Chapter 1
Idabel
The sound of cracking stone sent a chill up her spine. The gargoyles were waking. Hurriedly, Idabel gathered her bucket and rags and fled, cursing the noise of the key ring chiming at her hip and her heartbeat banging in her ears.
Her heels rang on the narrow iron ladders that the day workers used to access every nook and cranny of the Tower where the fierce creatures made their home. Though she spent every day in their most intimate spaces while they were frozenlike statues, she was not to be seen when they woke after sundown. She would lose her position if she were caught.
Only the keepers were permitted to serve the gargoyles directly. The rest of them were toounworthy, apparently.
She shouldn’t think such things. She was lucky to be inside the safety of Tael-Nost’s capital city, Solvantis, with its magic-drenched walls and army of winged protectors that could fend off any threat, fae, goblin, or otherwise. Lucky to be housed and employed, even if it was only as a cleaner. She couldn’t risk being expelled. She had nowhere to go.
When she reached the bottom of the ladder without being stopped, she dropped to the cobbled floor in relief. She didn’t dare glance upward at the hollow core of the enormous building that stretched into the sky and chance seeing the dark shape of wings above. She dashed for the layers of gates and doors that kept humans out, fumbling for the keys as she went.
A grim-faced keeper met her at the outer door of the scullery, scowling at the bucket looped over her arm. “You should’ve finished an hour ago.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Idabel tried to brush past the cloaked woman to stow her supplies in the storage cupboards, but the keeper blocked her way.
“It’s disrespectful to dawdle in the Tower. It is a sacred space for our guardians to study and train, and they must not be disturbed.”
Goblin’s gold, she made it sound like a temple. Idabel, who spent much of her time scrubbing their garderobes and collecting their refuse, did not have such a lofty view of gargoyles. “None of them saw me.”
“Still.”
Idabel nodded in agreement, hoping the conversation would end if she acknowledged her failings as a shit-scraper.
It did not.
“What kept you so late?”
“They feasted last night. There were a lot of bones to collect.”
The keeper visibly relaxed, tucking her hands into her sleeves. “Ah yes. That’s right. There’s more feasting tonight, so come early tomorrow.”
Idabel jerked her head in a nod, training her eyes on the floor, and finally the keeper stepped aside so she could empty her bucket into the stone sink. She wiped it out and placed it in a row with the others.
Her rinsed-out rags topped the basket that she hauled, as the last to finish her rounds, to dump down the laundry chute. The grubby linen toweling went somewhere deep in the catacombs to be laundered, and it’d appear the next day in fresh, folded stacks.
Idabel would not be so fresh, come morning. She was already late to her second job at the apothecary. She was little more than an assistant, and an unpaid one at that. But she hoped eventually become an apothecary herself one day. If that meant sacrificing her sleep for a few years while she saved up for the guild fees, so be it.
Betje, the only apothecary who gave her a second look, would be more forgiving of her tardiness—or at least, more distracted—if Idabel arrived with something interesting in hand. Rather than heading straight for the shop, she made a short detour to Maiden Hall, where she lived with the other unmarried women from the southern settlements. All of them had evacuated to the safety of Solvantis due to the goblin wars and, like her, were doing their best to make a new life here.
A sizeable stone building that hugged the base of the gargoyle’s tower, Maiden Hall had been built many generations ago as the domicile of the Head Keeper. But in the years since, new, more luxurious quarters had been constructed in the human king’s palace, and since then, the hall had beenconverted into a dormitory for apprenticed and newly sworn keepers. Rows of heavy, curtained bunks lined the ornately carved walls of the large, open main floor. Now, in addition to obedient keeper-hopefuls, they housed the sunburnt, bawdy, raw-knuckled maidens and spinsters of the south.
Idabel didn’t fit neatly into either group, though she spent her time split between them. She was too independent and opinionated to be one of the studious keepers she worked alongside in the Tower, and she was too quiet and serious to win many friends among the southern women. But if she had to choose one group to join, it’d be the latter. When it came down to it, shewasone of them, raised on fresh eggs and fresh air rather than the grim granite of Solvantis. Plus, they weren’t self-righteous sycophants who treated gargoyles like gods.
There were no more gods in Tael-Nost, and a lot fewer wars would be fought if everyone accepted it.
She cut through the dim, candle-lit hall, dodging greetings and gossip, and made her way to the narrow spiral stairs at the other end. They led to the warren of upper rooms that served as classrooms and staff quarters. Squeezed into the space between a wardrobe and the wall was an exterior door that opened onto a generous balcony.
Designed as a place for the Head Keeper to easily receive missives from the gargoyle Nadir, its corners were marked by sturdy plinths where winged messengers could perch. Its original purpose obsolete now that the offices were relocated, the balcony had mostly fallen into disuse, which was ideal for Idabel’s purposes.
Since she’d arrived in Solvantis, she’d been collecting broken buckets. Ones with leaky bottoms. Ones with failed handles and rusted hoops. Filled with earth she’d faithfully carted up the stairs one bucket at a time, and watered the same way, they now sprouted her first crop of herbs, grown from seeds she’dsmuggled into the city. Her only inheritance. A few of the fastest-growing were ready to harvest.
Betje, who regularly complained that the herbs in the marketplace were weak and wilted, would be delighted by this preliminary crop. Hopefully pleased enough to overlook Idabel’s lack of punctuality. This wasn’t the first time her work in the Tower had kept her late.
Kneeling in a pool of moonlight, Idabel began cutting stalks of herbs, wishing she had paper to wrap them. Her apron would have to do. She filled it with as much dill and basil as she could, then stood, turning to go.
An enormous, dark shape flitted through her peripheral vision. She turned her head in time to see a gargoyle land with minimal noise on the nearest plinth. Clutching her apron and its precious contents close, she gasped, stumbling back.
