Heaven's Needle

by Liane Merciel

  He had nothing to fear from it, though. The smoke was the smell of triumph, of wealth coming to him after a life-time’s waiting.

  Corban let it fill his lungs. “What are their limitations?”

  “The shapers’?”

  “The quarrels’.”

  Gethel shrugged, setting his candle on the higher ground before clambering up to join it. Smoke roiled and fell from his clothing like water sliding off a swimmer’s back. “I cannot yet say. The work is still very new; what you have seen today is only an early attempt. It wants perfecting. But it will be devastating when we are done. You have seen the power that lies within a tiny pebble. We have much more. Wet it with blood, and the fury of blackfire stone knows no limits.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. What do you need for shapers?”

  “Small hands. Small hands are better for making the pebbles and placing them so deftly.” Gethel tapped the unused quarrel’s filigree tip. “Big hands cannot do such delicate work.”

  “You’ll have them. What else?”

  “Time. Only time.”

  “Time.” Corban sucked the word through his teeth, along with a black skein of smoke. It wasn’t rank at all, really. It was perfectly sweet. “Give me what you have, and I will get you time.”

  1

  SPRING 1218

  Night was falling under Heaven’s Needle.

  Bitharn rested her elbows on the windowsill and watched the world darken below. She stood near the pinnacle of the crystalline tower. Far beneath her, to the south, she could see the green hills and high walls of Cailan, and past that the rippling gleam of the sea. Above her was nothing but glass and sky.

  The tower was a thing of beauty, rising from deep rose and violet at its base to swirl upward through honey and amber, lightening steadily until it reached the white brilliance of pure sunlight at its tip. Save for the sunburst that crowned it, Heaven’s Needle was perfectly smooth, translucent as cloudlight through water. No human hands had built such glory; Celestia’s Blessed had called it into being with their spells, weaving magic strong enough to turn sunlight to stone. The tower was older than Cailan, older than the kingdom of Calantyr, but younger by far than its purpose.

  Heaven’s Needle was a prison.

  Not, of course, for ordinary prisoners. There were no thieves or murderers in the tower; the dungeons of Whitestone sufficed for those. Heaven’s Needle was reserved for enemies of the faith, those too dangerous to be held by chains, too risky for the executioner’s block. A few were souls that the Blessed thought not wholly beyond salvation, but most prisoners in the tower were there because they held secrets the Celestians needed, because they were politically sensitive, or—most rarely—because their bodies were such vessels of corrupt power that killing them would release the foulness held trapped in their flesh.

  Bitharn hoped that the man she needed was one of the first group. She didn’t want to think about what might happen if he were one of the last.

  A candle burned on the sill before her, smelling of sweet spices: cinnamon and cloves, angel’s kiss and nutmeg. As twilight claimed the towns and villages, she saw tiny buds of light blossom across the earth, echoing the faraway glow of her candle. For a short while they shimmered in the dusk, like will-o’-the-wisps glimpsed in blue fog, and then the night came in earnest and Bitharn could see nothing in the shadowed glass except the reflection of her own candle’s flame, floating anchorless in the dark.

  Across the room Versiel was watching her, though he made some pretense of reading the book in his lap. Concern creased his careworn face. Versiel had never looked young, even when he’d been a fuzz-cheeked boy of sixteen, and life had written a palimpsest of worry on his brow in the decade and a half since.

  He’d have more lines before dawn.

  Bitharn regretted that, but there was no way around it. One of mine for one of yours, the Spider had said, and Bitharn had taken that bargain.

  The memory of that meeting was branded on her soul. It was a moonless night, far colder than this one, with the dregs of winter brittle in the air. She’d spent months scouring the underbellies of every city from Craghail to Cailan to find someone who could take her words to the Spider. Then she’d waited, terrified, to see what answer might come.

