Chapter One: The Cost of a Miracle

The captain had promised to release Matilda when they reached the Tower. He had not promised to release her with dignity. She stood in his cabin, barefoot and trembling, while Captain Hadrien examined the contract lying on his desk. Her husband waited beside her, his hands clasped so tightly that his knuckles had turned white.

The cabin smelled of tobacco, seawater, and the captain's unwashed clothes.

A lantern swayed from its hook as the ship shifted beneath them. Each small movement set the shadows of the cabin furniture sliding across the planks, as though the room itself could not hold still long enough for judgment to be passed. Beyond the closed door, boots crossed the deck and ropes creaked against wet timber; ordinary shipboard sounds continued with a cruelty of their own.

Matilda hated that smell. It had settled into the seams of her clothing and the roots of her hair. Even when she closed her eyes, she could tell which part of the vessel she stood in by the stale smoke and sour dampness, and she knew that the memory of this particular room would outlast the voyage. She suspected she would hate it for the rest of her life.

"Well," Hadrien said, turning the final page, "it appears your debt has been satisfied."

Mauro exhaled. Mauro addressed the captain, relief audible beneath his careful politeness.

"Thank you, Captain."

Hadrien smiled before speaking.

"Don't thank me yet."

The cabin held the stale, close smell of ink, salt, and old sweat. Beyond its thin walls, the hull complained against the sea, a low groan that made the room seem less like an office than a compartment inside some enormous dying animal. Matilda felt her stomach tighten. The captain placed his pen beside the contract and leaned back in his chair.

"One final condition."

Mauro stared at him. Mauro kept his voice steady despite the sailor by the door.

"We fulfilled our agreement."

Hadrien answered with a question, drawing out the uncertainty.

"Did you?"

Mauro insisted, refusing to look away from the desk.

"Every day of it."

Hadrien delivered the warning almost pleasantly.

"Careful, Regalian."

The captain's voice remained conversational, but one of the sailors standing beside the door shifted his hand toward the club at his waist. Mauro fell silent. Hadrien turned his attention to Matilda before speaking.

"Show me your breasts."

The words seemed to empty the room of air. Matilda stared at him. Matilda could scarcely believe the demand she had heard.

"What?"

Hadrien made no attempt to soften his meaning.

"You heard me."

Her fingers curled against the fabric of her dress. The cloth was thin from washing and hard wear. She felt the weave bunch beneath her nails, a small resistance she could control when nothing else in the room seemed subject to her will. The captain tapped the contract. Hadrien indicated the contract with a deliberate tap of his finger.

"One last look before I sign."

Mauro stepped forward. Mauro refused before Matilda could answer.

"No."

The sailor struck him across the stomach with the end of his club. Mauro doubled over, gasping. He tried to catch his breath without making a sound, one hand braced against the desk's edge. Matilda knew the effort it cost him to remain upright before the man who held their freedom in a few sheets of paper.

Matilda instinctively moved toward him, but the captain raised one finger, breaking the silence.

"Ah. No touching until we're finished."

She stopped. Mauro struggled to straighten himself, then forced the words through his pain.

"You bastard—"

The sailor struck him again. This time he fell to his knees.

"Please," Matilda whispered.

Hadrien looked pleased. Hadrien seemed to savor the plea.

"That's better."

She had learned during the voyage that the captain enjoyed making people ask for things he had already decided to deny them. He particularly enjoyed making her ask. Matilda spoke carefully, fighting to keep her voice from breaking.

The paper lay between them like a blade set flat on a table. Matilda could see the wet shine of the ink and the faint indentation left by the captain’s pen; neither detail made the choice before her any less terrible.

"Please sign the contract."

Hadrien repeated his demand without raising his voice.

"Show me."

Matilda looked at Mauro. His face was pale. Blood glistened at the corner of his mouth. He shook his head. But they both knew what would happen if she refused. The captain could tear up the agreement. He could demand another week of service. He could have Mauro beaten. He could simply order them locked below the decks and sail away. There was no magistrate aboard the Merciful Dawn. No law that mattered. No one to whom she could appeal. Matilda slowly lifted the front of her dress.

