In the House of Five Dragons
37. The Crooked Tower
“Where were you on the Day of Bells?”
— Liam Io
Once Thainna left the bustle of Mazrem Square and the VEIL archouses, Dormaen was eerily quiet. Most of the shops were closed and the streets empty of people. If there weren’t so many other things to think about, Thainna would have seized the unparalleled opportunities for thievery. But the Crest was waiting for her.
Thainna fought the urge to run. Thain needed her to hurry and terrible images of what the Crest might do to her twin chased each other through Thainna’s head, each worse than the last, but she knew better than to run. She would only exhaust herself and lose any time gained as she recovered her breath.
All the wisdom and restraint in the worlds couldn’t chase away the gnawing sensation inside her. The worry seemed as though it might eat away until there was nothing left of her but an empty skin slouching through the barren city.
Why did the Crest want to see Thainna?
Control over Rikard Mazrem meant nothing if never used, she supposed. Did the Crest want something from him? Thainna wiped her sleeve across her eyes. The blue tabba was soft against her skin, then warm and heavy as sweat soaked into the cloth. At some point, the Crest would want more than just control over Rikard. Money. Favors. A life or a death.
And I’ll have to be the one to make it happen. That’s my job, after all.
I don’t want to. I don’t want to hurt Rikard.
Thainna hated herself for even thinking it. The Crest held her brother captive to ensure that Thainna did as she was told. Now she doubted the job. And for what?
For whom?
Thain. Gods help me, I’ll slit Rikard’s throat myself to get Thain back. I will… Hae?
Rikard had offered Thainna a real life. She laced her fingers over her fluttering stomach. He helped her feel like a whole person, not a House Talon or a muddy street urchin. It was strange to think about. Until the Crest sent her here, Thainna had never considered another life besides that of a thief. Even if she won the Auction and put Thain on the Jade Throne, she would serve him as a faithful Talon of his House.
Now Thainna wondered about that plan. She wanted Thain to have a good life, but what would that life be? Crest of the House of Five Dragons or a guest in the house of Rikard Mazrem?
But it’s about more than that, isn’t it? It’s about Caelin and his wife, too, and everyone else like them. Like me. Most of us live in the Rows, no better than rats. We need Thain, just like VEIL needs Rikard.
Thainna might daydream about staying with Rikard, but she could never do it. The House of Five Dragons needed Thain and Thain needed his twin sister. There was something sweet about the regret of a life she would never have, perfectly crystallized as a rock-sugar candy. It was nice to think about, to savor, but it wouldn’t keep her fed through the winter or heal her sick brother.
Thainna guessed it was nearing noon when she turned a quiet corner into the temple district. Rikard would begin his pact soon. Thainna wished she could have been with him, but there was no other choice. Close now, she let herself break into a run and bolted across the blue-tiled mosaic court in front of Merra’s temple. The doors, styled like driftwood and framed in carved jade seaweed, stood shut. Even the temples were closed today. Thainna ran past Suzukarri’s shrine, where the air smelled like burnt cinnamon and salt. A dozen other ever-smaller shrines blurred past until she had bolted down the last empty street.
There. The crooked tower of the House of Five Dragons stood in a dark, secretive corner of the temple district. If it had ever been a true temple, raised to some old Carcaen god, no one remembered his name. The tower squatted in the shadow of the other shrines, dark and shaggy with crawling vines that never flowered.
Age or maybe poor design had taken its toll on the tower. Half of the foundation had collapsed long before Thainna’s birth and knocked the tower askew. It leaned alarmingly, hunched and deceptively weak, like an aged knight. Rain and years stained the sloped conical roof, but there were no holes. The dark, open doorway and worm-bore windows lied. This place was not dead and it wasn’t empty.
Thainna pushed the vines out of her way and ducked through the door. In her short lifetime in service to the House of Five Dragons, she had never been summoned to the Crest’s tower. The point of something cold and sharp pressed against her back. Thainna froze in an uncomfortable half-crouch.
“Slowly,” hissed the man behind her. “Put your hands out and turn around.”
When Thainna turned, she could make out little more than she had with her back turned to the man. He was dressed and masked in dark clothes that blended in all too well with the shadows. Even the crossbow he held was finished in a flat, unreflecting black.
Thainna couldn’t stop herself from staring. Crossbows were expensive weapons, imported all the way from Erastrasus. She had never seen one this close before. But she was too frightened to be able to admire it very much.