  It was a summons. To Aluvair, city of towers, capital of Calantyr. Her homeland, as much as she’d ever had one. Long past midnight Bitharn sat alone on a marble bench outside the Temple of Silences, watching moonlight dance across the frost on the reflecting pool and trying to keep her legs from freezing on the chill stone. She’d begun to think the Spider wouldn’t come at all. Then, between one breath and the next, the woman was there, wrapped in a fur softer and blacker than the starless sky. She’d stepped out of shadow without a sound, and her eyes had been infinitely dark, infinitely cold. The memory still made Bitharn shiver.

  “One of mine for one of yours,” the Spider said. “You have one of my students in Heaven’s Needle. Bring him to Carden Vale on the second full moon after Greenseed, and you will have your knight returned.”

  “Unhurt.” It was the only word Bitharn had been able to force past her frozen lips.

  The corners of the Spider’s lips curled very slightly at that. “Of course.”

  Three times the moon had circled and fallen since that midnight meeting. A little less than a month was left … but tonight she stood in Heaven’s Needle, and before dawn she’d have the Thornlord free.

  “Are you well?”

  “Of course,” Bitharn answered, forcing a smile as she turned from the window. She willed her face not to betray her, even as the concern in Versiel’s question cut to the bone. He was one of her oldest friends.

  But he was also Keeper of the Keys for Heaven’s Needle, and tonight one of those things had to outweigh the other. Bitharn had made her choice before she’d come. Love locked her on this path, even if she didn’t dare utter that word. If the only way to secure Kelland’s freedom was by betraying her friends, her beliefs, and the faith that had raised her since she was an orphaned cloister child wailing on the temple steps … then her only question was how to do it well.

  That much, she thought she knew.

  “Are you certain you wish to do this?” Versiel asked, fidgeting with the ring of keys on his belt. “Kelland was a good man, one of our best, but—”

  “Is. He isn’t dead.”

  He hesitated, then shrugged too quickly. “Is. Still. What do you hope to learn from the Thornlord? We captured him before Kelland was taken; how could he know anything about the Thorns’ plans? And even if, by some strange grace of the goddess, he did … what good would it do to hear that Kelland’s being tortured in Ang’arta?”

  “None,” Bitharn admitted. “But I have to know that. I have to ask.”

  “We aren’t supposed to let anyone up there. Especially not armed,” he added with a significant glance at the yew bow that crossed her back and the long knife at her belt. Half a dozen smaller knives, balanced for throwing, were secreted about her person. Both of them knew that Bitharn had seldom gone unarmed before Kelland was captured, and never afterward.

  “Well, it’s a good thing I’m not anyone, isn’t it?” she said, raising her eyebrows with feigned asperity. “I only want to ask him a few questions, Versiel. Please. Kelland was your friend as much as mine, and if there’s anything this prisoner can tell us that might help—”

  “I just don’t want to see you hurt. Thorns delight in twisting words, you know that. Anything he tells you will be half true at best, and he’s like to tell you awful things just to cause you pain.”

  “Not knowing is worse.”

  He sighed and separated a slim golden key from the ring, holding it out without looking. “Be quick. My sanity will return at any moment.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered, pressing the cold metal into her palm. “Where is he?”

  “The Seventh Ring. Northeast cell.”

  “Anyone else up there? Anyone who might hear?”

&n
bsp; “Only the other prisoners.” Versiel hesitated again as she took the key, and clasped his other hand over hers. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “I do.” Bitharn pulled away. She went back to the candle on the windowsill, bowing her head over the flame as if gathering her resolve. Dropping her hand to the dagger belted at her hip, Bitharn picked at the silver wirework and pearls that adorned the hilt. As a girl she’d been a fidgeter, and she hoped Versiel thought she’d kept the habit. Bright Lady, let him think I’m only nervous about confronting the Thorn. If he guessed her true purpose, she was lost.

  Two of the pearls came loose in her fingers. Immediately Bitharn flattened her hand to trap them and pretended to fidget with her necklace instead. Shielding the small movement with her body, she dropped one of the pearls into the well of molten wax around the candle’s flame.