Her arms seemed heavier than they should have been. She kept her gaze fixed upon a knot in the cabin wall, unwilling to give the captain the satisfaction of watching her search his face for mercy. She exposed her breasts, standing motionless while the captain inspected her with an expression of deliberate amusement.

The humiliation was worse because the act itself was so small. After everything that had happened during the voyage, after the nights spent in the captain's cabin and the sailors' quarters, after weeks of enduring men's demands because she and Mauro could not pay for passage, she had believed there was nothing left they could make her feel.

She had been wrong. Hadrien waited several seconds. Then he waved a hand.

"Enough."

Matilda lowered her dress. The captain signed. The motion took scarcely a moment. That was perhaps the worst part: all the waiting, fear, humiliation, and calculation reduced at last to a casual turn of the wrist. His pen scratched across the paper.

"There."

He sprinkled sand over the ink, shook it away, and held out the contract.

"Free people."

Mauro struggled to his feet. Matilda took the document before he could reach for it. She examined the signature. She had become so accustomed to deception that she expected the words to change before her eyes. They did not.

Their debt was discharged. Their passage was complete. The captain no longer had any contractual claim upon them. Hadrien watched her reading before speaking.

"You ought to be grateful."

Matilda folded the paper before speaking.

"I am grateful that we're leaving."

The captain chuckled.

"Same thing."

"No."

For the first time, his smile faltered. Matilda looked directly at him, breaking the silence.

"It isn't."

The sailor moved toward her. Hadrien raised his hand before speaking.

"Let her go."

Mauro took Matilda's arm. They walked toward the door. Behind them, the captain spoke again.

"One thing, girl."

Matilda stopped before speaking.

"When you find that Chalice of yours, perhaps you should wish for a little gratitude."

She did not turn around. She had imagined killing him many times during the voyage. Sometimes with a knife. Sometimes by pushing him overboard. Once she had imagined waiting until he was asleep and setting his cabin on fire.

It was the ordinary future that hurt most: mornings without fear, arguments about small things, the unremarkable privilege of having enough years to grow tired of one another. Now she imagined something simpler. She imagined him growing old. She imagined his hands trembling too badly to hold a pen.

She imagined him lying helpless in a bed, surrounded by people who remembered every cruel thing he had done. She hoped he would live long enough to become afraid. Then she left. The Merciful Dawn had carried fifteen slaves when it departed the Regalian coast.

At sea, the number had become a kind of dreadful arithmetic. Matilda had learned to recognize the scrape of shackles on the steps and the silence that followed when someone failed to answer the morning count. Only twelve remained. Matilda passed them on her way to the gangplank.

They were being assembled beside the forward hatch, shackled at the ankles and wrists. A sailor was counting them aloud. One. Two. Three. A young woman carried a child against her chest.

The infant's head lolled backward. Matilda slowed. The child was not moving. She looked at the woman's face. The woman stared straight ahead.

Her expression was empty. Matilda knew that expression. She had seen it in the small mirror hanging above the captain's washbasin. Mauro touched her shoulder, breaking the silence.

"Matilda."

She kept looking at the child.

"Matilda, we have to go."

The woman adjusted the infant's blanket. Its tiny arm slipped free. The hand was grey. Matilda felt her throat close. She wanted to help.

She wanted to ask whether the baby was alive. She wanted to take the child from its mother and find someone who could do something. But the sailors were watching. And Mauro was pulling her toward the gangplank. And the contract in her hand suddenly seemed terribly fragile.

She walked away. She would remember doing so. The Inverted Tower rose above the harbor, like a monument erected by something that had never understood the limitations of human ambition. It stood proud and arrogant, waiting for feeble men to enter its gaping mouth, devouring them.

Its upper reaches defeated the eye. Matilda tried to follow one vertical seam into the cloud cover, but the line vanished among balconies and buttresses too vast to belong to any familiar kind of building. The harbor below looked provisional beside it, a scatter of human efforts against an impossible wall. Matilda had expected a tower, she had not expected a world.

