The Broken Tower--A Novel, page 44
She could feel Cleric somewhere ahead of her. She expected she would always be able to feel him, the rosemary and burned flesh smell that was everywhere in his mind, his blood. And, yes, there was the pit where Alec had been slaughtered, full of wood waiting to burn. She knew wood, now. She understood it. She didn’t need to stand next to it or touch it. She merely looked at it, and determined that it would not burn her friend, and it flattened into something like paper, and then something like dust: a golden haze that settled gently over the pit, and Cleric within it.
He stood up. She felt him stand up.
Those few Elenesians who had noticed the dissolution of the great wooden gate stared slack-jawed at the space where it had been, but most were too deep in the rage of battle to notice or care. In the white, Judah felt the stone beneath her feet and felt within it the smallest possible fragments that could still be called stone, fragments so tiny they might as well be grains of sand. And sand was malleable. Sand could be rearranged. Sand could creep up a man’s legs as he fought. It could encircle his waist. It could even reach up and bind an arm that held a sword, and then it could become stone again.
The cries from the Elenesians changed.
* * *
Kendzi Baglia, knocked to his knees in the center of the scrum, looked up expecting to see his own death in the Elenesian guard standing over him. Expecting that the shining, barbed flail in the man’s hand would be the last thing he ever saw, as it rippled down toward him. He was not a strong Worker, he could not heal, he had no talent for training horses. Fighting was what he did. Eventually he would die doing it. He had hoped it would not be now, because this whole thing with Merrit and the Elenesian apostate and the Daughter of Maia was as tangled a clusterfuck as he’d ever tried to slash his way out of, but Slonim knew a person didn’t always get what they hoped for. He would not have minded as much if the Elenesians had intended to kill the Northerner clean, and quick. But he didn’t like torture.
He looked into the eyes of the Elenesian who was going to kill him, because by Kendzi’s morality, they owed each other that much. So he saw when the blood-heat in the man’s eyes turned to puzzlement, and then trepidation, and then terror. He watched as the stone crept up the man’s legs, then his waist, and then his sword arm.
The guard screamed, eyes wide and terrified. Kendzi looked down at himself. His own legs were free. Looking around, he saw that all of the Slonimi were free. All of the Elenesians were immobilized, the granite as solid around their feet as if it had been there for millennia. Beyond them, he saw Cleric emerge from the firepit, covered in golden dust. By the gatehouse, Merrit stood over a body that he was terribly afraid was Anurak’s, two immobilized Elenesians, and—gods—a massive horde of robed children, all screaming and wailing in front of her. The Morgeni stood in the empty gate, frozen in shock and horror, one hand holding a knife slack at his side. Past him was the world outside, away from all of this.
He turned back to call a retreat to his people, and saw the Daughter of Maia disappearing into the stronghold.
* * *
Still in the white, still burning with rage, stopping the Elenesian guards in the stronghold cost Judah no effort. Their flails dissolved and fell to the floor in glittering showers. Stone floors reached up to grab booted feet. Wooden wall paneling grew around arms and shoulders. A tapestry of a ghoulish figure she took to be the god Eleni wove itself around the head of a guard who had pulled a knife to run her through. The earth gave its power to her gladly and gladly, she took it.
None of this mattered. Judah knew the stronghold as well as Cleric did. She knew where the guildmaster’s office was. She knew where the penitence chapel was. She knew where the child acolytes were buried when they died. She could feel them, their small yellowing bones surrounded by dirt. When she passed living acolytes, if they were screaming and fleeing, she let them flee. Only if they tried to stop her did she stop them.
She came to a locked door. The door was wood, the hinges and bolts iron. At a touch, the wood dissolved. The iron crumbled to black dust. Inside stood a robed man, well-fed and oily, with fearful, panicked eyes and white hair. Even from the doorway she could tell that his robes were soft and rich and warm, not the same stiff, uncomfortable stuff as that of his guards and acolytes. Unlike every soldier in his stronghold, he held a sword. The trembling blade was pointed at her. She recognized him: it was the same man. The same guildmaster who had stood by as Alec was carved to pieces, the same one who ordered the pyre lit, the same one who had held up the scrap of parchment with the poem on it.
I am drowned in you. I am drowned.
The floor in his office was marble. The heart of marble was not sand. The heart of marble was crystal and it was crystal that crawled up the guildmaster’s legs, like ice forming on a fern. Like his men, his eyes went wide and afraid. He looked from the crystal shell enclosing him to her and back again. “Witch!” he cried. The crystal grew up over his arm, took the hand that held the sword. “Hell-bound witch!” he screamed, high with panic and terror.
From deep in the white, Judah frowned. “I don’t like that word,” she said, and stepped forward to touch his forehead.
Cleric had told her that the godswill wasn’t meant to cure, but to join body and mind, so the mind couldn’t escape the suffering of the body. But this man was fleshy. This man was old. This man had escaped too much of the suffering that he’d caused. She dug in his head, found Alec. Found the smell of his flesh, the blaze of the coals. Found the faces of the acolytes forced to watch, the flames shining on their sweat-dewed foreheads. Found Cleric. Found all of the others: every boy, through all the years. Every boy beaten, every boy killed. Every punishment. Every death. She opened each of them, slipped in through the soft places. Brought out their pain so the guildmaster could see it, so he could live it. When he began to scream she filled his mouth with crystal but she left his nose, she left his lungs, so that he would stay alive. So that he would live their suffering, so that he would live their deaths. Every scream. Every breath.