  As the pearl sank into the hot wax it became translucent and collapsed into liquid. The “pearl” was a ball of irhare sap, rolled in tailor’s chalk and cooled to temporary hardness, then affixed to her knife with a drop of pine gum. An apothecary in a dusty shop tucked into a shabby corner of Cailan had made it for her. Bitharn suspected the harelipped young man did most of his trade with assassins, but she hadn’t asked, any more than he had asked why she wanted a dram of irhare sap disguised as pearls.

  In moments the sap would boil off under the flame, releasing a powerful soporific into the air. The candle’s scent would disguise its odor. If all went well, Versiel wouldn’t suspect a thing until it was too late.

  Bitharn paced around the room, fidgeting with her dagger, until she’d made a circuit of the candles and dropped a poisoned pearl into each one. Then she paused by the doorway, drew a breath to steel her nerves, and waved farewell to the friend she’d just begun to drug.

  “Wish me luck,” she said, and slipped out.

  The tower stairs were cool and silent. There were no torches; the glass walls of Heaven’s Needle radiated their own golden glow, an echo of sunlight from the day past. Bitharn’s footfalls resonated hollowly around her as she went up the spiral stairs. With each step the aura of holiness in the air grew stronger. She was not Blessed, and had no magic of her own, but even she could feel the tingling presence of the divine as she neared the tower’s peak. It filled her with both glory and dread, and she wondered whether Celestia would smite her for what was in her soul. Surely, surely, the Bright Lady had to know her intentions.

  No smiting came. After three turns around the tower, Bitharn reached the rune-enscribed arch that led to the Seventh Ring. Like all the entrances in the tower’s high reaches, this one had no door. Instead its finely carved marble held a curtain of gossamer light, shimmering through a thousand shifting shades of gold and white.

  If an enemy of the faith tried to pass through that gate, the fires of the sun would boil the blood in his veins and char his bones to crumbling sticks of ash. Should the prisoners on the other side ever manage to escape their cells, they would get no farther than that delicate web of light—unless they intended to flee this life altogether.

  Only a soul anointed to the sun could pass through Celestia’s portals safely. And only such a one could ensure safe passage for sinners, and then only for good cause. The unworthy came to swift and fiery ends.

  Bitharn drew up the chain that held her sun medallion, pulling the emblem out of her shirt and laying it across her breast. The pendant felt impossibly heavy for such a tiny piece of gold; it weighed on her chest like a millstone. She laced her fingers behind her back to hide their trembling, though there was no one but herself to see it.

  She stood squarely before the arch as she had been taught, less than an arm’s length from the light. This close she could feel its heat and see it rippling before her like the air over a baker’s oven in midwinter.

  Swallowing around the dryness in her throat, Bitharn lifted her chin and recited the words for passage. “Celestia, Bright Lady, grant me your blessing that I might walk through fire and into the light of your truth.” And then, softly, she added her own: “Please. I know what I do here is wrong—but it is a small wrong, for a greater right, and I know that you must see it. Please, bright goddess, if you have any love for your mortal children, let me pass through and bring Kelland back.”

  She stepped into the portal, eyes open.

  It felt like something from a dream, like falling from an infinite height without any sense of being trapped in a body. Like being a sunray, surrounded by warmth and light, woven into it and inseparable from it. There was heat all around her, but it seemed to be part of her own flesh and it did not burn.

  Then she was through, and back in the world she knew. It seemed impossibly cold and dim. She stood inside the Seventh Ring, the sun portal a shimmer of gold at her back. The cells opened around her like the glass petals of a jeweler’s flower, the tower stairs coiled at their core.

  A compass rose was traced in gilt on the floor. Bitharn followed its rays to the northeast cell. Its bars, like those of all the cells on this level, spiraled out from the center in a sunburst. The bars appeared to be made of glass, and were transparent but for a slim strand of gold in the center of each one. The thickest was no wider than her wrist. Bitharn couldn’t see how they could imprison a child, but as she approached, she felt a low thrum vibrate through the bars and saw a tall figure rise from the cell’s depths to meet her.

  Malentir. The Spider’s student. Bitharn had never laid eyes on the man, but she knew his name and his crimes. Two of Celestia’s dedicants, and one of the Blessed, had died to capture him in a tiny village north of Aluvair last fall. It had been a brutal battle, cruelly fought and hard won. Thorns were hard to kill, and harder to capture. Malentir was the only one the Celestians had ever taken alive.

