Thomas shook his head. “What about Oswald?”
“Returned to Tuckomock Forest.”
Part of him wanted to fall to his knees and thank God for his release, but Oswald’s warning about trusting the Throcknells tickled the back of his brain. He scratched the stubble on his chin, crossing toward the door.
A dizzying feeling nearly knocked him backward as he looked past the guards, disoriented as though his head were swelling and contracting. The guards stood not in a dank stone stairwell as he’d expected, but in an enormous, sun-filled hall.
He stepped over the threshold and gaped. Carved stonework arched hundreds of feet above them. The hall was at least the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral. I must be dreaming. It wasn’t possible for something this vast to fit into a narrow tower.
“We need to make you presentable.” Holding a palm near Thomas’s chest, the penguin muttered in Angelic.
Thomas stared as his shirt transformed from rough brown wool into a silky, grass-green jacket embroidered with pearls. It fit snugly, apart from the puffed shoulders, and lace sleeves that flounced around his wrists. Gold trousers bloused out at the thighs, tied with green ribbons around his knees. Further green bows decorated his shoes. A cap sat on his head, and he pulled it off to find it made of green velvet and covered in pearls. He gritted his teeth, shoving the cap back on his head. I look like a twat. He schooled his face into a pleased expression.
“Are you coming, then?” the penguin asked gruffly.
“I didn’t think the cell was adjacent to a grand hall like this,” Thomas muttered, squinting in the bright light. His heels clapped unsteadily on the marble floor, and a part of him cringed. They put me in high heels.
“It isn’t adjacent.” The man glanced back at Thomas. “You don’t expect us to trudge up and down hundreds of stairs in the Iron Tower, do you?”
It wouldn’t do your waistline any harm.
“We use portals,” continued the guard. “Saves time.”
Late afternoon light poured through tall, arched windows, each one bearing the Throcknell herald in stained glass. Below the heralds were interlocked Bs. Queen Bathsheba and King Balthazar, of course. No doubt the previous windows with Queen Morella’s initials had been replaced soon before her execution.
Thomas peered out the windows at a grassy courtyard. They had arrived at the ground level without descending a single stair.
Across from the windows, marble statues towered over the hall, nearly the height of the ceiling. A woman with flames erupting from her hair pulled open the front of her dress, revealing a sun symbol on her bared chest. It blazed in the amber light. Thomas stared, his mind foggy.
A hand pushed him from behind. “What’s the matter—never seen tits before?”
The other guards burst into barking laughter. Apparently, that joke was hilarious. Thomas faked another smile.
A statue further on depicted a figure covered entirely in a cloak, decorated only with a few stars. Next to that, a mournful man in military garb displayed a pair of slashed wrists—the penitent blood god, no doubt. As they walked through the hall, he recognized Druloch—a man’s strong body intertwined with a tree, an ecstatic look on his face.
Thomas’s stomach rumbled. Was he really about to feast with a magical royal family? But why had they been starving him if they’d meant to send him home all along?
His high-heeled footsteps echoed off the flagstones. Closer to the far end of the hall, an elegant goddess statue rose from sea foam, a crescent moon on her forehead, and another muscular goddess reclined on a mountain range with a serene expression. The earthly gods.
Each statue was beautiful and terrifying at the same time. And there were seven of them. Seven points, seven towers, and seven gods. Maybe that was all the zodiac wheel had meant, just a coded reference to the gods.
At the end of the hall, a short flight of steps led up to an immense set of wooden doors. As they approached, the doors swung open with a groan. The fat guard motioned for Thomas to walk up the stairs, and he stepped up the marble staircase into a hall—if it could be called a hall. It looked like the nave of a ruined abbey, all crumbling stones overgrown with vines. He’d never seen anything so stunning in his life.