Smoke and Iron (The Great Library #4)(69)

He didn’t answer.

“I came back to the Iron Tower to find you, sir. And to get your help.”

“Didn’t they tell you? I don’t care. And I don’t help. Leave me alone. That’s all I ask.”

“Keria died to save your son, sir. I was there. I saw.” Morgan heard her voice shake, but she didn’t know if he could. “At the end, she chose his life over her own. And she saved us all. I know how much that must have hurt—”

“You don’t know anything about her, or about me,” he said. “I told you. Leave me alone.”

He could have stopped this with a snap of his fingers, Morgan thought; he could have broken the crystal any time he pleased.

But he hadn’t. And she had to believe that deep inside, he needed to talk. And to be useful in some way. Self-imposed exile was a harsh, inhuman sentence; how long since he’d had a visitor, after Keria? How many people even remembered he was here?

“He needs your help,” she said. “Your son. The Archivist has him in his prison. He plans to execute him.”

Silence, still. She wished that she’d worked out a way to see this man, to know if she was getting through to him at all.

Annis said, “Morgan. The fan will start up again soon. We have to move!”

Morgan shook her head and twined her fingers into the metal grate. “Eskander, please! Your son saved our lives. He is a brave, brilliant man, and he needs you. I’m begging you, please help!”

“I can’t,” Eskander said. It sounded hollow.

“You can; you know you should be the Obscurist! Take what’s rightly yours! Stop Gregory, and lead us out of this tower!”

“Lives would be lost.”

“They’re being lost now. Gregory killed a boy in front of me, just to prove a point! Do you think he cares about any of us? He only cares about his own greed! You must have known him, before you shut yourself away. You must know I’m telling the truth!”

“Morgan!” Annis sounded desperate now, and when Morgan glanced back, she saw the woman’s robes fluttering in the wind that was already starting to form. The gigantic fan was starting its next cycle. “Morgan, we have to go! We can come back!”

Morgan knew instinctively that if she stopped here, short of convincing him, it would all be for nothing. He’d refuse to answer again. He’d break the crystal. “Go! I’ll hold on here!” she shouted over the gust of wind that pushed her against the grate. “Just go, Annis!”

“Annis?” She could hardly hear Eskander over the building roar, but she pushed the crystal harder against her ear and hardly felt the cut that opened. “Is Annis with you?”

“Yes! She’s here! She’s helping me, and she said if Keria was still alive, she’d be the first to go against Gregory! But he killed her, and now you have to be the one!”

She didn’t hear his reply. The fan spun up to a shattering roar and threatened to tear her loose, and she had to drop the crystal and watch as it shattered on the metal grate before it was blown away into the darkness. She grabbed at the mesh with her left hand and tried to cling with all her might; she felt muscles trembling and pulling and tearing, and her robes tore in the battering. Her hair came loose. It felt like threads of steel cutting her face to pieces, and she struggled to breathe against the intense pressure on her back. How long does it last? She wasn’t going to make it. Her fingers were bleeding and cramping, and what breath she had was lost in a scream of pain as her right hand lost its grip, and she felt the wind shear her sideways, felt something pop in her arm, and then her left hand was loose and she felt herself lifting up, twisting wildly. She couldn’t think how to use her power, or on what to focus; there was just panic, terrible and awful panic . . .

And then a hand grabbed her and dragged her down. Annis. She’d stripped off her robe and tied it to the handhold, with the other end tied tight around her ankle. The wind flattened the thin shift she wore against her body and sent her wild hair flying like a flag, but she held on and pulled Morgan into her tight, unyielding embrace and held her against the storm as they both twisted and hovered in the blast, until its weakening dumped them back down to the metal floor, and both fell, still holding each other.

Annis was the first to get her breath, and she used it to laugh. A raw, half-terrified sound, but it was still laughter, and against her will, Morgan joined her until they rolled on their backs, exhausted.

“Did it work?” Annis asked, and finger-combed her wild hair out of her face as she sat up. Morgan’s was no better, and she tried to twist it back into a rough queue to keep it from her eyes. “Is he with us?”

“The crystal broke.” Morgan’s laughter turned to ashes in her mouth, and she swallowed hard against a sudden, weightless feeling of horror. “I lost him.”

She looked utterly ragged, she realized as Annis helped her up; at least Annis’s robe had survived the storm with only minor distress, but Morgan’s robe would hardly pass a glance without drawing attention. Do I dare? She’d already expended more power than she wished, and she couldn’t tell how much more she had left before the emptiness set in. But she tapped a trickle of it, whispered a formula under her breath to guide the work, and the tears knitted back together. Imperfect, like a child’s mending, but it would have to do.