Its walls disappeared into the clouds, their immense surfaces interrupted by buttresses, balconies, arches, and openings large enough to swallow ships. Buildings clustered around its foundations. Roads passed beneath enormous stone gateways, and smoke drifted from settlements constructed against structures whose original purposes were impossible to determine.

The harbor was crowded, canvas awnings snapped in the wind, salt crusted the quay stones, and the smell of tar mingled with roasting food, wet wool, and horses waiting beside overloaded carts. Travelers kept glancing upward even as they argued over prices or hurried through the crush.

Regalian merchants shouted beside Dramurian soldiers. Northern sailors unloaded cargo from longships. Armed pilgrims pushed through groups of laborers, refugees, and adventurers. Above them all loomed the Tower. Matilda stepped onto the quay, the stone was cold beneath her bare feet. She looked down.

A small cut had opened across the ball of her right foot. She did not remember injuring herself. There had been so many minor pains during the voyage that she had stopped distinguishing between them. Mauro followed her down the gangplank. He carried their only bag.

Inside were two changes of clothes, a waterskin, a little money, and a small wooden horse. The horse had once belonged to their son. She remembered the worn place along its wooden back where his thumb had rubbed away the paint. Its smallness was unbearable: an entire life seemed to have contracted into something that could fit inside Mauro's bag.

Her throat tightened around the answer. Even the gentleness of Mauro’s question seemed dangerous; if she allowed herself to answer truthfully, she feared she would not be able to stop. Matilda could not bear to look at it. Not yet.

"Are you all right?" Mauro asked.

She looked at him. His left cheek was swollen from the sailor's blow.

"Are you?"

He touched his face.

"I've had worse."

She knew he meant to reassure her. Instead, she felt angry.

"You shouldn't have said anything."

Mauro stared before answering.

"He was humiliating you."

"He was always going to humiliate me," she retorted.

"I couldn't stand there and watch."

"You did stand there!" she yelled.

The words escaped before she could stop them. Mauro went very still. Matilda closed her eyes, tears began to form in the wells of her eyes. She wanted to take them back, but they were true.

And their truth was crueler than she had intended.

"I know," he said quietly.

She looked away. Around them, the harbor continued its business. A merchant argued over the price of flour. A soldier laughed. A child cried.

Nobody cared that a marriage was beginning to crack beside the water. Matilda reached for Mauro's hand. He took it. They walked toward the Tower.

Their joined hands swung between them without rhythm. Around them, other newcomers moved with the same uncertain purpose, carrying bedrolls and bundles as though ordinary preparations could make the extraordinary place ahead of them manageable. The first miracle occurred at a customs table.

Neither of them had yet found words for the dream that had brought them across the sea. The Lady in White had spoken of a Chalice waiting at the end of the Tower, but she had given them no map, no number of floors, and no promise that the end would be reached in a human lifetime. The same summons had drawn others here; what it meant remained a mystery.

A soldier wearing a dark red uniform stopped them beside a row of temporary wooden barriers. His flag bore the Imperial colors, and chest was displaying the Imperial Crest. Dramurians had moved into the Tower as soon as they possibly could have, and now it seemed as if they had a monopoly on entering and exiting the Tower. At least for now.

"Names and place of origin,” the soldier's gruff voice demanded.

Matilda answered automatically.

"Mauro and Matilda. Regalia."

The soldier wrote something in a ledger.

"Purpose of entry?"

"We're seeking the Chalice," Mauro said.

The soldier did not look up.

"Of course you are."

His accent was unmistakably Dramurian. Matilda recognized the heavy consonants and peculiar rhythm from conversations she had overheard aboard merchant vessels. Yet he was speaking Regal Common, perfect Regal Common at that. She glanced at Mauro.

He appeared equally confused. The soldier pushed a document toward them.

"Read this. Sign at the bottom."

Matilda looked at the paper. The letters were unfamiliar, they were not Regal Common. She had never studied this script, yet she understood every word.

The document warned of dangerous creatures, military restrictions, and the absence of guaranteed rescue beyond designated settlements. Matilda read it twice.

The characters held their places beneath her eyes, yet their meaning came without effort. It was a violation of everything she understood about language, as though someone had slipped a second memory into her skull. The words remained perfectly clear.

