The Obsidian Tower

by Melissa Caruso

  “What if the Rookery says it’s under control?” I asked, desperate. “They’re the official eyes and hands of both Vaskandar and the Empire in matters like this. If they’re able to declare with absolute certainty that there’s no danger the gate will open—”

  “Karrigan threatened to unleash it on the Serene Empire,” Ardith pointed out, with a sort of sympathetic grimace. “That doesn’t help your position. My father and his allies work to sustain the peace, and demons fighting warlocks is basically the exact opposite of peace. They’ll want to take immediate action to stop this.”

  I didn’t know what form immediate action might take, but I had a suspicion they wouldn’t be throwing Morgrain a delightful tea party.

  “Karrigan can’t open the gate,” I said, throwing caution aside. I had to allay the Witch Lords’ concerns somehow. “It doesn’t react to her. It only reacts to me, because my magic is flawed. And I assure you that nothing the seasons can bring will make me open it.”

  Ardith chewed their lip a moment, hazel eyes thoughtful. “Maybe if the Rookery finds some way to guarantee no one can activate it,” they said dubiously. “They might be willing to wait in that case. I still don’t see how you’re getting out of a Conclave on this one, though.”

  “Give me time,” I urged them. “Give the Rookery time. I know you like to act the part of the irresponsible rascal, but your father listens to you.”

  “Don’t give away my cover like that,” Ardith laughed, glancing around in an exaggerated fashion. “Fine, fine. Let me think about this. But if you want me to wait for the Rookery, then they’d better act fast.”

  “I’m fairly certain they already know that,” I said grimly.

  As Ardith left, I spotted Odan waiting unobtrusively near one of the doorways. I had no idea how long he’d been there, but by the tension creasing his face, he’d overheard enough. I joined him on the discreet side of a femur-fluted pillar.

  “Are you all right, Odan?” I asked him.

  He offered me a stiff bow. “Never fear, Exalted Warden. I’ll keep the family’s secrets as I always have.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” I wasn’t sure Odan was quite my friend—he worked for me, and that defined a certain set of barriers and pathways between us that had little to do with friendship—but he’d been here for me in a thousand small ways for most of my life, and I cared about him. “I’m sorry that you had to find out this way.”

  “Ah.” His gray mustache worked for a moment. “Exalted Warden, I have lived and served in this castle for nearly sixty years. I may not be of your bloodline, but I can read the Gloaming Lore as well as you can.” His posture was always stiff as a sword, but he seemed to draw himself up even further. “I consider myself a guardian, too.”

  “You certainly are.” I flicked a glance in the direction Vikal had gone and let a touch of exasperation show in my face. “More so than those of the bloodline who don’t live here.”

  The mustache skewed slightly. “Even so, Warden. Seeing to the integrity of the old stone keep is one of my duties; I’ve walked past the Black Tower and felt my skin crawl, and once or twice I’ve thought I heard whispers. I’ve known for a very long time that something terrible was in there.” He shook his head. “Suffice to say that while I may not have known exactly what we’ve been guarding, nor am I entirely surprised.”

  “All right, then.” I let out a long breath. “I don’t know whether anyone among the castle staff heard that confrontation; it wasn’t exactly quiet.”

  “I’ll try to discreetly find out, Warden.”

  “Obviously we don’t want this to spread if we can possibly stop it.” We wouldn’t be able to keep this secret for long, though. The staff would hear the envoys talking, feel the tension in the air, and draw their own conclusions. “If you think someone might have figured it out, or even have suspicions, talk with them. Make sure they know that this isn’t something to gossip about.”

  “Of course, Warden. I’ve also already talked to the staff about avoiding gossip of any kind while the envoys are here, and I have a few people listening for me in case rumors start to spread. I was thinking more of the lady’s absence and Exalted Lamiel’s death, but the same precautions should serve us here as well.”

  “Perfect. Thank you, Odan. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  He snorted. “With all respect, Exalted Warden, you’d make a mess of things.”

