“You think I’ll get into trouble,” I realized.
He nodded, then reached up and took my hand in his, and turned it, pushing up the sleeve of my dress to expose the rose mark on the inside of my wrist. He nodded as if seeing my rose confirmed something he’d expected to see. “I’m afraid you already are.”
Shocked, I straightened, pulling my arm away. He and Griff were guards, I knew that. They were taking me to . . . to a Lord Protector, I thought Griff had said. Somehow I had the feeling he wasn’t going to welcome me to the City. Still, we went on.
“Here we are,” Quirk said as we came around a corner.
Before us was a thick wall with a gate in it under a stone arch; beyond that was a huge, ugly, windowless brute of a building. I stopped short, and Griff bumped into me from behind.
“Sorry,” I heard him mumble.
I didn’t want to enter this place. “It looks like a prison,” I said.
“It’s not,” Quirk said reassuringly. “Griff, here, grew up in the citadel. It’s not a prison, is it, lad?”
Griff stepped up beside me. He was looking at the citadel, his face blank. “No,” he said, after a worrying moment.
Feeling not at all reassured, but seeing that I had no choice, I let them lead me through the gate, where two guards stopped us. Quirk went to talk with them, speaking in a low voice. The guards glanced at me, and then one of them nodded and hurried away across the puddled courtyard and into the citadel. Now that I’d come closer, I could see that its forbidding walls were stained with soot and though it had windows, they were only narrow slits. The rain grew heavier, and I shivered.
Griff, standing silent beside me, took my arm and pulled me under the stone archway so that I wouldn’t get any wetter.
“Thank you,” I said.
His only answer was a nod.
The rain dripped from the edge of the stone arch. Griff avoided looking at me. I huddled into my cloak and felt glad for the snug, warm, and, most of all, waterproof boots that Shoe had made for me. After a while, the guard who’d gone away came back with two other guards, a black-haired woman and a man with chiseled features. At the sight of them, Griff stiffened; he seemed watchful. There was more muttered discussion. Finally Quirk came over to us, rubbing his hands, as if to warm them. “Right,” he said, with a nod to Griff. “We’re to report with her to his office.” He glanced up at me. Every trace of a smile was gone from his face. “Come along, Rose.”
With a feeling of growing dread, I went with them, the other two guards following, across the rain-wet courtyard and into the citadel. It was almost as cold and damp inside as the streets had been. We went up a narrow stairway and along a passage. It was all made of gray stone, with no decorations, not even a rug on the floor. No wonder Griff looked so grim; he’d lived here all his life.
We came to a door that was banded with iron. I heard Griff take what sounded like a steadying breath; then he knocked.
“Come,” a muffled voice called from within.
We went in. The guards who’d been following closed the door behind us and stood by the wall, arms folded, alert. Griff glanced at them, then away.
It was a plain, stone room—what a surprise. Sitting at a desk piled with papers was an austere-looking older man in yet another gray uniform. He frowned and set down his pen. “I’ve received a rather garbled report,” he said sternly. “Clarify it now.”
“Griff and I were on guard at the City’s main gate,” Quirk began promptly, his voice even and formal, “and, we, ah, apprehended this girl.”
“You didn’t apprehend me,” I corrected. “I walked right up to you.”
“Yes, that’s strictly true,” Quirk said. Then he poked my arm. “Take your hood off, Rose, so he can have a look at you.”
I shook my head. “I thought you were taking me to the Lord Protector,” I said to him.
“I am the Lord Protector,” said the man behind the desk in a controlled, even voice.
“Oh.” I’d assumed he was some kind of clerk, given his inky fingers. “So you’re the one who rules the City?”
“I do not rule,” the Lord Protector said sharply. “I govern. My role is to protect the City from Story.” He pointed a bony finger at me. “Remove the hood, girl.”
I did as he’d ordered.
