Tower of Mud and Straw

by Yaroslav Barsukov

  He screamed and fell when the black surface burned his hands. The device was red-hot.

  “Damn you.” He slammed his fist into the floor. “I don’t have time for this. I don’t have time for this.”

  When his palms lay on the lever and the valve again, he clenched his teeth and tried to forget about his skin melting away, turning and pulling through the pain’s curtain, turning and pulling the way Lena did it.

  The device shook one last time, spewed the last of its phlegm, and lowered itself onto the floor.

  He smiled briefly. Chuckled. “I did it, sis. I did it.”

  There was no answer.

  The people who found him—the ones who’d mustered enough courage to venture into the crippled building once the vortex had died—said he sat beside her body like a praying monk. He hadn’t said a word, allowing himself to be brought to his feet, bandaged, and led out.

  He didn’t speak the next day either, or the day after. Only listened.

  Heartbeat.

  Heartbeat.

  Silence.

  8

  Someone infantile had painted those trees and that morning light, someone who had just discovered whitewash and aerial perspective. In the same way, the sounds also lacked character: flat clicking of the horse’s hooves, dry tapping of the three pairs of boots that flanked the cart loaded with dark eggs.

  Aidan had hired some real goons.

  He strode beside Shea, black gloves on, whistling something, visibly pleased with ‘the catch’.

  Pines squeezed the road on both sides. When a gap opened on the left, a trail behind a decrepit wooden gate, Shea said, “I need to take a detour.”

  “Pardon?” Aidan shot a sideways glance at him.

  “The airship won’t depart for another three hours. I’ll meet you at the pier.”

  “As you wish—but try not to be late.”

  Shea hopped over the gate and followed the trail into the nascent day and along a cliff’s edge. Beneath him, Musk Valley gained form, soaking up light like an orange sponge, white houses and mansions, tiny figures scurrying between rows of grapevine, preparing them for winter.

  Morning sun always touched the Ashcroft estate last.

  Between it and the vineyards lay something new, a small field of red flowers. Tulips.

  He lowered himself onto the road. If he watched long enough and squinted hard enough, he thought, he would see a girl strolling among the flowers. He would wave to her, and she would wave back, inviting him in, telling him to come home.

  When an airship crawled out of the clouds, still a distant and transparent contour, Shea got up and headed back for the main road.

  9

  Owenbeg greeted him with the same children slinging dust at each other, the same butcher in a stained apron, the same blind lattices of windows.

  It felt like a different life—and maybe it was, everything alien, the castle, the battlements, even the tower. Events from a decade ago seemed more real than what had happened to him here.

  In his quarters, he walked up to the glass-fronted cabinet. There were no golden lights in the reflection, no figures spinning in a grand waltz, only the desaturated monochrome of his own face.

  Voices emerged from the courtyard: Brielle, talking to the people Aidan had hired.

  Bring the devices to the tower, he mouthed what he couldn’t discern. Prop my tower up.

  As for him—he waited for Lena.

  She came without a knock. She wore the same hunting suit as when they’d kissed for the first time, but she was even more beautiful, infinitely more beautiful now that he knew he was about to lose her.

  He tried to imagine again riding with her in a caravan wagon, her standing in the ocean waves. Just a few seconds more in the world they never got, a few seconds before she speaks.

  And she spoke.

  “You piece of shit,” she said. “What have you done?”

  “I’m sorry.” Shea held out his hands to her, then dropped them as he realized how pathetic he must have looked. “Forgive me, Lena.”

  “You’ve betrayed me. You little piece of… I’ll tell the duke about our affair. I’ll do it right away, and I really hope to see you hanging from the first tree they find for you.”

  “I had to do it,” he said. “I love you, but I had to do it. If you believe nothing that I say, please, at least believe that.”

  “Love me? You think it matters to me, you think I cared for you? You think I care for you now? All those things I’ve told you about leaving Owenbeg with me—it was all a con. How could you be this delusional? I was using you, I didn’t even like you, I was using you all along, as a collateral, as a backup plan in case the tower somehow survived.

