the staircase, spiraling into the dim reaches of the tower; hesitated only a moment, and began to climb.
The slit windows let in just enough light for her to see her feet and the edge. When she came to the crumbled place, the stones protruding from the wall seemed barely wide enough to hold a foot. The last time she’d been here, she and Gavin had stood on the edge and he’d said, Dare you, and she’d said, No, thanks, I plan to live to see adulthood. Then a rock had fallen. He’d laughed. She’d laughed. The truth was that neither of them particularly wanted to climb the tower; they’d climbed other towers, and found nothing but old furniture and dust. They’d been looking for an adventure, and towers were boring. Not an adventure at all.
Now, though: now, she wanted to. Because nobody else would. Gavin was too heavy and Elly was too scared and Theron never came to the workshop anymore. She would be left alone. She would be away.
She put one foot out, and then another, balancing across the gap with each foot on a stub of stone. The gap was smaller than she’d thought. The stone held her weight without even a wobble. She reached out for the next stub with her toe and tested, as careful as she had ever been in her life, to see if it would break and clatter to the floor below. It didn’t. Neither did the next one. The step after that was across an uncomfortable-looking span, onto a triangular stone with its bottom half flaked off. If it broke she would fall. There was nothing to hold on to, nothing to grab. She shifted her weight. Lifted her back foot. Swung her leg carefully—ever so carefully—forward.
But either the piece wasn’t as small as she thought, or wasn’t as far away as she thought, because the uncomfortable span was not so uncomfortable at all. Neither was the next. Her hand clung to the tower’s curved inner wall, finding nooks and holes to curl her fingers into, and each step was easier than the one before that. The magus had said the stairs would be passable, if someone were determined enough, and she was: determined enough to keep climbing as the stairs wound up and up, around and around, higher than seemed possible. There were more broken places, but she navigated them as easily as she had the first. The teeth always turned out to be larger and more secure than they first appeared, the spaces between them easily crossed. Up and up, around and around. The air changed; it became fresher and colder, as if a window were open. She didn’t even feel tired. In fact, she felt—was it elated? Was that the word?
Then, suddenly, there were no more steps. She stood on a small stone landing, facing a wooden door. The lock had been broken—annihilated, really, there was nothing but a jagged hole in the wood—and the door hung open. She frowned; the stairs would probably be enough of a deterrent, but she wished the lock worked, too. The door pushed open stiffly on corroded hinges. She stepped through.
And immediately understood why the air felt so fresh and cold. Half the tower looked like the workshop below, lined with shelves and cupboards. Several small tables dotted the room, none upright; a high stool and a settee seemed to have fared better, although the settee had one broken foot and listed at an awkward angle. Scraps of brown paper crumbled amid piles of dead leaves and bundles of feathers, twigs and eggshells that might once have been birds’ nests. Spiderwebs and wasp hives, abandoned for winter, sprouted from the shelves. Against one toppled-over table, the leaves and detritus had broken down enough that a small tree had managed to take root. It was frail, but surviving. Nobody had been up here in a very long time.
The other half of the tower was...gone. There was no rubble, no debris; it was as if an enormous mouth had bitten the top of it away, leaving neat, smooth edges. The floor was mostly intact, a nearly perfect circle, but only half of the roof remained and at least a third of the wall was missing. Beyond was open air, the ripe gold that presaged sunset.
She walked to the edge of the broken place. The parti-colored roof of the House spread out below her; off to the left, the sun glinted on what was surely the