“Ah,” the Lord Protector said, rising to his feet. I was starting to get a good idea about what people were like by the way they reacted to the beauty. Quirk had been frankly appreciative, but he’d have been friendly even if I’d had a face like a lumpy potato. Tom from the village had been possessive. Griff, who was standing very stiff and silent beside me, hadn’t looked at me again after his initial astonishment.
The Lord Protector’s gray-eyed gaze washed over me like a cold wave, making me want to shiver. He examined me from head to foot, slowly, as if dissecting my parts and laying each one out on a table to be carefully assessed. “She came from outside the City, did she not?”
He hadn’t asked me, but I answered anyway. “I came from the Forest. Through the gate in the wall.”
The Lord Protector nodded, as if he’d expected my answer. “She is under a curse?”
After a silence, Quirk answered. “Griff thinks so.”
“Mm.” The Lord Protector sat down at his desk again. From under a stack of papers he pulled a book covered in brown leather, which he opened. A book, I thought wildly. So they did have stories here, despite what Quirk had told me. Then he picked up a pen and dipped it in an inkwell and wrote something on one of the book’s pages. Not stories, then. Notes. Assessments. “What is the nature of the curse, girl?”
I blinked. “I—I don’t know. I’ve always had it. Since I was a baby.”
“Indeed.” He flicked a glance at Griff. “Remove it.”
I wasn’t sure what they were talking about. “Remove my curse, you mean?” I asked.
The Lord Protector ignored me.
“Yes. Griff is a curse eater,” Quirk answered. “Curses are a device of Story, and Griff has been raised strictly to fight Story. So he has the power to break them.” He glanced at Griff. “How do you do it, lad?”
Griff’s only answer was an uneasy frown.
“He doesn’t know exactly how it works,” Quirk explained. “What happens, Rose, is that he’ll touch you, and the curse will rise in response to him, and then he’ll take it from you. It won’t hurt her, will it?” he asked Griff.
“I hope not,” he said in a low voice.
“It’s more likely to hurt him, really,” Quirk said to me.
I didn’t find that very reassuring. “But what if I don’t want my curse removed?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Quirk said, looking away. “Sir,” he said to the Lord Protector, “Griff’s still recovering from lifting the last curse. It’s too soon for him to remove another one.”
The Lord Protector waved a hand, as if brushing away a pesky fly. “Get on with it,” he ordered.
“But sir,” Quirk protested.
“She is a danger to the City,” the Lord Protector said. “You will remove the curse at once.”
Quirk gave a resigned shrug. “I’m afraid you don’t have any choice,” he said to me.
I glanced at the door. Even if I could get past the two guards, who were watching me avidly, there was still the citadel, and the winding streets of the City, and its wall, and the Forest beyond, which might not let me back in. I tried to take a step toward the door, but the two guards had come up behind me; they seized my arms. “I shouldn’t have come here,” I said aloud.
Griff had turned to face me. He raised his hands, which were shaking, I noticed, and placed them on each side of my head, the thumbs against my temples.
“It’s all right, Rose,” I heard Quirk’s voice say. “It’ll be over in a moment.”
“No, it isn’t all right,” I whispered. I gazed up at Griff’s face. It was very pale, and set. For just a moment, his eyes met mine—his eyes were gray, I found myself noting, and bleak—o
f course they were—and then they flinched away again. His lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. There was a roaring in my ears. The room spun.
And then papers from the Lord Protector’s desk were whirling around me and Griff; a wild wind battered at us; I could hear distant shouts. The guards holding me staggered, and released their grip on my arms. The wind’s roaring rose to a howl; for just a moment the entire room was plunged into impenetrable darkness; there was a flash of brilliant light and a feeling of immense pressure.
For just a moment, Griff and I were connected. For just that flash of a second, I knew him. It was almost as if something inside of me recognized something inside of him, apart from his bleakness and silence. And then it was gone.
Griff’s hands were jerked away from my head.
A sudden quiet fell. I blinked away the darkness. Papers settled like falling snowflakes around the room.
