Kaelen counted aloud as I climbed, and I could hear him for the first sixty rungs.
Then the wind took his voice, and there was only the iron under my gloves and the Row shrinking below me, a scatter of red coals in a bowl of dark. I did not look down. I had learned that lesson the first time. I looked at the next rung and the one after it, and I kept to the left side, where the metal still held.
My head was clear, which frightened me more than an ache would have. I had told no lie in two days. The tab behind my left eye had gone quiet, and a quiet tab, I was beginning to understand, was only a bill waiting to be written.
At the top, a hand reached down and took my wrist.
"Quiet," Sparrow whispered. "Please."
◆
The tower looked the same. The cold brazier, the cot, the mirror on its tripod angled out toward the Row. But the slate had been wiped clean, and the chalk lay broken in two pieces on the floor, and Sparrow's hands were shaking so badly that she hid them in her sleeves.
She was not alone.
A boy sat on the cot with a grey blanket around his shoulders. He was perhaps eleven, thin as a rake, with the same crooked hair as his sister and the same sharp, tired face. His feet were bare and black with soot. His lips were cracked. He looked at me with enormous eyes, and he did not say a word.
"This is Tam," said Sparrow. Her voice broke on the name. "He came up the ladder an hour ago. By himself. He's been in a cellar for three months."
"Who brought him?"
"Nobody." She shook her head. "The door was open. That's what he says. Someone unlocked it and left it open, and he walked out and followed the lamp."
"Which lamp?"
"Mine." She laughed, a small wet sound. "I've been signaling every night, the way I was told. He saw the flash from the bottom of the shaft. He knew it was me because I used to do it for him, when we were little. Three long, one short. It means come home."
I knelt in front of the cot, so that my eyes were level with his. He flinched, but he did not look away.
"Hello, Tam," I said. "My name's Aren. Your sister says you asked for me."
He swallowed. His voice, when it came, was a cracked thread of sound.
"The man said you'd come."
"What man?"
"The clean one." He glanced at Sparrow, who nodded. "He talked to me every day. He brought bread. He never hit me. He said he was only keeping me safe until Sparrow finished her work."
"Did he tell you his name?"
"He said I could call him Uncle."
The word sat in the cold air like a stone. Sparrow's face twisted. I did not look at her.
"Did Uncle say anything about me?" I asked.
"He said you were the Architect." Tam said it carefully, as though reciting a lesson. "He said the Lady wanted you alive, and the Catalyst alive, and everything else didn't matter. He said the Row was a stage. And that when the play was done, the Lady would be pleased."
"The Lady," I said.
"That's all he called her."
My hands had gone cold. I thought of a gloved hand resting on a black card with silver runes. I thought of a woman in midnight silk saying, I have a bet on you. I thought of a tall man in a black coat climbing a stair to a door that was not on any floor plan.
"Tam," I said, very gently. "Think hard. Did Uncle ever say the word Empire?"
"No."
"Did he say anything about the Captain?"
"Which captain?"
"The man in the grey coat. The one with the shaved head."
Tam frowned. I watched him dig for it, a boy trying to find the right box in a room he had spent three months in.
"Uncle did a voice," he said slowly. "Sometimes, when he thought I was asleep. A low voice, flat and slow. He'd say, Open the hatch. He'd say, Send a man down. Then he'd laugh, very quietly, and say, Not bad. Not quite right."
I felt the floor tilt under me. Sparrow made a small sound.
"Practicing," I said. "He was practicing someone's voice."
"I think so."
"Did he say whose?"
Tam shook his head. "He said, one more week. And then nobody will ever tell the difference."
◆
I did not say anything for a while. The wind hissed through a gap in the parapet. Far below, very faint, I could hear Kaelen's voice, still counting, in a steady monotone.
A man who wrote everything down. A man who bought twenty-two grey coats and carried a voice like a spare coin. A man who kept a boy in a cellar and called himself Uncle, and who knew the word Architect and answered to a Lady.
It was neat. It was terribly neat. It fit together like a good lie, and I distrusted it for that reason alone.
"Sparrow," I said. "The message. COME. ALONE. BROTHER. Did you write it?"
She hesitated, and then she shook her head.