  “And now,” Lena said, “I will destroy you.”

  The gulls went silent. The imaginary caravan wagon exploded just as Aidan’s family carriage had.

  A dark tongue licked the ocean waves away.

  IV. THE TOWER

  1

  How many steps can a person take until the course of events becomes irreversible—fifty? A hundred? In his mind, Shea counted Lena’s: now she rushed through the corridor, now she passed through the criss-cross shadows that had slipped from the window grates.

  She’d said she would destroy him, but he was already a man caught under the rubble: one part of him would’ve given everything to run after her, the other paralyzed, repeating the same word. Guilty.

  Guilty, but at least he would have power; if that would be worth the cost—at all.

  What would he have told her, had he followed her? There was nothing he could tell her.

  Outside, a chickadee let out a ‘dee-dee-dee’. He remembered his and Lena’s visit to the Drakiri settlement, the garlands, the roundabout spinning sunlight into black hair—and fatigue, gray, featureless, rolled over him.

  “It’s too late, little bird,” he said. “One’s dead, and I’ve betrayed the other one.”

  The sound of his own voice finally allowed him to move, and he stepped out into the corridor.

  The courtyard stood deserted save for Aidan’s men—creations of a sculptor too drunk to have been allowed anywhere near a chisel—and Brielle. She was still discussing something with them, waving her hand at the cart loaded with black egg-shaped things.

  “I need to talk to you,” Shea said.

  She turned her whole body to him, beaming like a child on New Year’s Day.

  “Thirty-two devices, Shea. Thirty-two. You’re a genius.”

  “Please. I want to talk.”

  He took her aside, under a creeper stretching its feelers across the wall.

  “I understand it’s awkward, but I’ve absolutely no one to turn to. It’s about Lena.”

  “Okay, an interesting start. I didn’t expect that, to be honest. What kind of advice are you looking for?”

  “She’s an acquaintance of yours, right?”

  “Barely. I mean, we’re both part of the duke’s entourage, but we almost do not cross paths otherwise.”

  “She’s going to confess our affair to the duke.”

  Brielle’s eyes widened. “What the… What happened between you two?”

  “This happened.” He pointed at the cart. “She believes in an old Drakiri legend, another tower emerging when ours reaches a certain height. Something like that.”

  “Emerging?”

  “Yes, from hell. Don’t ask. She was happy when she learned the tower was about to crumble.”

  “What?” Brielle’s face went one shade paler. “You told her? You’ve told her? We’ve agreed to keep it between ourselves—”

  “It was like…” The lovemaking, the angel, the olive branch. “Listen, she wasn’t going to tell anyone.”

  “Did you tell her I’d made a mistake in the calculations?”

  “No, of course not. Why would I tell her that?”

  “It’s important to me, Shea. Did you tell her I’d made a mistake?”

  “No! Besides, it’s not relevant right n
ow. Right now she’s, let’s say, extremely angry with me.”

  “Because you’ve brought in fresh devices.”

  “Because I’ve brought in the tulips.”

  “Why don’t you talk to your friend from the capital?”

  “Because he worries me, Brielle. He has certain tendencies… I don’t trust him.”

  “Wow.” She glanced back at Aidan’s goons. “Oi! Don’t touch those things, fellas! Sorry, Shea. I assume you’ve tried to reason with her?”

  “How would I reason with her? You can’t imagine what this legend means to her. I knew it and I didn’t say anything to her, about going to Musk Valley and retrieving the tulips. Now she won’t listen to me. I’ve betrayed her.”

  “Stop being melodramatic.” Brielle chewed on her lip and looked up at the sky. “Listen, I need to take care of the devices before dark. Have you considered the fact she’s got as much to lose as you do? Her relationship with the duke we all know nothing about and we all suspect exists?”

  She’s right. Of course she’s right. You overreacting idiot.

