The Grey Tower

The doors to the Band of Brothers didn’t open. Kaira groaned. The innkeeper must have bolted the doors when the storm began. She watched Johan hammer on the door with a sinking feeling. Then he turned and swore. Kaira blinked at him in mild surprise. Not because he had used coarse language in front of a young woman like her, but because he used curses that she had never heard before. Briefly she wondered where he was from. He walked past her, muttering to himself.

Kaira frowned. Was he giving up so soon? It didn’t seem quite like him. She hissed under her breath, then walked up to the door and placed a palm on the wood. Where had that light gone? If only she could channel, then perhaps she could figure a way through this door. She closed her eyes and tried, in vain, to find the Source.

From behind her, Johan spoke.

“Think we can reach it?”

Kaira looked up and followed his gaze. He was staring at the window to the first story of the inn. Kaira’s mouth dropped open and her voice climbed two octaves.

“You want to climb up that? But there is snow! It will be slippery. What if you fall?”

“We’ll just have to find out,” he said.

Kaira would have stomped her foot if her ankle wasn’t sprained. Oh, he’ll find out alright when he falls and breaks his neck! She watched him reach up for a brick that jutted out from the wall. He brought his right foot up onto another small ledge. Then he pulled himself up. Another brick. Another foothold.

He climbed surprisingly quickly, with the deft sureness of a boy who must have conquered a million walls. Kaira could not believe her eyes. She had left the Tower that morning expecting a short and pleasant shopping trip to buy a birthday present for Nasrin. Instead, she had been groped by a man, chased by city guards, sprained her ankle, and trapped in a blizzard. And now she was stuck with some fool Drin with a death wish!

But somehow he did not fall. He reached the window. She watched as he peered in through the glass and then fiddled with the frame. After a moment, the window swung open. Johan pulled himself in through the opening. Then he was gone.

Wait. What about her? Kaira shivered. She cupped her hands around her mouth and called up at him.

“Hey! Johan! Are you expecting me to climb up too?”

His head popped back out of the window.

“Yeah, I am,” he said. Then again he disappeared.

Kaira gaped up at the window. How could he just leave her out here?! And his words had been said without a trace of sarcasm or amusement, which somehow made everything worse. She exploded in fury.

“I have a twisted ankle,” she yelled. “I can’t climb that bloody wall! You get back here right now, Johan! Or tell the innkeeper to unlock the door!”

Silence.

After a few minutes of grouching and grumbling, Kaira went to the wall and sighed. She reached up with her right arm and gripped the very same brick that Johan had used. If he can do it, I can do it too. She lifted her injured foot and set it gingerly on the ledge. Then she pulled herself up, relying mostly on the strength of her arm. She found another jutting brick with her left hand. Slowly, she climbed.

Light, her fingers were freezing! And her muscles ached, especially her arms, as she strained to make up for her leg. Finally, she looked up to see the window ledge. Grinning, she reached for it. And in her eagerness, she made a mistake. She let go with her other hand before she found a firm grip.

Relief turned to shock as her fingers scrabbled for purchase against the slippery surface of the ledge. She slid, then her hand slipped off the ledge. No! Kaira screamed as her weaker leg gave away beneath her. Then she was falling...

This wasn’t the first building that Johan had broken into, but he hoped, at least, that it would the last. Once all the training was over and he had learnt enough not to get himself stabbed in a fight, he was going to set up his own mercenary band and provide for himself that way. No more stealing. No more crime. He’d get his money guarding people’s backs and protecting them. Today had proved that he couldn’t go back to what he’d once been. He’d tried it, seen if he could still do it, and failed; it couldn’t have got any worse.

He glanced around the room, even as he pulled the scarf down from around his nose and mouth. There was a bed, a chest for clothes, a rug on the floor, a table with a jug, and a fireplace that looked like it hadn’t seen a fire for quite some time. Sparse but comfortable, it was obviously one of the inn’s many rooms, but it was just as empty as the fireplace. The room was icy cold, and his breath once again misted in the air. Strange…

Not pausing to think about it too much, Johan took a step forward, but immediately froze as the floorboards creaked under him. He waited for a moment with bated breath, expecting to hear footsteps running up the stairs in reaction to the noise, but the only sound was the steady beating of his heart. Thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump.

He spared one last glance at the door, before, wondering what was taking Kaira so long, he moved back to the window.

Just in time to hear the scream.

He reacted instantly. There was no thought behind what he was doing; instead, he let instinct and his reflexes take over, not giving a thought to himself as he threw himself half out the window, heart thumping, heart pounding, trying to leap out of his chest. One hand wrapped around her wrist, and he gritted his teeth and pulled her up and through the window. He fell back, no longer having to fight against gravity, and hit the floor once again.

This time, though, he just stayed there, and laughed.

“Please tell me you’re not going to make a habit of this. I’d like to return to the Tower whole and safe.”

A hand wrapped around her wrist and hauled her through the window. Kaira collapsed on the floor and caught her breath. She was alive. A little bumped and bruised, but alive. She rubbed at her wrist in wonder.

A small giggle escaped between her frozen lips. Then suddenly she was laughing, a full-on belly-shaking laugh, lying there on the floor beside Johan. It was a blessed relief from all the distress that had been shoved her way in the last few hours. For a single moment, nothing else mattered. Not her throbbing ankle, not the cold that chilled her to her skin, not the fact she had nearly fallen to her death.

And where laughter faded, joy remained. They had made it. They were safe. Kaira smiled and sat up.

“Why not, if I have someone like you watching my back? Let’s go downstairs and greet the innkeeper,” she said, cheerfully. She stood and offered a hand to Johan.

“Coming?”