"He gave it to me. Uncle. Three days ago, on a card, with the pattern marked. He said to send it the moment Tam came up the shaft." She wiped her face. "I didn't know Tam would ever come. I thought it was a lie. I thought he was going to use it to get you up here."
"He did."
"But Tam is real." Her voice cracked. "I don't understand. Why would he let him go?"
"Because it's a better bait than a lie," I said slowly. "Real things are very hard to doubt."
She stared at me. Tam looked from one of us to the other.
"Is it a trap?" he whispered.
"Probably."
"Is it a bad one?"
"I don't know yet." I stood. My knees ached. "Sparrow, how long before the next flash is due?"
"Midnight. In ten minutes." She looked at the mirror. "I send it every night. Three long, one short, then wait for the answer."
"What does it say?"
"Nothing. It's just a keep-alive. It means the tower is still manned, and nothing has changed." Her eyes went wide. "If I don't send it, he'll know something has."
"Then you send it."
"And if he answers?"
"Then you tell me what the answer says."
I took the slate from the floor and the broken chalk, and crouched in the dim light of the brazier. "Show me the pattern. I'll learn it. Then, if anything changes, I'll know."
She hesitated, and then she knelt beside me and began to draw, slowly, line by line, her small fingers steady for the first time all night.
◆
It was a short, plain signal. Three long. One short. A pause. Two long.
"And he answers with?"
"One flash." She demonstrated, the back of her hand held up to the lamp. "That's all. It means received."
"From where?"
"The roof of the long hall. Always."
"Always," I repeated.
Sparrow nodded. I looked at the tripod, at the polished disc, at the brass slide on the shuttered lamp. Ten minutes. In ten minutes, someone in the Row would flash a single answer, and I would learn whether the man called Uncle was still watching.
"I need you to send it exactly as you always do," I said. "Same rhythm. Same pause. Don't change anything."
"And Tam?"
"Stays here, below the parapet, under the blanket." I looked at the boy. "Can you be very quiet for ten minutes?"
"I've been quiet for three months," said Tam.
I almost laughed. It came out as a short, painful breath.
"Good man," I said.
◆
At midnight, Sparrow stood at the tripod with the lamp in her hand and her chin up.
Three long. One short. A pause. Two long. The light went out across the dark in clean bright bars, the shutter clicking under her thumb, and I watched it fall on the Row like a line drawn on slate.
Then we waited.
The wind dropped. Somewhere far off, a hammer rang once and was still. I counted my own breaths, in and out, the way I had in the bunker.
Nothing came back from the long hall.
Sparrow's hand trembled on the lamp. "He's late."
"How late is late?"
"He never is."
I looked down at the yard. The long hall was a dark shape in the haze, its roof black against the glow of the furnace. No flash. No wink of mirror. The Row lay silent as a held breath.
"Send it again," I said.
"If I send it twice—"
"Send it."
She sent it again. Three long. One short. The shutter clicked, and the bars of light fell across the roofs. Again, nothing.
Behind me, very faintly, I heard Kaelen's voice. It had changed. It was no longer counting. He was shouting, a hoarse, wordless sound that carried up the shaft and was torn apart by the wind.
I went to the parapet.
Down in the Row, on the far side of the yard, a light had gone out. It was the lamp in the east hall kitchen, the one Sister Vell kept burning all night for the Hospice patients, small and gold and steady as a star. I had seen it every night since we came. I had stopped noticing it.
Now the window was black.
And across the yard, moving without hurry along the wall of the west hall, a grey coat walked toward the door where Lyra was sleeping. It carried a lantern with the shutter closed.
It was not hiding. It did not need to. Every Warden in the Row had been told to look at the furnace, and every other eye in the Undercity had been told to look at a tower.
"He didn't answer," Sparrow whispered, very small. "Because he didn't need to."
I understood her then, all at once.
The flash was never a keep-alive. It was a clock. It told the man called Uncle that the tower was still manned, and that whoever was up here was busy, and that the rest of the Row was unwatched.
I had climbed the ladder because I was asked. I had stayed because a boy had said my name.
And I had counted every minute of it on a slate, like a fool, while the lamp went out.
I went over the parapet before I finished the thought.