"How am I reading this?" she asked.

The soldier sighed.

"First time?"

She nodded.

"Everyone asks,” he said.

"But it's written in Dramurian."

"Yes."

"And you're speaking Regal Common."

"No," the soldier said. "I'm speaking Dramurian."

Matilda stared at him. He tapped the document.

"The Tower translates. Speech, writing, everything. You'll get used to it."

Mauro frowned, breaking the silence.

"You're telling me that you're speaking Dramurian right now?"

"That's what I said."

"But I hear Regal Common."

"Then Regal Common is what you hear."

The soldier leaned back, kicked up his feet, and sighed.

"Now sign, please. There are people waiting."

Matilda took the pen. Her hand trembled as she wrote her name. She had crossed an ocean in search of a miracle. She had not expected to encounter one before leaving the harbor. They met the soldier Éloïse Varenne beneath a ruined archway.

The arch's missing stones exposed a jagged inner core. Weeds grew in the joints, although no one could have said with certainty how old the structure was; the Tower itself had appeared less than a year ago, already bearing the scars and apparent antiquity of a forgotten civilization.

She was sitting on a broken stone step, cleaning blood from the edge of a short sword. Matilda noticed her uniform first. Dramurian. Military. The woman was young, perhaps in her late twenties, with short auburn hair and a narrow scar cutting through one eyebrow.

Her close-cropped hair made the line of her jaw look sharper. When she lifted her face toward the light, the scar briefly turned pale against the weathered skin around it, and her eyes moved from one stranger to the next with a soldier's practiced economy. A pack rested beside her. Her boots were muddy. There was dried blood beneath her fingernails.

Mauro approached cautiously before speaking.

"Excuse me."

Éloïse looked up.

"What?"

"We're looking for somewhere to stay."

"Then find an inn,” her voice coated in sarcasm.

"We don't know the city."

"Neither do I."

She returned to cleaning her sword. Mauro hesitated, breaking the silence.

"Are you with the imperial garrison?"

Éloïse stopped. For a moment, Matilda thought the woman might strike him. Then she sheathed the blade.

"Why?"

"We thought you might know where travelers are supposed to go,” he asked honestly.

Éloïse studied them. Her gaze moved from Mauro's swollen face to Matilda's bare feet.

"You've just arrived."

"Yes."

She studied them for a second.

"From Regalia?"

Mauro nodded. The air between them had acquired the brittle stillness that came before an argument. Matilda kept her hands close to her body and watched the soldier’s face for any sign that patience was running out. Éloïse exhaled through her nose.

"Wonderful."

Matilda stiffened.

"If we're bothering you-"

"You are.”

The woman rose to her feet. She was taller than Matilda had expected.

"There's a small settlement to your west, one further to the east as well. You'll find rooms there, if you have money."

"Thank you," Mauro said.

Éloïse looked at the sky before speaking.

"Don't travel after dark."

"We've heard that," Matilda replied.

"Then listen."

She picked up her pack.

"Whatever you think this place is, you're wrong."

Matilda watched her walk away. Mauro shook his head before speaking.

"Friendly."

"She's frightened," Matilda said.

He looked at her.

"How can you tell?"

Matilda watched the soldier disappear into the crowd before speaking.

"Because she keeps looking behind her."

Torsten Halvik was arguing with a priest when they encountered him. Torsten's irritation had the energetic quality of a man confronted by a question nobody could answer. He had come to study an anomaly without precedent, only to discover that the first people he met were already making confident claims about its origins.

The argument was taking place beside a weathered statue whose face had been deliberately chiseled away. Torsten was a broad-shouldered northern man with silver-blond hair and a beard beginning to grey. He wore a heavy traveling cloak despite the mild afternoon air. The priest was considerably younger. Both appeared furious.

"You cannot simply declare every inscription religious," Torsten said.

The priest folded his arms.

"And you cannot declare every religious inscription a historical curiosity."

"That is not what I said,” he argued.

"It is what you implied."

Torsten gestured toward the statue.

"You cannot possibly know who made this inscription!"

"You don't know that!” the priest shouted.

"I can read the inscription!"

"So can I!"

