And besides which, I cast a more critical eye up at the tower, if he had a part in bringing it into the world, then he sounded as though he would be happy to help remove it from the world, too!
“Can you take me back?” I asked Ymmen seriously, nodding back up at the tower top. I was aware that I had already asked him to do many things tonight – and even though he wanted to help destroy the mechanical dragons and the ‘bad magic’ – I knew that, though I had curbed his temper this night, I did not know how long the Bull dragon would be able to keep his temper in check.
“As long as you.” He surprised me as he turned his head to look at me. His eyes were shot through with red, but I could sense that it wasn’t me that he was angry with. There was a fierce sort of humor to his voice in my head and I was starting to get used to a mirth rooted in claws and teeth.
“Deal,” I said, and found that I was grinning back at him.
“Then after: fish.” Ymmen huffed his sooty breath at me, a small admonition and reminder of just who and what he was.
“I promise,” I said, and held up my arms as Ymmen clutched me to him and jumped into the air, silent and graceful.
The tower top was less imposing without the mechanical dragon sitting sentinel atop it, but no less eerie. Ymmen rested lightly on the battlements as before and allowed me to clamber down, while he sniffed at the air and the stones around him. I hurried to raise the trapdoor to find that there was still light coming from below, as well as a high-pitched, tinkling sound of chimes.
Is that… music? I thought. It was unlike the pipes and strings of the Plains, but it had a certain repetitive, melodic quality like a bird. I did not feel threatened however, as I crept back down the stairs.
Montfre was still in the room where he had his ‘audience’ with Abioye, and it was from here that the light and the sound was coming from. I reached the landing and sighed deeply to prepare myself.
“I can hear you, you know!” the imprisoned man on the other side said loudly, and there was a sudden crash as an empty glass beaker flew through the open archway and smashed on the opposite wall. “I told you not to bother me again, Abioye!” the man inside shouted.
“Uh – I’m not Abioye,” I said gingerly as I stepped out from around the archway and into the light.
I knew that the person speaking to Abioye would be young from his voice, but I was shocked by the sight of the actual person that I saw standing there. Montfre had white-silver hair that hung loose to his shoulders and clear gray eyes, as well as pale skin. He was young –only a few years older than Oleer and just a few years younger than Abioye himself. He was also tall, with a strong build that would have earned him a place on the first hunting parties of the Souda – were it not for the obvious toll imprisonment had taken.
He had sunken eyes and the harrowed, slightly shocked look that I knew only too well. I had seen that same look on the faces of every other Daza that I had ever come across in the camps. After the first year your face sets into a permanent serious expression. I wondered if I still looked like that after my taste of freedom.
He had the pale skin of one confined indoors, and the stooped shoulders of one who had spent a long time only moving through small spaces.
And of course, he had a heavy pair of manacles attached to his feet. The very same sort of ankle chains that Dagan had forced on me, more than once. I knew just how heavy they were, and just how they stopped you from ever stretching your legs fully. I wondered how he had managed to wear them for six years without being completely crippled, but he didn’t even seem to notice them as he shuffled across the room towards me.
“I’m Montfre,” he said, extending a pale, long-fingered hand. It reminded me of Abioye’s fine hands, apart from the fact that Montfre’s fingertips were callused and scarred, presumably from his work; which was all around him.
This appeared to be some kind of workroom, but its furnishings weren’t anything like the long wooden benches where my mother had worked with her herbs and incenses. Instead, all three walls of the narrow tower room had long tables abutting them, each of which held wooden trays upon which sat grouped different types of substances. The longest table held different trays of bronze parts – some of which were large cog wheels, and others were so small as to just cover the pad of a finger. Next came thin rods or slivers of metal, each in exactly the same size and color.
Everything was ordered to exact detail – which was something that I did not expect from an Imanu, and I had figured that a ‘mage’ would be similar – but clearly not.
The next table had trays with more organic components – heaps of powders of different colors, along with trays of different colored and shaped minerals. One heap was clearly the russet-red of iron, and next to it the bright greens and the orange yellows that would eventually turn into copper, and eventually; bronze. Next to these sat trays of glass beakers – all grouped according to exact size and shape.
And then came the last table, which sat next to the large, padded leather armchair where Montfre must usually sit. It mostly held papers and books, but in its center was also a strange device: a small wooden box with its lid open to reveal a delicate wire frame, upon which hung singular crystal beads, interspersed with entire hollow ‘rings’ of glass. The entire contraption was revolving, with different parts moving at different speeds, and as the glass rings slid against each other or the crystal beads hit each other, it created that ethereal, twittering chimes of music like birdsong.
“Ah, you like it?” Montfre saw me looking, and I realized I had been staring at the device and hadn’t even introduced myself. Before I could say anything more, he was rushing to pick it up and present it to me with a big smile on his face.
“It’s a Crystal Euphonia. Entirely mechanical. No magic used whatsoever.” He sounded proud of it, and a second later I understood why. “I designed it,” he added, before his face fell “a long time ago.”
I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. It really was a beautiful thing, but I did have to wonder: why make a thing that sounded almost like birds when he could have just gone to listen to the birds?
Apart from the fact, obviously, that there were no birds in a box, I looked around his room. One thin window, in which there was a singular candle burning.
“Do you want to see more?” Montfre appeared giddy, excited like a child of ten on his name-day. “My collection room is the next floor up. If you like this, you should see!” he said, beckoning me already to the door.
Before he suddenly paused and shook himself a little straighter, as if he had realized something. “Only Abioye comes to see me. Or Inyene.” He turned around slowly, and this time his gray eyes seemed hard and bright, as if with an inner light. “Which one sent you?”
“Neither,” I said quickly. This young man had clearly been addled by his years in confinement, as I had seen many others become. But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t sane, or a nice person. Just that he wasn’t used to this strange new change in his routine. “My name is Narissea, of the Daza Souda,” I said formally.
“The Daza…” Montfre’s anger subsided, to be replaced by apparent interest. “The people of the Empty Plains. Tribal groups, some twenty or more distinct tribes, spread across over at least thirty documented villages, covering a vast land.” He spoke like he was repeating words that had been told to him.