadn’t rotted. Something like that might exist in the ruins of this City, but if it did, it was far enough away that it wasn’t likely to offer much haven. Kaylin didn’t believe in coincidences. Or miracles.
She did, on the other hand, believe in magic, and she expressed that belief in four official languages, until Tiamaris told her to stop.
Severn and Kaylin between them began to search along the seams of the door for anything that might be used to pull it up, which was awkward, because they were still linked together by the rope.
“What are you doing?” the Dragon Lord demanded.
“We’re trying to find a way down. There’s a—sorry—trapdoor of some kind under our feet.”
“Made of stone?”
“Not usually, no.”
“It feels like stone, to me,” he replied, slightly testily. His eyes were now a bronze that was a little too dark for Kaylin’s comfort—not that there was much comfort to be had at the moment.
“It’s not stone—or at least it doesn’t look like stone to me,” was Kaylin’s sharp reply. “I slid across it when I took too large a step.”
Tiamaris nodded. “Move aside,” he told her.
She started to argue, and decided there was no point. “There’s not a lot of side to move to.”
“Then flatten yourselves as best you can against the wall. I would ask that you do the same, Lord Nightshade, but the risk is yours to take.”
Kaylin could see the bare hint of Nightshade’s enigmatic smile. He was Barrani, but his apparent concern for dignity and the appearance of power was absent; if it weren’t for the gash across his cheek—a gash that was already fading, it had been so shallow—she would have sworn he was enjoying himself.
I am, he replied.
She swore.
And I believe that I will continue to do so for at least a little while longer. Do you know that I have never seen a Dragon Lord in human form take armor? I am aware that it is done—but it is seldom done. I have, as has Lord Tiamaris, ventured into Towers such as this—but never with this effect; they did not test me.
Because they weren’t activated yet, Kaylin thought.
This Tower is strong, he said, his voice soft and smooth, because he didn’t actually have to struggle to make it heard, or you are.
I cannot quite decide.
CHAPTER 21
Tiamaris, adorned by water, shone even in the gray and overcast light. Lightning, like gods blinking, flashed briefly above, and his armor left an afterimage in Kaylin’s vision.
“Private?” he asked, as he positioned himself more or less above the patch of ground that had nearly dumped Kaylin on her backside.
She nodded, grimaced, and said, “Yes, there. More or less.”
“More would be preferable.”
She let Severn guide Tiamaris into the center of what did appear to be wooden slats, and nodded—which Severn at least could see—when it was time to stop fussing with his position. After which, Tiamaris took two steps backward. Rocks pinged off his armor.
He looked just beyond his feet, and his lips turned up at the corners in what was, for the Dragon Lord, an almost unpleasant smile. Kaylin pressed her back into what was left of a wall, dragging Severn with her; Nightshade stepped back, away from the wall’s protection, the odd, fey smile still adorning his face.
The Dragon breathed. Steam rose instantly from the ground around the circumference of the cone of flame that left his mouth, and Severn cursed in sharp and pointed Leontine as the wood in front of his feet began to blacken. The flames rolled up to the edges of Tiamaris’s feet, but he wasn’t apparently troubled by them.
She glanced at Tiamaris’s face, which was once again impassive, and then took a tentative step toward the hole he’d made in the flooring. “There are stairs,” she said. “Going down. Why is it always down?”
“Is it?” Nightshade asked, raising a dark brow.
“Welcome to my world,” she replied, as she placed one foot on the first step. “There’s a bit of light farther ahead; there’s not a lot of light, otherwise. I don’t suppose you’d care—”
“We’ll use magic if there’s cause,” Tiamaris replied. Which meant, essentially, no. “There’s light—and water—from the hole. It will do for some time. Walk,” he added, “with care.”
She would have told him she always did, but she was no longer certain it was true.
The stairs, unlike the trapdoor, if that’s what the flooring was, were solid stone, and they went down in a spiral that hugged one smooth, central pillar to Kaylin’s right. They were wide enough to fit two abreast, but they had no rails, and the pillar was the only wall available. On the other side, to Kaylin’s left, it was dark. Dark enough that she couldn’t immediately look down to see the length of the drop if she happened to misstep.
They walked down single file.
“What does this look like to you?” Kaylin asked Tiamaris.
“Stairs,” he replied. “Solid stone. There is one central supporting pillar.”
They were—finally—seeing the same thing. She started to say as much and then stopped and looked at the surface of the wall beneath her palm. “What’s—what do you see on the wall?” she asked him. She could see,
in a spiral that paralleled the stairs themselves, a line of carved runes. They weren’t Elantran; they weren’t regular enough. But the lines, strokes, dots, and curves of these runes reminded her, vaguely, of Barrani. Or, she thought, with less joy, of the marks on her skin.
He turned to look. “Besides your hand?”
“Very funny. And I thought Dragons had no sense of humor.”
“We don’t.” He frowned, and the frown deepened as he stared. “Yes,” he finally said. “I see the runes.”
“Tell me they aren’t following my hand.”
“They can’t be. Either you’re carving them, somehow, as you walk, or you are uncovering them by touch. Neither option is particularly comforting,” he added, as he reached out and touched the wall. His hand rested on the rock about a foot above where hers had touched it, and her touch was very easy to see, given the words that seemed to run in its wake. She watched Tiamaris’s hand move the length of three steps as he descended, which was awkward, given the room on the stairs. She had to back up, and she felt Severn’s grip tighten as he followed.
Tiamaris frowned, and retraced his steps. His hand remained against the surface of the wall as he descended again. He did this four times, and then he studied the wall in silence.
“Yes,” Lord Nightshade said, although Tiamaris asked no question. “There is an impression.”
“It is not—quite—the same.”
“No, and it is not as deep or as refined. But it is there.” The Barrani Lord, not yet Outcaste from the High Court, raised his own hand; it hovered above the smooth surface of unblemished stone for just a minute, and then fell once again to his side. “I think I will not repeat the exercise.”
Tiamaris nodded, as if he were barely paying attention—in Kaylin’s opinion, because he was. “Can you read this, Private?” he asked her quietly.
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