“Thainna Vahn,” said the man behind the loaded crossbow. “He is waiting for you. I’ll take you up.”
The Talon — who still had not given his name — insisted on walking behind her. Did he think Thainna would run? Perhaps he did, because the crossbow remained pointed at her. However fast she might move, his bolt would be faster. Pointing with his weapon, the Talon directed Thainna along a staircase that coiled up through the crooked tower.
The close darkness forced Thainna to move slowly and gave her time to examine her surroundings. The dark, she quickly discovered, was much more than a simple lack of light. Everything was dark. Drapes and bunting covered the basalt blocks of the curving wall that ran along the staircase, all in twilight blue and violet. There were lanterns, too, dangling from the distant ceiling on long black chains and shielded by smoky glass. These stairs were covered in something thick and soft. They made no sound under Thainna’s feet as she climbed.
The floor below vanished quickly into the artificial shadows. After what seemed like an endless hike, the stairs leveled out into a half-moon landing. The stone walls here were finished in gleaming black enamel and painted in intricately looping designs that made Thainna dizzy to look at. Or maybe it wasn’t the painting — she could no longer see the off-kilter tilt of the tower, but she felt it with every step. The floor was never quite where it was supposed to be and Thainna couldn’t seem to catch her balance.
“Keep moving. Take the door on your left.”
There were more rooms, all steeped in lightless murk. Thainna caught glimmers of treasures shining in the dark — paintings and sculptures, tables heaped with things she couldn’t see. Other things hung from the ceiling, rattling as they swung in even the faint breeze generated by their passage. One room was close and narrow, and the air was bright with the sharp copper scent of blood.
Thainna held her breath and hurried through. Was Thain somewhere here? Bound in the stifling, oppressive darkness?
Following the instructions of the Talon on her heels, Thainna tugged open a heavy ebony door and found another flight of stairs. She climbed on sore, weary legs through the shadows. There were windows up here, mostly covered in vines that allowed only thin, blade-edge rays of sunlight through. They slashed white-gold wounds across the dark stairwell but did nothing to illuminate the greater blackness.
Passing close to one of the windows, Thainna tried to look out into the city. What was Rikard doing right now? Maybe they were high enough to see Mazrem Square. But the sun only blinded her and made Thainna trip over the next step. Another cold, unfriendly prick against her spine forced her up again.
The bright spots in her vision had faded to silvery smears when Thainna reached the next stout door. There was something carved into the wood, but she had to squint to make out the design. A dragon? A dragon with five heads. Thainna put her shoulder against the door and pushed. It swung open much easier than she expected, moving smoothly on well-oiled hinges. Thainna gasped.
Nothing in the tower below had prepared her for the opulence that awaited her at its crown. She was in a large, circular room supported by an inner ring of columns, all decorated with more intricately carved dragons. They watched Thainna reel between them with glittering gemstone eyes.
Tapestries in bright colors and braided strands of crystal beads covered the walls, draped across the ceiling like jeweled cobwebs. The floor shone brilliantly, covered in a layer of burnished copper polished to a mirror sheen. Flower petals floated in colorful glass bowls and filled the air with a delicate, exotic scent.
A dozen couches filled the circular chamber, so wide and lavish that they looked more like beds, each adorned with its own slender, naked occupant, chained in shining silver. Men, women… as beautiful and silent as statues. They all watched Thainna being ushered through their midst with no more curiosity in their dead eyes than those of the stone dragons.
“Turn right.”
Thainna’s course led her uncomfortably close to one of the beds. None of the occupants of the room were Fiori, but Thainna couldn’t shake the thought of Thain chained up here like some kind of animal, a toy. It was even worse than the dark, blood-stinking rooms below, somehow. These were slaves, men and women not just controlled, but owned by the Crest.
The next doorway plunged Thainna once more into darkness and then they were climbing again. Would it ever end? She was dizzy and tired. The stairs felt different under her sandals. It was not until she realized that the rhythmic sound in her ears was not her own terrified heartbeat that Thainna understood she was listening to her own footsteps for the first time since entering the crooked tower. The stairs were bare stone, barely finished and almost crude in construction.
“Where are we going?” Thainna asked over her shoulder.
“I should think that was obvious. To see the Crest, our master.”
“Where is he?”
“Not far now. It will seem much further on the way back.”
