The time passed with annoying slowness. It felt as though everything and everyone—myself included—had paused it mid-step, in anticipation of something momentous.
At one point Anari returned with two men, who silently restored the now-mended mattress to the bed. A woman followed with fresh sheets and a blanket. When she spoke to Anari, they both used hushed, almost reverential tones. And they kept glancing surreptitiously in our direction.
Neither Aber nor I deigned to notice them. We were both pretty drunk. They left, and an almost eerie silence spread over the house.
“Do you think the hell-creatures… the
“No. Anari will tell us.” He sighed. “They must be on the fifth floor.”
“What's there?”
“Servants' quarters.”
After we finished our fifth bottle, I finally decided I had drunk too much. I felt happily numb, and though everything had a comfortably blurry shine, I couldn't tell if it was me or the wine or our location that caused it. My senses had become so screwed up since entering this place that nothing looked or felt or smelled quite right any more. Fortunately, thanks to the wine, I didn't particularly care.
Aber, too, had begun to slur his words, and several times he laughed to himself as though at some private joke. To be good company, I laughed along. Every once in a while we would exchange trivialities:
—“Do the walls look like they're bleeding to you?” (Me.)
—“Not really.” (Him.) “Is that what you see?”
—“Yes.” (A hesitation.) “But they're not bleeding like they were an hour ago.”
—“Oh.”
I sat back, pondering everything around me with the deep sense of wisdom that can only be found in an excess of alcohol.
“You know what we need?” I said.
“What?”
“Windows.”
He actually fell off his chair, he laughed so hard.
“What's so funny?” I demanded.
“Windows. There aren't any.”
“Why not?”
“It's safer.”
“How do you know if it's morning or night?”
“You don't. There's no such thing here.”
“Doesn't it get dark?” I asked.
“Not in the sense it did in Juniper.”
I thought about that for a while. It seemed impossible, but my whole life since leaving Ilerium had seemed that way.
“How late is it?” I finally said, stifling a yawn.
“Very.” With a sigh, he rose. “Come on, I'll show you to your room. I imagine it's been searched and cleaned up by now.”
I looked at him in surprise. “This isn't my room?”
“This little cell?” He chuckled. “What kind of hospitality do you think we offer family members? This is just a spare room where Dad stuck you. You'll have a proper suite on the next floor. Come, I'll show you.”
He rose unsteadily. I did, too.
The room rolled around me, and the sound of wind—which had died down to a murmur like distant surf— rose to deafen me. By leaning on his shoulder, I managed to keep my feet, and together we staggered out into the hall.
“You can have Mattus's rooms,” he grunted, bearing up under my weight. “It's not like he needs them any more.”
That reminded me—what had happened to Rhalla? Probably drafted to help with the cleanup. I didn't blame her for not fetching me dry clothes. Priorities, priorities…
Aber led the way out to the hall, turned left, left again, then twice more left. It should have us put us back where we started, but somehow we found ourselves facing broad stone steps leading both up and down. Sconces held oil lamps whose light bubbled steadily upwards to pool on the ceiling.
I glanced behind us. The corridor seemed to narrow and coil in on itself. All the angles were wrong here, I reminded myself. Corners weren't square. I wouldn't be able to track my position mentally as I moved about.
“Think you can make it?” he asked.
“With you to lean on? Sure!”
With him supporting me, we ascended to the next floor.
Still no windows, I noticed, like Aber had said. For some reason, it began to bother me—though it was probably just as well that I couldn't see outside. I remembered my sister Freda's Trump, which showed the Courts of Chaos. Merely looking at the image had unnerved me. A sky that writhed like a living thing, stars that darted and swirled in seemingly random patterns, and giant stones that moved across the land on their own, while colors pulsed and bled. I should have been happy not to have to gaze out onto such nightmare landscapes.
And yet not having windows made me feel trapped, somehow. It was one of those games you just can't win.
As we climbed, I never lifted my hand from the railing. The steps started to slide out from under me, but I paused a few seconds, pretending I needed to catch my breath, before continuing. Aber, drunk and staggering a bit himself, never even noticed.
Finally, we reached the top. More bleeding walls, more sconces with oil lamps that bubbled their light up to the ceiling. Strangely enough, it had all began to feel normal.
My brother turned left sharply five times, but instead of ending up back where we started, we were suddenly facing a new hallway lined with tall, ornately carved wooden doors.
“Here we are!” he announced with a grand sweep of his arm. “Mattus's suite is ugly, but he never had any sense of style. It ought to do!”
He halted before the first door on the left, then rapped sharply on the wood.
“Hulloo!” he called. “Wake up!”
“Why—” I began.
I had been about to ask why he would knock on a dead man's door, but a large face carved into the central wooden panel began to move. It yawned, blinked twice, and seemed to focus on Aber.
“Greetings!” it said pleasantly. “This room belongs to Lord Mattus. State your business.”
“Just visiting,” Aber said. “Do you remember me?”
“I do believe it's Lord Aber!” the door said, squinting a bit. I wondered if it might be near-sighted. “You have grown since last we spoke. Welcome, welcome, dear boy! I can talk to you, but Mattus left strict instruction that you cannot, under any circumstances, enter his room without permission, or I will be—and he made this quite clear—rendered into toothpicks.”
So Aber wasn't welcome here! Somehow, it didn't surprise me; no one in my family seemed exactly trusting. They were to the last more likely to stab you in the back than put in a kindly word.
“I have bad news,” Aber said in a serious voice, ignoring the slight. “My brother Mattus is dead.”
“No! No!” the face in the door gasped. “It cannot be!”
“I'm afraid so.”
“When? Where?”
“It happened some time ago, and far from here.”
The face gave a wrenching sob. “He did not suffer, I hope?”
“No. It was fast.”
That, actually, was a lie. Mattus had been tortured to death in a tower made of bones. But I saw no sense in correcting Aber's story… the face in the door seemed quite emotional, and I wasn't up to dealing with weeping woodwork right now.
