The Obsidian Tower

by Melissa Caruso

  But something was wrong.

  It was my grandmother’s face, but a wildness lit her eyes that I’d never seen before. Something about the way she held herself was off, as if she were favoring an injury.

  “Ryx,” she said, with exasperation. “How do you always manage to get yourself into so much trouble?”

  And she bent with swift and unhesitating fluidity and ripped the arrow from my leg.

  I screamed, and the world collapsed into darkness in a sickening, giddy plunge.

  For a time, I wasn’t so much unconscious as far away.

  My body was damaged, poisoned, failing, and nearly irrelevant. I needed to get up, open my eyes, and catch hold of my grandmother before she could disappear again. I needed to run after my attacker and try to glimpse their face. To see if it was Severin, and I’d blundered into a trap like a fool.

  I was dimly aware of a voice cursing, and later of being carried—I tried to struggle in a wild panic for a moment, terrified that I would kill whoever held me, but I still couldn’t move. I was a dead awkward weight, and the cursing changed tone with bitter effort, until light shone through my eyelids and more voices cried in alarm.

  Time passed like a dream, and too many people were touching me, and I thought there must be corpses piling up like leaves after a storm. I needed to get up, get up—there was so much to do—but my body was useless, broken like my magic.

  Once someone woke me enough to make me drink, shaking my good shoulder. It wasn’t water. A whole sequence of different bitter swallows of not-water followed, each tingling with magic all the way down.

  The world sharpened into enough focus at last that the pain in my leg and shoulder bothered me again. I was lying in my own bed, not on the Bone Atrium floor, and the world was warm with daylight. I opened my eyes.

  Of all the people I might have expected to find sitting in my window seat, boots up on my favorite cushion, Ashe was not one of them. She was staring at the sun-drenched ceiling, her pale spiky head tipped back and nestled in her laced fingers, a dreamy expression softening her face. The moment I turned my head and made the pillow rustle, she snapped to attention, fluidly upright, eyes sharpening to their usual cusp-of-violence intensity.

  “Huh, you’re awake. That was quick.” She shook her head. “Damned mages. You should take weeks to heal like the rest of us. It’d keep you more honest.”

  I tested my arm; it moved, but fresh pain stabbed through my shoulder beneath the bandages swathing my wound. I winced. I didn’t feel quite confident enough to try anything with my leg, where the pain went deeper. A queasy fuzz about my senses suggested I was under the effects of more than one potion.

  I glanced out the window at the bright blue sky. “Please tell me it hasn’t been more than a day.”

  “Now I want to tell you it’s been a month just to watch your face.” Ashe snorted at my uncertain expression. “No, it’s just past noon. You’ve had a long night’s sleep, but no more.”

  I tried to sit up, but an overwhelming spike of pain in my leg dropped me gasping back to my pillows.

  “My grandmother!” I managed after a moment. “I saw her.” She had been so real, the least dreamlike part of that nightmare, the blaze of her eyes familiar as my own face. “Is she back?”

  Ashe shook her head. “If the Lady of Owls was here, she didn’t stick around—but she left a mark on the Bone Atrium, for sure. Spikes everywhere.” She made stabbing motions with her fingers. “Everyone assumed she did it from afar.”

  “No, she was here. I saw her.” Unease fluttered through me like a ragged moth as I remembered the odd look in her eyes. “She saved me.” And ripped the arrow from my leg with brutal unconcern.

  “Saved you and left you bleeding out on the floor. Nice family you’ve got.”

  All at once Ashe rose, swift and graceful, hand on her sword hilt, staring at the door with blank intensity. A soft knock sounded on the far side.

  “It’s us,” came Foxglove’s muffled voice. “Please don’t kill me when I open the door, Ashe.”

  Ashe sighed and flopped back into her seat. “Oh, fine.”

  The rest of the Rookery plus Aurelio squeezed in, expressions ranging from grave to shaken. I tried to ease myself upright to receive them, but pain flashed white-hot through my leg.

  Bastian waved his hands urgently at me. “No, no, you’re not ready to sit up yet.”

