They have a monopoly, and can charge whatever they like for their goods and foodstuffs.”
“What about the other magisters?” Moon followed her. Ardan headed toward the far end of the room, past the pool and the fountain, where a set of stairs went up to a gallery along the back wall. There was an archway up there, surrounded by elaborate scrollwork carving, an entrance to another grand hall. Guards were posted, but Moon had assumed they were there to keep Ardan’s involuntary guests from slipping away.
“Several of them have died off from old age, from what we’ve heard. Ardan is the most powerful.” Karsis sounded bitter about it. “He seems to be instrumental in keeping the beast from sinking, or shaking the city off.”
“But he can’t put it to sleep again, or send it back to the coast of Emriat-terrene.”
Karsis made a faint derisive noise. “Why would he bother? He has everything here just as he likes.”
Ardan climbed the stairs to the gallery and vanished through the archway. “What’s up there?”
She sighed. “Another exhibit hall full of his acquisitions. Those are apparently more precious to him than the ones downstairs.” Her tone turned contemptuous. “I suppose you’ll be helping him to add to it with this ruin of yours.” She hesitated. “He will kill you, you know.”
Moon’s attention was on that tempting archway, so carefully guarded. He turned to her abruptly. “Is that where he keeps the seed? The wooden thing you found?” His expression must have been too intense because she fell back a step.
Sounding uncertain for once, she said, “I don’t know where he keeps it.” She recovered quickly and lifted her chin. “Why do you want to know?”
Yes, why do you want to know? Idiot. He said, “I wanted to see it, make sure it’s the same as what we found in the ruin.”
“I see.” She studied him a moment. “What do you know about these seeds?”
At that point, Esom arrived, saving Moon from an answer that probably would have been suspiciously inadequate. Esom took Karsis’ arm firmly and said, “Karsis, Negal needs to speak to you.”
“What? Oh—” Esom tugged and Karsis went reluctantly. Moon took the opportunity to vanish into the crowd. He had some planning to do.
Ardan’s withdrawal must have been a signal, because it wasn’t much later in the evening when the invited guests began to leave, and Bialin and his guards herded Moon and Negal’s group back down to their quarters. As the stairwell doors were securely locked behind them, Negal turned to Moon and said, low-voiced, “Guards walk the halls at odd intervals. We are not locked in our rooms, but movement is discouraged.”
That was good to know, and unexpectedly generous of Negal. Moon didn’t want to feel like he owed these people anything, but he managed to thank Negal without irony.
Orlis and Karsis were already moving away down the hall, both seeming tired and dispirited. But as Negal went to join them, Esom stopped Moon and said, with stiff aggression, “And in case you found yourself curious, Karsis sleeps in my room.”
Moon had no idea why he was being given this information. Hoping to discourage further disclosures, he said, deadpan, “That’s nice for you.”
Esom stiffened even further. Through gritted teeth, he said, “She’s my sister.”
It occurred to Moon, belatedly, that Esom was trying to warn him off approaching Karsis for sex. Groundlings, Moon thought in sour disgust. It must have shown on his face, because Esom’s expression turned defensive and confused. Moon just walked away toward his room.
He closed the door and sat down on the bed, wincing at the faint odor of scent-concealing oils that came up from the blankets. After all the smothering perfumes upstairs, his sense of smell was next to useless. He pulled his boots off, lay down, and waited.
Listening to the groundlings’ conversations upstairs had netted a little more information. Ardan was more powerful than Moon had thought, and everyone there had been afraid of him, hating him, or courting him, or a combination of all three. Moon would have thought a magister’s business was to make magic, but Ardan seemed intimately concerned with the working of the city and its trade concerns.
After a time, he heard the others stop moving around. Various doors shut. He hadn’t noticed earlier how dead the tower was to sound; he could be the only one alive in it. He thought of the colony tree, how despite its size you could feel it move and breathe and rustle, sense the