“Come here, please,” Kyon requests as he continues to look at the landscape of the waterfall in front of us.
The soldier looks at us and decides that he was the one Kyon meant. He does as he’s ordered and stands next to Kyon.
“What do you think of my landscape?” Kyon asks the soldier.
“It’s very nice,” the soldier replies.
“Nice! It’s nice?” Kyon laughs, seemingly amused. He lets go of my hand and clamps his arm around the soldier’s shoulder. “Why don’t you have a closer look?” Kyon pushes the man into the landscape. The soldier disappears from the room and reappears on the bank of the waterfall in the portrait where he falls to his knees, blood dripping out of his mouth, ears, nose, and eyes. He collapses on the ground in the grass.
I take a step back from the portrait. Kyon glances at me. “You see? It has a few problems.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me the problems? You didn’t have to kill him!”
“I made it easy for you to understand that you can never use this to leave here. I could’ve told you, but you don’t trust me. This way, I can be assured that you believe me.”
“Why do you need it?” I ask, turning away from the dead man on the other side of the portal. I hold my hands behind my back so no one will see them shaking.
“Think of the ramifications that something like this can have for us. We could move troops—be everywhere and nowhere in a matter of seconds. It is a very useful tool—if I can get it to exert less pressure on the soft tissue of the body, it will be perfect. I have to find a way to protect the brain and internal organs,” he says absently.
“The funny thing about weapons like this, Kyon, is that the door works both ways. Someone could find it and come to us as well,” I reply.
Kyon turns and faces me. “I did not have you pegged as a ‘glass half empty’ person.”
“I’m not. I’m just being practical,” I reply to cover up my gut-wrenching fear of his intellect. He’s so smart. He won’t need priestesses or me soon. He’s a force all his own. I take another step back from him. I rest my hand against the nearby tree pillar for support. Instantly the glass floor becomes a platform and lifts me to the gallery level.
Kyon laughs below me. He comes to stand next to the tree pillar on the opposite side. “You figured out my puzzle,” he says. He puts his hand on the pillar, and another glass platform raises him up to me. “Now what?” His eyebrow arches in question. I glance across the open airspace to the gallery railing across the room.
I have no idea what will happen if I move forward off the glass step, but I know that something will, because Kyon is watching me with an air of expectation. I take a deep breath, hold it, and take a step forward toward the railing. My foot connects solidly with another glass step in the shape of a clear river stone.
“Did you know it was there? Or were you just being brave?” Kyon asks.
“I was being hopeful.”
From below, it must look as if we’re walking on air as we cross the room to the gallery railing, which turns out to be merely a hologram. The gallery is real enough, though, and I’m grateful for the solid stone beneath my feet. “Do you want to see more?” Kyon asks me.
“I want to see everything,” I reply. I do. I want to know him so that I have a better chance of surviving him. I will put up no fight yet. I have to bide my time. I need him. If I’m to be free of the Brotherhood, he’s my best chance. He has as much to gain by their demise as I do. I’m just afraid that he’ll see through the cracks in my heart. I have more weaknesses than I’d like to admit.
“Fulton,” Kyon calls to his mentor on the ground. “Where have you put our guests?”
“They’re in Beauty—garden level.”
“Beauty?” I ask.
Kyon escorts me from the gallery to a long hallway that is entirely glass on one side. Sunlight falls on us and warms me. This hallway overlooks a flower garden outside. Butterflies flitter around it in droves, feasting on lush buds. “I’ve named all the towers in the house.”
“What was the one I just left called?”
“Kingdom,” he replies.
“And this one?” I ask when we reach the end of the corridor. We enter through a magnificent archway into another tower.
“This part of the house is called Foundation.”
We enter at the gallery level. It looks a lot like a study. The walls of the gallery are lined with books and artifacts. Iron helmets adorned with wings as well as wicked-looking swords are on display behind glass. As I gaze over the wrought-iron railing, I find below us is another round room. The floors are stone with inlaid Nordic knot symbols. Beautiful tapestry carpets with rune symbols of green and gold cover large areas of the floor. Four sets of stairs descend to the lower level from four areas of the gallery. Spiral staircases wind upward to more levels in Foundation. The rows and rows of books and artifacts go all the way up to the pointed peak at least fifteen stories above us.
I leave Kyon’s side and explore the room. Taking the stairs down, I see a study of a kind and a space that Kyon must use to tinker around with things. The first table I happen upon is covered with parts—cogs and washers and metal pieces. The inner workings of some machine is laid out in a definite pattern, as if he took a clock apart and laid it out in a road map in order to be able to put it back together. Another long table with bottles and vials and burners is laid out in the most particular way, as if an experiment had been started and abandoned, but then preserved so that he could pick it up again. I don’t touch anything, treating it with the kind of respect it deserves.
“This is your study?” I ask.
“Yes. I spend much of my time here.”
Only one portrait is in this room: an oil rendering of a very beautiful, petite woman. She looks like a Norse goddess. Her cerulean eyes sparkle with a secret truth that she ponders while she stares back at me. Her face is the graceful, flawless, feminine form of Kyon’s. She has to be a close relation.
“Is she why you’re bad?” I ask as Kyon joins me to gaze at the lovely woman frozen in repose.
“She’s my mother. Her name was Farling.”
“She was a priestess?”
“She was. She was also your mother’s best friend. They used to say their names together—Farling and Arissa—Arissa and Farling. There’s a portrait of the two of them together in a different tower.”
“What happened to her?”
“My mother? She helped your mother escape Alameeda. She paid for it. They executed her for treason.”
“Who did?”
“The Brotherhood—my father. He was infatuated with your mother. He wanted her for his own.”
“How could Excelsior have claimed her when he had already claimed your mother?”
“He can do whatever he wants. He knows how everyone will vote because he tells the majority of them how they’ll vote. He has always been untouchable.”
“Your mother saved my mother from him?”
“She helped Arissa get out of Alameeda, but she couldn’t save herself.”
“Or you,” I whisper to him and the portrait of the ghost who broke his heart.