Chapter 15 The Tower of Iron and Cotton
The Tower of Iron and Cotton
That night, Morfran enacted the plan he’d meant to enact three days from then: his much-anticipated escape.
There wasn’t much preparation that had to go into it, honestly. With his escapade involving the flying squid, he’d won over the remainder of those who’d doubted his allegiance even after the stunt that’d landed him the nickname “the Necromancer.”
Beni and the kids were being housed in an animal nursery near the banks of the lake, where there was fresh air and plenty of grass to indulge on.
He’d prefer to have them in his room, but Tritonia was deathly terrified of goats, and as such there was a No Goat policy in the palace.
Morfran griped that there should be a No Lunatic policy as well, which hadn’t endeared him to any of the city sentinels.
So the nursery on the outskirts of the city it was.
He entered the pen where several animals were, including two llamas, an alpaca with a superiority complex, and Beni and her children, the latter of whom were snuggled beside a hay bale.
“Benjamin.” He shook his goat friend. “Wake up.”
The animal blinked groggily, raising her eyes to meet his. It’s two in the morning, Morf, her look seemed to say. Why are you doing this to me?
“It’s time to go,” he whispered. “These people want me to kill myself. Can you believe that? Here, stand up. I’ll grab the kids.”
In response Benjamin dropped her head back onto her straw pillow and took up snoring again.
He huffed, rising. This wasn’t in his plans. He certainly didn’t want to carry her and her children out of the city in addition to his getaway bag. Right as he decided he’d have to give Beni a gentle rousing kick to wake her up, something hit the back of his knees so hard he buckled to the ground.
“Hey!” he half whispered, half shouted, out of shock and slight fear. Was it Ravana’s men? Was there a spy within the city who’d come to assault him?
Then he sensed it more than saw it. Someone swinging at his neck. He spun and tried to knock them over with a sweep of his foot. The individual—all cloaked in black—jumped just in time and was already recoiling backwards with a fluid grace as Morfran rose to his feet and bum-rushed them.
The person tripped over literally nothing. Morfran, coming at them with a speed not suitable for emergency stops, crashed, knocked over, and landed right atop them, which broke his fall and allowed him to catch a confusing whiff of something flowery.
A feminine oof rose from his assaulter’s mouth.
He blinked down at her. “Bronwen?”
She pulled off her assassin’s mask. In the silver moonlight, her eyes flashed with anger. “I didn’t want to believe it!” she growled. “But I had a feeling you’d try and ditch us. You unbelievable coward!”
Her knee came up into his tender bits, and he recoiled, groaning. She quickly scampered out from under him.
“Just when we started to believe in you, you decide to run away! Why, Bernard? Are you scared of Morfran’s wrath? Do you think we don’t have a chance to beat him?”
Morfran considered that a loaded question, and one he couldn’t answer due to his current state of testicular pain.
“Or is this just who you are? You like running from your problems, don’t you? Do you like ditching a situation when times get tough?” She propped her hands on her hips as she glowered down at him. “Well?”
Morfran groan-laughed. This woman was going to be the death of him.
Whether she found out who he really was or whether she got sick of the man he pretended to be, she was quite possibly going to be the one to end his life.
He eventually managed to pull himself to his feet, stooping over, holding his lower abdomen.
“It isn’t that I’m frightened of Morfran, or that I got bored of you lot.
” He straightened. “It’s just I really don’t want to be here. ”
He launched at her with her dagger. When he’d crash-landed atop her, he’d hastily slipped it out of the pocket she loved to keep it in. He moved so swiftly she couldn’t properly defend herself, and soon had her pressed up against the barn wall, her knife resting against her throat.
She attempted to fight back, half-panicked, but her efforts were great and the hex kicked in, so she only ended up cutting her fingers on her dagger.
“Stop it,” he demanded when he saw the blood. “You’ll just hurt yourself further.”
“As if you care! You were going to leave me hexed!”
He paused, and then nodded, admitting it nonverbally before admitting it verbally. “All right, yes. You’ve got a point. Would you prefer me to kill you now, or leave the hex to do that for you?”
In response she lashed her knee up at him again, which he avoided only because he’d been expecting it. “Right, then.” He chuckled and went to yank the knife against her throat to finally put her out of her misery.
But his hand wouldn’t do it. She was the only thing in the way between him and a life of jammy bliss with his goats.