  “Apparently.” I sank back into the pillows, defeated, as the others took up perches around the room.

  “Excellent. You’re awake.” Foxglove rubbed his hands. “Did you see who attacked you?” The others leaned forward, listening.

  I shook my head, a shuddery feeling trying to rise up within me. I’d been trying not to think about the attack itself—the shocking first moment of impact, the sickening realization that someone had come there with the express intention of hurting me, of killing me.

  “No. It was dark, and everything happened so quickly. But…” I hesitated. “I was on my way to meet Severin.”

  Foxglove winced. “I must apologize. I’ve been cursing myself this whole time. We were all set up and in position to protect you in the stable yard, and you got nearly murdered on the way there.”

  “Missed out on a perfectly good fight,” Ashe sighed.

  “You couldn’t have known.” I waved my hand. “For that matter, neither could anyone else. Right? Severin was the only one who knew about our meeting.” A surge of anger swept through me—at Severin, for his betrayal, but more at myself for trusting him.

  “That bastard,” Aurelio said, through his teeth. “I wish I’d been there to guard your back, Ryx. I’d have loved the excuse to point my pistol at that smug face.”

  The Rookery were all looking at me oddly.

  Foxglove cleared his throat. “You may both want to reserve your ire for other targets.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Ryx,” Kessa said, gently as if she were breaking bad news, “much as I hate to destroy a truly beautiful animosity, it was Severin who found you and brought you to us for help.”

  My whole world seemed to tilt and rotate, like a puzzle piece I’d been looking at the wrong way. “Not… It wasn’t my grandmother?”

  “No.” Bastian exchanged uneasy glances with Foxglove. “Exalted Severin saved your life, Ryx. When you pulled that arrow out of your leg, you really made a mess. You were bleeding all over him when he dragged you in. Luckily I keep us stocked with common medical potions, or I might not have been able to save you.”

  “I didn’t…” I swallowed, my throat hot and painful. I couldn’t bring myself to tell an entire room full of people that my own grandmother had left me to die. No, she wouldn’t do that—she must have heard Severin coming and vanished, not wanting him to see her. “I suppose I must have misjudged him.”

  Aurelio shook his head, apparently in just as much shock. “But he wants Ryx dead, as Lady Lamiel’s killer.”

  Foxglove flicked a startled glance at me, confirming that Aurelio knew; I returned a tiny nod. “So far as I’m aware, Alevar blames Morgrain in a general sense, but they don’t suspect Ryx specifically.”

  Kessa tapped her lips. “He could have set the whole thing up to attack you and then look like he was saving you,” she suggested. “To gain your trust. Very dramatic. I’ve done things like that on a lesser scale, without the attempted murder.”

  “I don’t think whoever shot me would have risked coming back after my grandmother showed up,” I said, remembering the pure terror in their departing scream.

  Bastian pulled out his notebook. “The arrows had the same fletching as the ones that killed Exalted Karrigan,” he reported, “and the heads were coated in the same paralytic poison. I think it’s a safe bet that the murderer—or would-be murderer, in your case—was the same.”

  A queasy shudder ran through me at how close I’d come to dying exactly as Aunt Karrigan had. I hated to imagine her just as frightened as I’d been, in pain and helpless—but
my grandmother hadn’t been on alert for someone attacking her heirs yet, and Karrigan had died forsaken and alone.

  “We should expect another attack,” Foxglove said grimly.

  “Oh, I’m looking forward to it.” Ashe grinned. “I hope you like company, Ryx, because I’m going to stick to you like a burr. You’re my best hope of a decent fight on this mission.”

  “I should warn Vikal.” Pain and potions crumbled my voice at the edges. I hated how weak it sounded, but even this brief conversation had exhausted me. Kessa and Bastian exchanged we should go glances.

  “Don’t we have any real clues?” Aurelio pressed. “It could have been anyone.”

  “Anyone except Severin, it seems,” I amended. It would make for cursed awkward diplomacy, knowing any of my noble guests might have tried to kill me—except perhaps for the one who had openly called for my death.

