The rule against having any fire and the lack of fireplaces in the tower made for cold living. It was winter, and there were no doors on the two circular entrances. Icy winds nipped at us, and though the first level was full of people, the weather had set into our bones. We bedded under our wagon on the cold stone of the tower floor that night, whispering about what we should do with Adelaide. I lay there listening to Jade ask Tessa to describe how my niece had looked, and I wondered what Dermid had meant. Fox lay next to me, looking pallid and miserable, her arms holding a sick-looking Daisy. My thoughts turned to Adelaide’s words.
The tower is like a poison. It makes anyone who lives in it mad and weak with terror. Then they become subservient.
The wagon was too ripe with the goats and chickens having shit in it for moons. No matter how much we tried to clean it, it was impossible. We only used it for coverage for bathing and changing clothes. But the floor of the tower was not the earth of the long dust road. It did not have any give to it beneath our backs. Our sleep was fitful if we had it.
Just as I was close to dozing, I felt a handon my shoulder. I opened my eyes to see Reed looking at me through the spokes of a wagon wheel.
“I’m here to look at how we’ll get you out. Is there any exit other than the two great ones at the front?”
Peering behind him, I saw Keir and Evangeline. “I don’t know. I may have seen something, but we’ll need a torch. Dermid says to look for a cellar.”
Keir squatted next to Reed and reached out to lay the back of his hand against a slumbering Jade’s face. “That means he’s seen an exit other than the Gates of Sound from outside. He’s been working with Thane for days, reclaiming his wagons from the military and taking them outside the city wall. I think Thane may not have been paid in full yet and he’s worried about losing property.”
“Where did you see it?” Reed asked me.
“Just have her come with us, Reed,” said Evangeline.
“What are you lot talking about?” Ilsit half snored.
Lit only by the dim light let in from the front entrances, beyond which distant torches lined the street, Ilsit and I joined the three of them in a careful walk down the rows and rows of wagons and penitents, half of whom were all sitting with hanging heads, unable to sleep.
“Everyone looks drunk,” Evangeline said in my ear. “Or sick maybe.”
“I’ve other things to convey,” I replied. “Let’s get to the stables first.”
I insisted on checking on Zara again before I showed them the door with the sharp stairwell that seemed to pitch nearly straight down from the landing. I rubbed her down while Keir collected a wall torch from outside the street and Evangeline and Reed kept watch outside her stall. Between my and Ilsit’s petting her, she seemed more at ease by the time we left.
When Keir returned, having doused the torch to get it past the guards standing watch outside, he lit it again. It was not one of their twisting cresset torches, the opening of which he could have closed,just a heavy wooden thing capped with a iron basin lined with oil, rope, and kindling. We stood around him to hide any light as he struck and struck, using flint, iron, and a rag he had pulled from his shirt. It would not light.
“Hurry up,” Evangeline begged. “And don’t strike it so loud.”
As it took Keir several tries for him to light the wall torch, it took me a few tries to find the door with the flame on it.
“Makes no sense having that on a door when there is no fire allowed,” Ilsit remarked.
“Well, it’s Saint Rodwin’s crest,” I offered.
“If Dermid said to look for a cellar, he must have seen something low in the wall outside,” explained Reed. “The wall is right up against the tower. It might be used by the tower guards alone and that’s why it was locked up.”
“Lucky you found the key,” said Evangeline.
“Not lucky,” countered Keir, watching me remove the key from my apron pocket. “The guards all look unhappy. They cannot wait to leave. I doubt they worry about anything but their shifts ending and keeping the penitents in.”
That was when I realized I should, though I did not understand it, convey the theory of the tower my niece had explained to Tessa and myself. We stood in a half circle around the door, our faces lit by Keir’s small torch, looking over our shoulders for a guard.
“So, when they’re not at war, this is where their new army recruits live and train?” Keir asked. “If there is some curse of subservience, a magic worked?—”
“No,” said Evangeline, speaking over him. “They’re religious lunatics. They don’t practice magic.”
“They also believe in demons who will use their skulls as soup bowls in the afterlife,” Ilsit said, crossing her arms. “Maybe they’re not wrong.”
I stared at her, aghast.
“What I mean is,” she went on, “maybe demons do exist and they are alive and in this tower, cursing the folk here.”
“How does it feel to have lived a week here?” Reed asked.
Ilsit and I exchanged a look.