A quick flick of his wrist and he could be miles away by the time Brim and his men realized he was gone.
But he couldn’t jerk the knife. Something within him, not a curse, not a hex, not anything but some profoundly confusing sentiment was stopping him.
It was Beni, staring up at him, her gaze watchful of the knife in his hands. Are you really going back to this, Morf?
He huffed, irritated. Shuffled in place. Repositioned the knife. Then the question burst from him without him even thinking. “Why do you always smell like posies?”
Bronwen blinked, confused.
He put the knife back against her throat, fidgeting back and forth. He’d been the Dark Lord of Ruthven?, damn it. He’d sliced the throats of enemies on the daily. Why couldn’t he do it now? He’d been wholly prepared to do similarly to Gueldefore the other day. Had to hold himself back, actually.
“Are you going to do this?” She flitted a look over him. “Or do you have to pee first?”
With an aggravating growl he tore away from her, kicking at a sodden pile of straw and propping his hands atop his head in frustration. He turned away only to turn back to her, jabbing the knife at her. “You’re lucky the goat likes you.”
She looked just as confused as before. “What?”
He responded by growling again and hurling the knife at a nearby post. It sank into the wood and quivered. Bronwen looked from it to him with a bewildered—and impressed, though she tried to hide it—expression.
“Come on,” he snapped, chucking his pack over his shoulders and giving his goat friend a disgruntled glare. “We’re going to the tower.”
A stunted silence, as if she were trying to catch up to his whiplash. “Right now?”
“It’s either that or we awkwardly wait around for my drive to kill you to return,” he grumbled, stomping away from Beni and her kids, the former of whom looked smarmy as she snuggled up against her babies. I should have cooked you in a stew when we first met, he thought in vain.
After retrieving her knife, Bronwen slowly began to trail after him, moving through the streets with a quiet grace. She remained at a safe distance from him, all her previous distrust simmering back up to the surface, judging from the sullen glares she was tossing.
“How far is the tower?” she asked. “It’s the middle of the night. Will we be walking for long?”
He didn’t speak. He just thrust his finger at a lone lighthouse in the distance. It looked like a piece of black slate jutting out of the rocky cliffside with a firefly flickering honey-gold light off the tip of it.
Bronwen bristled. “We were this close to the tower this whole time? I could’ve had my hex removed three days ago!”
“Not alone, you couldn’t have.” He kept his eyes straight ahead, dreading both walking with her and what was to come next. “You have to know a secret passcode.”
She squinted at him. “Just who is this guy?”
To be fair, Morfran had never met the man. He’d only heard the tales Ravana liked to boast to visiting royalty. Of how she had denied him his destiny. Of how she had ruined his prophecy. Of how she was the reason he was still locked away up there, and why he was powerless to ever escape.
When they came up to the base of the lighthouse, it was as Ravana had once told him.
It loomed up forty feet, a cylinder of blue-gray stone wreathed in fog, with no doors or openings except for a square window at the very top.
Beside the base of the tower was a mailbox stuffed with aged, weather-beaten letters.
The lighthouse light itself was on, and to Morfran’s relief and dread, the window was also brightly lit from inside.
Bronwen had wrapped her arms around herself, looking forlorn and uncomfortable.
“This looks like a mad scientist’s lair,” she murmured before glaring at him.
“Did you lie to me? Are you trying to sell me off to some lunatic who eats newts and tries to revive dead cats? What’s this man’s name, anyways? ”
Morfran ignored her. He just propped his hands on his hips, looked up, and hollered the passcode: “Vibrato! Staccato! Portobello! Rapunzo, I beseech you, let down your hair-o!”
His voice carried off into the night. At first there was a great silence. It was so quiet that Morfran wondered if the password had been changed since Ravana had last been here, or if somehow the inhabitant had escaped long ago.
Then there was the sound of a window being unclasped.
In the black gloom of the night, a brilliant sheet of gold poured out the window, so vibrant it appeared to be glowing.
Down, down, down it fell, right to their feet, where it dangled like a thick climbing rope that reminded Morfran of his school days when his physical education teacher always made his students squirm up to the top or else he’d dump their lunch on their heads.
Bronwen poked it. “Is this…hair?”
“Yes, and it’s the only way up the tower.” He gestured to it. “You first?”
She yanked out her dagger and spun it. “I don’t think so, goat man. You lost my trust back there. This is starting to be a habit of yours.”