  A gentle tapping drew our attention to the window. A gray jay stood on the sill, cocking its head, a slip of paper clutched in its beak.

  I gathered myself to get up, but Ashe gave me a glare and opened the window for it instead. The bird fluttered to my hand and dropped a torn-off scrap of paper into my waiting palm before flying back out into the near-autumn chill.

  I turned the scrap over, all too aware of everyone watching me.

  When you’re well enough, it said, let’s try again. We need to talk privately.

  “Seasons spare us,” I muttered. “It’s from Severin.”

  Severin wasn’t the only one to send me a bird. A steady stream of them came and went through my window over the next couple of hours. I communicated from my bed with my family, the concerned Wardens of villages and towns all over Morgrain who couldn’t calm the land they guarded, and even a few Witch Lords. All of the responsibilities of running the domain were falling on me now, with none of the power of a Witch Lord to back it up. I couldn’t even send birds back on my own; I had to stack my letters in a tray for Jannah.

  It didn’t help that the pain dulled my wits and set my pen to trembling. Or that I had to keep closing my eyes and forcing myself to take slow, measured breaths to banish sudden memories of the sound of the arrow hitting my leg and the terrible helplessness of lying paralyzed on the Bone Atrium floor.

  After one such spell, Ashe’s voice cut across the silence, making me jump and almost spill the ink balanced on my lap desk.

  “First time anyone’s tried to kill you, huh?”

  I’d almost forgotten she was there. She’d been dozing in her perch in my window, chin on her chest, unwilling to leave in the hope that an assassin would appear. Now she watched me with her ice-blue eyes narrowed to slits.

  “Yes,” I admitted. “Usually I’m worried about hurting people, not the other way around.”

  Ashe grunted. “Athelings. You’d probably never been in real danger before in your life, with a whole damned domain looking out for you.”

  I nodded ruefully. “I’ve been afraid plenty of times. But never truly for my own life. I don’t…” I shivered. “I never thought before about how fragile we are. How much has to go right every single moment for our bodies to keep on living.”

  “Welcome to the world the rest of us have been living in.” Ashe stretched her wiry frame, the brilliant sunlight catching in the tufts of her near-white hair. “I swear I don’t know how you mages think you can rule over us when you don’t even know what it means to be human.”

  “I’m human,” I protested.

  “Never said you weren’t.”

  I chewed that over for a bit in silence. The ache in my leg deepened in a way that made me suspect my pain-killing potion was wearing off. It had been nice while it lasted—potions had never worked on me before, so when I managed to injure myself I had to tough it out.

  “I’ve been thinking,” I said at last, “about why someone would want to kill me.”

  She lifted pale brows. “Looks to me like they’re killing off your family.”

  “Maybe. I’m sending messages to all my relatives to warn them, just in case.” I thought of my father, out looking for my grandmother—but he was probably safest of all of us right now, because he’d be hardest to find. “They could be targeting us because we can get through the wards on the Black Tower, or it could be someone with a grudge against our family, like Alevar. There are other possibilities, though.”

  Ashe nodded sagely. “Always lots of reasons to murder someone.”

  “Alevar is the obvious suspect, even with Severin saving me—I could easily see him and Voreth having a falling out over methods—but they’re almost too obvious. Ardith kept talking about needing to take steps I wouldn’t like to preserve the peace.” I shifted on my pillows, but the growing ache in my leg and shoulder made every position uncomfortable. “I don’t like to think it was them, but I can’t rule out the possibility. The Serene Empire might be murdering its way toward a more malleable negotiating partner, or killing off anyone who they think could activate the gate before they move their warlocks in to destroy it.”

  “Lots of options,” Ashe agreed. “Not my job to figure it out.”

  “I need to try to meet with Severin again.” I picked up the torn scrap of his note from my letter tray and ran it through my fingers. “Though since it was a trap last time—”

  “I doubt it was a trap.”

  “Maybe not Severin’s trap, but someone certainly ambushed me,” I amended.

