فصل 13

13.

In Which Antain Pays a Visit

The Sisters of the Star always had an apprentice—always a young boy. Well, he wasn’t much of an apprentice—more of a serving boy, really. They hired him when he was nine and kept him on until he was dispatched with a single note.

Every boy received the same note. Every single time.

“We had high hopes,” it always said, “but this one has disappointed us.”

Some boys served only a week or two. Antain knew of one from school who had only stayed a single day. Most were sent packing at the age of twelve—right when they had begun to get comfortable. Once they became aware of how much learning there was to be had in the libraries of the Tower and they became hungry for it, they were sent away.

Antain had been twelve when he received his note—one day after he had been granted (after years of asking) the privilege of the library. It was a crushing blow.

The Sisters of the Star lived in the Tower, a massive structure that unsettled the eye and confounded the mind. The Tower stood in the very center of the Protectorate—it cast its shadow everywhere.

The Sisters kept their pantries and auxiliary libraries and armories in the seemingly endless floors belowground. Rooms were set aside for bookbinding and herb mixing and broadsword training and hand-­to-­hand combat practice. The Sisters were skilled in all known languages, astronomy, the art of poisons, dance, metallurgy, martial arts, decoupage, and the finer points of assassinry. Aboveground were the Sisters’ simple quarters (three to a room), spaces for meeting and reflection, impenetrable prison cells, a torture chamber, and a celestial observatory. Each was connected within an intricate framework of oddly-­angled corridors and intersecting staircases that wound from the belly of the building to its deepest depths to the crown of its sky-­viewer and back again. If anyone was foolish enough to enter without permission, he might wander for days without finding an exit.

During his years in the Tower, Antain could hear the Sisters’ grunts in the practice rooms, and he could hear the occasional weeping from the prison rooms and torture chamber, and he could hear the Sisters engaged in heated discussions about the science of stars and the alchemical makeup of Zirin bulbs or the meaning of a particularly controversial poem. He could hear the Sisters singing as they pounded flour or boiled down herbs or sharpened their knives. He learned how to take dictation, clean a privy, set a table, serve an excellent luncheon, and master the fine art of bread-­slicing. He learned the requirements for an excellent pot of tea and the finer points of sandwich-­making and how to stand very still in the corner of a room and listen to a conversation, memorizing every detail, without ever letting the speakers notice that you are present. The Sisters often praised him during his time in the Tower, complimenting his penmanship or his swiftness or his polite demeanor. But it wasn’t enough. Not really. The more he learned, the more he knew what more there was to learn. There were deep pools of knowledge in the dusty volumes quietly shelved in the libraries, and Antain thirsted for all of them. But he wasn’t allowed to drink. He worked hard. He did his best. He tried not to think about the books.

Still, one day he returned to his room and found his bags already packed. The Sisters pinned a note to his shirt and sent him home to his mother. “We had high hopes,” the note said. “But this one has disappointed us.”

He never got over it.

Now as an Elder-­in-­Training he was supposed to be at the Council Hall, preparing for the day’s hearings, but he just couldn’t. After making excuses, yet again, about missing the Day of Sacrifice, Antain had noticed a distinct difference in his rapport with the Elders. An increased muttering. A proliferation of side-­eyed glances. And, worst of all, his uncle refused to even look at him.

He hadn’t set foot in the Tower since his apprenticeship days, but Antain felt that it was high time to visit the Sisters, who had been, for him, a sort of short-­term family—albeit odd, standoffish, and, admittedly, murderous. Still. Family is family, he told himself as he walked up to the old oak door and knocked.

(There was another reason, of course. But Antain could hardly even admit it to himself. And it was making him twitch.)

His little brother answered. Rook. He had, as usual, a runny nose, and his hair was much longer than it had been when Antain saw it last—over a year ago now.

“Are you here to take me home?” Rook said, his voice a mixture of hope and shame. “Have I disappointed them, too?”

“It’s nice to see you, Rook,” Antain said, rubbing his little brother’s head as though he were a mostly-­well-­behaved dog. “But no. You’ve only been here a year. You’ve got plenty of time to disappoint them. Is Sister Ignatia here? I’d like to speak to her.”