  “I don’t think anything will happen, Shea. I think she’s just mad at you. This’ll blow over. I’m no expert on relationships, but I would wait a few days and try talking to her again. If she’s still mad by then, I’ll talk to her myself, I promise.”

  “Thank you,” he said. “You know, I can’t say we’re friends in the strictest sense of the word…”

  “I know.” Brielle smiled. “More like battle comrades.”

  “Yeah, but I mean, I just want to say—thank you, Brielle.”

  “Before this gets awkward, I’ll dash off and attend to those idiots—otherwise they’ll blow themselves up. Stop worrying about things, you shoulder way too much blame.”

  He watched her figure sail up to the cart, then turned and went back into the castle.

  2

  Brielle turned out to be wrong.

  They came for him during the night, and they weren’t exactly courteous. The dream in which he’d been cutting a rotten grapevine collapsed as he spat out caked dust from the rags someone had shoved into his mouth. He blinked: a person—or persons—stood behind an oil lamp swinging in a blurred kaleidoscope. Darkness extended hands which yanked him out of bed. He tried to twist away, but they held him fast.

  Shea kicked blindly, and a man cursed in a rich baritone, letting go of his right arm.

  Free from the grip, his fist found something soft, probably the guy’s guts. This prompted a grunt and another curse—but immediately, almost like the body’s own sympathetic reaction, Shea’s solar plexus flared up, and the world drowned in white sparks.

  No more violence followed: they must’ve had orders not to leave any marks. They simply twisted his arms behind his back and dragged him out of his quarters.

  From his new position, Shea could only see the floor tiles, but it was irrelevant: he had a hunch where they were headed.

  Down, up, up, down, through a hallway.

  A door threw open, and light bit into his eyes. The men who held his arms—he still wasn’t sure, but there seemed to be three of them in total, two assailants and one who’d been responsible for the oil lamp—pushed him to his knees.

  Legs swam into focus, stretching out of a night robe, sticks painted in varicose. Then came the rest, sitting on the edge of a grand four-poster bed, under a canopy filled with figures carrying swords and pitchforks.

  “Ashcroft,” the duke said. “Ashcroft.”

  He looked normal, even more controlled than usual: focused, spider-like eyes, hands gripping the knees as though calcified into them—but he didn’t seem to be able to push out more than a single word.

  “Ashcroft.”

  She was there, too, in her long black dress, staring out a window which couldn’t have shown much apart from the torches down in the courtyard. Shea remembered the yellow room, how she’d seemed, in the same way, detached from whatever was happening around her.

  “Lena,” he said, and his solar plexus exploded again.

  She didn’t turn her head.

  “Why don’t you shut up for a change?” The duke’s hand came alive and ran over his colorless lips. “You know, I did have a hunch something had happened between you two, Ashcroft. Still, I hoped common sense in you would prevail—forgetting how people always find ways of letting me down.”

  “Sorry to disappoint you.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Shea saw the man on his right start a movement, but the duke made a dismissive grimace.

  “Leave him be. It’s a bit too late to feel sorry, Ashcroft, sincerely or otherwise.”

  “Hurt me, and you’ll have a hell lot of explanation to do to Daelyn.”

  “Will I?” The duke smoothed down his hair as if preparing for a morning routine. “Remember, when you’d paraded in here, you didn’t even know about the Drakiri devices—or the sabotage attempts. I tell my people to keep a lid on something—they do. They’re loyal to me. That’s what good leadership brings you.”

  Shea chuckled.

  “Look at him,” the duke said. “Look at him, Lena. Defiant to the end. I said look at him!”

  She didn’t move—in fact, she ceased all movement. She resembled a statue now.

  “Anyway.” The duke’s palm touched his lips again, wiping the spit. “I’ve got a couple of ideas about you, Ashcroft. Both are marvelous, in their own way. One: we take you to the cellars and put your neck through a noose. Or two,” he leaned forward, “these fine gentlemen here castrate you.”

