The Tower Broken

1



Farid


Farid’s captors pushed him through the doorway. One moment he was standing in the alley, four hands holding him iron-tight at the shoulders, and the next, he was falling towards a pocked stone floor. He braced for the feel of cold granite against his cheek, the burn as it scraped his skin away, but then he flailed and righted himself. This was a small house – if it was a house – and a third of the space was taken by stairs rising up into darkness. The shadows beneath them held a man in dark robes, startled, judging by his posture, a book held against his lap. Then strong hands took Farid again and steered him into the only other room, small and lined with shelves, stinking of foreigners’ ale.

They shoved him against the far wall. He struggled to hear the words being murmured in the other room. The man from the shadows was asking questions – Farid could tell from the tone – but the words were too low for his ears. Just one captor stayed with him now. Farid sneaked a glance: he looked to be about his own age, and just as muscled. It would be a fair fight if it came to that. When his captor leaned over to pull on a length of fresh-smelling rope Farid got up to run, but with a casual movement of his foot the other man tripped him and he skidded against the hard floor. While he was lying there stunned, jaw and arm smarting from the impact, his hands were tied behind him.

‘Why are you doing this?’ He did not expect an answer – from the time they grabbed him in the marketplace there had been no words. But they wanted something, otherwise he would be dead. The man half lifted, half pushed him into a wooden chair, then smiled, not a kind smile, though Farid sensed he could probably manage a semblance of such. He had smooth skin and regular features, not the sort one usually found in the Maze; more the sort you’d find in a comfortable position at a noble estate.

Or the palace. The palace takes the best of us, his father always said: the ones who showed unusual talent. The hardest workers. The strongest, the prettiest.

The palace would not have brought him to a tiny corner of the Maze, though. The palace would have taken him to a guard station in one of its outer walls, or worse, to the cold, dark cells hidden below its soaring towers. He had heard a person would do the unthinkable just to be free of them. Could this man have been in the prison dungeon, done something unthinkable?

Farid looked away, desperate to hide the current of his thoughts.

For months the Blue Shields had been in the Maze, hunting down the slave rebels and escaped prisoners, killing them in the streets and in the warrens where they hid. During this time the larger city had carried on with its usual business of exchanging goods for coin, and Farid with them. He had not considered the Maze and its outlaws his concern. Refugees from the north were a greater problem, crowding the streets and frightening his customers with rumours of deadly storms. He’d cursed them – too poor to pay for his fruit and too rich to disappear into the dark corners and alleys of the city and be out of his way. But now that he was tied to a chair and at the rebels’ mercy, he knew the refugees had been no more than a distraction.

The man laid a callused hand on Farid’s cheek, the way his mother might. Startled, Farid looked back into his tea-coloured eyes.

‘What did you see?’

Farid swallowed. ‘What happened back there? I heard—’ Nothing. He’d heard nothing more than a chorus of gentle moans, drifting like ash on the wind.

‘There was an attack.’ The man from the shadows stood in the doorway, lowering the hood of his red robe to reveal a shock of white-blond hair. Farid’s pretty captor stood and lowered his head in deference.

‘An attack?’ Farid wiggled against his ropes. His hands felt numb. ‘It wasn’t me. I was …’ He had been looking down at the street-stones when they grabbed him.

The leader moved forwards, a look of sorrow on his face. ‘You saw them, didn’t you?’

‘Saw them? Who?’ But at last Farid remembered. He had seen a glimmer in the afternoon light, had left his stall and squatted in the street to investigate. Shapes and lines, glimmering not on skin but on stone. He had thought it art, perhaps, or someone’s idea of a joke. ‘The marks.’

‘The marks.’ This time it was the leader’s turn to repeat.

‘What do they mean?’ Farid wiggled against his bonds again, looking from one man to the other. ‘Has the Pattern Master come back?’ Part of him hoped they would not answer.

‘No, this is not the pattern, not as you know it.’ The leader waved to the other man, who knelt to untie the ropes. Farid felt them loosen. ‘I apologise for the manner in which you were taken. Let’s begin again. My name is Adam.’