Rook shuddered, and Antain didn’t blame him. Sister Ignatia was a formidable woman. And terrifying. But Antain had always gotten on with her, and she always seemed fond of him. The other Sisters made sure that he knew how rare this was. Rook showed his older brother to the study of the Head Sister, but Antain could have made it there blindfolded. He knew every step, every stony divot in the ancient walls, every creaky floorboard. He still, after all these years, had dreams of being back in the Tower.

“Antain!” Sister Ignatia said from her desk. She was, from the look of it, translating texts having to do with botany. Sister Ignatia’s life’s greatest passion was for botany. Her office was filled with plants of all description—most coming from the more obscure sections of the forest or the swamp, but some coming from all around the world, via specialized dealers in the cities at the other end of the Road.

“Why, my dear boy,” Sister Ignatia said as she got up from her desk and walked across the heavily perfumed room to take Antain’s face in her wiry, strong hands. She patted him gently on each cheek, but it still stung. “You are many times more handsome today than you were when we sent you home.”

“Thank you, Sister,” Antain said, feeling a familiar stab of shame just thinking of that awful day when he left the Tower with a note.

“Sit, please.” She looked out toward the door and shouted in a very loud voice. “BOY!” she called to Rook. “BOY, ARE YOU LISTENING TO ME?”

“Yes, Sister Ignatia,” Rook squeaked, flinging himself through the doorway at a run and tripping on the threshold.

Sister Ignatia was not amused. “We will require lavender tea and Zirin blossom cookies.” She gave the boy a stormy look, and he ran away as though a tiger was after him.

Sister Ignatia sighed. “Your brother lacks your skills, I’m afraid,” she said. “It is a pity. We had such high hopes.” She motioned for Antain to sit on one of the chairs—it was covered with a spiky sort of vine, but Antain sat on it anyway, trying to ignore the prickles in his legs. Sister Ignatia sat opposite him and leaned in, searching his face.

“Tell me, dear, are you married yet?”

“No, ma’am,” Antain said, blushing. “I’m a bit young, yet.”

Sister Ignatia clucked her tongue. “But you are sweet on someone. I can tell. You can hide nothing from me, dear boy. Don’t even try.” Antain tried not to think about the girl from his school. Ethyne. She was somewhere in this tower. But she was lost to him, and there was nothing he could do about it.

“My duties with the Council don’t leave me much time,” he said evasively. Which was true.

“Of course, of course,” she said with a wave of her hand. “The Council.” It seemed to Antain that she said the word with a little bit of a sneer in her voice. But then she sneezed a little, and he assumed he must have imagined it.

“I have only been an Elder-­in-­Training for five years now, but I am already learning . . .” He paused. “Ever so much,” he finished in a hollow voice.

The baby on the ground.

The woman screaming from the rafters.

No matter how hard he tried, he still couldn’t get those images out of his mind. Or the Council’s response to his questions. Why must they treat his inquiries with such disdain? Antain had no idea.

Sister Ignatia tipped her head to one side and gave him a searching look. “To be frank, my dear, dear boy, I was stunned that you made the decision to join that particular body, and I confess I assumed that it was not your decision at all, but your . . . lovely mother’s.” She puckered her lips unpleasantly, as though tasting something sour.

And this was true. It was entirely true. Joining the Council was not Antain’s choice at all. He would have preferred to be a carpenter. Indeed, he told his mother as much—often, and at length—not that she listened.

“Carpentry,” Sister Ignatia continued, not noticing the shock on Antain’s face that she had, apparently, read his mind, “would have been my guess. You were always thusly inclined.”

“You—”

She smiled with slitted eyes. “Oh, I know quite a bit, young man.” She flared her nostrils and blinked. “You’d be amazed.”

Rook stumbled in with the tea and the cookies, and managed to both spill the tea and dump the cookies on his brother’s lap. Sister Ignatia gave him a look as sharp as a blade, and he ran out of the room in a panicked rush, as though he was already bleeding.

“Now,” Sister Ignatia said, taking a sip of her tea through her smile. “What can I do for you?”

“Well,” Antain said, despite the mouthful of cookie. “I just wanted to pay a visit. Because I hadn’t for a long time. You know. To catch up. See how you are.”

The baby on the ground.

The screaming mother.

