City of Dragons (Rain Wild Chronicles #3)

City of Dragons (Rain Wild Chronicles #3) Page 61

As Alise continued to climb the winding stair she encountered more locked doors, one at each brief landing. She tried every door, bracing herself whenever she touched the metal handles with the small insets of black stone. Each time, it was like a strike of lightning that briefly burned an image of activity and life into her eyes before she snatched her hand back and restored the tower to silence and gloom. At each landing, the stairs grew narrower and steeper.

Then abruptly she climbed up and into a much larger chamber than she had expected. The top of the tower was like the cap of a mushroom on a stem and domed with a thick glass ceiling. It had begun to rain again, and the rain ran down the grimy glass in tiny rivulets as if she looked up at the bellies of snakes. The walls of this domed chamber were made of alternating panels of glass and stone. One, she saw to her shock, was broken. She walked hesitantly around a collapsed table in the middle of the room. As she drew closer, she scowled. Someone had started a fire in the room! And the window had been broken deliberately: the glass shards were both on the floor and also on the parapet that ran around the outer edges of the tower. There was a clear handprint in the soot on the wall beside the window.

Outrage flooded her. What had Rapskal been thinking? For he was the most likely culprit. He had spent more time in the city than anyone, had been the most curious to explore it, and was the only keeper she could think of who would be so impulsive as to do such a thing simply so he could lean out and have an unimpeded view of the city.

It was the same temptation that called her now. She leaned out briefly to confirm what she already knew. The sun was going down, and the rain had returned. Then, her heart in her mouth, she ventured out past the jagged shards that still clung in the framework and onto the parapet. A chill wind tugged at her, and broken glass gritted under her feet. The walkway that encircled the tower was narrow, and the railing that edged it was ridiculously low.

She kept close to the wall as she circled the tower cautiously, peering through the rain at the city and its surroundings. Mist and oncoming darkness frustrated her. The outflung city was a huddle of buildings against the dim land. Across the shining black river, she could see sparks of light from the keepers’ settlement, but grand Kelsingra slept in darkness. She had almost completed her circuit when she saw the narrow gate set in the railing. Heart in her mouth, she forced herself to step to the edge and look down. Yes. The gate gave onto a ladder that descended to another encircling balcony. She divined their purpose at once. Access for cleaning the windows. She gripped the railing in both hands and leaned out. The ladder went down several stories; the locked chambers that she had passed on her climb had windows. If it had been a dry bright day, she would have risked going down to see if she could enter the locked rooms that way. But alone and in the wet wind and with the light fleeing was not the time for her to risk a fall. She squeezed back into the tower room and stood blinking raindrops off her lashes.

The pile of rubble in the middle of the room claimed her attention. She crouched down to peer at it. There had been a large round table, and it had collapsed. But there had been something on the table. She stared at it for a time before she made out what it was. It was a model of a city, of this city! Here was the river harbor and here the docks, a bit degraded where the rain had driven in through the broken pane. But the rest of the model was remarkably intact. The tower she was in seemed to also be in the center of the city as it was portrayed, making the panels of glass the corresponding viewpoints to the map itself.

If only she had a torch! The light was going too quickly. She would have to come back here first thing tomorrow and bring something to draw on. And this wondrous map of the city had to be preserved somehow! Rapskal’s careless vandalism had put this precious artifact in danger. She’d have to speak to him tonight, to be sure he understood the damage he had done. She only hoped he hadn’t been so destructive elsewhere. Whatever had he been thinking?

She rose with a heartfelt sigh, reluctant to leave the wondrous map but equally reluctant to face finding her way back down the stairs in the gathering darkness. A final glance at the map as she left the room made her halt. Her breath caught in her throat. A bridge? There was a bridge over the river? But there couldn’t be! No one could construct a bridge that long over such a raging torrent. Yet there it was, a tiny model of a black bridge spanning the wide river. She oriented herself and once more ventured out onto the rain-slippery parapet. She peered through mist and rain and saw nothing. Likely it had disintegrated long ago.

She returned to the tower room and began her long descent of the steps. Going down the stairs now was like descending into a well. She managed the first flight before the darkness defeated her and she was forced to let her hand trail the black wall beside her. To her astonishment, instead of the mere support she had sought, her touch woke the tower to light, for her fingers had found a jidzin strip set into the wall just above the banister. The light raced ahead of her, not bright but certainly preferable to the darkness and enough to guide her feet. There were fewer Elderling memory-ghosts on the stairs, and those she saw carried brooms and dusters. Once, she saw a yellow-robed official with some sort of shoulder decorations to indicate his importance emerge from one of the locked doors. He carried an armful of scrolls and moved ponderously as he trudged down the stairs. It took her two flights of steps before she had the courage to push through the insubstantial vision and hurry past him. She glanced back up at him, and his preoccupied scowl ignored her as if she were the ghost.