Griff was sprawled on the stone floor in front of me, eyes closed. A paper drifted down to land on his face, and I watched, hands clenched, until it moved with his breath—he was still alive. Both guards were braced against a wall as if they’d been blown there by the wind. They stared at me. The Lord Protector climbed from behind his desk, spared a cold glance for Griff, then bent to pick up his book.
“You all right, Rose?” Quirk asked, his voice shaky, but loud in the silence.
I nodded. The tie at the end of my braid had come off, and my hair straggled over my face. I brushed it out of the way to see better.
Quirk stepped past me and knelt beside the unconscious Griff. “Ah, lad,” I heard him mutter. He took the paper from Griff’s face and with his stubby fingers felt for a pulse at his neck. Finding one, he nodded and glanced up at me. “That’s quite a curse you’ve got.”
Griff’s eyes blinked open. He squinted, as if he was having trouble seeing. Had he felt the connection, too? I couldn’t tell. With Quirk’s help, he sat up. His face was whiter, even, than the papers that were scattered around the room.
From the desk came the Lord Protector’s cold voice. “Did you remove the curse?”
“I don’t feel any different than I did before,” I said.
“Report,” ordered the Lord Protector impatiently, as if I hadn’t spoken.
Griff climbed unsteadily to his feet. Quirk stood beside him and took his arm as if to brace him. “It’s a—” Griff stopped and cleared his throat, then took a shaking breath and continued. “It’s braided. Very strong.” He squinted at me. “I saw something. A . . . spindle?”
Spindle again. Shoe had said the same word as he was dying.
Griff shook his head. “I couldn’t—”
“You failed, then,” said the Lord Protector. I could hear the disdain in his voice.
Griff closed his eyes. Nodded.
“Best if I get him to the barracks so the physician can have a look at him,” Quirk said briskly.
“Yes, you are dismissed,” the Lord Protector said without looking up from his note-taking.
Quirk and Griff started toward the door, Griff with his eyes closed, Quirk guiding him. “Is he . . .” I gulped. “I didn’t hurt him, did I?”
“I’m all righ’,” Griff mumbled.
“Oh, sure you are,” Quirk said, with a wry smile. He glanced at me. “Likely he feels as if his head’s just been split open with an ax. Watch the doorframe here, lad,” he said to him, and they stepped out into the hallway.
The door closed behind them. Leaving me with the Lord Protector and his two guards.
CHAPTER
7
GRIFF AWOKE FROM A DREAM THAT SWIRLED WITH BLOOD-RED flowers and the luminously beautiful face of the girl named Rose. Along with her came a looming sense of dread—of danger—and a sound of distant thunder and . . . something else. When he opened his eyes, all was gray again and the headache lanced into him. Wincing, he sat up and pushed back the one thin blanket on his bed. The barrack was empty; the light that filtered in through the single slitted window was gray. Morning or evening, he wasn’t sure.
Stiffly he stood and pulled a clean uniform from the shelf over his bed. Pinned to the front of the tunic was a note written in Quirk’s spidery scrawl.
The L.P. wants to see you when you’re up.
He nodded. It was to be expected.
He found his father in his office, as usual, but had to stand waiting in the cold hallway for an hour before the Lord Protector had finished his other business and had time for Griff’s report. As the time passed, his headache ebbed enough that he noticed how hungry he was. While asleep he’d missed . . . breakfast? Dinner?
“You’re to go in now,” said a clerk emerging from the office, laden with papers.
Griff stepped inside.
The Lord Protector stood before the empty hearth with his hands clasped behind his back. “Ah.”
Griff was sure that he must look, as Quirk would say, like cold porridge, but he knew better than to expect any sign of concern from his father; for him to express such a thing would be weak and irrational.
