The Liar's Key

I run. In this we are in accord, the boy and I. One swift kick sends the chair skittering across the flagstones. I chase it and when it stops I’m up and climbing, fear boosting me so that I gain the seat in one stride, the back in the next, and as it topples I launch toward the window. I’ve not been in the west spire before but I’ve been in the east. The young Jalan assumes they are the same. I pray it.

I’ve learned to fear a lot of things as I grew. Most things perhaps. Heights though, they still thrill me. I hang on to the stonework as I swing through the window, feet searching for the ledge that should be down and to the left. The boy doesn’t look to check but slides lower, letting the window’s edge slip through his hands. He lets go and a moment later his boots find purchase. We stand flattened to the outer wall, the windowsill above our head, arms wide to embrace the stones, a three-inch ledge supporting us.

By degrees I circle round to the gargoyle, twin to the ugly demon that watches the realm from the side of the east spire, just below the highest window. There are a series of such demons set in a descending spiral on both spires, all of the same design but as individual as people, each with its twin in the corresponding spot on the other spire. I know their faces better than I know those of my small tribe of cousins. My fingers tremble but it’s the fear of the blind-eye woman that puts the tremor there rather than of the fall beneath me.

I drop from ledge to gargoyle, slide around horns and barbs to reach the supporting ledge, circle to the next, drop again. This is how I discovered the old man in the tower—only then I was climbing upward, and nearly a year younger. It’s a wonder I didn’t die.

Great-uncle Garyus lives, or is kept, in the east spire. When I first climbed there I was too young to understand the danger. And besides, the spires were made for climbing. There can be few towers in the empire with so many handholds, so much ornamentation placed at convenient intervals. It had seemed like an invitation. And even at an early age escape obsessed me. If the guards and nurses at the Roma Hall took their eye off me for more than a second I was off, running, hiding, climbing, learning all the ways out, all the ways in. Any high window drew me. Except the one in the west spire—that always looked like a devouring mouth, just waiting for me to clamber in.

I reach the palace roof and scamper up the tiled slope, over the serrations of the crest, and down toward the east spire. The dark slates are burning hot, scorching my hands. I try to keep my arms and legs clear, sliding on my arse, feeling the heat even through my trousers. Sweat-slick palms lose traction on the slate. I slide faster with nothing to grip, jolting my spine. A misjudged effort to slow myself turns me sideways and in a heartbeat I’m tumbling, rolling down the roof toward the drop. Arms flail, the world blurs, I’m screaming.

•   •   •

Thump. Something hard stopped my tumble, taking away in one painful crunch all the momentum the slope thrust upon me. The impact wrapped me around the immovable object that arrested my fall, and I lay there moaning. Somehow I’d become entangled in an old blanket—a damp old blanket—and it seemed to be raining.

“Jal!” A man shouting.

“Jal!” Another man, closer.

I moaned a little louder, though not much. My lungs had yet to refill after being so rudely emptied of air. Seconds later hands found me, pulling the wrappings from around my head. I found myself staring up at Snorri’s face, framed by dripping black hair, with trees rising on all sides, terrifyingly tall and stark against a grey sky that seemed too bright.

“Whu,” I managed. It seemed sufficient to convey my feelings.

“The trolls dropped you.” Tuttugu, head thrusting into view, obscuring the sky, wet ginger hair dripping around a concerned expression. “Luckily you hit a tree.”

I puzzled this new definition of “lucky.”

“Did I fall off the roof?” I still wasn’t really following the conversation. Tuttugu looked confused. “You’ve lost weight,” I told him. Perhaps not relevant to the situation, but it was certainly true that the road’s hardships had stripped a few pounds from the man.

The Vikings exchanged a glance. “Let’s get him back up,” Snorri said.

With a distinct lack of tenderness they unwrapped me from the tree. A tall conifer with sparse branches—others like it dotted the slope. Snorri hefted me to my feet, gasping as he straightened, as if it pained him. He looped my arm over his shoulder and helped me up toward a ridge maybe fifty feet above us. The troll column stood there, black and watching, Gorgoth at the front, Kara to the rear where Snorri angled me. It looked to be late evening with the shadows thickening toward night. Hennan watched from the back of a troll as we drew close. It seemed they had taken to passing him about their number. It hadn’t struck me before that although there were both he-trolls and she-trolls in our merry band they hadn’t a child amongst them.