Jeweled Fire

by Sharon Shinn

  EIGHT

  In a conspiratorial moment, Corene and Liramelli had decided they would slip off to the Great Market without any of their usual companions by claiming they were going to tour the two great towers of the city. Melissande had already made the obligatory visit to the landmarks, and Filomara’s nephews had seen them so often they couldn’t be expected to work up any interest in the jaunt. Once they were free of the palace, the two of them could head to the market alone and shop. Corene had even mentioned this clever plan in a note she’d sent to Leah the day after her dinner with the prefect’s family.

  So at breakfast a few days later, they proposed an outing to the towers and had to hide their glee when Melissande actually yawned. But Steff expressed interest in going, which made Melissande suddenly want to join them. Jiramondi excused himself, but Garameno and Greggorio both surprisingly attached themselves to the expedition. Most astonishing of all, Alette looked up from her almost-empty plate and said, “May I come, too?”

  “How lovely it would be to have you with us!” Melissande exclaimed. “Please do.”

  So, once again, they required two carriages and platoons of soldiers to make the slow journey through crowded streets to a destination Corene wasn’t even sure she wanted to visit. Once again, she’d ended up in Garameno’s carriage, and this time he filled her in on the history of the towers: when they had been built, and when the gas lines had been added so neither one had to be tended by human workers but would burn eternally on inexhaustible fuel.

  “So the white light is also flame?” Corene asked. “It doesn’t look like any fire I’ve ever seen.”

  “It is not flame so much as heat,” he replied. “The top of the dome is made of a dense crystal that is unimpressive until the temperature reaches a certain point. Then it begins to glow in the way that you’ve seen. A few very wealthy individuals have much smaller lighting systems in their houses built along similar principles.”

  “It seems like a spooky sort of illumination,” Corene commented. “I’m not sure I’d want to live by it.”

  “I tend to agree.”

  They headed first to the southern tower with its magnificent crown of fire. Up close, it was even more impressive, built of solid chunks of cinnamon granite, each one bigger than a coffin. A large arched doorway showed a glimpse of a stone floor and a spare stairwell curving upward into darkness. The base was at least the size of Corene’s suite of rooms, though the spire seemed to taper as it climbed toward the sky. Or perhaps that was just the extreme perspective; Corene was squinting upward and couldn’t be sure.

  Melissande leaned as far back as she could, craning her neck to see. “Yes, flame, just as there is always flame, night and day,” she decreed. “Now we have seen it, let us move on.”

  But Steff had hopped nimbly from the second carriage, then thoughtfully turned to help both Alette and Liramelli alight. “We can climb to the top, can’t we?” he said. “I want to do that.”

  Melissande looked at him in horror. “No, you do not! Who would want to do that?”

  He grinned. “Corene, I bet.”

  She was already out of her seat and accepting Foley’s hand to swing down to the cobblestones. He looked amused; he knew this wasn’t how she’d really planned to spend the day. “You’re right,” Corene said. “I’m here, I’m going up.”

  Liramelli looked indecisive. “I’ve been so many times. I think, today—”

  “Today you will wait with me and Garameno and be very entertaining,” Melissande said firmly. “Come. Sit with us.”

  “I’m climbing,” Greggorio said. He glanced at Steff. “I’ll race you up.”

  Steff grinned. “You’re on.”

  Alette spoke up in her soft, heavily accented voice. “I would like to go to the very top of the tower, please. But I will not run.”

  “No, I’m not running, either,” Corene said. “Those two are idiots.”

  “Well, come on, then,” Steff said, and the four of them stepped through the archway.

  They paused a moment to let their eyes adjust. The stairway, which hugged the wall as it spiraled upward, appeared to be built predominantly of wood reinforced in various spots by cast metal. It was wide enough for four people to walk abreast if none of them was afraid of being pushed off the interior edge, where there was no banister. In counterpoint to the stairway, on the opposite wall, a single thin tube of gaslight wound up the spire, providing enough light to see by but not enough to chase away all the shadows. Way, way up, at the very apex of the tower, a coruscating red announced the presence of fire.

  “Hold up at the bottom of the stairs. Have one of the women give the signal to go,” Greggorio commanded, and he and Steff lined themselves up, each with one foot on the lowest step.

  Corene glanced at Alette, who didn’t seem to have heard the directive. So she said, “Go!” and then laughed to see the two men leaping up the stairs as fast as their legs would carry them.

  “I hope they don’t fall and break their necks,” she commented. “Still want to make the climb?”

  “Yes,” Alette replied, and side by side they stepped onto the first riser and began the ascent. They could hear the laughter and ringing footfalls of the men as they charged upward; Corene even fancied she could feel the stairway shake from the vigor of their passage.

  She had taken the outside edge just to prove she wasn’t afraid to fall, but she started to regret it before they were halfway up. The wood and metal framework felt less and less substantial, and through its slats Corene could see the floor so far away beneath her feet. It was akin to being suspended unsupported in midair, and vertigo swirled through her head.

