The Tower of the Forgotten by Sara M. Harvey Page B

are all at
cross-purposes. Even the demon grows restive. Each seems to think that they can
outsmart the others in this scheme."
    "We
should include ourselves in that—the thinking we can
outsmart everyone else aspect, anyway."
    "Yes,
but we are all on the same page, mostly." She eyed Imogen’s bloody markings. "Have you done enough of
that for now? We should not leave Nigel to his own doings out there for long."
    Imogen
nodded and buttoned her blouse again, smearing almost-dried blood across the
fabric. In the main room, Nigel had once more disappeared from view. They found
him on the floor below, gazing out a window.
    What
they saw had once been a garden, hidden safe and beautiful in the center of
Salus, one of the cities of the dead. But before them stretched out a landscape
made of interlocking cogs and wheels, some metal, some stone, and some looking
frightfully like bone. The rhythmic grinding sounded like both heartbeat and
respiration, and they could see the faint glow racing up the tower’s walls above them like a pulse.
    It
quickened, incrementally, almost too subtle to notice as it happened. The
gleaming lights flooded the dark sky above. Not just dark, but blank, Portia
realized. There, in the margins of the worlds, she could see familiar
constellations above her—the archer, the great
bear, the dragon—as if viewing them
through a sheer mesh fabric, but she could also see the strange shifting sky
lights of Salus, borealis-like and as fitful as lightning. They overlaid one
another in places where the two worlds met. But gaps in the barrier were
forming, tearing at the edges of the great rent that the tower had made for
itself.
    The
tower shuddered and Nigel frowned. "You wouldn’t be interfering with the plan, would you, Portia?"
    He
turned and she saw, too late, the black stiletto in his hand, the same one
Imogen had concealed in her flesh and used to divide Nigel from Kanika.
    He
looked at her then, frankly and directly, gazing straight into her eyes. It was
something, Portia realized, that she did not think he had ever done before. Nigel’s interactions were primarily of the sidelong variety, the
not-quite-making-eye-contact sort that drove Portia and everyone else in
Penemue mad. Nigel always comported himself like a liar, and this sudden,
honest connection stilled her tongue in her mouth.
    In
the space between heartbeats, he whipped his right arm around and slammed the
hell-blade stiletto into her chest.
    "You’re not going to understand, but one of you has to die, maybe
both. I don’t know yet."
    The
pain surprised her, lancing through her body in a sudden wave, followed by an
ebbing sense of coldness. The chill emanated from the stick of metal and
rendered her immobile. Her left arm quickly grew numb. Her chest spasmed and
her lungs contracted painfully, expelling her breath in a plume of bloody
sputum.
    Imogen
screamed, a chilling sound that Portia thought could have woken the dead. But
it really was not helping her. Her eyelids fluttered, then slowed into a series
of long, slow blinks before sagging half-closed. Her knees gave way in a slow,
melting sensation, and she droped to the floor. Paralyzed, she lay quiet and
peaceful; within her, the panic subsided as her heart flagged in its beating.
She floated in an icy prison of her own body.
    She
struggled to roll over onto her side, but her body would not respond. With her
right hand, she managed to jerkily pluck at the wound, but the stiletto had
sunk below her skin, caught between ribs and muscle. Blood darkened the silk of
her tunic.
    Imogen
struggled in Nigel’s grasp. He snatched the
axe up from the floor and brought its point under her chin. She pushed it aside
and fell to her knees, trying to dig the metal out of her beloved’s chest.
    "Well, that ought to keep you busy
enough for the time being. The both of you." He set the axe across
his shoulders and strolled, whistling, out of the room.
    "Portia, I’m here, I’m here,