by Lisa Henry
Min had never been this close to the Iron Tower, but he didn’t have time to take much in as they approached. Because right at that moment, a sound like the crack of thunder tore through the air, a flood of panicked courtiers and servants burst out of the Tower and fled, and, above them all, the roof of the Iron Tower shifted, seemed to shimmer for a moment in the early morning light, and then shattered apart like delicate glass and crashed to the ground.
MIN HAD never been inside the Iron Tower before, but he imagined it was usually nicer than this. Dust and smoke filled the air, obscuring Min’s sight, and all around him he heard the panicked cries of men and women still trying to find their way to the exits and the creak and moan of metal as though the Iron Tower was trying to tear itself apart. The walls shuddered. Sconces shifted, windowpanes cracked, great fissures appeared in the plaster walls, and the chandeliers swung and shuddered like the Iron Tower was a ship rolling on a storm-tossed sea.
Chirpy shrieked and fluttered away.
Min’s courage, such as it was, might have failed him except that Aiode strode forward and Harry, the reckless little fool, darted after her. Min tugged his shirt up over his mouth and followed them.
Aiode clearly knew her way through the rooms and galleries of the Iron Tower. She led them to a set of curving stairs that shuddered alarmingly and, placing one hand on the wall to steady herself, began to climb them.
Harry called out a hoarse warning too late.
A portly man, shrouded in dust except for his red gaping mouth, shoved his way down the stairs, sending Aiode stumbling backward.
Min caught her before she fell past him, holding her against the wall.
“Fucker!” Harry yelled at the dusty courtier, but the man was already gone.
Min took the lead, Aiode and Harry falling in behind him.
On the third floor, they came to a set of doors and a man shoving at them relentlessly. He was tall, well built, and covered in so much dust and plaster that Min didn’t even recognize him for a moment.
And then he did.
“Decourcey,” Robert Sabadine snarled. “What are you doing here?”
“Enjoying a platonic relationship with my nephew,” Min shot back. “You?”
Robert straightened up, panting for breath. “You joke at a time like this?”
A chunk of plaster smashed on the floor beside Min’s boots. “You mistake me, sir. That was no joke.”
“Min,” Harry snapped.
Min held up his palms. “Fine. What’s happening in there?”
“I have no idea,” Robert said. “My father… he brought Kazimir to the king.”
“As a prisoner?”
“As a hostage!” Robert snapped. “The Hidden Lord is at the gates!”
“And why the fuck do you think that is?” Min demanded. “Coincidence? The Hidden Lord is at the gates because you’ve imprisoned Kazimir!”
“You imprisoned Kazimir!” Robert dragged a hand over his face, wiping streaks of sweat through his mask of dust. “Where are the guards? I need to get this door open! The king is inside, and I fear his sorcerers cannot subdue Kazimir!”
“And you think you can?” Min almost laughed.
“The king is inside,” Robert repeated.
Right. Duty and honor and suchlike. Robert Sabadine seemed like the sort of man who would fling himself willingly into death for the sort of abstract concepts that had never troubled Min in his life. Noble of him. Stupid, but noble.
Metal screeched against metal, and the Iron Tower shuddered.
“Go,” Min said to Harry. “Get out of here.”
Harry shook his head and jutted his chin out. “We’re a team, Min.”
Min had a sudden flash of memory of a terrified eleven-year-old, long hair worn in ribbons and bare feet sticking out from underneath the ratty hem of a dress that had been handed down too many times.
“Do you want to get out of here, kid?”
They’d been a team since that moment.
“Harry,” he said now, helplessly, because he didn’t know what was waiting for them behind the door, and Harry wasn’t a void, and if he didn’t walk away from this, then everything would have been for nothing, and Min couldn’t lose him. Not after everything.
But Harry shook his head again.
The bones of the Iron Tower screamed, and another shower of dust and plaster choked the air. Min heard shouting from nearby and the sound of boots thumping on the stairs, and then a knot of soldiers joined them at the door.
“Get it open!” Robert shouted at them. “Your king is inside!”
