18. Yarrow Gets Too Close to Yellow Tower and Tertius Gets Its Hands Wet

18. Yarrow Gets Too Close to Yellow Tower and Tertius Gets Its Hands Wet

Peregrine called Tertius a hollowman, and seemed confused that Yarrow had never heard of or seen one before. "A Mother must know of them," he said. "We itinerants take them all over Black and Red, and other places too."

"Not to Grey," said Yarrow. She looked over her shoulder. The West Passage rose up behind them to the edge of the hill, cutting off any glimpse she might have had of the top of her tower. "You never come to Grey."

" I don't, but some other butler must."

"Never. The wine arrives by fish-cart."

"Ah, well." Peregrine put a wad of leaves into his mouth and chewed them, then spat bright emerald juice over Tertius's side. "Maybe the Master of Privileges knows why. I sure as South don't."

The Passage went up a little hump, and through a dip in the left-hand rim of the valley, Blue Tower loomed through chilly mists. Yarrow shivered.

"Do you know why winter's fallen?" she asked. "We were in summer before the snow came. We did nothing wrong."

"I've been over in Red for a month," said Peregrine. "It was winter there, and meant to be, but I heard a rumor that the seasons had come out of joint for Blue and Grey."

"Did we do anything to displease Black?" The broken mask flashed into her mind, but Yarrow would not confess to that sin unless necessary. The Willow Lady could only punish you if she knew you'd done wrong, and as powerful as she was, how could she have seen that slip in the heart of Grey?

Peregrine shrugged. "I stopped at Black long enough to restock on wine, but not on gossip. Take comfort, though, little Mother: if Grey had committed some sin bad enough to warrant wintering, the whole palace would have heard. No, I think it's more likely that the wheel has stuck or been meddled with."

This was not reassuring. If the wheel of the seasons was so easily disturbed, it meant people all over the palace had been suffering or dying over some slight mistake in Black.

"That's horrible," said Yarrow.

Peregrine shrugged again and spat purple onto the road below. "It's how things are."

Tertius reached the level part of Yellow and its gait became smoother. The pools and parks around the tower disappeared behind roofs and walls, but the tower itself still surged into the sky like a jet of vomit. Bridges dwindled and vanished, while the buildings became tall and smooth and orderly. Stone traceries framed their arched glass windows. Wrought iron railings and balconies sprouted everywhere like vines. The green copper roofs were warm as leaves in summer. The humid air glued Yarrow's robe and wimple to her.

Something rustled above her head. When Yarrow looked up, she saw the smallest ape peering over a flower-carved cornice. She waved at it, and it imitated her. As Tertius moved on, the ape kept pace with it, and Yarrow felt a little better. At least she would have a friend of sorts here.

They came to a crossroads where a broad, white avenue intersected the West Passage. Peregrine rapped on the platform three times. Tertius halted.

"To the Lady's Lakehouse," said Peregrine, enunciating each syllable with the abstracted precision of someone performing a ritual for the hundredth time. Tertius let out its deep chuckle and turned right. As they left the crossroads, Peregrine spat orange.

"What's at the Lakehouse?" said Yarrow.

"Sardonyx, the Keeper of the Ferry, is owed one bottle of claret every seventy-five days," said Peregrine. "In recognition of his services during the Night of Bones at the end of the Apple Era."

"What services?"

Peregrine shrugged. "The Master of Records would know. I'm not even sure what the Night of Bones was; I just deliver wine."

Old Yarrow had told the story once, though it was on her deathbed and incomplete. Something about factions of Grey and Red aligning with each other to overthrow the Bellflowers. The third ruling Lady used to progress from tower to tower, and at each she would demand tribute. Great Citrine of Yellow was her ally, and took a tithe of the tribute to enrich Yellow itself. And the guardians of Grey, overzealous in their duty, put their ancient weapon at the disposal of fractious Red. It came to pass that the Bellflower Lady was staying in unfortified Yellow, and the conspiracy saw their chance. In a single night, with the aid of an unnamed miracle of Red, thousands of Bellflower partisans died, and the guardian's weapon killed the Bellflower Lady. They did not achieve their aim: her daughter was in Black and took the throne at once, and an answering miracle of Yellow devastated Red for three generations. And so order was restored. The house had stayed aloof from the conflict and so Grey was spared the punishment that fell on Red. And that, Old Yarrow said, was another reason not to trust the guardians, who would betray even their home in the pursuit of their duty.