  And she was going to set him free.

  “A visitor,” he said as he came to the bars. His voice was cultivated, melodious; it carried a soft eastern accent. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  Bitharn studied him carefully before answering. Captivity had not been kind to the Thornlord. He was handsome, in a fey, cruel fashion, but after half a year in the tower his features were haggard and wan. Dark circles shadowed his eyes, and his robes were threadbare at sleeve and hem. A collar of glass, clear as the bars, with the same thread of gold at its center, ringed his throat. That collar crippled his magic; it kept him safe, kept him harmless. Yet he carried himself with such hauteur that he might have been a king, and she a supplicant before his throne.

  She gritted her teeth. “My name is Bitharn. I’m here to take you out.”

  “Ah.” He gave her a faint, condescending smile, as if she’d announced that she’d come to clean the chamber pot, and adjusted one tattered sleeve. The cloth was slashed with ivory and black, matching his varicolored hair. She caught a glimpse of pale, pocked scars ringing his wrist. “By whose authority, might I inquire? Ordinarily there are more guards in my escort, you see. I should hate to think that my hosts had stopped caring.”

  “No one’s. This is an escape.”

  “An escape,” he repeated, and Bitharn thought she saw something flash in the Thornlord’s cool black eyes.

  “That’s what I said. Are you coming?”

  “That depends. What is your plan? I have not much interest in being recaptured. There are quite a few sun-blinded fanatics who would prefer to see me dead rather than imprisoned, and I have even less interest in giving them a chance to correct that.”

  “The Keeper’s been drugged. He has spare clothes in his quarters. We’ll dress you as a solaros, you’ll pull the hood low, and we’ll leave while it’s dark enough to keep you hidden. The guards outside the tower know me; they won’t ask too many questions. They changed after sunset prayers, so the ones who saw me go in won’t know that I came alone. I have horses waiting at an inn not half a league away.”

  He cocked his head to one side, considering. Then he shook it. “No.”

  Bitharn felt as if she had been punched. “What?”

  �
��Oh, it’s a pretty story. It might even be true. But I am not inclined to gamble my life on uncertainties, and I have no assurance that what waits for me outside is a horse rather than an arrow. Escaping prisoners do tend to end badly … and predictably. No, I believe I’ll stay.”

  “If you knew what I’d done to come here—”

  “We all have our sins.” Something about the way she said it must have given him pause, though, for the Thornlord did not return to his bed. “What made you commit yours?”

  He didn’t deserve the truth, and yet she couldn’t think of a lie. “You are to be exchanged.”

  “For whom?”

  Bitharn didn’t reply, but all the answer he needed was in the jut of her jaw.

  “Ah,” he murmured, “I begin to understand. They have someone dear to you. A sibling? A friend? A lover, perhaps? Oh, keep your secrets if you like. It doesn’t matter. There’s been a trade arranged.”

  “There has.”

  “By whom?”

  “The Spider herself. Avele diar Aurellyn.”

  “And to think I feared I’d been forgotten.” Malentir closed his hands around the crystalline bars. Their glow lit his pale fingers so intensely she could see the shapes of his bones through his flesh. His black eyes were bright, now, and the shaggy dishevelment of his ivory-and-black hair gave him the look of some caged wild beast. “Where is the exchange to be made?”

  “Carden Vale. Do you believe me now?”

  “No. But I will let you prove yourself. Free me, and I will take us there. If you aren’t planning treachery, you should be glad to save the ride. The roads are cold and hard this close to winter. If you had other plans … well, I’m afraid you’ll have to learn to live with disappointment.”

  “I will not have you casting spells.” Bitharn drew a sun sign across her chest. She knew the price of the Thorns’ magic: blood and death. They worshipped Kliasta, the Pale Maiden, whose province was pain. The stronger the spell, the greater the agony needed to fuel it. Bitharn could guess that a spell powerful enough to carry them to Carden Vale would require tremendous pain. Perhaps a death.