And oh, god, what if something got to it before the Witch? What would happen to us then?

And oh, my stars, why must this continue? Why is there no one to stop it?

Sister Ignatia smiled. “Liar,” she said, and Antain hung his head. She gave his knee an affectionate squeeze. “Don’t be ashamed, poor thing,” she soothed. “You’re not the only one who wishes to gawk and gape at our resident caged animal. I am considering charging admission.”

“Oh,” Antain protested. “No, I—”

She waved him off. “No need. I completely understand. She is a rare bird. And a bit of a puzzle. A fountain of sorrow.” She gave a bit of a sigh, and the corners of her lips quivered, like the very tip of a snake’s tongue. Antain wrinkled his brow.

“Can she be cured?” he asked.

Sister Ignatia laughed. “Oh, sweet Antain! There is no cure for sorrow.” Her lips unfurled into a wide smile, as though this was most excellent news.

“Surely, though,” Antain persisted. “It can’t last forever. So many of our people have lost their children. And not everyone’s sorrow is like this.”

She pressed her lips together. “No. No, it is not. Her sorrow is amplified by madness. Or her madness stems from her sorrow. Or perhaps it is something else entirely. This makes her an interesting study. I do appreciate her presence in our dear Tower. We are making good use of the knowledge we are gaining from the observation of her mind. Knowledge, after all, is a precious commodity.” Antain noticed that the Head Sister’s cheeks were a bit rosier than they had been the last time he was in the Tower. “But honestly, dear boy, while this old lady appreciates the attention of such a handsome young man, you don’t need to stand on ceremony with me. You’re to be a full member of the Council one day, dear. You need only ask the boy at the door and he has to show you to any prisoner you wish to see. That’s the law.” There was ice in her eyes. But only for a moment. She gave Antain a warm smile. “Come, my little Elderling.”

She stood and walked to the door without making a sound. Antain followed her, his boots clomping heavily on the floorboards.

Though the prison cells were only one floor above them, it took four staircases to get there. Antain peeked hopefully from room to room, on the off chance that he might catch sight of Ethyne, the girl from school. He saw many members of the novitiate, but he didn’t see her. He tried not to feel disappointed.

The stairs swung left and right and pulled down into a tight spiral into the edge of the central room of the prison floor. The central room was a circular, windowless space, with three Sisters sitting in chairs at the very middle with their backs facing one another in a tight triangle, each with a crossbow resting across her lap.

Sister Ignatia gave an imperious glance at the nearest Sister. She flicked her chin toward one of the doors.

“Let him in to see number five. He’ll knock when he’s ready to leave. Mind you don’t accidentally shoot him.”

And then with a smile, she returned her gaze to Antain and embraced him.

“Well, I’m off,” she said brightly, and she went back up the spiral stair as the closest Sister rose and unlocked the door marked “5.”

She met Antain’s eyes and she shrugged.

“She won’t do much for you. We had to give her special potions to keep her calm. And we had to cut off her pretty hair, because she kept trying to pull it out.” She looked him up and down. “You haven’t got any paper on you, have you?”

Antain wrinkled his brow. “Paper? No. Why?”

The Sister pressed her lips into a thin line. “She’s not permitted to have paper,” she said.

“Why not?”

The Sister’s face became a blank. As expressionless as a hand in a glove. “You’ll see,” she said.

And she opened the door.

The cell was a riot of paper. The prisoner had folded and torn and twisted and fringed paper into thousands and thousands of paper birds, of all shapes and sizes. There were paper swans in the corner, paper herons on the chair, and tiny paper hummingbirds suspended from the ceiling. Paper ducks; paper robins; paper swallows; paper doves.

Antain’s first instinct was to be scandalized. Paper was expensive. Enormously expensive. There were paper makers in the town who made fine sheaves of writing stock from a combination of wood pulp and cattails and wild flax and Zirin flowers, but most of that was sold to the traders, who took it to the other side of the forest. Whenever anyone in the Protectorate wrote anything down, it was only after much thought and consideration and planning.

And here was this lunatic. Wasting it. Antain could hardly contain his shock.

And yet.

The birds were incredibly intricate and detailed. They crowded the floor; they heaped on the bed; they peeked out of the two small drawers of the nightstand. And they were, he couldn’t deny it, beautiful. They were so beautiful. Antain pressed his hand on his heart.