The soldiers struggled with the door, and at last, with a crack, it gave, sending the men spilling into the gallery beyond it.
Smoke, Min thought at first, but no. Feathers. The air was full of feathers. They hung in the air like dust motes or like seaweed swaying underwater, buoyed by invisible currents. Min stepped forward, sweeping a path clear with his hand.
A man lay sprawled on his back on the parquet floor, his blue robes twisted around him. A sorcerer. His eyes were open and rolling in his skull. He was clawing at his own arms, his fingernails digging bloody furrows in the flesh.
“Get it off!” he screeched. “Get it off me!”
An illusion, Min thought, stepping over the man, and a hell of a powerful one to get past a sorcerer’s defenses. To do such a thing was almost unthinkable. To do it inside the Iron Tower should have been impossible. Pride—Kaz was magnificent—battled with fear inside him.
Because Kaz was terrifying.
At the end of the gallery, Min saw them: four more sorcerers encircling a figure standing hunched over on the floor. There were other men nearby, pressing up against the trembling walls as though they would offer them any protection. Courtiers, probably. Dust blanketed their fancy hats and fur-lined collars. And one must have been the king, though he wore a shroud of dust—and his fear—the same as any other man. A philosopher might make a point of that.
And there was Edward Sabadine, too, eyes bulging as though he was being strangled to death by his own intestines. The old man looked fucking petrified as a feather drifted down past his face.
As Min watched, one of the blue-robed sorcerers staggered back, shrieking.
Another shudder ripped through the Iron Tower.
Kaz lifted his gaze. His fingers were wrapped around the iron collar Min had fastened on him. His face was pale, and his eyes… his eyes were white like a blind man’s. Min could see the veins under his skin as though they had been drawn there in ink. The black lines lay on his skin like spiders’ webs or the cracks in enamel. The veins in his cheeks, his throat, and his forearms were all black. He had never looked less human to Min’s eyes than in this moment.
Kaz opened his mouth, and the sound that came out was the piercing, chilling cry of a raven. The tower shook again, every feather hanging in the air shuddered, and Min watched in horrified amazement as Kaz wrenched his arms and the iron collar fell onto the floor in pieces. The chunks of it crumbled away like charcoal.
One of the courtiers screamed, and all the windows in the gallery shattered as one.
Are you doing this? Min wanted to yell at Kaz, but the words wouldn’t form. They weren’t the right words in any case. Of course Kaz was doing it. What Min really wanted to know was whether he was controlling it. Whether he could stop it. Whether he wanted to. The Hidden Lord had said that no man could contain the storm once it broke, and the cold knot of fear inside Min’s gut worried it was true.
“Stop him!” one of the courtiers cried out, his hands over his ears like a toddler in the midst of a tantrum. “Stop him!”
“We are surrounded by iron!” a sorcerer shouted back.
Their magic was weak in this place. Kaz’s… Kaz’s was not.
Kaz climbed slowly to his feet, his chest heaving under his sweat-slicked shirt.
The storm, Min thought wildly. The storm is about to break.
One of the soldiers—a braver man than Min—rushed at Kaz.
Kaz lifted a hand without even looking at him, and a flash of blue light sent the man flying back. He landed in a crumpled heap on the floor.
One of the sorcerers—a man exactly as brave as Min—tried to flee. Kaz flicked his wrist, and some invisible string tugged the man back toward him, screaming and struggling. Kaz flicked his wrist again and flung the man against the wall. He hit it with a resounding crack and slumped to the ground.
The air smelled of feathers, of plaster dust, and of the sky before a storm.
The three remaining sorcerers, two women and a man, circled Kaz warily. One of them reached out toward him, flinching back as her hand struck some unseen barrier between them and blue light flared brightly.
Robert Sabadine stepped forward.
Min caught him by the arm. “Don’t be a fool.”
He glanced behind him. Harry stood with Aiode. They were clutching hands tightly.
“Leave,” he mouthed.
Harry shook his head stubbornly.
If they survived this, Min would tan his hide.
