famed Tower of Heaven at any moment, but the jungle’s canopy and the body of the rising mountain they’d been climbing had hidden it. Until now.
“This . . . this is not what I saw,” Orholam said.
Overwhelming all the terrestrial wonders of this lost city was a great tower, surely as wide as all seven towers of the Chromeria put together, including all the grounds, and much, much taller.
Perfectly symmetrical, and bafflingly, blindingly black, the untapering cylinder was stabbed in the heart of the island. A crater ridge rose around it, as if some angry god had impaled the world here and only the black haft of his spear jutted from the wound.
Nothing relieved the unearthly emptiness of that black except a thin, pearlescent ribbon, a trail, spiraling around the outside of the great megalith.
And if its base would have covered half of the entire island of Little Jasper, its height was something else entirely. It had to be taller than Ruic Head or any of the Red Cliffs.
Gavin said, “Orholam’s beard, pilgrims climbed that?”
Orholam had already recovered, and he just smiled at him like a fool.
“I have to climb that, don’t I?” Gavin asked.
“We,” Orholam said cheerily. “We get to climb that.”
Chapter 37
Karris twitched in her sleep. She couldn’t breathe.
She tried to snort. Nothing happened. No air entered her lungs.
Her eyes flew open. The room was pitch-black. There was nothing over her face, but as her tongue convulsed, no air flowed in.
She couldn’t swallow.
Her body was paralyzed from the neck down.
“Shhh,” a woman said. Soothing. “Shhh.”
The woman stepped closer. Teia. Karris jerked at the recognition.
“I’m letting go,” Teia whispered. “Be quiet now. You’ll feel tingling, and then you’ll be able to speak in a moment.”
Speak?! She couldn’t breathe!
Then her fingers tingled. Toes tingled. And rapidly, feeling returned to her body.
She gasped, then sat upright, her chest heaving.
“I brought you something,” Teia said.
Karris’s hair fell over her eyes, and she considered punching Teia in the throat. The goddam child, strangling her?! Who did she think she was? Was that paryl?
Teia pulled out a red leather-bound folio. She flipped the leather back for Karris to read the title page: ‘Being the Secret History of the Chromeria: Written for and by the Whites.’
By the Whites?
And then Karris saw that there were dozens of signatures below the title. The last one was Orea Pullawr’s, albeit a more florid hand than she’d had when she was young. The folio had been penned by Karris’s predecessors in office. All of them.
A note on the next page said, “Entrusted to your care on the understanding that you will add no untrue or deceptive word, nor bring the black to excise any words written herein. We trust you here with the unvarnished history of our empire. For Orholam loves the truth, and will bring all things to light in time, but not all things should be known by all people.”
A sheaf of loose papers was tucked in the back. Karris flipped to them.
They weren’t histories, but instead names, contacts, accounts with bankers: all the things Orea Pullawr had wanted Karris to have, and to know.
“Where did you get this?” Karris asked. Her heart was pounding, and she wasn’t sure now whether it was still from her fright or from excitement.
“From my master, who killed its previous owner and stole it.” This was one of the ways Teia tried to minimize the dangers of eavesdroppers: no names to prick ears.
“How did you get this away from him? Did you kill him?”
“He gave it to me.”
“Orholam Himself must have blinded him to its value.”
Teia snorted and shook her head as if Karris were a hopelessly clueless mom and she her teenage daughter.
“What is your problem?” Karris asked. Even her excitement about the folio couldn’t erase all her pique at the girl paralyzing her.
“Quiet!” Teia hissed. “My problem? First is that you’re gonna get me killed if you can’t even remember to whisper for five fucking minutes.”
Karris gritted her teeth. She hadn’t been that loud. Whispering now, she said, “You come and give me a gift like this, and then act like a spoiled child while you do it?”
Teia scoffed. “A child? A child?!” Now she wasn’t remembering to whisper.
“I have questions,” Karris said. Teia was a goddam child, but Karris wasn’t. It was on her to forgive and compensate for the shortcomings of those she’d demanded serve in such hard positions. She wasn’t being fair. “Please.” She offered this last genuinely apologetically.
Teia calmed, but still said, “I don’t have