Classroom conditions improved after Esor asked for Corvin’s leniency. Keroterase crowded the library, but once Esor stepped into his classroom, he found only Ilare and her commander.

  “I’ve been ordered to limit keroterase inside this room,” said Samej.

  Ilare clapped her hands. “Wonderful. Now we can get work done! Don’t you think that’s wonderful, Samej?”

  The commander’s gaze burned silently through Esor.

  Samej was more vigilant to compensate for the emptied room. His hand seldom left his belt knife. He hovered at Esor’s back, as if waiting for an excuse to slit the teacher’s throat.

  This scrutiny did nothing to damage Esor’s reinvigorated enthusiasm for teaching. Esor lit the heating elements, unpacked an assortment of herbs, and pulled books off the shelves.

  “How queer that my brothers relaxed their policy on my supervision,” Ilare mused aloud. She performed an infusion on the alchemy table, using notes written in her own hand. Flighty as she was, she learned quickly, and she had already written a novel’s worth of pages about the lessons.

  Esor stood nearby with only Samej between them. At least Esor could see her hands. “I asked the Lord Mayor for help.”

  “When did you speak to him?” asked Ilare.

  “We had dinner on Biltane.”

  “You ate with Corvin?” She drooped. “I never eat with him.”

  Ilare seemed distracted for the remainder of the lesson, incapable of performing even the simplest procedures. Esor did not press on her performance.

  After the lesson, he bade she return prepared on the morrow.

  Ilare replied, “Will you ask my brother to let me attend church?” At Esor’s confusion, she elaborated. “The church in ?elasdur has fallen into disuse, but I would see it restored for my spiritual comfort. I cannot make this request directly; I’ve not spoken with Corvin in months. He’s always in Osurmite, guiding battles against the Dwarrow, his attention far from ?elasdur. If you passed along the message, I would be indebted—deeply so.”

  “I’ll broach the subject if opportunity presents itself.”

  “Thank you, Master Esor.” Ilare sang, ?I have been so lonely.? It whispered from her like a brook rippling between stones.

  Esor pretended not to hear or understand, bowing his farewell.

  After she left, he stood before windows shaded by growing thunderheads. Condensation gathered inside the glass and ran in rivulets to the sill. He widened the lantern’s shutter so that he would not be alone with the shadow. “A church in ?elasdur,” he murmured.

  ~

  THE PATRICIAN’S LIBRARY was sparse on matters specific to the xilcadis. “The Great Wave destroyed much of the original collection,” the librarian explained. “I’ve been rebuilding it a thousand years, but many books can never be replaced.”

  “Nobody has recreated maps of the palace?” asked Esor.

  “What’s the benefit?” Medista asked.

  “Such information would help maintain the estate. Or help its residents find their way from room to room,” he said. Medista’s obvious annoyance made Esor think he had said something ridiculous, but he wasn’t certain what. “Then do you know where I might find an abandoned church in the xilcadis?”

  “The tower was built by those who came before the Republic. They didn’t have language like we do. They didn’t draw maps. They got around the world-tree using symbolic signposts.”

  “You mean, the runic marks on the statues? You think I could follow those to find the church?”

  Medista sipped her tea wordlessly and stared at him until he left.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Esor searched his personal collection for information on symbolism and runes. Every book felt heavier than the last, their covers fraying and pages delicate. Previous employers had gifted most to him. The old books had no practical value: outdated almanacs, reference books, and other ephemera that had been forgotten in the basements of Great Houses. They contained many symbols that meant nothing to Esor. None aligned with those upon ?elasdur’s statues.

  He looked through an atlas of Xaxen Tuv, the Land Beyond Chaos where Emperor Xenētos ruled all Republics. Esor read older translations of the Holy Chorus, too. But nowhere did Esor find anything that related to the pattern of symbols.

  He did not mean to sleep, but his eyes were heavy, and he had long avoided slumber. When he blinked, symbols swirled behind his eyelids. Crosses and hatches. Jagged lines intersecting with curves. Musical annotations. The sigils of Spirits.

  Esor could not tell the difference between his open eyes looking at a page and the dream. He tumbled into dark, musty caverns as his head drooped.

  The wind sucked him deeper. It was warmer than ?elasdur ever became, even on the hottest day. The distorted Heartbox hung before him, gleaming in darkness, its lumpy shape a mockery of the flawless cube Esor carried. Icons slithered over the topography, dipping down into the valleys and arching over hilly peaks.