“Oh, my,” he whispered.

The prisoner lay on the bed, fast asleep, but she stirred at the sound of his voice. Very slowly, she stretched. Very slowly, she pulled her elbows under her body and inched her way to a small incline.

Antain hardly recognized her. That beautiful black hair was gone, shaved to the skin, and so were the fire in her eyes and the flush of her cheeks. Her lips were flat and drooping, as though they were too heavy to hold up, and her cheeks were sallow and dull. Even the crescent moon birthmark on her forehead was a shadow of its former self—like a smudge of ashes on her brow. Her small, clever hands were covered with tiny cuts—Paper, probably, Antain thought—and dark smudges of ink stained each fingertip.

Her eyes slid from one end of him to the other, up, down, and sideways, never finding purchase. She couldn’t pin him down.

“Do I know you?” she said slowly.

“No, ma’am,” Antain said.

“You look”—she swallowed—“familiar.” Each word seemed to be drawn from a very deep well.

Antain looked around. There was also a small table with more paper, but this was drawn on. Strange, intricate maps with words he didn’t understand and markings he did not know. And all of them with the same phrase written in the bottom right corner: “She is here; she is here; she is here.”

Who is here? Antain wondered.

“Ma’am, I am a member of the Council. Well, a provisional member. An Elder-­in Training.”

“Ah,” she said, and she slumped back down onto the bed, staring blankly at the ceiling. “You. I remember you. Have you come to ridicule me, too?”

She closed her eyes and laughed.

Antain stepped backward. He felt a shiver at the sound of her laugh, as though someone was slowly pouring a tin of cold water down his back. He looked up at the paper birds hanging from the ceiling. Strange, but all of them were suspended from what looked like strands of long, black, wavy hair. And even stranger: they were all facing him. Had they been facing him before?

Antain’s palms began to sweat.

“You should tell your uncle,” she said very, very slowly, laying each word next to the one before, like a long, straight line of heavy, round stones, “that he was wrong. She is here. And she is terrible.”

She is here, the map said.

She is here.

She is here.

She is here.

But what did it mean?

“Who is where?” Antain asked, in spite of himself. Why was he talking to her? One can’t, he reminded himself, reason with the mad. It can’t be done. The paper birds rustled overhead. It must be the wind, Antain thought.

“The child he took? My child?” She gave a hollow laugh. “She didn’t die. Your uncle thinks she is dead. Your uncle is wrong.”

“Why would he think she is dead? No one knows what the Witch does with the children.” He shivered again. There was a shivery, rustling sound to his left, like the flapping of a paper wing. He turned but nothing moved. He heard it again at his right. Again. Nothing.

“All I know is this,” the mother said as she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. The paper birds began to lift and swirl.

It is just the wind, Antain told himself.

“I know where she is.”

I am imagining things.

“I know what you people have done.”

Something is crawling down my neck. My god. It’s a hummingbird. And—OUCH!

A paper raven swooped across the room, slicing its wing across Antain’s cheek, cutting it open, letting him bleed.

Antain was too amazed to cry out.

“But it doesn’t matter. Because the reckoning is coming. It’s coming. It’s coming. And it is nearly here.”

She closed her eyes and swayed. She was clearly mad. Indeed, her madness hung about her like a cloud, and Antain knew he had to get away, lest he become infected by it. He pounded on the door, but it didn’t make any sound. “LET ME OUT,” he shouted to the Sisters, but his voice seemed to die the moment it fell from his mouth. He could feel his words thud on the ground at his feet. Was he catching madness? Could such a thing happen? The paper birds shuffled and shirred and gathered. They lifted in great waves.

“PLEASE!” he shouted as a paper swallow went for his eyes and two paper swans bit his feet. He kicked and swatted, but they kept coming.

“You seem like a nice boy,” the mother said. “Choose a different profession. That’s my advice.” She crawled back into bed.

Antain pounded on the door again. Again his pounding was silent.

The birds squawked and keened and screeched. They sharpened their paper wings like knives. They massed in great murmurations—swelling and contracting and swelling again. They reared up for the attack. Antain covered his face with his hands.

And then they were upon him.