“It wasn’t easy getting that boiler lit. I did it because you were freezing to death.”
Anton looks over his shoulder. The great claw-footed tub squats under billowing steam.
“I am so very cold.” Anton nearly whispers, his shoulder still pressed to the door.
“We might pull you through—one hears of such things—if only you would cooperate. But I see you won’t. Out in the storm with me, is it? Very well. The servant obeys.”
He had no idea Faraz possessed such Romanian.
“I’m off. Don’t you dare waste that water.”
The master obeys, backs slowly to the tub, but—disaster! Faraz has pulled the plug. Less than an inch of water left. With thoughtless need, he plunges his free hand into the water. The voice outside erupts in laughter. Boots clatter down the service stair.
“Faraz!”
The pantry door slams.
“You bastard Persian!”
Hot water teases his fingers. Gone.
Anton will send a message by the tower lamp. Risky—but he can neither ignore the aircraft nor go to town himself, leaving the palace in the hands of a cripple and a lunatic porter. He rushes back through the rainy ballroom. Down the windy corridor. Under the oilpaint smirks of deposed kings, freezing to death.
Lupescu’s code still perforates the night:
“…insane, don’t you see, he’s crazed by power, his hideous power!”
On the great stair landing, Anton leans from the window again. The rain surges in like a cold sneeze, almost extinguishing his torch, and he backs away.
“Sweet Mary and Joseph. I’m drenched.”
“Beware of him!” taps Lupescu.
He turns the corner, running again. There would be a drybox and matches in the tower, in fact—
“Oh, the tower!” For the second time that night, he shouts in joy and triumph. The tower’s huge signal lamp, it burns hot. Incredible that he has forgotten. But then he has not used the lamp for—six months?
A year?
He shivers up an iron staircase, six dizzying turns, and then his torch thumps on the padlocked tower door. He groans, feels his pockets.
Below, the drag of Tatiana’s foot on the great stair. Her voice wavering about a melody. She enjoys the stairwell’s echo, the choral embrace it affords even the meanest voice. Suddenly, for no reason he can fathom, he wishes urgently to avoid her.
The key. He had quite forgotten it was in his pocket. It fits, but what now? The lock is rusted, fused. Tatiana labors up another step, singing:
And if you treat him as your only son,
He’ll cheat you ’ere the day is done
And if you tender him his liberty
Then far beyond your call he’ll be
Oh, far beyond your call he’ll run
And you with harvest scarce begun.
Halfwit. Singing to the gale. And how she tortures him with that ballad. Days, weeks, until it flits about in his head like a thrush in a chimney.
O bitter coin of liberty
For far beyond your call he’ll be.
Her candle glimmers on the wall. With a gasp, he wrenches open the lock. In a moment he has struggled into the hollow tower. The door booms shut, and Anton follows the sound up a thin ladder. Cold rungs bite his fingers; oil splatters from his torch, which he clamps awkwardly between two fingers; the climb seems endless. But at last he thrusts open the ceiling door, dangles horribly in the air a moment, and pulls himself through.
It is like wriggling into heaven. The chamber is nearly all glass, and it is the highest point between Mount Amagire and the sea. He is between rain clouds again. Like knots of fireflies, electric storms ripple to the horizon, illuminating icy Bicazului, splashing brilliance in the troughs between slithering breakers. The capital is still dark, and even the lights of the village—his own village—are dim. But strangely, in other places his vision extends for miles: he sees stubbled wheat fields, smudges of forest, ruins.
A low fog, he reasons. Snagged on church spires, wedged into alleys. For his village creeps almost to the palace wall, spends mornings in its shadow. Anton remembers this view, reversed: all the long years he trundled to school, or wheeled sawdust from the lumber mill, or eased great butterfly-winged piano cases from his father’s shop into waiting trucks—always, this tower loomed over his life. Each morning until that one on which he left for the municipal music school (certain those meager, mouse-dung halls were no more than a turnstile in his path to the Conservatory) he had craned his neck up to see the first sun dancing here, on this high glass pulpit.