  “You go on ahead, I’ll fall a step behind,” Corene said, suiting action to words. The world stabilized a bit once she could put her hand against the wall. The key was to not look down, she decided. She focused on the colorful print of Alette’s robe and the feel of the granite against her fingertips. “Aren’t you dizzy?” she couldn’t help asking.

  “No.”

  “I’m not usually afraid of heights, but I feel like I could lose my footing at any minute,” she went on. She could tell she was babbling, and probably annoying Alette, but she couldn’t stop. “Though I guess I’m a little afraid of heights. I mean, I wouldn’t go up in the flying machines we have in Welce. Well, that only makes sense. They’re not safe—people crash and die all the time. But I’ve never worried about stairs before.”

  Alette didn’t bother answering, just kept moving surely and smoothly up the tower. Corene wondered what kind of shoes the other girl was wearing. The soles of her own pretty slippers felt decidedly slick; maybe Alette was so steady on her feet because her shoes provided a better grip. Or maybe Alette had grown up on a mountaintop and spent her days running up and down narrow pathways like a wild creature. Corene knew nothing about Dhonsho. She should study it. I will, as soon as we get safely back, she told herself. If I haven’t gone completely mad from fear before we make it to the top.

  They were almost there—she could tell by the thick, smoky heat and the heavy, fluttering sound of a massive flame. The color of the air around them had darkened to a translucent ochre that they passed through like fish swimming through tinted water. For the final few steps, the heat was so oppressive that Corene found it hard to breathe, and the metal patches of the stairwell felt hot beneath her feet. Then they burst through a rectangular trapdoor to the roof and found the world on fire.

  Truly, that was how Corene felt when she first laid eyes on the raging blaze that crowned the granite tower. Behind the jagged glass screens of crimson and saffron and orange, the flames leapt up, taller than a man, whipping wildly in an invisible wind. Over the loud whuffling of the fire Corene could hear the faint hiss of the gas jets paying out their fuel. It was the most spectacularly beautiful sight she had ever seen.

  “About time you got here!” Steff called out. Coren
e dragged her eyes from the mesmerizing rise and fall of conflagration to inspect her destination. The roof of the tower didn’t feel a whole lot safer than the stairwell. There was a wooden lip, wide enough for three people to stand shoulder to shoulder, that encircled the leaping flames. Above it was a metal fence, barely waist-high, consisting of only two flat rails and occasional vertical supports. Past this flimsy barrier the city spread out in all directions below them, looking like nothing so much as a painting of a city in a child’s picture book. The heat was so intense that Corene moved as close to the railing as she could without scalding herself on its broiling edges.

  “Who won?” she called back.

  Greggorio pushed past Steff, looking pleased with himself. “I did. By two steps.”

  “You went up on the inside edge,” Steff argued. “You had an advantage.”

  “We’ll race up the white tower, too,” Greggorio retorted. “I’ll take the outside, and then we’ll see who’s fastest.”

  Corene moved carefully past them so she could locate the one landmark she was sure to recognize: the palace. As the largest building in Palminera, it wasn’t hard to find. And from this vantage point, she could also get a better appreciation of the walled city that enclosed it, could clearly see the loops and whorls of the labyrinthine streets that wound their way to the palace grounds and away again.

  She liked this distant view better than the day-to-day close-up one, she thought. Maybe because it made more sense to see it than to live it.

  Not quite resting her hand on the hot railing, she slowly walked the perimeter of the tower, studying the landscape below her as the view shifted. She liked the haphazard arrangement of city streets and neighborhoods, and the colorful border of the harbor. From here, she could barely see the ocean, just a smudge of blue against the long horizon. If she squinted, she thought she could make out white sails against the indigo of the water.

  She would never be able to see far enough to catch a glimpse of Welce.

  That thought had just crossed her mind when Steff yelped with alarm, and she whirled around to see what was wrong. And then, even in this hellishly hot place, she felt herself freeze with fear.

  Alette had scrambled up from the wooden floor of the tower to the frail metal of the railing and stood poised upon it with her arms outstretched. She stared down at the city below, her dark face suddenly alive with emotion, twisted with anguish. Her balance was so delicate, her pose so impossible to hold, that even the whipping flames seemed like they could create enough wind to knock her over.

  “Alette,” Corene whispered, afraid to speak any louder, afraid to startle her. “Don’t.”

  Alette just closed her eyes and swayed forward.

  Corene shrieked, but Greggorio lunged. He grabbed Alette’s arm and wrenched her backward as she screamed and twisted to get free. Steff leapt to help, and together they dragged her to safety, though her arms and legs bumped heavily against the metal railings and Corene was sure she would be covered with burns and bruises. Alette fought them, moaning something in a language Corene couldn’t understand, but it was clear enough that she was begging them to let her go.

  To let her die.

  Corene was shocked motionless, but Greggorio, of all people, seemed calm and in control. Once Alette was safely off the railing, he took her in his arms, then sank to the wooden floor, holding her so closely that her flailing hands were immobilized against his chest. He leaned his head over hers and murmured something in her ear—reassurances, surely, promises that everything would be fine, that whatever troubled her could be fixed—and did not look up until she grew quiet and passive in his embrace.

  Corene just stood there, still staring, but Steff crouched beside them, and the two men conferred. “How can we get her down?” Steff asked.

