Silence - By Kailin Gow Page 0,8

she could see the horns rising like cathedral spires from their foreheads. In the pools, Briony saw the flick of great fish tails, only for human heads and torsos to surface moments later to stare up at her.

By that point, Briony was too busy staring at what lay beyond the first hil s to worry about the attention. Towers stood against the skyline, high enough in some cases to pierce the lowest clouds.

Wal s ringed each tower, creating a courtyard around it while separating it from the rest. Or not quite separating it. Slender bridges of white marble stood between the turrets, connecting them in a delicate web that made the castle looked like it had been draped in lacework. To Briony, it was everything that a castle in a fairy tale place like this should have been.

Archer flew on towards it. As they got closer, Briony saw that there were flat roof areas or balconies on most of the towers, looking a little like helicopter landing pads might have on skyscrapers. Except that it wasn’t helicopters landing on these, as Briony found out when Archer circled one of the towers, swooped closer, and landed in an elegant spread of wings.

Even as Briony slid down from his back, Archer transformed once more into the amber-eyed young man he had been.

“Welcome to your father’s castle, Briony,” he said smiling. “Shal we go inside and see your tower?”

“My tower?” Briony looked at it with shock. “Al this is for me?”

Archer nodded. “When your Aunt Sophie came through and told us of you, the King had a tower set aside for your use. He knew you would come. Come on, I’l show you around.”

“I can hardly believe al this,” Briony said.

“It’s as real as I am,” Archer pointed out. “Now come on. I’l have to rush the tour as it is.”

Archer offered her his arm, and Briony surprised herself by taking it. He led her through opulent rooms, decorated with more wealth than Briony had seen in her life. “This is the bedroom, and here is the receiving room, and the solarium, and some quarters for your servants.”

“Servants?”

Archer seemed to enjoy Briony’s slight discomfort at that. “Oh, you’l need some servants.

Can’t have a princess without servants. Pages and butlers and maids and…”

“Archer.”

“Oh, al right. Now, Prince Vigor’s tower is over on the other side, while your father’s is in the center. I should probably take you straight to him. I know he’l want to see you. Just… try not to pay too much attention to the Prince, al right?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Oh, he probably just won’t be that happy to see you.”

“And wil the King?” Briony decided that she wouldn’t cal him her father. That stil felt too much like a slight to the man who had raised her as his own.

“Of course he wil ,” Archer promised. “Now come on. Everyone wil know we have arrived by now, and we wouldn’t want to keep them waiting.”

Chapter 4

The journey across the bridges between the towers was actual y scarier in its way than riding on Archer’s back had been. There, Briony had possessed no way to hold onto him, but she had stil felt safe. They had been flying, and Briony had felt that everything was under control. This, on the other hand, was just a long way up.

Archer, seeming to sense Briony’s discomfort, was quick to distract her, starting to talk about the buildings around them and why they were constructed in the way that they were.

“The towers are separate and wal ed off to make them easier to defend if they are ever attacked,”

he said. “You would have to take each courtyard and tower separately if you were trying to get in.”

“What about the bridges?” Briony asked, forcing herself to keep walking along the marble span as though there were nothing wrong at al .

“Partly, they’re to make it easy to get from place to place without having to go up and down a lot of stairs, but they’re also a protection. They’re like a marble web over the ground to slow down dragons and other flying creatures. We can land on the top levels, but if we want to go lower, we have to pick our way very careful y.”

That made some sense to Briony, although it did raise one or two obvious worries. Before this, she had thought that Palisor would be a place of peace, yet no one constructed castles this wel without at least some threat