wondered that he didn’t clean it, but assumed he knew what he was doing. “None of us are free,” he said.
Chapter Eighteen
Two weeks later, Nate stumbled into the Seneschal on the front steps. Literally. He’d been in the tower nearly every day; Judah was starving for the experiences she found in his memories, insatiable. The blood loss he could deal with, but untrained as she was, she left his head such a wreck that he could barely find his way back to the manor, where Derie waited to put him back together. “Making progress?” the Seneschal said.
Years ago, Nate had slept with a village girl named Anneka beneath a wagon, lying on soft grass sprinkled with tiny ugly flowers that released all the perfume of heaven when crushed by their bodies. Had his life not already been spoken for he might have stayed with her, married her, spent his life raising goats and chickens and lovely children with his eyes and her beautiful skin; but he belonged to the Slonimi, so he’d had only that one sublime night. Judah loved his memories of Anneka. She returned to them over and over again. Now the smell of the flowers was strong in Nate’s nostrils and he could feel the wagon above him, comforting and familiar. Both were more real than the man standing in front of him. With great effort, he said, “Enough.”
“Is she coming down?” the Seneschal persisted.
Nate’s lips were dry. He resisted the urge to lick them. “Eventually.”
“Sooner rather than later.” It was a command.
Nate flexed his wrist so his springknife leapt out of its casing and buried the blade in the man’s eye. Just like that bandit on the road, after they’d passed through the Barriers. Blood and fluid running warm over his hand.
He closed his eyes. Gathered himself. Opened them again. The real Seneschal stood in front of him, eyes intact. Nate wasn’t even wearing his springknife. He never did when he went to see Judah, because flashes like that hit him not infrequently on his way home, and he couldn’t risk trouble.
“This tower situation is very frustrating,” the Seneschal said. Nate had shown him the broken place in the stairs. None of the Seneschal’s guards, who were all great hulking men, could have navigated the narrow chunks of protruding rock without planks and ropes and a great deal of effort. The Seneschal’s proposal to Judah had been a calculated move, not a romantic one; when winter came, the man had explained to Nate, the House would grow cold, and Judah would remember that he had offered her kindness and a choice. Both false, of course—all of the Seneschal’s plans ended with Judah in a guildhall, being experimented on by the Nali chieftain—but having his men build ramps up the tower to drag Judah down by force would show the Seneschal’s cards long before the gray man intended.
They had come to the door of the Safe Passage. “I wish I understood how you make it up those stairs so easily,” the Seneschal said, pausing to take out the huge ring of keys that would unlock the Passage’s maze of doors. “You must have been raised by mountain goats.”
“I’m just careful,” Nate said.
It was a lie. Nate lied to the Seneschal a great deal—he would have said anything to get inside the Wall to Judah—but even if he was in the habit of telling the man the truth, he didn’t think he would have told this truth: that the forces bound into the tower knew him, recognized him, and let him pass; that the broken stone steps grew to meet his feet, and the spaces between them shrank to match his stride. He hadn’t known what would happen when the Seneschal insisted on seeing the broken place for himself, and watching Nate cross the gap. From Nate’s view, the stones had swelled, the spaces had shrunk. From the Seneschal’s view, apparently, everything had looked utterly normal.
“I want her out of that tower, magus,” the Seneschal said, unlocking another door, standing aside to let Nate pass, and locking it behind him. “Out of the tower and cooperative. That’s why I let you in and out, because you told me you could get her to come willingly, and do as I tell her for once in her life.”
Another of Nate’s lies. Nobody could ever make Judah do what she didn’t want to do. The oiled rushes were unpleasant under his feet and the smell made his already-queasy stomach feel even