"Then read it properly!" Torsten shoved the priest.

Matilda slowed. Mauro looked at the two men before speaking.

"Should we-"

"No," Matilda said.

But Torsten had already noticed them.

"You there!"

Mauro stopped. Torsten pointed toward the statue before speaking.

"Would you read that inscription?"

Matilda glanced at the weathered stone. The shapes were sharp as scratches made by a knife point. Matilda traced one without touching the surface, afraid that the uncanny understanding might vanish if she blinked. The letters were strange, their shapes angular and unfamiliar.

Torsten watched Matilda read with open fascination. There were no established histories of the Tower for him to consult, no reliable catalogue of its languages or builders. Every mark was evidence, but evidence of what he could not yet say. Yet the meaning came to her immediately. She read aloud.

"'Let those who seek the heart descend without certainty, for certainty belongs only to the dead.'"

Torsten spread his arms triumphantly.

"There!"

The priest frowned.

"That proves nothing."

"It proves the inscription isn't a dedication to your god!"

The priest walked away, Torsten watched him with curiosity.

"Idiots," he muttered.

Then he turned toward Matilda.

"My apologies. Torsten Halvik."

"Mauro,” he shook his hand.

"Matilda."

"New arrivals?"

"Yes," Mauro said.

Torsten looked toward the Tower before answering.

"Then I advise you to abandon whatever expectations brought you here."

Matilda felt her shoulders tighten.

"We came for the Chalice."

"Of course, who doesn’t.”

He said it without mockery, which somehow made the words worse.

"Everyone comes for something."

"And you?" Matilda asked.

"Me?” He pointed to himself, “Answers.”

"To what?"

Torsten smiled faintly before speaking.

"That is precisely the difficulty."

The young woman at the fountain was completely naked. Water trickled over the basin's cracked lip and darkened the stone beneath her bare feet. She seemed more concerned with keeping the mouth of her waterskin beneath the stream than with the curious crowd gathering behind her. Matilda noticed her because everyone else had noticed her.

She stood beside a cracked stone basin, filling a waterskin from a narrow stream. Her long hair was streaked red and green, falling in tangled strands down her back. She wore no shoes. No cloak. No undergarments. Nothing.

Goosebumps covered her shoulders and arms in the cooling afternoon air. Her breasts moved naturally as she leaned over the fountain, and her nipples were visibly tightened by the cold. She had not shaved her armpits, legs, or pubic hair.

There was nothing theatrical in the way she moved. Her body responded to the chill and to the ordinary work of lifting water; she neither displayed herself for the onlookers nor altered her posture to appease them. Her unshaven skin and bare feet belonged to the same unadorned discipline as the satchel worn across her shoulder.

Matilda had seen naked women before. She had washed beside other women. She had assisted during childbirth. She had spent weeks aboard a ship where privacy was treated as a privilege rather than a right. Yet there was something startling about seeing a woman walking openly through a crowded settlement without any apparent embarrassment.

A group of young men stood nearby. One whispered something. Another laughed. The woman ignored them. Matilda watched her lift the waterskin.

"Is she mad?" Mauro whispered.

Torsten, who had accompanied them from the statue, glanced toward the fountain. No one seemed eager to speak above a murmur. The silence around the question had the quality of a room in which something dead had only just been discovered.

"No,” Torsten replied.

"You know her?"

"No. But I know what she is."

Matilda looked at him, breaking the silence.

"A druid?”

The naked woman turned.

"I can hear you."

Her voice reached Matilda in Regal Common, but with a strong, unfamiliar northern accent. The consonants had a firm, almost rolling quality, and her vowels carried a cadence unlike any Matilda had heard before. Torsten inclined his head.

"My apologies, miss.”

The woman approached. Up close, Matilda could see scratches along her calves and small bruises on her knees. Her bare feet were dirty, with calluses across the heels and soles. A thin scar crossed her left thigh. She carried a satchel over one shoulder. A short knife hung from its strap.

"I'm Florentine," she said, extending her hand.

Torsten took it and introduced himself. Mauro gave their names. Matilda remained silent. Florentine looked at her before speaking.

"You're staring.”

