Page 135 of Brimstone
When I exited the tunnel, I found myself in a high-ceilinged section of the library that felt very different from the rest of it. A table. A chair. In the far corner: a bed, half-concealed behind a maroon velvet curtain edged with a golden tassel fringe. The walls were made of the stacks themselves, which had been arranged to form a sort of internal sanctuary, separate from everything else.
The rug underfoot was threadbare at the entrance to the snug. Threadbare also along the section before the large hearth on the far wall, in which a fire crackled merrily in the grate; the bald spots in there indicated many hours during which someone had paced, lost in their thoughts.
In the center of the cloistered space was a large table, on top of which sat a contraption made of cogs and long, spindled arms with shining brass balls attached at their ends. The arms were still, but over time, they would move. It was an orrery. A beautiful one, too. Once, there had been one in my father’s study. As a Faeling, I’d been fascinated by the complex workings of it. My parents had sat at the device, studying it at length. They’d shown me the planets as they were represented by the globes of inlaid silver and copper—how they danced around one another, all spinning around the much larger golden sun at its center.
This orrery was very different from the one in my father’s study. The alignment and thenumberof the planets were different. It was beautiful to be sure.
If there were time, I would have stayed and appreciated the craftsmanship of the device a little longer—orreries were notoriously difficult to make—but I had come in search of its owner, and I had a feeling I would find him among therealstars.
A rolling ladder had been bolted to the wall to the right. Twenty feet up, a small window stood open, the heavy curtain that was partially drawn across it billowing on a cold breeze. The cat sat at the bottom of the ladder and looked up at the open window, its meaning clear: Your friend is waiting for you up there.
So be it.
At the foot of the ladder, the cat meowed, blinking slowly at me. It did a turn, the way cats do when they’re about to lie down and nap, but when this one stretched its front paws out, it became a thing of ink and darkness again and disappeared into the long shadow I cast across the moth-eaten rug.
“All right, then,” I muttered to myself.
I felt no different. Aside from having just seen it happen with my own two eyes, I had no evidence that the cat had justmergedwith me somehow. I shrugged and climbed the ladder. The window was three feet tall and only two feet wide. I had to fold myself considerably and angle my shoulders to slide through and out onto the narrow walkway beyond. A low parapet ran around the domed roof, providing minimal protection from the three-hundred-foot drop that fell away on the other side of it.
Above, the stars rioted, blistering and brilliant.
I had walked halfway around the dome before I came across the recessed flat section of roof where a male sat at a small, weather-beaten desk, perched high above the world, scrawling away in a book with a feather quill. Though he didn’t look atme, he knew that I had come: the brief pause . . . and then resumption of his scribbling confirmed it.
Once, Foley had been a lord’s son. His father, Warrick Briarstone, had been advisor to King Rurik. Their family line had been second only to the Daianthuses in power and pride. If the true king had not been slain by Belikon, Foley would have eventually risen in rank to become the second most powerful male in all Yvelia. It was the duty of a king’s advisor to act in his stead in emergencies, and as such, a lot of responsibility was placed on his shoulders. Foley had been born to be respected and to work diligently in service of his realm, and instead he had learned how to fight and had joined the Lupo Proelia. And now he hid here in his tower on top of the world, among an ocean of books, a shunned vampire who was too afraid to look up and face an old friend.
The scratching of his quill stopped at last. He set it down. “I see Guru hitched a ride with you,” he said quietly. “He does that sometimes.”
When I looked down, I found that the cat was already there, looking back up at me. Whole. Alive. Purring.
“He likes to chase the birds. They used to roost here at night, a long . . . time ago.” He seemed to get lost along the way as he spoke, as if he were, in truth, too weary to complete the thought out loud and had to force himself to finish it.
“Foley.” I said his name, and the male flinched at the sound of it. “Foley,lookat me.”
He stared down at his book, frozen solid.
“All right. Fine.” There was no second chair on the roof, only the one Foley currently sat in, but there was a wooden crate full of odds and ends that he’d obviously used to carry items up here in. I upended the crate, dumping the leather tubes, ink bottles, and other bits and pieces onto the roof, flipped the crate upside down, and sat down across from him.
Where was I supposed to start? Foley and I had never laughed together all that much. He’d always been far more serious than the others. More serious than Renfis, even. But there had been an easy camaraderie between this male and me. An understanding, it could be said, of a life that should have been, now lost. We had both been subject to Belikon’s ire—heirs to a future that he had gone to great pains to destroy—and had suffered his close attention until it had become too much to bear. We’d become brothers out of necessity, more than anything. Inseparable. But so much time had passed. Lifetimes during which we’d both endured the kind of misery that would have ended most other males.
I didn’t know where to begin, but the last thing I would do was rush him. I sat silently, leaning down to pet the cat when he approached and started begging for affection. Guru was an appropriate name for him; he seemed wise. The wind teased at our hair and plucked at our shirts. It scattered Guru’s solid edges, smudging him as if he were a charcoal drawing being swept from a page.
Foley looked up from his book, glancing off to the right, at the rise of the tower’s domed slate roof. He covered his mouth with his hand. “You don’t need to do this,” he said, his fingers muffling his words.
I smiled slowly, sadly, arching a brow at him. “And when have you ever knownmeto do something I don’t want to do?”
He huffed, as if acknowledging the truth in that, but didn’t say anything else.
I let the silence sit a moment longer, then I said, “You have a fire burning down there. Real flames, not evenlight.”
He nodded. “I like the warmth of it,” he said. “It . . .remindsme.”
Of what it was like to live.The words went unsaid, but I gathered his meaning perfectly well. “I noticed the titles onsome of those books down there, too. You made your home in the philosophy and morality section?” I allowed myself a small smile.
Foley did the same, buthissmile was tight around his eyes. “Hm,” he said. “The creatures here have very little interest in either. Seemed like the safest place for me.” He laughed bitterly, finally turning his gaze to me. “You look the same,” he said. “Tal used to tell me what you were going through. I . . .” Both of his eyebrows rose. “I thought you’d never be free of it. I wanted to help. I . . .”
Slowly, I shook my head. “It’s gone. Done. Passed. I’m okay.”
“Are you just saying that to make me feel better?” he asked.