And then she left him there.
* * *
As Judah left the stronghold, all she saw was suffering. All she could feel, with every footfall, was suffering. The building was made of wood and stone and iron and clay but the glue that bound it was suffering, the agony of the children who had become men here—men who went out into the world and bound sick people to their suffering with godswill, men who stayed within the stronghold walls and taught a new generation how to suffer. The stronghold was a terrible place. The suffering had infused it to its very core and there was no way to make anything good of it.
And so, the moment she stepped out of it, she took it down. Every stone of it. Every brick. Every bloodstain and every lash. Down to the smallest possible bits, down to powder. The building shuddered and trembled, seemed almost to shimmer—and then it was gone, and there was nothing but a cloud of dust. Which she couldn’t see through, and urged gently toward the ground. The air cleared and she saw that the stronghold itself was gone but the walls that surrounded it remained, so she focused there, next. Every stone of it. Every brick.
But someone was gripping her shoulders. Someone who clearly wanted to shake her—she knew what that felt like, that tightening of the fingers—but who did not quite dare. The someone said her name over and over and at first it was merely a word but as she came down out of the white, into the thin eddies of dust that still swirled in the empty courtyard, she began to truly hear it.
Judah. Judah.
Something else.
Judah, stop now. Please. Judah—
“—stop.” It was Lukash. His eyes were dry but huge with some strong emotion. After a split second she realized that it was shock. He must have seen her come back into herself, because his hands on her arms relaxed and he let out a great sigh. “You can stop now,” he said. “It’s over. It’s all done.”
Then she heard something else. Weeping. The last of the dust cleared, and Judah looked around her.
The Elenesians were fixed in solid rock where she’d left them. They were the source of the weeping. Horrified and afraid, their eyes rolled skyward and tears cut channels through the dust and muck on their cheeks as they begged for their freedom, begged for their lives. Two of the Slonimi were pulling on the arms of one man, trying to pull his body from his stone prison. Another was bashing against the stone circling a second man’s upraised arm. Still another was using the hilt of his own sword as a chisel.
Kendzi, Merrit, and Cleric were crouched over the outstretched body by the gearhouse. All three turned when Lukash said Judah’s name and what she saw in their eyes was bleak horror, but it wasn’t the battle they were afraid of. It was her.
“What have I done?” she whispered.
Lukash, hand still on her arm, said, more gently, “Judah.”
But she was already gone. Fled. As far into the white as she could go.
* * *
She wanted to be somewhere safe. And comfortable—it had been so long since she was comfortable. She wanted a chair to sit on; when was the last time she’d sat on a chair? She wanted a hot cup of coffee to drink, a caramel to soften against the roof of her mouth. She pushed all of the dust and the stronghold and the stonebound Elenesians out of her mind. Soft chair. Coffee. Caramels. Warm. Clean. Safe.
The chair formed under her in the white. Her clenched fists eased, spread open to hold a chipped mug, the ceramic warm under her fingers. Her mouth filled with milky sweetness. Around her, walls came out of the white, covered in patterned silk and faded with time. To her left were two glass doors onto a wide terrace. There was a settee and a table and then—
She was in the parlor. Home and prison all in one. From where she sat she could see the room she’d shared with Elly on one side, and Gavin and Theron’s room on the other. There was Theron’s coat, slung lazily over the back of a chair, and his old boots that she’d long since appropriated. Elly’s sketchbook lay on the sofa. The terrace doors were open and it was spring, the fields were blooming. All that was missing were the others. Elly wouldn’t be on the terrace, not with her fear of heights. Perhaps in one of the bedrooms, but which one? Elly had slept in Gavin’s room after the betrothal, and how ridiculous and happy she’d been then. Did Judah want her ridiculous and happy, or younger, when she and Elly would share the bed in the other room, and Elly would press her shins against Judah’s back and it was so warm, so comfortable? She didn’t know. And Theron. Theron would be in his workshop. Not dead, no matter what the magus had said. Building something. Fixing something.
But Gavin—Gavin might be here. Tall and confident, as he’d been before the coup and before Amie of Porterfield and before everything. Wearing his blue waistcoat, maybe. The one with the embroidery that was nearly too much, but tell him that. His hair trimmed in the back but long on top, so his golden curls shone in the sun from the terrace—
And then he was there, just as she’d imagined him. Jude! he said merrily.
But something was wrong. Even as he spoke and smiled, the nearly-too-much waistcoat dulled, and the white sleeves of the shirt beneath it darkened, until he wore a dun-colored travel coat that was a bit short in the arms and dust-stained trousers. His hair grew longer, a short beard sprouting from his cheeks and chin. Beneath it his face thinned, hollows deepening under his eyes as the flesh drained away from his frame. The smile vanished. Jude, he said again, but this time there was no merriment in it. Only weariness and wonder and a terrible grief.