Matilda flushed.

"I-I'm sorry."

"Most people do,” she said, looking towards the floor.

"You're not cold?"

"Very."

"Then why don't you wear something?"

Florentine's expression changed. Not to anger, but annoyance.

"I'm Dallist."

Florentine's voice had the tired steadiness of someone accustomed to explaining the same thing to strangers. She glanced at the gathering spectators before turning her attention back to Matilda. Matilda waited. Florentine sighed.

Her shoulders sagged beneath the weight of yet another explanation. Her faith had always required endurance, but she had not expected every ordinary conversation to become a trial of it.

"A Ballist druid. We don't wear clothing."

"Ever?"

"Ever."

"Even in winter?"

"Even in winter."

Mauro looked incredulous before speaking.

"Wouldn't you freeze?"

"Sometimes we nearly do."

Florentine adjusted the satchel against her shoulder.

"Faith is not always comfortable."

Matilda glanced at the woman's bare feet before speaking.

"You must hurt yourself constantly."

"More often than I'd like."

As though to demonstrate the point, Florentine shifted her weight and winced. She lifted her right foot. A small splinter of stone had lodged in the sole.

"Wonderful," she muttered.

The small wound looked absurdly bright against the grime on her skin. It was scarcely an injury at all, yet Matilda found herself staring at it because blood, unlike the impossible things surrounding them, still obeyed familiar rules. She sat on the fountain's edge and removed it with her fingernails. A bead of blood appeared.

Matilda watched her press a thumb against the wound before speaking.

"Doesn't that make traveling dangerous?"

Florentine looked up before speaking.

"Traveling is dangerous."

She smiled faintly.

"At least I know which parts of me are vulnerable."

Matilda almost smiled back. Then she remembered the ship. She looked away.

They found Sabine in a makeshift infirmary. A narrow lane led to the old chapel, its stones slick with runoff from nearby washing troughs. Before Matilda reached the doorway, she heard coughing, the clink of instruments, and the low, strained murmur of people trying not to cry out.

The building had once been a Black Canvas chapel. Its altar had been removed, and the floor was covered with straw mattresses. A dozen injured travelers lay beneath blankets. The smell of blood and infection was thick enough to taste. Sabine was kneeling beside a man whose left hand had been badly burned.

She had dark curly hair tied behind her head and wore a stained apron over her dress. Several curls had escaped their binding and clung to her temples. Her sleeves were rolled above her elbows, exposing forearms marked by soap, old scratches, and the pressure of too many hours spent lifting injured bodies.

"Hold still," she told him.

The man screamed. Sabine continued cleaning the wound. Matilda stopped in the doorway. The patient's fingers were swollen and blistered. In places, the skin had split, exposing raw tissue beneath.

"What happened?" Mauro asked.

Sabine glanced up before answering.

"Slime."

The word silenced them. She returned to her work.

"First floor. Eastern quarter. He thought he could outrun one."

The man groaned. Sabine wrapped his hand.

"You're fortunate," she told him.

He stared at her.

"Fortunate?"

"You still have a hand."

She rose and approached the newcomers.

"Are any of you injured?"

Matilda looked down at her feet, breaking the silence.

"Only a little."

Sabine noticed the blood immediately.

"Sit."

"It's nothing."

"Sit."

Matilda obeyed. Sabine examined the cut beneath her foot before answering.

"How long have you been walking barefoot?"

"Several days."

"Why?"

Matilda hesitated. Matilda glanced down before she answered, painfully aware of the stone beneath her feet and of how quickly the ground had worn them raw before answering.

"I lost my shoes."

Sabine looked at her. Something in her expression softened.

"All right."

She washed the wound. Matilda winced.

"Sorry," Sabine said.

She continued working.

"Where are you from?"

"Regalia."

"And you're here for the Chalice?"

Matilda nodded. Sabine did not ask why. For that, Matilda was grateful. By evening, the six travelers had gathered beneath the same stone arcade.

The daylight narrowed between the columns. Farther down the street, merchants lowered their shutters with increasing haste, and people who had seemed unhurried an hour earlier began to move as though an invisible deadline had been announced. It had happened almost accidentally. Mauro and Matilda had been unable to afford a room.

