Catherine Fisher - The Lost Heiress

“I’ll watch. Go to sleep.”

As Raffi swallowed the last scrap of meat, Godric leaned toward him, clutching the flask. “Do yourself a favor, lad,” he whispered, his breath stinking of ale. “Leave this lot. Both of them care more about their dreams than about you.” He clapped a great hand on Raffi’s hair and ruffled it. “Clear out with me. Be a thief. If you like to live well, that’s the life, boy.” Drunkenly he leaned back, closing his eyes. “After all, what have you got to lose? You’re an outlaw already.”

Jerking back, Raffi glared down at him bitterly. “Thanks,” he said. “Thanks a lot.”

The Tower of Song

8

For Flain, the city of Tasceron, gold and sunlit;

For Tamar, Isel’s mountain, cold and high.

For Soren, the Pavilion of Song in the Green hills;

For Theriss, the blue chasms of the sea.

For Kest, the plain of Maar, abode of horrors.

Above them all the seven moons

and the Crow, flying between.

Litany of the Makers

IT HAD BEEN RAINING ALL DAY, and there was no sign of it stopping. Carys had given up; her hood hung useless and her hair streamed, trickling and dripping inside her soaked clothes. Shivering, she urged her horse on, seeing how the water oozed and bubbled out of the leather of her gloves.

Ahead, under a stand of black-leaved saltan trees, Braylwin and his three men were waiting. Wearily her horse splashed up to them, and she saw how the beasts’ red paint had smeared and dripped into the puddles below.

“Problem?” Braylwin asked absently. He was dressed in a vast black traveling cape that hung down below his stirrups; the rain pattered off it in torrents. It was stiff with wax.

“He’s going lame.” She slipped off, knee-deep in water.

Braylwin shook his head. “I’ve told you before to get yourself a better horse,” he said crisply, above the downpour. “And clothes, Carys! I like my patrol to be well turned out.”

Crouched over the horse’s hoof, she snapped, “I’m not as rich as you.”

“Ah, but that’s your fault, sweetie. Prize money is only the half of it. The small gifts of the people, the bribes, the little inducements. Your trouble, Carys, is being too long among keepers.”

She dropped the hoof and slapped the horse’s flank, then glared up. “That’s my business.”

His round face smiled down at her. “Is it?”

“How far are we from this wretched place?” she asked sullenly.

“How far?” He took a plump hand off the reins and pointed. “We’re here.”

She stared out. She saw a vastness, a rising shape, indistinct in the rain, gray in the misty drizzle. At first she had thought it was a cloud, a great bank of fog drifting up over the mountains, but now she realized with a cold awe that it was real, a vast building climbing the mountainside, rising in a countless series of rooms, stairways, balconies, and galleries, far away and immense, its topmost roofs white with snow. And up there, like a needle sharp with ice, one uttermost pinnacle flew the remote black pennant of the Watch.

The Tower of Song.

How Galen would have loved this, she thought, the rain running into her eyes and down her face, the heavy downpour hissing from the low gray skies. How it would have amazed Raffi. They’d have prayed, she thought wryly. Looking up at the vast, rain-clouded walls of it, she almost wanted to pray as well.

Braylwin had been watching her. Now, as the rain began to crash with a new ferocity, he turned his horse hastily. “Come on,” he called irritably. “Before we drown out here.”

She walked, leading her horse up the steep mountain track. The tower loomed above; she saw how it had been built over centuries, been added to, repaired, ruined, neglected, renovated. All the Emperors had spent their summers here, far from the heat of Tasceron, building their palace of luxuries around the lost core of Soren’s pavilion, the place she had chosen for her own when the Makers divided the Finished Lands between them, long ago. Now the Watch held it, one of their greatest fastnesses, and here were stored rooms of confiscated tribute, loot, treasures. And the records, the vast bureaucracy of files and papers and reports of its millions of agents. If she really wanted to find out about herself, about the Watch, about the Interrex, this would be the place. But she’d have to be careful. Very careful.

Hauling the horse up over the slippery pebbles, she wiped her face and scowled at Braylwin’s back. He came here every year for his winter quarters, warm and dry. Here they’d stay—until she had word from Galen. Irritated, she shook her head. She should have warned Galen.

It took an hour to clamber up to the outer barbican, and another half hour to satisfy the searchers, fill in identity forms, get their papers and permissions and passes to the inner courtyards.

Trailing behind Braylwin across the cobbled yards and under the porticoes, she was amazed at the crowds of people: scribes, clerks, scriveners, translators. There were men dragging great trolley-loads of papers, long lines at doors, crowds around notices pinned to hundreds of boards. Most of them were sleek and well-fed; only a few were field agents or post-riders, looking far more weatherworn. Climbing one vast staircase, she looked down and saw an endless miserable line disappearing under one porch—not Watch, but tired-looking men, haggard women, a few lounging Sekoi.

“What are they?”

Braylwin paused long enough to glance down. “Petitioners. People looking for their families. Criminals. Nohopers.”

He climbed on clumsily. After a minute she ran after him.

His apartments were about a mile into the labyrinth of rooms and corridors they called the Underpalace; she realized after a while that even with all her training she was hopelessly lost. When they got there he went along a narrow passageway, banging doors open, tutting over dust, fussing at ornaments that weren’t where he’d left them. She knew the men-at-arms would sleep outside his door when on duty, otherwise in the endless dormitories all Watchholds had. She was expecting that for herself, but Braylwin beckoned her coyly to the end of the corridor and flung a door open. “For you, sweetie.”

She peered in.

A tiny room, with a bed and an empty hearth and a chest, and rain dripping into a pool, but when she’d crossed to the window and looked out she smiled, for the room was high in some turret, and it hung out into the sky over the tangle of lanes and courtyards and alleys far below.

She was glad it was up on its own. She was already beginning to dislike the Tower of Song.

“It’ll do,” she said, turning.

Braylwin smirked from the door. “Yes. For keeping an eye on you, Carys.”

It took her three days even to find a map of the place. In the mornings Braylwin would dictate long reports of the summer’s tax-gatherings to a harassed clerk who had been ordered to work with him.

The man deserved a medal, Carys thought darkly, watching the sleek Watchleader tease and flatter and make a fool of him. Harnor, his name was. Once she saw him give her a quick, exasperated glance, but he never lost his temper, and Braylwin smirked and preened and invented endless imaginary accounts until he tired of the game and sent one of the men-at-arms to fetch his dinner. After that he spent the long, wet afternoons sleeping, or entertaining the gaggle of unpleasant cronies he called friends.