He looked down and saw nothing. If he hadn’t counted two hundred stairs passing under his feet, he might have thought he could step off right onto the floor, but he knew that would be the death of him, the end of hope for the kingdom. He looked up and thought he saw a sliver of light. It invigorated him and he began moving up the stairs, keeping as close to the wall as he could.
As he climbed, the sliver of light grew brighter, and with it his mood lifted. He moved faster, driven to get out of the dark and into the light. His thighs ached from climbing, sweat ran from his temple, but the light got closer until he recognized it as the sun shining through the narrow crack beneath a door.
Khirro made his way cautiously up the last few stairs, suddenly aware again of the fall awaiting him if he misstepped. Finally, his eyes drew even with the crack under the door and he could see the last few stairs dimly lit, and the landing at the top of them.
He rested a moment as he reached the top, sucking deep breaths into his lungs in an attempt to recover from the climb. How horrible it must have been to be a condemned man making such an ascent, having so much time to contemplate your coming demise. Khirro shivered at the thought but put it aside as he reached for the door.
It wasn’t locked, of course. At such a height, there was nothing to keep out, and who in their right mind would climb the steps to the door.
Only me, I suppose.
The city stretched away in all directions from the spire, its broken down buildings bathed in the golden glow of early morning sun. Beyond the far city wall, yellow-brown steppe led to forest and the ground rose to hills. Khirro didn’t know if he looked toward Kanos or Lakesh, but either way, the view was breathtaking.
As was the sheer height of the spire.
Khirro stepped gingerly onto the ledge outside the door. It was big enough for a few men to stand on at once-perhaps ten feet wide and extending out five feet from the tower-but the lack of any handhold or railing to separate platform from empty air made it a poor idea to crowd it with too many. One was probably enough.
The soles of Khirro’s boots scuffed the rough stone as he shuffled away from the doorway, curious to peer over the edge. He leaned forward, dragged his feet ahead another few inches, then leaned again.
The stairs two hundred feet below were tinted pink, painted that color by the lives they’d taken over the centuries. After the climb to get here and now standing on the platform, Khirro realized that the death at the end of the fall might have been a relief to the condemned who took the plunge. The dread anticipation and exertion of climbing the stairs, the opportunity to contemplate the value of life while standing on the platform looking over the city and the land beyond, the fearful descent to the stairs so far below all must have been tortures heaped upon tortures that hitting the stairs would finally relieve.
Tortures heaped upon tortures.
Like having the life you were raised for torn from you against your will. Like being cursed to carry out a task you didn’t want. Like watching friends and companions die in the name of helping you. Like never having the chance to love the woman you truly loved.
Khirro moved closer to the edge, his toes less than an inch from open air. A bird flew by close to the tower but beneath the level of the platform; cold wind touched his cheeks, drying the sweat on his temples and making him shiver. He looked down at the pink stone stairs and drew a long breath in through his nose.
One death could save so many: Athryn, the child in my dreams, my family. If only it could bring back those already lost.
The wind rose again, flapping his breeches against his legs, tugging at him. He crossed his arms, hugged himself against the cold, but he knew it wasn’t only the cold that made him shiver. It was also where he stood, and it was temptation.
But how many more would die along with that one death?
The thoughts were like words in his head that didn’t feel as though they belonged to him. He swayed slightly forward and back again, forward and back. His legs ached, tired of holding him upright, tired of holding the burden.
Smoke curled from chimneys of many of the decrepit houses below and Khirro caught a whiff of pork frying, bread baking. He saw people moving through the streets. These weren’t his people, but they made him think of his own home, of people like the widow Breadmaker who liked to entertain foreign merchants, and of Maree who showed him her lady flower when they were but children. Did they deserve to die because Khirro didn’t want to go on any longer?
Do they?
The voice again that didn’t belong to him. He knew whose voice it was: the tyger's.
“No,” he said aloud. “They don’t.”
Khirro turned his shoulders to move away from the edge, but his feet wouldn’t do as they were told. The world tilted and he stumbled, arms pinwheeling, desperately seeking balance without finding it. Khirro threw his weight backward, away from the edge, felt air rush around him and the sensation of falling. Saliva flooded his mouth with the coppery taste of panic.
Then his backside hit the platform.
His heart beat fast in his chest, pumping blood and adrenaline through his veins at the speed of racing horses. He scuttled away from the edge like a crab fleeing the sea and scrabbled through the doorway, closing the door behind him to sit atop the stairs in the dark.
Half an hour later, when Khirro stepped off the bottom stair onto the flat stone floor, his hands were still shaking. He paused and found the sound of Athryn’s breathing in the darkness, then peered back up the stairs. The sliver of light from under the door was invisible in the dark, as were the stairs set into the wall and the ceiling so far overhead. He swallowed hard. His heart had returned to its regular rhythm, and the urge to throw himself from the platform was gone, but as he’d made his way down the stairs, another feeling came over him and it returned as he crossed the floor to take up a position beside the door.
Despite the echo of his footsteps confirming the emptiness of the place, he felt like they were being watched.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cold salt water splashed Graymon’s feet and ankles. The going through the forest with its tangled underbrush had been slow and noisy, so when he emerged onto the shore of what he thought must be the Small Sea, he decided to take to the water to move faster. The numbness spreading through his toes made him regret the decision.
The wind tugged at the blanket around his shoulders and no matter how tightly he held it or how careful he was, a corner kept dipping into the water, the wool soaking it up so a third of his covering was wet. One good thing about the coldness of the water and wind: they made staying awake easier even as they rattled his teeth.
He moved out of the shallow waves onto the shore, drenched boots crunching and gurgling on the pebbly beach. So long he’d dreamed of the water, of seeing the beach and swimming in the surf like his father had done in the stories of his youth. But his dreams of the sea looked vastly different than this. In his dreams, the sun tanned his skin and the water felt warm and inviting.
No dead men chased him in the dreams.
A sound behind him made him stop, the fine rocks shifting and grinding beneath his feet. He held his breath and listened, ignoring the pressure in his bladder as the lapping waves did their best to coax urine out of him, distracting him.
The sound came again-clearly a growl this time-and thoughts of urinating disappeared. An animal? He crouched and listened, annoyed by the noise of the tiny stones under the soles of his boots. A second sound, answering the first. It was no animal.
They know I’m gone.
Graymon looked around frantically but didn’t see the soldiers. The water’s edge lay a few feet to his left, the tree line ten yards to his right. He wiggled his toes, noticed feeling returning, and knew he couldn’t go back into the water. With nowhere to hide on the beach, the forest’s tangled thicket offered his best option.