In other words: It’s a surprise.
And so they’d gone on in mystery, but not without resentment and a vast deal of speculation. The crossing had been hard: bleak and monotonous, physically and mentally grueling. The theory purse had been Calixte’s idea, and a good one. Lazlo had seen how it gave the others a spark of life, to play a game of sorts, to have something to win. It didn’t hurt that they liked to hear themselves talk, and it gave them opportunity. It was simple: You made a guess as to what the problem was, and Calixte wrote it down in her book. You could make as many guesses as you wanted, but each one cost ten silver, paid into the purse, which was a shabby affair of old green brocade held closed with a gaudy brooch. Calixte said it had been her grandmother’s, but then she also said she came from a family of assassins—or else a family of acrobats, depending on her mood—so it was hard to know what to believe.
Once they reached Weep and all was revealed, whoever had made the closest guess would win the purse—which was up to some five hundred silver now, and bursting at its frayed green seams.
Lazlo had not entered a theory into the book. “There couldn’t possibly be an idea left unclaimed,” he said.
“Well, there’s not a boring one left unclaimed, that’s for certain. If I hear one more manly variation on the conquest theory I might kill myself. But you can do better. I know you can. You’re a storyteller. Dream up something wild and improbable,” she pleaded. “Something beautiful and full of monsters.”
“Beautiful and full of monsters?”
“All the best stories are.”
Lazlo didn’t disagree with that. He made a final adjustment to the net, and turned back toward camp. “It isn’t a story contest, though.”
Calixte fell into step beside him. “But it is. It’s a true-story contest, and I think the truth must be stranger than that lot is fit to dream up.” She flicked her notebook dismissively toward the center of camp, where the rest of the faranji were gathered waiting for their dinner to be cooked for them. They’d early established themselves in the role of guests—most of them, anyway—and were content to stand idle while the caravan drovers and the Tizerkane—and Lazlo—saw to all the work. They had already covered their lightweight chaulnots with their heavy woolen ones against the coming evening chill—proof that not one joule of energy had been converted to heat by means of respectable labor. With their hoods up and their purposeless milling, Lazlo thought they looked like a pack of ghosts on coffee break.
“Maybe not,” he allowed.
“So it’s all up to you,” said Calixte. “You can’t help but come up with a strange idea. Any idea you have is a Strange idea. Get it?”
Lazlo laughed in spite of himself. Usually, plays on his name were much less good-humored. “I’m not a member of the delegation,” he reminded her. What was he? Storyteller and secretary and doer of odd jobs, neither Tizerkane nor delegate, just someone along for the dream.
“But you are a faranji,” she countered. And this was true, though he didn’t fit with the rest of them. He’d ridden into their cities mounted on a spectral, after all, and most of them assumed he was from Weep—at least, until Thyon Nero disabused them of that notion.
“He’s just an orphan peasant from Zosma, you know,” he’d said, lest they be tempted to feel anything like respect for him.
“Even if I won,” Lazlo said to Calixte, “the others would just say I already had the answer from Eril-Fane.”
“I don’t care what they’d say,” Calixte replied. “It’s my game. I decide the winner, and I believe you.”
And Lazlo was surprised by the strength of his gratitude—to be believed, even by a tomb raider from a family of assassins. Or perhaps especially by a tomb raider from a family of assassins. (Or acrobats, depending on her mood.)
Calixte, like he, didn’t fit with the rest. But she, unlike he, was a member of the delegation. The most puzzling member, perhaps, and the least anticipated. She was even a surprise to Eril-Fane, who’d gone to Syriza seeking a builder, not an acrobat.
It was their first destination after Zosma, and so Lazlo’s first experience as the Godslayer’s secretary had been the recruitment of Ebliz Tod, builder of the Cloudspire, tallest structure in the world. And what a structure it was. It looked like an enormous auger shell, or a unicorn’s horn upthrust from the earth, and was said to stand at over six hundred feet. It was a simple, elegant spiral, windowless and unadorned. Syriza was known for its spires, and this was the king of them all.
Eril-Fane had been duly impressed, and had agreed to Ebliz Tod’s every demand in order to woo him to Weep. A formal contract was prepared by Lazlo, in his official capacity, and signed, and the Unseen party was set to continue its journey when Lazlo mentioned a bit of gossip he’d heard:
That a girl had climbed the Cloudspire.
“Without ropes,” he’d relayed to Eril-Fane. Only her hands and bare feet, wedged in the single cleft that ran spiral from the base of the tower to its tip.
“And did she reach the top?” Eril-Fane had wanted to know, squinting up at the tower to gauge the feasibility of such a feat.
“They say so. Apparently they’ve put her in jail for it.”
“Jail? For climbing a tower?”
“For raiding a tomb,” Lazlo corrected.
Never mind that the man for whom it had been built was still living, the Cloudspire was a royal tomb, and all manner of luxuries had already been laid in for the king’s postmortal comfort. Besides the oculus at the top (for the “respiration of souls”), there was only one way in. It was never left unguarded, but when a treasurer entered the tomb with his arms full of itzal (jars containing the souls of animals, the practice of slave itzal and wife itzal having been—happily—abolished), he found a girl sitting cross-legged on the jeweled sarcophagus, juggling emeralds.
She confirmed that she had scaled the spire and entered through the oculus, but claimed she hadn’t come to steal. She was only practicing her juggling, she said. Wouldn’t anyone do the same? When Eril-Fane went to the jail—and found a bruised, bald waif in rusty manacles, half starved and defending herself with a nail—he asked her why she’d done it, and she replied with pride, “Because I could.”
And Lazlo supposed that must also be the reason he had brought her along with them: because she could climb a six-hundred-foot tower with only her small hands and bare feet. He didn’t know why this skill might be of value. It was a piece of the puzzle.
—Ebliz Tod: a man who could build a tower.
—Calixte Dagaz: a girl who could climb one.
—Thyon Nero: the alchemist who had distilled azoth.
—Jonwit Belabra: mathematician.
—Phathmus Mouzaive: natural philosopher; liked to declare that his field was no less than “the physical laws of the universe,” but whose focus, in reality, was somewhat narrower: magnetic fields.
—Kae Ilfurth: engineer