He reached out to her and she saw that his fingernails had been pulled out. The raw flesh where they should have been was healing and she could see that they were barely starting to grow in again. She had felt that, she realized. She remembered dousing her hands in the bad-smelling turquoise pool to quench the burning in her fingers. He took a few steps closer. It’s you, he said, in that grief-filled, un-Gavin-like voice. It’s really you.
She shook her head. She couldn’t look away from him. No. I’m—this isn’t real. I’m not here.
That got a smile. A faint one. I’m not here, either.
Where are you? She stood up. She wanted to reach out to him, but she didn’t dare. Remembering the swirling maelstrom that had always engulfed her when they touched. What happened to you?
Quite a bit, he said, gravely. We’re in—I don’t know, some inn between Tiernan and Highfall. His eyes flickered upward. Hey, you cut off your hair.
I—
But before she could finish the sentence, the parlor door flew open and Theron burst in. Not a wraith or a ghost or a revenant but Theron, flush-cheeked and healthy, the eyes behind his glasses full of wonderful quick intelligence. Judah! he cried. What are you doing? Stop it. It can see you. They can all see you!
Around her, the walls of the parlor melted away, turned to gray stone. Dead leaves sprouted over the faded rug, and the tower grew up around them like the rock had grown up around the Elenesians. And with it, Judah sensed a creeping familiarity. That sense of being watched, the sense of observing multitudes—it was here, surrounding her on every side, circling her like a closing fist. It wasn’t only the Slonimi who had been watching her. It was the tower. It was this place.
Go, Theron said, urgent. And, like that, she was gone.
TWENTY-THREE
Korsa sat bolt upright in his narrow cot in the tower room, feeling as if his breath had been snatched out of his lungs. His eyes slid across the room, over the device Florence had built and the distiller and the empty shelves, until they landed on Theron. As he’d somehow known they would. “The girl I met in Elban’s room,” Korsa said.
Theron nodded. “Judah.”
“She’s more powerful than I thought,” Korsa said, awestruck.
“She’s coming here.”
Korsa frowned. “I didn’t hear her say that. The man said he was coming here. He was your brother?”
And at that, Theron smiled. The smile was a bit sad, as it always was when Theron talked about his family. “If Gavin is coming, Judah is coming. That’s the way it’s always been.”
But Korsa’s mind was spinning. “The Seneschal only wants my children because he cannot have her.” He had never spoken about them that way—my children—and they were not children, really, but the words felt right and sound and real. “What will he do to them, if he gets her?”
“You don’t know Judah. She won’t be so easy to get. Also, I very much doubt Judah and Gavin are coming back to see the sights. The Seneschal will have other things on his mind.”
“You think there will be trouble?”
“Not only from them. That web I told you about—all of those people linked into whatever’s in this tower. Whether she meant it to be or not, what Judah did was basically the equivalent of grabbing it with both hands and shaking as hard as she could. Anyone with any sort of power heard it.” Theron shook his head. “The tower heard it.”
“What do you mean?” Korsa said.
“The force in this tower,” Theron said. “Whatever it is. Couldn’t you feel it pulling at her?”
But before Korsa could answer, they heard quick footsteps on the tower stairs, and Liam came through the door. “Who were they?” he said, breathless. “We all saw them. Ida thinks they were Lord Gavin and the Foundling. Were they?”
He didn’t seem to notice Theron’s presence. Wonderful. Korsa couldn’t tell the difference between kagirh-space and reality anymore. That wasn’t a great sign. “I think so.”
“He said they’re coming here,” Liam said. “Are they going to try to overthrow the Seneschal?”
Korsa looked at Theron, who said, “Try to, maybe.” And again, Liam didn’t react, but the long-sleeping part of Korsa’s brain that had once planned battles began to shake off sleep, and plan.
“If the Seneschal is under attack from outside,” he said, “he will be paying less attention to the inside.”
Theron said nothing. But Liam’s eyes lit up. “A distraction,” Liam said.
“A distraction,” Korsa agreed. He swung his legs over the edge of his cot and began to put on his boots. “I think we had better get ready.”
TWENTY-FOUR
In the dark garret of an inn, somewhere between Tiernan and Highfall, Nathaniel Clare, too, jerked awake, his heart pounding and his mind full of certainty.
There were no beds in the garret, but the floor was crowded with bedrolls. The soft sound of breathing and the assorted smells of bodies filled the air in the small space. Most of the Tiernan soldiers were sleeping outside, in the inn yard, but the Tiernan magus—Ambrose something, Nate tried his best to avoid him —and a few others rated indoor accommodations. Bindy was downstairs, sleeping in her own bedroll on the floor of Eleanor’s room. She had insisted Nate be given a place inside. He had promised to return the favor.
“When we get back to Highfall, you can teach me to be a magus, for real,” she said. As if they weren’t just going back to Highfall but going back in time, to those retrospectively glorious days when he’d still had possession of Arkady’s beautiful lab on Limley Square. Everything had seemed so possible then, so clear and easy. Thinking of it made his heart hurt.
Or maybe it was thinking of Bindy that did that.