Thainna turned back to the stairs and nearly smashed her face into the last door. It creaked ominously when she pushed it open. Thainna could see nothing beyond but shadows, a depthless black like an infinite inkwell. What if the emptiness stretched all the way back down to the bottom of the tower?
Her guide shoved her roughly and Thainna fell through. She shrieked and braced herself for a fall, but her heels only jolted painfully against the floor a few inches down. Thainna gasped and turned to shout at the Talon for his unnecessary push, but he paid no attention. Shouldering his crossbow, he lit a single lamp from an emberbox, then pulled on a chain and hoisted it up into warped and splintered rafters. The wavering spot of light illuminated a vast chair of translucent green stone. The Jade Throne, the seat of the Crest of the House of Five Dragons.
The throne was obviously well cared for, polished and dusted frequently, cushions often laundered and replaced. Still, there was no cleaning away the immutable sense of age. The Jade Throne was as cold and remote as a distant mountaintop.
“You’ll wait here.”
The man in black left before Thainna could answer him. She faltered in the crooked darkness. She could see nothing outside the spotlight above the empty throne. It was hard to believe it was the middle of the afternoon on a bright day outside.
A soft rustle in the shadows made Thainna freeze like a mouse in a field, listening. Was there someone else here?
“Hae?” she called. Her voice cracked.
A piece of the darkness cut itself free and stepped into the blurry circle of lamplight. He was as indistinct as one of the shadows. Like the one who had brought her, he was covered from head to foot. Over a flowing tabba of black silk, the man wore a cloak of midnight blue with a hood so deep the face inside was invisible. Even the long-fingered hands were gloved in soft, dark gray doeskin. The shrouded figure turned its hooded gaze on Thainna. She shivered.
“Do you not know your master, Talon?” he asked.
The Crest. Thainna fell to her knees and bowed her head to the slanted floor. Her throat was cinched shut as tightly as a miser’s purse. She couldn’t breathe, could not speak. The Crest seated himself gracefully on the hard Jade Throne.
“You were set a singular task, Thainna. Of all my Talons, Rikard Mazrem was entrusted to you. I gave you every chance, every tool and resource to bring him under your control,” the Crest said. His tone was easy and conversational. Civilized. Was there something familiar about that voice? But Thainna could barely hear at all over the thundering staccato of her own racing heart. “You used none of it. In fact, you helped Rikard Mazrem to hunt and drive us out of VEIL. What have you done, Thainna?”
“You took my brother!” The fury returned Thainna’s voice. “You threatened him! I was just a thief. I have no business in this sort of work in the first place!”
The Crest lifted his chin to peer down his nose at Thainna. Or she thought that was what he was doing… it was impossible to tell in the darkness under his hood.
“You belong to me, Talon. So does your brother,” the Crest said. His voice was suddenly all ice and sharp edges. “You were chosen for this task and you may not refuse. I trusted no other, Thainna, and you disappointed me. You let Rikard Mazrem chase every single one of our agents from VEIL. You even let him procure the Erastrasus grain.”
Thainna shook her head, lost and bewildered. “What? How can you blame me for that? You only gave me one order! And what do you care if he fixes the wheat? It’s your Talons who were going to starve!”
“Poisoning that shipment was an extremely delicate matter.”
“You… you did that?” Thainna could not believe what she was hearing. “Why? Just to drive up wheat prices this winter?”
“The Nianese consul had a great deal invested in the shipment. Nian is trusted with the wealth of a great many powerful men and their interests. Liam Io would have been responsible for repaying that deficit.”
“You were going to give him the money, weren’t you? Or at least loan it to him. Either way, he’s in your pocket.”
Thainna knew she should stop talking. The Crest already said that he was going to punish her. If Thainna pushed him too hard, how much of that punishment would fall to Thain? But even on her knees before the Crest, she was furious and could no more silence her words than she could her hammering pulse.
“You would let half of the Rows starve to death just to get control over one consul?” she asked.
“And his three pets,” the Crest added. His tone was lighter again now, but had not quite lost its glacial edge. “They would have been the first links in the chain by which I would rein in the whole Lyceum. You lost me a great deal, Thainna. My hold on VEIL and on Liam Io. Your control over Rikard Mazrem had better be more secure.”
“Why? What do you want from him?”
The Crest sat forward on his wide throne. “What does it matter to you, Talon? Do you fear I might ask something… difficult of him? That I might hurt him? My little Thainna, are you fond of the great legens?”
