Michael Sullivan - The Crown Tower

“From now on, no talking,” Royce told him, having to shout to be heard over the wind as he hoisted the coil over his head.

Is that supposed to be a joke?

They were just beneath the alabaster stone of the “crown,” and here Royce scaled up freehand; then like a spider he worked his way to the outer ring while inverted before setting the rope and dropping the length. The line hung out away from the wall two feet beyond Hadrian’s grasp. They hadn’t practiced this. He looked up, but Royce was climbing once more.

From now on, no talking.

He had done it on purpose. To follow, Hadrian would need to disengage from his safety and lunge out in midair to catch the other rope. Only two feet, but any distance separated by death felt too far.

Does it really matter?

He hadn’t come all that way to fail. And who would really care if he died? He focused on the dangling line and half imagined Royce above him, poised, ready to shift it the moment he jumped.

See, Arcadius, I told you he couldn’t make it.

The bastard.

That was all it took and he jumped. Catching the rope was easy, but the swing and the sudden drop was unexpected, and he struggled to stop himself from sliding down the length. His skin began to burn as his weight dragged him down. He felt the heat between his thighs and wrapped his feet tightly, catching the cord. Together, his legs, feet, and hands left him alive and swinging out and back where he slammed hard against the stone, slapping his knuckles and cheek.

Above him, Royce was already on the parapet.

Different.

Nothing was ever the same the second time around. Not that Royce made a habit of doing anything twice, but on those rare occasions he found it impossible to repeat the sequence exactly. This held true with the Crown Tower. None of it was the same. Of course it wouldn’t be, given the oaf he had in tow, but that wasn’t the issue. That aspect was behind him, and what he was feeling was out front.

Different.

The trip to Ervanon illustrated his point. The first time, he had moved invisibly except for the bumbling seret, who had no idea the real threat he posed. Once he dumped them on Hadrian, he had become a ghost, inconspicuous and unseen. This second time, the road had been alive with riders. Not that Hadrian had noticed. The man noticed nothing, not even his own stupidity, which followed him as loyally as a dog. Stealing that book had set all of Ghent on edge, and he was still being hunted. Soldiers, even those who worked for the church, were animals of habit. They hunted by day and slept at night. Avoiding them had been a simple task, but still indicative of a problem Royce hadn’t faced previously. Never before had he returned to the site of a crime within days of committing it. Such an act certainly benefited from being unexpected, but it also threw all the elements into a kind of tornado.

He had planned the job carefully. He knew the routine of the servants and patrols, the merchant caravans, and even the drunk they called Mosley, who wandered home past the tower each night. As a result, he had a high level of confidence even though he had little idea what lay at the top. Precious little information had been available on that. The alabaster portion of the tower was rumored to be the personal living quarters of the Patriarch, the head of the Nyphron Church. As much myth as man, only the archbishop, and perhaps the sentinels, ever actually saw him. If he had servants, he kept them with him and none ever saw the light of day except through tower windows.

While from the ground the top looked small, Royce had determined the “crown” was not just one floor. Arcadius had helped with that part. He sent Royce to take visual measurements using sticks and string; then he calculated with numbers and determined the alabaster portion was as many as four stories, or two if it had high ceilings. The sheer girth of the tower suggested a living space bigger than most castle keeps and could house a large staff of servants. Guessing that a patriarch was much like a king, Royce anticipated a personal chapel, a library, an impressive reception hall, an opulent bedroom, and a study. The top of the Crown Tower was famed to house the horded wealth of Glenmorgan and the church, so he could also expect a treasure room of some sort. A simple strongbox was unlikely, unless the tales were only rumor, but he suspected they were true. If anywhere was perfect to keep a treasure, it was up there. All he needed was to find the room with the biggest lock.

Royce was wrong-about the lock. He had found the book in an unguarded, open room littered with a cornucopia of oddities, weapons, armor, books, chalices, and plenty of jewelry, each treated with no more respect than junk in an attic. To Royce’s relief, there had been just a few books to search through and only one battered journal. He was in and out in minutes, never needing to explore the upper floors, despite his curiosity. This time, knowing exactly where to go, he expected to be faster. The only variable was Hadrian.

Looking down, he saw the dolt was still dangling, swinging like a clown near the end of the rope. Arcadius had chained him to a mindless cow.

Unlike Hadrian, Arcadius wasn’t an idiot, and the old man’s motives vexed him-but then everything the professor did was puzzling. After paying to get Royce out of prison-something he never gave a reason for-he provided Royce with a room at the school, where he had fed and educated him. Initially, Royce hadn’t seen anything strange in his actions. He was confident Arcadius had old scores to settle, and being in need of a good assassin had simply bought one.

Genius really-save a killer from certain death and such a beast might just be tamable. Having a pet assassin could be handy to anyone. Yet for all his education, Arcadius knew nothing about the ethics of killers-or maybe it was just Royce he had read wrong. Royce had no intentions of being domesticated.

Royce had already known letters and numbers, which had surprised the old man and allowed them to move on to history and philosophy. Why the professor wanted to educate him in such matters was another of the many mysteries that he refused to answer-no, not refused. Arcadius never flatly refused anything. He always gave an answer, just never the one Royce expected. This was one of the early indicators that the old man was clever. I feel very strongly that everyone should have an education. Ignorance is the bane of the world. Knowledge brings understanding, and if men understand the difference between right and wrong, they will, of course, do what is right . It was this sort of absurdity that the professor would spout, leaving Royce to puzzle about his real motives. In the two years they had spent together, he had never found it.

Months went by.

Royce had expected Arcadius to provide him with a list of people to eliminate, but he had never received one. The old professor had even accepted Royce’s prolonged leave of absence, “to close out some unfinished business.” Arcadius hadn’t asked a single question before or after, and the topic was never brought up since, not even in jest. This, more than anything, convinced him that Arcadius had known exactly how he’d spent those months away, confirming Royce’s belief that the professor was dangerously intelligent and absolutely puzzling. Over a year had passed, and until this job, escorting Hadrian to Sheridan, he had never requested a thing. Now Arcadius was tossing Royce the key to his freedom, but why? If it had been anyone else, Royce would have assumed the job had been designed to fail. He had been on enough setups to recognize the smell. But why? Why buy him out of prison just to send him back or see him killed?