  Ashe snorted. “That wasn’t an ambush. At least, not a competent one. If they knew where you were going to be, they could have set up in a much better spot. Up on a balcony or somewhere with cover, where you’d have no chance of seeing them. And they’d have picked someplace less trafficked. No, that was someone who took an opportunity when they saw you wandering around alone at night.”

  I shivered. “You think it’s safe to meet with him, then?”

  “Oh, I hope not.” Ashe patted Answer’s hilt, grinning.

  “I suppose it doesn’t matter whether it’s safe.” I drew in a deep breath, shaking off fears like cobwebs. “I have to meet with him. Just in case that’s exactly what the assassin was trying to stop.”

  I’m glad you didn’t die,” Vikal said.

  I had no idea how to respond to that. Not the words, or his presence here in my room for the first time ever, or the deep hollows of grief and anger carved into his face. I was forcibly reminded that he was four years younger than me, even though in some ways this expression was the most mature I’d ever seen on him.

  “Thank you,” I said at last. And I meant it. I hadn’t known he cared enough to be glad.

  Ashe pretended to doze in the windowsill, her sword across her lap. Vikal ignored her completely, dropping into a chair by my bedside with an attitude of utter exhaustion.

  “I hope the worthless wretch tries to come after me next.” Fury simmered in his voice. “I’ll feed their heart to Lancer. You might be a bit useless, but you’re family.”

  “Thanks.” This time, I let the word drip sarcasm. “I hope you’ll forgive me if I try to catch them before they make another attempt, though. Much as I’d love to see you strangle them, you’re your father’s heir. You need to stay safe.”

  Vikal sniffed. “I’m not afraid.”

  “And that’s part of the problem.” I leaned back into my pillows; dealing with Vikal was exhausting at the best of times. “You’re not only yourself, Vikal. You’re a Warden whose villages depend on you for protection and prosperity, health and bounty. You’re an heir who might, if the Grace of Luck turns truly against us and the seasons are full of spite, inherit the whole domain of Morgrain. And you’re a royal whose murder could spark a war. You can’t run around taking stupid risks. You should be tending to your domain and your people.”

  He stiffened. Butterflies opened and closed their wings on his shoulders, flickering shades of purple. For a moment, I thought he was going to tell me he could be as stupid as he wanted, because he was a proper atheling.

  But his shoulders drooped,
and he sighed. “I suppose you’re right.” He dropped his voice so low I almost couldn’t hear him. “I don’t want anyone else to die, Ryx.”

  “Me either.” I didn’t want to think about death—not now—and I could see Vikal working himself up for some morose philosophical discussion I wasn’t in the mood for. I leaned toward him and murmured, “I saw Grandmother.”

  That did it. His eyes snapped up to mine. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes. In the Bone Atrium, before I passed out.”

  “Ash and ruin. I didn’t realize she was here.” He banged a fist down on his own leg. “And she didn’t talk to me!”

  “She barely talked to me, either.” She left me bleeding to death on the floor. “She seemed… strange.” I didn’t know how to voice the terrible suspicion that had been growing in the back of my mind since I’d seen her, like the shadow of the hills at sunset stretching to claim Gloamingard for the night. I wasn’t at all sure Vikal was the right person to tell, for that matter—but he was family. At this point, that made him one of very few people I could trust.

  Vikal frowned. “Strange how?”

  “Not herself.” I took a shaky breath and tried again. “I don’t know; I only saw her for a few seconds. I can’t help thinking… She tried to deal with the gate on her own, right after I opened it. She went into the Black Tower and disappeared. What if she’s…” I couldn’t finish. The word locked in my throat, too awful to speak.

  “What if she’s what?” Vikal leaned close, his eyes bright.

  I managed a dry, strangled whisper. “What if she’s possessed?”

  Vikal stared at me. Seconds slipped past, unbreathing, unblinking, time continuing to run obliviously on even after I’d stopped it by uttering my worst fear.

  Laugh at me. Go on, please. I needed him to dismiss the idea as foolish. To tell me that with his functioning magic enhancing his connection to our grandmother, he could tell it wasn’t so. That if I were a proper atheling, I’d know she was fine.