“Rikard’s a good man and he’s got real steel in him! Money or girls or drams won’t let you control him. You don’t know Rikard. He’d rather die than do the things that you want him to!”
“Do you think so, Thainna? Truly? How unfortunate for you. You see, your beloved Rikard has made a terrible mess of my plans. I need him to leave well enough alone, to be otherwise occupied, while I figure out whether or not the situation can be salvaged.”
“You want me to… to leave him alone?” Thainna asked uncertainly. The idea struck her hard as a physical blow.
“No, Thainna. I want you to return to him. The man likes you, doesn’t he? He took a blade for you in the Sun Court yard. Let us put that considerable affection to the test. I don’t want Rikard Mazrem worrying about anything but you for the next few days.”
“I don’t understand…”
Thainna trailed off as a pair of stocky, rough-faced men stepped out into the light. Scars crisscrossed both faces, and one of them was missing an eye. The other cracked his knuckles ominously.
Thainna lurched away across the slanted floor, searching wildly for the door, but the Crest’s easy voice stopped her dead.
“Stay, Thainna. If you run now, I will kill your brother. He is useless to me except to ensure your obedience.”
Thainna turned back. Her tears turned the room into a puddle of oily black and greasy gold. She fell to her knees. They scraped painfully on the stone floor, but Thainna didn’t think that would matter for much longer. She bowed her head.
Thain. Thain, I love you. None of this will matter after winter comes. I’ll buy that throne for you, Thain. And you’ll fix everything.
The Crest flicked his finger at his Talons. “Begin.”
He said it the same way another man might tell his son to show him something he had learned in class. One of the Talons hauled Thainna up by her hair and held her. Thainna swore that she wouldn’t scream, but she did not keep that promise long. She was no warrior and her body broke easily under their fists and a stout cudgel. The wood was soon stained red. When her legs would hold Thainna no longer, they let her fall and continued their work. Only when a kick cracked one of her ribs with a wet crunch did the Crest stop them.
“Narissa,” he called.
The priestess came forward from the darkness. She looked like she might be ill, but she curtsied gracefully to the Crest.
“Hae?” Narissa asked.
“Will she live?”
Narissa stepped gingerly over a puddle of blood and crouched at Thainna’s side. She touched her fingers against the side of Thainna’s throat, eliciting a raw moan of pain. After a few minutes inspection, Narissa nodded.
“She will live for a while, at least. The injuries to her head and ribs are extensive. They may kill her, in time.”
The Crest was a black blur against a sea of red that sparkled like blood on moonlit snow. “Hae, then.”
“We’ll drop her somewhere that Mazrem’s people will find her,” Narissa said.
“No. Let her walk. Thainna, get up.”
She willed her limbs to move. They felt like skins of water, each bloated and boneless.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“Go to Rikard and see if he will care for you, if his affection for you is any kind of hold at all.” The Crest stepped down from his throne and came to stand beside Thainna. His voice dropped to a whisper. “Crawl, Thainna. Crawl back to Rikard Mazrem and break his heart. If you die before you reach him, I will kill your brother. Be strong, Thainna. For Thain.”
Thainna wept with the effort, but heaved herself to her feet. She fell, screamed and stood again. The room was gone. Narissa, the Talons who had beaten her, even the Crest. Thainna’s world was full of exploding colors. She staggered, found the door and tumbled through.
The nameless Talon at the door was right — the journey down the crooked tower was far longer. An hour, a day, a week. Thainna didn’t know. She walked, crawled, staggered and fell down the endless flights of softened stone stairs until the starburst haze lightened. Out, back in the streets of the temple district. The air tasted strange in her mouth, stuffy and salty. Bloody and smoky. Everything smelled like hot metal.
Home. I’ve got to get home… to Rikard… Is that home…?
Thainna knew that she wasn’t thinking clearly, but she could do no more about it than she could change the color of the sky. All she could do was walk.
Home.
She walked. A man in Saeran black bumped into Thainna. He tried to take her arm, shouting something. He was going the wrong direction. Home was the other way, but Thainna couldn’t make him understand. Finally, he released her and ran, screaming and crying. Other people shoved past as Thainna walked, all dressed in their best. Like flowers, she thought. Frightened flowers with wide eyes. A whole garden of them.
Bells. I hear bells.
The sky… the sky over Dormaen was the wrong color. Someone could change the sky and had turned it black. Why? The sun was just another swimming speck of red. Thainna staggered on.
Home.