But Arnica, in the room to check Old Yarrow's pulse, disagreed. Red had stolen the weapon. The guardians were never involved.

And Jasper, teaching the apes, had read a very long poem lauding Citrine for killing her tyrant sister with the guardians' steel, and taking the uncountable wealth of Bellflower for Yellow.

So Yarrow did not see any point in telling Peregrine about the Night of Bones.

They began to pass people at last. Many of them had glistening amphibian skin and long spiny tails, but just as many had feathered heads like Ban's, and a few like Peregrine were simple flesh. As the hollowman came to a plaza with a fountain, it paused and laboriously settled down onto its elbows and uttered a low call. Standing up, Yarrow could see that Tertius appeared to do honor to a group of three blue-robed figures, whose faces protruded like long silver spoons from their hoods. Each of them trilled a high note, and Tertius got back to its feet and went on.

"Brothers of the Order of Transit," said Peregrine, when Yarrow gave him a questioning look. "They made the hollowmen back in the Bellflower Era, so Tertius is bound to acknowledge them whenever they enter its sight." He spat brown. "Mostly they run the trains these days, though. There's hardly any hollowmen left, just those in service of Black Tower, and not many of them either. Trains are faster and need less maintenance, so most of the towers turned to them ages ago." He patted the platform and Tertius rumbled. "Tertius is one of the originals."

Peregrine's face was so proud that Yarrow assumed his use of Tertius was an honor accorded to him. She made a noise of interest as the hollowman swung right onto a narrow passage between two long rows of houses. The platform scraped a wall, sending a little shower of stone dust onto the pavement. The walls all along the passage were marked like that; some of the gouges had clearly eroded. The Apple Era was ages past, and Yarrow felt a thrill of awe at just how long the Butlers Itinerant had been making this journey to Sardonyx. Tertius alone had probably done it thousands of times. But as old as the custom was, her own were even older.

The passage made a long, graceful curve to the left. Yarrow's awe faded as the pit of her stomach twisted. A low drone thrummed in the passage, and it grew louder as the passage went on. The drone rose and fell, wavering like a sick person's breath, but never going entirely away. Yarrow's hands were cold with sweat, and she knotted her fingers around her sleeves. Please don't let it be what I think, she said to no one. Please, let it not be. Her breath began to match the uneven throb in the air.

Tertius entered a path between high green hedges. Too high, too green. But over the trimmed tops hung the branches of dead trees, almost comforting in their homey barrenness. Tertius turned right and left and left and right and kept turning until Yarrow was lost. All the time she thought, Let it be somewhere else, let it be one of the pools. Not the lake. Do not take me there. The Lady of Yellow Tower has never died. The drone grew louder and louder. It's only insects, Yarrow told herself. Nobody can come close to Yellow Tower, not even Peregrine. The Lady is one of the five, older than the palace. She has never died. She is too holy.

The hedge rustled. Alarmed, Yarrow glanced to the side. The little ape was swinging among the green, green branches. It did not seem affected by the droning. That was some comfort. Surely an animal would know if there was any harm ahead.

The maze debouched onto a wide terrace. Directly ahead was calm blue water, and beyond that, Yellow's roofs and the hazy spikes of Black and Red. Then Tertius turned right, and Yellow Tower was before them, rancid. The stones themselves seemed to sweat. Green algae fringed its windows and the pits of its incised decoration. The windows gleamed as slick as oil. A sickly rotten smell like compost breathed from the lake at its foot. Yarrow's stomach flipped and she doubled over.

"A bit of a shock, isn't it?" said Peregrine, not unkindly, and patted her shoulder. "It's all right, little Mother. You get used to it."

The sickening drone lay around Yellow Tower like a fog. Whether it came from the tower itself, or rose from the water as a fume, or was just Yarrow's own panic at being so near the Lady, could not be told. She kept her mind on breathing. She sang the Thirty-First Birthing-Song without making a sound, and made her lungs go in and out with its rhythm, instead of the nauseous chaos of the tower's drone. Peregrine spat on the terrace, red as blood, and touched her shoulder.

