The wind muffles the clank of our grappling hooks and climbing claws as four of us begin to scale the wall. Maven waits below for the line that Boulder promised to throw her.
The wind hollows out my black hood and seeps through the cowl, but the exertion of the climb keeps my torso warm. This wall is four times higher than the bridge wall I scaled the other night, and it’s dangerously smooth, with shallow seams between stones and very few toe or finger holds. I went with fingerless gloves for this excursion, since I like to feel what I’m climbing, and I’m both glad and regretful that I did. My grip is better, but my fingers are getting cold faster.
Boulder would have no chance climbing bare-handed—his body is too bulky. He’s using pitons, driving them deep into the wall as he goes. Scriv is below him, using the freshly made holds to climb.
Occasionally, Scriv creates things on his own, but I’ve noticed he prefers letting other people do the hard work. He takes advantage of the labor of others to make his own life easier. Like how he’s trying to take over my crew instead of creating his own.
The dents Boulder is making in the wall concern me. Every time he creates a new one, a vibration runs through the stone surface, like a pulse of energy, and the eyes blink rapidly. I consider telling him to quit it, but then how would he get to the top? The spring-loaded grappler he brought isn’t powerful enough to reach the parapet—it’s too high above us.
“Avoid the eyes if you can,” I call to the others. “They may be harmless, but don’t take chances. Don’t touch them or damage them.”
“Understood, boss,” Boulder replies, and Flex yells back, “Like hell I’m touching those things.”
Partway up, my fingers grow too numb for me to trust my grip, and I have to pause. I’m forced to hammer in my own pitonand endure the vibration that pulses through the wall when I pierce it. Is the wall itself sentient, or is there some sort of magical alarm? And if it’s an alarm, why has there been no response?
I tie a bit of tough, thin rope around the piton and use it to steady myself while I put my cold fingers under my cowl and into my mouth to warm them. Clinging with one hand and my boot toes, I heat the fingers of my right hand first, then my left.
The height and conditions of this climb are dramatic enough to turn away all humans except the most greedy and desperate. Not to mention the fact that at least one of us would have died in the acidic snow, or been mutilated by it, if I hadn’t suspected something malicious.
That’s part of what I bring to the table—what Scriv doesn’t understand. I have an instinct for danger. Yes, my plans often have to change, but I excel at designing new strategies in the heat of the moment. I can keep all our assets cataloged in my head, and I instantly know how each one will be best applied in a given situation. I weigh risks, gauge acceptable losses, and make decisions quickly.
I wish I could have verbalized that to Scriv during our conversation at the Night Goose. I wish I could shout all those things at him right now. Maybe, when this is over, I will, but until then, I let the thoughts fuel my climb, focusing on my seething resentment rather than on how painfully the cold bites my fingers, how slippery the wall is, and how shallow the hand-holds and foot-holds are.
After an arduous climb that takes over an hour, we reach the top of the wall. Behind the parapet, we’re sheltered from the wind, able to regain some of our body heat by huddling together.
Boulder lowers the rope for Maven and we wait as she climbs up, partly by her own strength and partly with his help. She’s sweaty and panting when she reaches the top, but she’sgrinning, triumphant. I smile back and punch her shoulder lightly by way of congratulations, something we’ve done with each other many times.
Her smile falters, and she turns away to coil up the rope she used, returning it to Boulder.
“We might need it later,” she says, without looking at me.
Whatever vibration I sensed within the wall is gone now, and no one has showed up to stop us. Maybe those quivers in the stone were my imagination, my own body trembling from the cold or the wind. I push the sensation to the back of my mind and survey our new surroundings.
Here and there along the outer wall of the fortress are towers with pointed peaks, like giant teeth. The towers have eyes, too.
Every few seconds, a crimson star shines on the sharp tip of a tower, then disappears. The lights blink on and off, gleaming red in an alternating pattern, from tower to tower all around the perimeter. I suspect those towers are somehow sustaining the barely visible shield over the fortress. Even now I can see it, shimmering between us and the sky, a faint ruby veil forming a dome over Annordun.
“Do you see that?” I ask Maven, pointing upward.
She nods. “The spell has to extend over the entire place, to keep winged Fae out.”
Winged Fae. I’m standing in a wholly different realm, one that has actual Fae, with real wings.
“We’rein Faerie,” I whisper to Maven. “You and I. We’rehere.”
She smiles. “I know.”
We can’t indulge in more than a moment of girlish glee over that fact. We both know that as much as we enjoy tales of Faerie, it’s not a pleasant place. It’s perilous at best, and at worst, if we’re captured, we could suffer as slaves or endureexcruciating torment that lasts beyond death. The High Fae of the Seelie Court may consider themselves civilized, but they represent only a fraction of this realm’s residents.
“Look down,” says Flex, and we all follow his gaze.
We’re on the brink of the chasm between the fortress’s outer and inner walls. In the darkness below, crooked lines of scarlet light branch intermittently from the first wall to the second, sometimes higher, sometimes lower, stabbing randomly here and there. We all know instinctively that it would be very bad to get caught in one of those beams. Beyond them, I glimpse the ground, impossibly far below. None of it bodes well for us climbing down.
The narrow walkway on which we stand runs along the parapet in both directions as far as I can see, looping around each tower it encounters. Right or left may be a better option than down. Or perhaps there’s a third choice.
When we were looking at the sketch of Annordun, I spotted a thin line connecting the outer wall of the fortress to the inner one. It could have just been a stray scrawl, or it could be a high path from the top of one wall to the other—in which case we wouldn’t have to descend to ground level at all.
“Let’s follow the walkway,” I call.