Torsten had offered to share his provisions. Florentine had followed them after learning that the eastern quarter was dangerous after sunset. Sabine had come to check Matilda's foot. Éloïse appeared shortly before dusk, carrying a bundle of firewood. She stopped when she saw the group.

"You again."

Mauro looked up.

"Good evening."

Éloïse stared at him.

"Are you planning to sleep here?"

"We haven't found anywhere else."

She looked toward the street. Then toward the darkening sky.

"Idiots."

She dropped the firewood.

"Help me barricade the entrance."

Torsten stood before speaking.

"Is that necessary?"

"Yes."

Florentine looked up from her satchel before speaking.

"What's coming?"

Éloïse drew her sword.

"Slimes."

The word settled over the group. Mauro began moving stones toward the archway. Torsten helped him. Sabine gathered the remaining supplies. Florentine tightened the strap of her satchel and examined the knife hanging from it.

Matilda sat beside the fire, watching the shadows lengthen. She had never been so tired. Her body ached. Her feet throbbed. Her husband had barely spoken to her since their argument at the harbor.

And somewhere inside the enormous structure surrounding them was a Chalice that might restore their son to life. The imagined warmth vanished as soon as she opened her eyes. What remained was cold stone, the distant scrape of strangers moving in the dark, and the terrible emptiness where a child’s weight should have been. She closed her eyes.

For a moment, she imagined him beside her. She imagined his little hand resting on her knee. She imagined his voice. Mama. Her eyes filled with tears.

Then someone screamed outside. The sound tore across the arcade so abruptly that Matilda felt it in her chest before she understood it as a human voice. Somewhere beyond the columns, running footsteps slapped against stone and stopped. The first scream came from the street beyond the arcade. The second came from much closer. Éloïse rose immediately.

"Put out the fire."

Mauro stared.

"What?"

"Now!"

Torsten kicked dirt over the flames. Darkness rushed into the arcade. Matilda heard something moving beyond the columns. A wet, dragging sound. Florentine shifted beside her.

Her bare feet scraped against the stone.

"What's that?"

Éloïse did not answer. A figure emerged from the darkness. A man. He wore a plain dark coat and carried a lantern. His hair was neatly combed.

His expression was calm. Almost cheerful.

"Good evening," he said.

Nobody answered. The stranger looked at the barricade.

"You've chosen a rather unfortunate place to spend the night."

Éloïse raised her sword before speaking.

"Identify yourself."

The man smiled.

"Pascal,” his voice was soft.

He looked around the group.

"May I come in?"

Behind him, something scraped against the stones. Éloïse's expression hardened.

"Move."

Pascal stepped aside. A pale, translucent mass slid into the lantern light. The lantern flame shivered within its glass. As the creature advanced, the light entered its body and broke into murky green layers, illuminating suspended fragments that should never have moved together. It was larger than a man. Fragments of bone floated within its body.

A human skull turned slowly beneath its surface, its jaw hanging open. Matilda recoiled. Mauro seized her arm. Florentine whispered something under her breath. Sabine reached for her medical bag.

Torsten stared at the creature with horrified fascination. Éloïse advanced. Pascal’s expression changed with exquisite restraint. He could feel fear passing through the others like a fever, and the effort of keeping his own face properly arranged was almost pleasurable. Pascal watched her. His smile faded.

Not because he was frightened. Because he was disappointed. He had been hoping to spend a little more time observing the strangers before deciding which of them might be easiest to kill. The young healer, perhaps. She seemed trusting.

Or the Regalian woman. She looked exhausted enough to fall asleep standing. He had not killed anyone since the soldiers threw him into the Tower. The absence had begun to irritate him, but now was not the time.

The slime surged forward. Its weight made a sound like a heavy sack of wet grain dropped onto stone, but it flowed outward rather than settling. Éloïse felt the change in the air as it rushed past her knees. Éloïse shouted.

"Back!"

Pascal drew his knife. Matilda, who had crossed an ocean to bring her son back from the dead, found herself wondering whether she would survive her first night in the Inverted Tower.