The Wolf Tower isn’t very warm. They don’t have the heating system the House had. Just fireplaces and baskets of coals (braziers), both of which smoke.
Anyway, I must now write down what Ironel Novendot told me. Because this book is the story of my life, and she – or the Law of the Tower – made it all happen.
Yes. The Law.
But I think I’ll have to explain about that separately. It’s a story in itself, the Wolf Tower Law. I’ve only become a tiny desperate bit of it.
The Law (and as I say, I’ll go back to the Law) decreed that Nemian had to find a girl to take over a particular duty in the City. Probably the most necessary duty. And that was because Ironel, who until now had seen to this duty, was at last too old for it – or she said she was.
And here Law is LAW. Is Absolute. No one goes against it.
So Nemian, just married and all, set off in the hot-air balloon, of which the City has a fleet, although they seldom use them.
Some things then went wrong with the balloon, and there was a chance he wouldn’t make it. Then he did make it, only to be shot down by the guns of the very place – the House – he’d been travelling to. He told them he was on a quest, and he was. I was the quest. He was on a quest to find me. This makes me sound of great importance, and I was. I am.
Because, you see, Jizania Tiger, in her youth, over a hundred years ago, had also left this City, and gone to live in the House. (No one says why. Honestly, I should just think she’d have preferred to.) I don’t know how the House is related to this City. But obviously it was, then.
When she left, she promised, made a vow by the Law, to present to the Wolf Tower, when required, a girl of royal blood, from the House. A girl suitable to take on Ironel’s duty, when Ironel gave it up.
If Jizania eventually forgot this vow, I don’t know. Very likely. It was a damn silly nasty thing to have to remember.
But Nemian gave her the red flower, the Immortal, which was the token by which she’d know the time had come.
I suppose, as in certain stories I’ve read, maybe it was meant to be her own daughter, or granddaughter, she’d have to supply.
Did Jizania perhaps even tell Nemian that I was – that I was her granddaughter, her daughter’s child?
You see, Jizania lied to Nemian, and she lied to me. And she knew and doubtless told him, he’d better lie to me too. Even when he started to have doubts I was the princess-girl Jizania had assured him I was. By then I was all he could get. I did come from the House. I have the House accent – which Ironel would recognize. Perhaps I’d do. And I was daft enough to believe him, to stay with him.
He did nearly lose me, that once, in Peshamba. But when he knew he might, he rushed to me and pleaded to try to get me back. He really was desperate and afraid that night. When he said his life wouldn’t be worth anything without me, that wasn’t a lie at all.
I said, the Law is the LAW. If he’d come back empty-handed, he’d have lost his title, his money, his wife. They’d have flung him in some cellar and left him there.
That’s what the Law is like. You don’t ever go against it.
Maybe he could just have run off in the wild, never come back. But he wanted to, was ‘homesick’. Or – well, he probably wanted Moon Silk.
That I’d be reluctant to come with him, was obvious. That is, if I’d known what they wanted me for. He wasn’t surprised Jizania hadn’t warned me, or told me everything. Or that he had to pretend.
That’s all bad enough. But there’s this other thing. Jizania was determined to send me off with Nemian, to keep her vow. So did she lie to me as well about my mother being royal? She couldn’t say both my parents were royalty – I’d have seen the House wouldn’t exile a prince and a princess. But the story of a princess falling in love with her servant rang true.
Of course, Ironel knew my name, or the full name Jizania told me was mine. Claidissa Star. Jizania must also have promised the Law she’d give this name to the chosen child. But then, you see, she could just have made sure some child of around the right age, any old child, did get this name. And that just happened to be me. So my name doesn’t prove a thing.
And she’d seen I was nuts on Nemian. So I’d go on with the lie in any case, making him believe I was a princess and worthy of him.
I mean, do I strike you as princess material?
Heaven knows who I really am. Or who I really was—
Because now, I belong here, to the Tower. To the Law. To this place of stones, where their statues make even animals ugly.
And for this I gave up Argul. I made him think I didn’t care. And that ring he dropped – oh, it was for me. Of course it was. He was for me, and I was for him. And anyway, even if he was just being kind – I could have been out there, in the world, in the Waste-which-isn’t. Free. I could cry or laugh until I was sick. But instead, I’ll go on writing. There’s more to say. If you can stand it.
THE LAW: KEEPING
In the evening, I dined with Ironel.
Her apartment is sprawling. The size of the Travellers’ Rest. Maybe not quite.
The Wolf Tower, as Nemian