From the time Griff was very young, the Lord Protector had been training him to live according to the austere laws of the City, to become the perfect Watcher, and perhaps, someday, his successor. In addition to his physical training, Griff had been taught to report, to analyze, to draw accurate conclusions. He’d always understood the necessity of all of this; he knew that his father had to set an example for the rest of the City. There could be no softness, no love, no wonder, no beauty. Those things were dangerous; they invited Story to rise again, to dominate the City and all its people. They couldn’t risk that.
Living up to the Lord Protector’s rigorous expectations was difficult. It was supposed to be difficult. But Griff had never made such a serious mistake before.
The Lord Protector paced before the empty hearth. Reaching the wall, he turned. “Report,” he rapped out.
“The girl’s curses were stronger than any I’ve encountered before,” Griff said.
“Curses?” his father demanded. “You didn’t mention before that there was more than one.”
Hadn’t he? He couldn’t remember. “She is under three curses.”
“And their nature?”
I was too busy having my head split open by an ax to notice, he wanted to say, but instead he kept his face blank. “I could not tell.”
“Something to do with a spindle, you said,” the Lord Protector noted.
He couldn’t remember that, either.
His father went to his desk and opened the book where he kept notes on all the elements of Story. Silently he read, then turned a page. “Ah, here it is. The spindle. It is a device from one of Story’s most powerful tales. All the spindles in the City were destroyed long ago to prevent that story from being retold again.” Closing the book, he pursed his lips. “You said the girl’s curses were braided?”
“Yes.” A silence indicated that Griff should continue. “Individually, the curses might be broken. Woven together as they are . . .” He shook his head.
“Are you making an excuse for your failure to lift the curses?” the Lord Protector asked sharply.
“No.” No excuses. Ever.
“So.” The Lord Protector took a few pacing steps before the hearth. “You failed to lift the curse. You failed to inspect the girl before bringing her here.”
Griff blinked. “Inspect her?” He could hardly bear to look at her; inspection would have been impossible.
“She was marked,” his father said. “Beyond the curses.”
The rose-shaped birthmark that Quirk had noticed. He should have mentioned it during the initial report.
“It is an old ruse of Story,” his father went on with unusual patience. “One we haven’t seen in the City since Story was last defeated. A person who is meant for a particularly significant role will have a birthmark of some kind so that he or she will be recognized, later, and Story’s plot allowed to continue. The girl’s Story-mark was here.” He turned his arm, pulled up the
gray sleeve of his uniform, and tapped the inside of his wrist. “A rose. It has been excised.”
The Lord Protector kept talking, something about a plan to repel yet another attempt by the Forest to infiltrate the cleared zone outside the City’s walls, but Griff couldn’t quite make sense of his words.
“Excised?” Griff interrupted.
“It is not your concern,” the Lord Protector said coldly. “Now, the girl said she came from the Forest.”
That information was incomplete. “She came through the Forest,” Griff corrected. “She said she’s from a village four days’ walk from here, beyond the boundary of the Forest.”
“She lied,” the Lord Protector pronounced. “The girl herself is likely a spy.” Before Griff could ask what he meant, he went on. “Beauty such as hers is not natural. She serves Story. The Forest brought her to the City to protect the world outside. A kind of quarantine.”
Griff shook his head. The girl had seemed completely and openly innocent to him. “I don’t think—” he began.
“I did not ask you to think,” said the Lord Protector sharply. “Only to obey. As a Watcher, you know that the City has been uneasy of late. Outside elements, subversions, attempts by Story’s Breakers to overthrow the rule of rationality.”
Griff nodded. The flower curse he’d removed from the young woman proved that Story was, yet again, attempting to rise. He was sure it was assisted by the storytelling Breakers, who had evidently brought in new people from outside the City to aid in their efforts. They were dangerous fools, the Breakers. Quirk had said they thought their simple tales could be a weapon in the fight against Story, but they were wrong—and so they served Story despite their own intentions.
“Very well,” his father continued. “That is all I need to know. As you go out, call in my guards. I shall have them imprison the girl.”