  Crosses and hatches. Jagged lines. Curves.

  Esor was no longer falling. He stood upon shifting, sandy ground. There was nothing to be seen in the absolute darkness, but some emptiness that roared huge and unseen. The mass of its presence was in its aural splendor, as if Nam? herself were inhaling for a yawn.

  He caught the Heartbox and shined it upon the ground. There was something at his feet—a round metal shield, half-embedded. Its rim was circled by concentric rows of slithering runes. The largest at its center was a crescent and teardrop, plain compared to the intricacy of the others, and distinct in its sharpened lines.

  Look there.

  Whispers swirled louder around him, and Esor turned to see, but he was alone. There was nothing but the symbols. The Heartbox. The emptiness.

  He’s looking for me.

  Look.

  Esor’s forehead struck a book. He leaped awake at his desk. He flung himself back in his chair, again drenched in sweat. The lantern’s flame dwindled as the fuel depleted. It was still Night outside, sky turned moonless-black, and Esor couldn’t stop shaking.

  He stacked his books, stumbled to his bedroom through cold hallways, and collapsed into bed.

  ?elasdur was awake when nobody else wanted to be. Its core thrust so high into the clouds that it swung with every storm. After so long being so shaken, the masonry was dust, and there were no more stones capable of falling; what remained to support the stumps of old branches had been sung together by so many artisans it could have withstood the end of the world.

  It felt like the end of the world when Esor tried to sleep. The tower screamed in fear of its fate. His bed heaved like a ship at sea. He covered his head in pillows, but still, the sound tormented him.

  By midnight, Esor was out of bed again, cloaked against the cold, and lurching into darkness with his lantern.

  It didn’t take long for him to find the icon of the crescent-and-teardrop on a statue. àstin had never told Esor what he would find if he followed those to a point of concentration, climbing lightless stairwells and dusty halls based on their nearness to those markings.

  Esor soon found himself in an unfamiliar hallway outside an unfamiliar pair of doors. They were dusty and locked with a chain. Grand carvings rippled underneath the surplus of ivy growing from its frame, but no matter how Esor swept them aside, he could never glimpse more than a few pieces of the relief. An Eternal Cross marked the center.

  “Nam?’s blessings,” he whispered. “There is a church here.”

  After so much time fussing with the Heartbox, the lock on the church door looked simple. Esor still had no means to open it. He settled for ripping down ivy to expose the entrance. It stood opposite a wall of windows staring at the foothills, and there was just enough starlight through the clouds that Esor could behold the door.

  He stepped back, eager to see the whole of it...and gasped.

  “Nam?’s blessings,” he said again, with fear.

  The Eternal Cross was carved onto the shield of a Spirit of Aspiration. The crescent-and-teardrop engulfed the opposite side of the door, backing a creature of eyes and rippling shadow. The monster was killing the Aspiration.

  Lorkullen.

  “Master Esor?”

  He leaped and shrieked and swung his lantern, striking the housekeeper in the head.

  “Chisamith! Oh, my apologies, I didn’t realize—did I hit you?” Esor dropped his lantern onto a windowsill to reach for Chisamith’s hands, but the old àlvar batted him away.

  “You’ve neither the aim nor arm to do damage,” she snapped, rubbing her forehead. “What in Neu? are you doing up here? This part of the palace hasn’t been used since the Great Wave.”

  “Is it off-limits?”

  “Only if you consider the limitations of sensibility. Come on, get away from there. Ripping down ivy—hexes! You could have pulled the whole wall on yourself! Or fallen through a hole in the floor!” Chisamith swatted him down the hall. Her hands were rough from centuries of hard labor, but her beating was half-hearted.

  “My deepest apologies. I couldn’t sleep and got to exploring. Honestly, I don’t know how anybody else here sleeps with all this noise,” Esor said, laughing nervously.

  Chisamith’s aging face puckered into a frown. “What noise?”

  “The wind...the shrieky walls and windows... It’s terrible all Night. Surely you must hear it. It’s all over the palace.”

  She still didn’t understand. “If your windows are troubling you, I’ll see about having another room prepared.” Chisamith did not react to the floor pitching under their feet. She was steady guiding Esor to his office, where he seemed most settled, and she left him huddled behind his desk with his lantern blazing bright.