Min drew a breath and crossed the parquet floor. He approached the sorcerers surrounding Kaz and stood where he thought the unseen barrier was. Then, because he couldn’t resist what might be his last chance to be a cocky asshole, he winked at Edward Sabadine and stepped through the barrier to where Kaz stood.
“Hello, sweeting,” he said softly.
Kaz’s blind gaze fixed on him. “Min?” he asked tremulously.
Min felt a rush of relief that Kaz still knew him. That he hadn’t passed beyond Min’s reach. That despite what he looked like at the moment and despite the carnage he was raining down on the Iron Tower, that he was still Kaz. “Yes, Kaz, it’s me.”
“Min!” Kaz darted out a hand and gripped his wrist tightly. “Min, it hurts! It hurts!”
And then his legs gave out and he crashed to his knees on the floor.
Min followed him down. “Kaz?” He put a hand on Kaz’s cheek. His skin was burning. “Kaz?”
“Min.” Kaz raised himself up, holding Min’s shoulders. His breath was hot against Min’s throat. “Min, I want to go home. Why won’t they let me go home?”
The whole world seemed to hold its breath in that moment. The feathers shivered in the air. Min held Kaz and rocked him gently back and forth, shushing him like he might have a child, if he’d had a paternal bone in his body. But Kaz was scared and hurt, and angry too, and Min didn’t know of any other way to offer him comfort, and so they knelt there, surrounded by people who had harmed Kaz, who had been cruel to him just because of the strange blood that ran in his veins.
His chest felt tight and his throat ached. He hated himself for the part he had played in this. He wanted to lift Kaz up in his arms and carry him out of here. Carry him all the way back to Anhaga, if that was what he wanted, where he could live in his messy little bedroom in Kallick’s house and mix potions and poultices all day and watch people’s unremarkable little lives play out in the square below. If Min had never wanted to be caught up in all of this mess, then neither had Kaz.
If he walked away, what would happen? The Iron Tower was shuddering and shaking around them like a leaf caught in a gust of wind, but it still stood. And while it did, it subdued the Gifts of the three sorcerers who still remained on their feet. If Min carried Kaz out of here, would they follow? Would they be able to harm Kaz once they were free of the Iron Tower? Min had heard that sorcerers could perform curses that tore the flesh from a man’s bones just by speaking the right words. What would happen to Kaz if these sorcerers had full command of their Gifts again? Were three sorcerers a match for the strange combination of Kaz’s Gift and his fae magic?
Min didn’t know. He couldn’t know. Every damn thing about Kaz was unknowable. What had Min thought that night he’d captured him in Anhaga?
This impossible boy.
This strange, inexplicable, beautiful, and impossible boy, and Min wanted him like he’d never wanted anything else in his life. Wanted him, but more than that he wanted him to be free, and to be happy, and to be safe. He wanted it so much he felt as though his chest might burst from the aching need of it.
Min had always prided himself on his quick thinking, but there was too much happening here, too many variables to guess at how every one might play out. He couldn’t see past Kaz and how he was hurting and the way his breath hitched as he sobbed silently against Min’s shoulder.
“Sweeting,” he murmured, running a hand through Kaz’s unruly hair. “Oh, my love.”
It seemed as good a time as any, he supposed, to let the word slip out of him while the Iron Tower collapsed around them.
Kaz shivered and trembled in his embrace and gave no indication he’d heard.
He was an injured little animal, Min thought, ready to lash out and hurt those who had hurt him. Which left Min here holding the wolf by the ears, too afraid to let go.
“Min,” Kaz whispered. “Min, I got so angry.”
“I know you did, sweeting,” Min whispered back. “You blew the roof off the Iron Tower.”
Kaz didn’t seem to hear him. “I got so angry I think I woke them up.”
“Woke who up?” Min asked.
And in the sudden silence, in the distance, Min heard screaming.
Kaz leaned back slightly to look at him. His eyes were still white, and his veins still black as lines of ink across his pale skin. He laughed suddenly, and the sound of it, sharp as the ringing of a broken vessel, sent a chill down Min’s spine. “Everyone.”