  “I’ll carry her.”

  “If she starts struggling, you could both fall.”

  “You go ahead to catch us.”

  “I can carry her part of the way,” Steff offered.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Steff straightened up and threw Corene a single look of distress. She just nodded—It’s as good a plan as any—and said, “Should I go first? To let the others know what happened?”

  “No,” said Steff. “We don’t all want to come crashing down on top of you.”

  “We won’t fall,” Greggorio said quietly. “But you might have to help me to the stairwell, and guide my feet down the first few steps.”

  Corene watched helplessly as Steff dropped through the trapdoor and found his footing. Still sitting on the wooden floor and holding Alette in his arms, Greggorio inched over and let his feet dangle into the stairwell until he, too, caught his balance. He rose cautiously to his feet and slowly disappeared.

  Corene came after them, far enough back to keep out of Greggorio’s way. They made a slow, strange procession down the steps that the men had run up so merrily just a few minutes earlier. Corene could see that Steff was descending backward, one hand against the wall, one hand on Greggorio’s arm to keep him steady. She could tell that Greggorio was feeling his way down blindly, keeping one shoulder against the rough granite of the stone. She could glimpse the top of Alette’s dark head pressed into Greggorio’s shoulder, could see the bright fabric of her robe fluttering around her thin legs, but the girl didn’t speak and scarcely moved and might not even be breathing.

  Corene’s thoughts chased themselves wildly through her mind as she followed them down. Had Alette come to the tower this morning specifically so she could throw herself off? What had made her so miserable that she wanted to die? Had she received terrible news from home? Been treated badly by Filomara? Was she simply an unhappy girl, unstable and wretched, unable to manage the normal blows and disappointments of daily life?

  Unbidden, fragments of a recent conversation with Jiramondi floated to the top of her mind. He had said, I am not convinced her father didn’t send her here to marry one of us and then stab him in the heart some night when he was sleeping. Alette could do almost as much damage to international relations by killing herself. That would most surely provoke enough outrage to invite hostilities from Dhonsho.

  You have spent too much time at court suspecting everyone’s motives, Corene scolded herself. She’s probably just a troubled girl who could not endure some tragedy the rest of us know nothing about.

  It seemed to take a year to navigate the stairwell, but finally they safely reached the ground. As soon as Greggorio strode out into the sunlight with his burden in his arms, cries of consternation rose from the waiting carriages.

  “What happened?” Melissande called. “Did she faint?”

  “Was she dizzy? The heat is so intense up there,” Liramelli spoke up.

  Steff and Corene glanced at each other, wondering if it would be better to conceal the truth. But Greggorio didn’t hesitate.

  “She tried to jump,” he said. “We were barely able to stop her.”

  “Jump!” Garameno exclaimed. “Why? What’s wrong?”

  Alette loosed a low moan and began to sob uncontrollably into the front of Greggorio’s jacket. For the first time during this whole terrible interlude, Corene saw him look uncertain. He could cope with a wild woman, she thought, but not a weeping one.

  “Oh, the poor girl,” Melissande said. In a moment, she was on her feet and out of the carriage she had shared with Garameno and Liramelli. Climbing into the empty coach, she gestured imperiously at Greggorio. “Bring her to me. I’ll take care of her.”

  “Maybe we should—” Corene began, but Melissande shook her head.

  “She and I will ride together. I am sorry, but the rest of you will have to crowd together in the other carriage. Come now. Do as I say.”

  When Melissande spoke in that confident voice, it was impossible to gainsay her. Soon enough, Melissande and Alette were in the lead carriage, heading back to the palace, and t
he other five had folded themselves into the second coach. Corene couldn’t settle in place until she’d scanned the ranks of accompanying soldiers and spotted Foley among the lead riders. Then she sank back against the seat cushions with a sigh.

  “She tried to jump?” Liramelli demanded as soon as the first carriage was out of earshot.

  “I heard Steff cry out, and then I turned around and saw her standing on the railing,” Corene said. “I have no idea why she didn’t topple over.”

  “How did you stop her?”

  “Greggorio and Steff hauled her down.”

  “Greggorio, mostly,” Steff said.

  “Then my cousin is a hero,” Garameno said softly. “You must be praised for your quick actions.”

  Greggorio didn’t answer. Like Steff, he was sitting in the backward-facing seat, but he had twisted around so he could watch the other carriage.

  “Did she say why?” Liramelli wanted to know.

  “No, she just started crying,” Steff answered.

  “I can think of a number of possibilities, but they’re all pure speculation,” Garameno said.

  “Well? Don’t keep them to yourself,” Corene said.

  He seemed amused at her sharp tone. “Perhaps she’s had a letter from Dhonsho containing bad news. Or perhaps she recently wrote asking to come home, and the reply she received merely said, ‘No.’”

  “And has she received such a letter?” Corene asked. “Surely someone in the palace is monitoring all the mail.”

  Garameno put a hand to his heart and looked pained. “Princess! I am shocked that you have such a low opinion of the empress!”

  Corene just waited.

  Garameno managed a lopsided grin. “To my knowledge, no such letters have arrived.”