He was still dripping when the elves began pushing him toward the door. Their own clothes were dry, clean. Elf magic. Pricks. He walked. They pushed. He walked a bit more slowly. They stopped pushing. The door opened to stairs. Wide, clean slabs of stone. Eleven steps straight ahead of him, a landing at the top, an angle of stone to his right suggesting another flight of steps leading higher. He stopped, looked up. They pushed.
“You sure you want me to go first? Give up the high ground?”
The pushing stopped. Hesitation. Uncertainty.
The half-born snorted and shoved past the elves, grabbing Sorrows at the elbow, partly in annoyance and partly in possession. He’s mine, she was saying. Leave the big, scary human to the half-born, you cowards. She pulled him to the stairs. Her elf companion followed. The two elves by the door joined him on either side. The five started up the stairs, boots echoing. They made enough noise that the entire tower would know how many steps they had climbed, whether they had stopped, and what they had eaten for breakfast.
The stairs continued long enough for Sorrows to feel every inch of his legs. Beside him, the half-born fought to hide her fatigue, forcing air in and out through her nose. This caused her nostrils to flare. And that did little to improve her overall appearance. Behind them, the three elves offered no audible signs of tiring, and Sorrows didn’t care enough to turn around and see them not sweating. After an eternity of stone slabs, the half-born stopped climbing and the two new elves stepped past Sorrows to open a heavy oak door like the one before the stairs. They stepped into a wide corridor lined with sconces, decorated with tapestries, and marked by evenly spaced doors. It was quiet like the streets had been, as though the storms had kept everyone locked away in their rooms. They stopped in front of the seventh door. The last door on the left. One of the two new elves opened it. The half-born led Sorrows inside. The room was empty except for a single wooden chair. No table. No sconces. No tapestries. No more than six paces wide, eight deep, another six high. Stone walls and floor. Lamps hung from beams that crossed overhead. Sorrows spat on the floor, rubbed a dark streak on the stone with his boot. It grew cold beneath his feet, and the room filled with the scent of orange blossoms. The half-born walked past him.
“Have a seat,” she said.
Sorrows unstrapped the bundle from his back and rested it on the chair. He shrugged off his cloak and laid it on top. Walked to the wall. Ran his fingers along the seam between stone slabs, and felt the eyes of the half-born and the elves watch his every move. He turned, leaned against the wall, and slid to the floor. The half-born stared at him for a long moment before turning and leaving the room. The elves followed. The door shut. A low hum filled the air, like the rush of a river in the distance. Elf magic. Sorrows wouldn’t bother trying to open the door. If an elf wanted you to stay put, you stayed put.
The knocking of boots faded as the elves and half-born walked away. He glanced at the bundle on the chair and thought of unwrapping the bow, but wouldn’t give the elves a reason to take it away. So he rested his head against the wall, closed his eyes, and breathed. Slow breaths. Patient breaths. But too few breaths. Footsteps again. A different cadence. Heavy and ponderous. The door swung open, and an elf stepped in. Brown-haired, gray-eyed. Not unheard of for the species, but uncommon. His face was all hard lines and hostility. He raised a hand, rubbed his chin in the angle made by his thumb and forefinger. Squatting, he created peaks and valleys in the fabric of his gray skirt. He was old. Older than Sorrows.
“Bigger than you thought, right?” Sorrows asked.
“Younger,” the elf said.
“Than you? I’d suspect so. Haven’t seen too many elves with wrinkles.”
The elf said nothing; he stared for a few seconds more, stood and left, slamming the door behind him. Sorrows closed his eyes and returned to his breathing.
Footsteps again. Fast, light. The door opened. New face, same faint surprise. She was younger, a couple centuries at most. Not old enough to remember humans. She had a pretty face, haughty and aloof, but soft in all the right places and hard in a way that quickened the pulse. Same black jerkin, same gray skirt, same black boots. But they looked better on her somehow.
“More handsome than you expected?” Sorrows asked.
“Are you what humans deemed handsome? Interesting.”
“The more of me you see, the more interesting I become.”
The elf said nothing, but her mouth twitched with a slight smirk. She turned, the door slammed. Sorrows closed his eyes, returned to his breathing.
More breaths this time. Thoughts cleared, questions considered and set aside. A third cadence. Soft, steady. Confident. Sorrows straightened, leaned forward, watched the door. It opened and a third face appeared. Old. White-hair old. With eyes like a storm and deep lines around her mouth.
“You’re bigger than I imagined,” she said.
“I get that a lot.”
“What do you think of me?”
“Older than I expected. I prefer the last elf.”
“She gets that a lot.”
Her voice was smooth, melodic, confident. Sorrows was just another matter to deal with. And she’d handled worse. She was as much a part of the tower as the stones that shaped the walls and floors. She was an elf that straightened spines when she walked by. A leader. Respected. She stared at him and he stared at her. They stayed like that