  “That I would.”

  I took my leave and headed off toward my rooms; much as I didn’t want to, I had some letters to write.

  As I passed a flower-framed window that looked out into one of Gloamingard’s many small courtyards, I noticed a flash of gold embroidery and paused, my heart speeding up. Severin and Voreth stood among the rosebushes in the bold morning sunlight. A mockingbird waited patiently on a branch while Severin finished scrawling out a letter, presumably for his brother. By the set of Voreth’s shoulders and the way he gripped his staff, I suspected they were arguing.

  I could hardly let an opportunity like this pass by.

  I ducked into a disused sitting room and through the back of a seemingly boarded-up fireplace, then slipped through the dusty space between walls until I came to a place where a low spear of white daylight interrupted the close darkness. It was the hole where the water pipe for a long-gone fountain had pierced the castle wall, and it happened to come out in the courtyard right next to where Severin and Voreth were standing. I knelt down, taking shallow breaths in the musty air, and applied my eye to the hole.

  “—an actual gate to the Hells,” Severin was saying, his hands trembling as he attempted to stuff his letter into a tiny message tube. “This changes everything.”

  “This changes nothing,” Voreth snapped. “Our most exalted lord ordered you to get him either the murderer or that artifact, and those orders stand.”

  Severin laughed, but there was an edge to it. “Oh, come on, Voreth. Even my brother isn’t mad enough to want an artifact whose sole function is access to the Nine Hells.” He paused. “At least, I hope he’s not.”

  Grace of Mercy, I hoped not, too. The last thing we needed was the Shrike Lord deliberately drawing on the power of the Nine Hells or allying himself with demons.

  “The Shrike Lord has made it clear that vengeance is his priority now,” Voreth said, his tone too commanding for an underling, bordering on insolent. Severin significantly outranked him; he must have some other hold or authority over the Shrike Lord’s heir, to speak to him like that. “If Morgrain will not hand over the killer, then this artifact seems as if it would serve quite well to grant him the vengeance he desires.”

  The space between the walls seemed to get colder, as if a winter wind had found its way through the tiny round gap.

  “What is wrong with you, Voreth?” Severin demanded incredulously. “Seasons spare us, I swear you’d drown a baby if you thought my brother wanted it.”

  “I serve the Shrike Lord,” Voreth said, staring pointedly at Severin. “As do you, Exalted Atheling.”

  Severin finished preparing the message and let out a long, pained breath. “As do I,” he agreed. “I suppose we’d better make sure that Morgrain hands over the killer, then.”

  Blood and ashes. Somehow, things kept getting worse.

  Whispers hissed through the halls of the castle. Tension seethed palpably beneath the calm surface of its everyday activities, like water just shy of boiling. And it was my job to somehow keep this kettle from overflowing.

  I wrote to my father and my uncle, and after some hesitation penned brief messages to the doge of Raverra and some of Morgrain’s closest allies among the Witch Lords as well, attempting to project the reassuring impression that someone was in charge here in Gloamingard and that whatever ancient menaces we might be developing exciting new theories about, they had been well under control for millennia and continued to be so.

  I wished I believed a word of it myself.

  A knock sounded at my door when I was h
alfway through drafting a note to the Fox Lord. I wasn’t sure who I expected—Odan, with a report on the guard shifts I’d asked him to post at the entrances to the old stone keep, or perhaps Jannah with a new batch of letters or some tidbits of useful gossip or minor espionage. But it was Aurelio who stood in the doorway, his face strained, barely able to manage a smile.

  “Ryx,” he greeted me. “Do you mind if we talk?”

  “Come in.” My room wasn’t really set up for guests, since in the past I hadn’t dared host anyone in such a confined space; I gestured him to the simple wooden chair by the tiny square table where I sometimes had meals in my room, then perched on the edge of my bed. “What’s troubling you?” I realized the moment it left my mouth how foolish the question was.

  He gave a hollow laugh. “Oh, nothing. Everything is all roses and dandelions. Ryx, I don’t know what to do.”