"We won't be here for long," he said. "Just to deliver the bottle, and then we're gone."

"Why is it like that?" Yarrow gasped. "Oh, why is it like that?"

Peregrine shrugged. "It's just holiness, little Mother. All the Ladies give that off, though normally it's endurable. My master once told me it's the weight of their dreams. And the old one there, she has thousands of years of 'em."

Tertius had kept moving this whole time, and like a cat stepping from a stool to the floor, went over the terrace's marble balustrade and down to the green shore of the lake. Before them was a little house, also of marble, built entirely of scrollwork and lattice and situated beneath two weeping willows, dead and dry but so covered with ivy that they seemed alive. If she'd come across it anywhere else, Yarrow would have called it a pleasant little place. The ape followed, and got immediately into one of the willows, where it snatched at dragonflies. Tertius came to a halt.

Peregrine leaned into the pink tent and produced a small brass horn, which he blew. The echoes were swallowed up by the drone. A door in the little house opened and a man in marigold robes came out. Meanwhile, Peregrine took a wooden pole with a brass hook on its end and went to the rope ladder.

"Welcome," said the man, bowing.

"Thank you," said Peregrine, bowing and unrolling the ladder at the same time. Since nobody told Yarrow not to follow, she did. Being on steady ground might clear her head and settle her stomach.

Peregrine went around to the back of the hollowman. At the end of its rib cage was a flap of ivory flesh, buttoned at the top two corners. With the pole, Peregrine unfastened it and the flap came open. The inside of Tertius was all red and moist, like lips, its ribs visible through cloudy membranes. The cavernous space was full of bundles and packages and trunks. Peregrine hooked a satchel with the pole and brought it out. By then, the Keeper of the Ferry had joined them, yawning and scratching himself.

"Slow day?" said Peregrine wryly, opening the satchel.

"Always," said Sardonyx.

Peregrine drew out a dark glass bottle and began to say something about rewards and nights of bones, but Yarrow's attention was drawn away. Near the top of the tower, on its shady side, a round yellow-green light was pulsing and winking in a window. She stepped forward. Everything around her faded into grey except that pus-colored light, dancing and skipping like a guttering candle. Its motion gradually stopped, and the sphere came into focus and turned .

It was looking at her.

Yarrow screamed. Peregrine stopped in the middle of his ceremony, and both he and Sardonyx looked faintly annoyed. Just then, the ape, hearing her scream, bounded down out of the tree and toward her. Tertius made its witless chuckle and slammed its hand onto the ape. There was a squelch, and a lot of red and purple. Tertius lifted its hand and, still chuckling, began to lick the squashy remnants of the ape from its dirty palm.

Sardonyx sighed in annoyance. "That's a month of paperwork for old Bismuth, right there," he said.

Yarrow screamed again and sank to her knees. Peregrine followed, trying to quiet her, but she would not be quieted. All the ape wanted was to follow her. It only wanted to see if she was all right. She'd asked it to come.

The drone rose until the air and ground throbbed with it. Yarrow fell forward onto her hands and vomited, her stomach moving to the tuneless tune. Peregrine clutched his own stomach. Even Sardonyx looked a little green. The sound cut off abruptly, leaving only the quiet splashing noises of the lake.

" She's calling," he said.

"What?" said Peregrine, almost shouting.

"Who?" said Yarrow. The drone returned, gradually rising in volume.

"You're to come up immediately," Sardonyx said. "The girl, at least, though she didn't say no to the Butler Itinerant."

"She can't mean it," said Peregrine. "The Mother didn't know the rules. She's not to blame. I'll go instead. I shouldn't have brought her this far."

Sardonyx shook his head. "She said the girl. You can go if you want, but the girl for sure."

Peregrine turned to Yarrow. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm so, so sorry."

"Who wants me?" said Yarrow, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. "Who's called?" She knew the answer before she spoke, and the look on Peregrine's face confirmed it.

"The Lady of Yellow Tower," said Peregrine. "She's called, and you'll go."

As if in reply, the green light in the window winked and went out.