  Shea felt blood rush away from his face. The walls came alive, bending around him, morphing into huge, cold fingers. The room shook.

  “Your choice,” the duke said.

  “Lena.” Shea tried to stand, but hands shoved him back into place. “Lena. Look at me.”

  Look at me. A small motion, barely noticeable: she dug her fingernails into her palms.

  “So what will it be, Ashcroft?”

  “Your Grace,” the guy with the baritone said. “My boys and I are ready to do both.”

  The face above the night robe brightened, and for the first time since the yellow room, Shea saw an emotion other than anger or irritation pass through the duke’s features.

  “What a wonderful suggestion,” he said. “Gosh. Absolutely splendid. Pull down his pants.”

  I’ve got a few seconds left. If I drop to the floor…

  The entrance door creaked, and a voice called out, “Your Grace.” The duke jerked in surprise. For a second, the pressure on Shea’s shoulders weakened.

  …I can sweep one of those bastards.

  He threw himself on the stone tiles, rolled over, and drove his boot into the ankle of the guy to his left, who let out a short scream. In rapid succession, he glimpsed Aidan’s face through the door, the canopy above the duke’s bed, knuckles of a bear-shaped fist.

  When the room stopped rocking, he and Aidan were on their knees next to each other.

  “Exactly when we need a witness,” the duke said. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Your Grace, I just want to talk,” said Aidan.

  “What’s the harm now?” The old man flexed his wrist as though considering shoving him between the ribs. “Let’s hear it. What did you want to say?”

  “Your Grace, before you do anything irreversible, you should know something about the Drakiri woman. That person isn’t who you think she is.”

  “Meaning?”

  “She’s behind the sabotage attempts at the tower.”

  What is this nonsense?—but then Shea glanced at Lena. She no longer looked impartial, or distant, or trying to contain something. She took a step back from the window, eyes locked on Aidan.

  “Very funny,” the duke said. “Very, very funny. There were no sabotage attempts, my lord, Ashcroft himself proved it. Our workers couldn’t handle the devices.”

  “Lord Ashcroft theorized unskilled labor was the problem. It was a good theory, too—however, only partially correct.”r />
  “Go on.”

  “She was using you, Your Grace, to get access to the tower. I have proof. My people have detained her fellow saboteurs.”

  His people—Colm? Or did he bribe more?

  Lena shifted her gaze from Aidan to the duke, then to something behind Shea’s back, then to Shea. And looking into her eyes, he was, again, a man split in two, one half sensing the tables reversed on the person who’d put him into this situation.

  The other half though, a warmer and larger one, wished to cover her with his own body. The roundabout, the smile, the smell of strawberries. I didn’t lie, he realized. What he felt here and now, on the floor of this hideous old man’s room, was something beautiful.

  “The witnesses are ready for your questioning, Your Grace,” Aidan said.

  “Aren’t you going to say anything?” The duke half-turned to Lena. Having received no answer, he tsk’ed. “What’s the motive?”

  “That’s what I didn’t understand until recently, either,” said Aidan. “It’s no secret Drakiri aren’t fond of the tower, but two days ago, Lord Ashcroft really opened my eyes. Apparently, they’re prone to some kind of a doomsday superstition. How do you call it?” He pointed his chin at Lena. “The Mimic Tower?”

  Still no answer, but she smiled—a sad, wise smile.

  “So that’s how it is.” The duke lowered and shook his head. “Lena—I assume, by your silence, these allegations are at least partially justified?” The muscles in his jaw tightened. “All right, we’ll consider the evidence.”

  At that moment, Shea saw with perfect clarity how the master’s anger mirrored the servant’s—the same detached rage Patrick had displayed against everything and everyone he considered an enemy, against the Dumians, against the ‘capital types’.

  “You want to punish someone—punish me, motherfucker,” he said. “Leave her alone.”

  Aidan grabbed him by the arm. “Have you gone mad? Your Grace, he’s simply—”

  “Do whatever you’ve got to do. You wanted to punish me, so do it.”