  There was a quiet desperation in the slump of his shoulders, the catch in his voice. Oh, Hells. I should comfort him. I had absolutely no experience comforting anyone whatsoever.

  I reached out and patted him on the shoulder, twice, my palm flat and rigid. My heart floundered in my chest. I had never been so certain I was doing something wrong.

  “It seems like the end of the world,” I said, “but we have to remember that this gate has been there since the Dark Days, and nothing has happened.” Best not to mention that I’d done something to trigger it and it was now leaking. “It’s not really an emergency at all.”

  Aurelio shoved a clawed hand through his auburn forelock. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that Vaskandar has the power of the Nine Demons at its command. Don’t you see?”

  “That’s not true,” I objected.

  “Your aunt literally threatened the Serene Empire with the power of the Hells.” Aurelio spread his hands. “It doesn’t matter what you believe the truth to be. The fact is, you have that power, and Karrigan at least won’t hesitate to try to use it.”

  This again. I rubbed my forehead, wishing I could unravel time and stop Karrigan from saying that. “And the Empire can’t afford not to assume she can do it.”

  “There are only two possibilities from a Raverran perspective, both of them terrible.” Aurelio put his head miserably in his hands. “Either you can control the power, in which case there’s a terrifying and unanswerable weapon in the hands of a nation with a habit of invading us, or you can’t control it. And that’s even worse, because then you could unleash the Dark Days on us at any moment through sheer accident.”

  When he put it that way, I’d be inclined to raze Gloamingard to the ground myself in the Empire’s place. “I’ll talk to Karrigan,” I said, dreading the conversation already. “At the very least hopefully I can convince her to calm down her rhetoric.”

  “That’s not enough.” Aurelio shook his head with a heaviness as if a great weight lay upon it. “This is a power that could destroy the world. Raverra can’t sit back and trust Vaskandar to handle this. We have to do something.”

  “That’s what the Rookery is for.” I leaned toward him, narrowing the space between us to a couple of feet. I succeeded in catching his eyes, and he lifted his face from his hands; there was no hope there, but by the Graces, I’d do what I could to kindle some. “They’ll find some way to make sure the demons can’t come through the gate again, and to keep us all safe from the power of the gate. They’re experts. They deal with things like this all the time.”

  Aurelio snorted, a bit of life coming back to his eyes. “No they don’t.”

  “Well, maybe not quite like this. But give them a chance.” I gave him a tired smile. “If anyone can handle it, they can.”

  “We’d better hope so,” Aurelio said, his face grave and pale. “Because if they fail, there may not be anyone around to give them a second chance.”

  I’d never before set foot in the room Aunt Karrigan lived in when she visited Gloamingard. It was in one of the tree towers, an airy chamber shaped from three living trunks and a connecting lattice of intricately wrought branches. It was like being inside some combination of a treehouse and a shadow lantern, with the light filtering green and golden through the boughs. Layers of rich, bumpy mosses carpeted the floor, scattered with tiny star-shaped flowers, and a curtain of silvery vines draped the bed. A sleeping owl roosted on one of its posts, and a mink dozed on a chair cushion in a sunny spot; it opened one bright, sleepy eye to watch me as I entered.

  Before the jess, I couldn’t have set foot in here without leaving a wake of death.

  By the way Karrigan’s eyes flicked to the golden bracelet on my wrist, then back up to my face, she was all too aware of that. She grunted a dubious sort of welcome and let me in, but didn’t invite me to sit.

  Of course not. She preferred not to acknowledge my existence at all. Too bad for her; I was the Warden of Gloamingard, and if she didn’t want to deal with me, she shouldn’t have come here.

  “We need to talk,” I said stiffly. “Morgrain is in trouble.”

  Karrigan lifted a pale brow. “That’s an understatement. I’ve just received a bird from one of our Wardens on the coast reporting that half the imperial fleet that was pointed at Alevar has set course for Morgrain.”