Min had no idea what was happening, but the sorcerers had eyes that he did not. One of the women gasped and clutched her throat.
“The dead!” she cried out, lifting her gaze to stare out a shattered window toward the city. “The dead are waking! The boy is a necromancer!”
Kaz’s laughter echoed all around.
Chapter 18
IN THE center of the storm, it was calm.
Min knelt there with his arms around Kaz, Kaz’s unearthly laughter muffled for now against his shoulder, and looked around the room. Black feathers hung in the air as though they were floating underwater, or perhaps hanging from a thousand invisible strings attached to the shuddering ceiling of the gallery. The three sorcerers still encircled them, just a few steps back from whatever magical wall Kaz had placed around himself. Against the closest wall, Min saw Edward Sabadine and a group of four other men. One of the men was elderly. The three others were perhaps around Min’s age. Their fancy clothes were covered in plaster dust. One of them had reddish hair underneath his wig of dust, and Min wondered, on that passing resemblance to Aiode alone, if he was the king. He looked like an ordinary man. He looked afraid.
Back toward the door of the gallery, Aiode and Harry stood with Robert Sabadine and the soldiers. The mage who had been thrashing on the floor like a landed eel was silent now. He lay there limply, and Min had no idea if he was alive or dead and no particular care to find out either way. The soldier Kaz had flung against the wall was crawling back toward his fellows.
“Kaz,” he whispered. “Kaz, come back to me.”
Kaz continued to laugh.
“Kaz, you need to stop this.” Min dragged the fingers of one hand through Kaz’s curls. He gripped the back of his neck, fingers digging in a little, unsure now if it was an embrace or if it was censure. “You need to stop whatever you’ve done.”
Kaz reared back suddenly, pushing away from Min and landing on his ass on the floor in an ungainly sprawl of limbs. His white eyes shone. “They have to pay, Min! They have to pay!”
“Far be it for me to get in the way of your revenge, sweeting,” Min said, his heart thumping wildly even as he struggled to keep his voice steady, “but Harry’s here too. And Aiode. You haven’t met her, but she’s a good person. Better than I deserve as a friend in any case. Revenge should be exacting, Kaz, not indiscriminate.”
Kaz’s blind gaze slid around the room.
“And what about the people in the city?” Min asked. “What about t
he people you know? That girl in Anhaga and her fishermen brothers. You remember you told me about them?”
Kaz blinked slowly. There was a bluish cast to his pale black-veined skin now, as though he was very cold. Min could feel the heat radiating from him, though. Kneeling in front of him was like sitting too close to a fire.
“And what about Joderman and his geese?” Min asked, forcing a smile and wondering if Kaz even heard the words. “And his wife who packed him mutton for lunch that we ended up eating instead? What about those strangers we passed in the street the night we reached the city? Do any of them deserve to pay? And what about my mother, hmm?” He reached out and caught one of Kaz’s hands. Made an exaggerated grimace. “Well, maybe my mother.”
Kaz’s mouth quirked at that.
Min’s heart tumbled over a beat. Kaz was still in there, and Min was reaching him.
And then Edward Sabadine, the vile old fuck, ruined everything.
“What are you doing??” he bellowed suddenly, stalking forward with more courage than Min would have thought he had in him. “Why do you not act? Kill him, you fool! Kill him!”
And there was a certain logic in that, of course, and Min would indeed be a fool not to consider it. He was a void and the only man in the Iron Tower who could reach Kaz without being blasted back across the room by his magic. But also, he wasn’t the one who’d brought a half-fae necromancer into the Iron Tower to begin with, and fuck Edward Sabadine for thinking Min had any obligation at all to clean this mess up. And fuck him twice for assuming that murder was the only option. And fuck him a third time, hopefully snapping his brittle geriatric bones in the process, for shouting something like that aloud.
Kaz flailed back again, his mouth open in a soundless cry as though he thought it was true. As though he thought Min would actually kill him.
“Kaz,” Min said, reaching out for him. “Sweeting. I would never—”
Kaz pushed away from him, his face contorted by terror, and raised his shaking hands.