  I let out a surprised huff. That hadn’t taken long; it had only been a few hours since the confrontation in the Bone Atrium. But the Serene Empire had courier-lamp networks that let them communicate instantly. Once Celia’s initial message made it to the border, they had no need to wait for birds to fly back and forth.

  “All the more reason that we need to work together to improve our relations with the Empire,” I said. Then I hesitated, unsure how to frame this. “I know you’re not fond of me—”

  Karrigan barked a short, harsh laugh. “Do you think I blame you for existing?” She shook her head, mouth flattening. “No, I know full well that’s your father’s fault.”

  I stared at her, stunned, all my carefully marshaled words about avoiding warlike rhetoric spilling from my head like sand from a split bag.

  “Well, that’s… honest of you,” I managed.

  Aunt Karrigan shook her head and crossed the room to a cabinet shaped from the living wood of the tree tower, opening it to remove a crystal bottle and two cups. “Don’t ask me to pretend you’re not a problem. I was relieved when your mage mark started showing up, given your mother’s worthless bloodline. Thought chance had saved our family from embarrassment.” Amber liquid cascaded musically into the cups as she poured with careful precision. “Then you got sick, and I was as broken up as anyone about it. We all thought you were going to die. And I won’t lie to you, Ryxander. It would have been better for the domain if you had.”

  My breath stopped as if she’d driven a knife into my lungs. I’d always suspected some of my family felt this way, but no one had ever said it to my face. How was I supposed to respond to that?

  Especially because I knew it was true.

  Karrigan put the bottle back into the cupboard, her hands lingering on the smooth wood as she closed the door. “I don’t know what Mother did to save you, but here you are. I had to have two more children just as a buffer to make sure there was no way you could inherit the domain—and I love them more than life, but pox take it, I thought I was done with that—and every time I visit Gloamingard I hear about some outbuilding collapsed because you leaned on it, or a fire started, or another poor unlucky bastard dead or nearly so. All because my idiot brother didn’t do his duty as an atheling and marry someone appropriate to his rank.”

  My jaw ached from clenching. I liked it better when she ignored me. “Do you have a point?” I asked, letting acid drip from my words.

  “Yes.” My aunt handed me one cup, keeping the other for herself. I took it in surprise, the heady scent of honey wine tickling my nose. “None of it’s your fault. I don’t hate you. Of course we can work together.”

  Dark humor gleamed in her eyes as she lifted her cup to me, then took a long swallow. I briefly considered finding out for t
he first time what it was like to punch someone before stuffing all the complex churn of feelings down into a bottle with everything else.

  I set down my cup without drinking. “We’ve got Alevar poised to invade, the Empire preparing to wipe us off the map out of sheer panic, and the Nine Hells themselves in danger of breaking loose in the Black Tower. We need to walk a careful line if we want to keep this from destroying Morgrain.”

  “We need my mother to call off whatever cursed joke she’s playing and get back here,” Karrigan growled.

  “You think she’s disappeared as a joke?”

  “To make things happen.” Karrigan waved an impatient hand. “She’s done this before. When your uncle and I were fighting over who would be her heir, or when some of her Wardens were misusing their power. Thought it would be funny to disappear and let us show our true colors, see what we did with her gone. Then she’d appear again and hold us all accountable, like winter falling hard and sudden. It’s one of her favorite tricks.”

  This was news to me. I’d seen my grandmother do this in miniature, showing up late to a meeting with diplomatic guests while she eavesdropped from one of Gloamingard’s hidden places to see what they’d say in her absence, but never on this scale.

  “It’s hard to believe Grandmother would let things get this bad without intervening,” I said slowly.

  “Oh, she’ll show up soon enough. You wait.” Karrigan shook her head. “And I’m saving up words for when she does.”

  “In the meantime, it’s up to us to do what we can,” I said. “And forgive me, but I’m not counting Vikal.”

  Aunt Karrigan grunted agreement. “Your uncle gave him far too much rein. I won’t say more than that about kin.”