43. Yarrow Speaks to the Lady of Blue Tower

They climbed for a long time. Yarrow was not much given to resistance, and the Lady seemed curious about what was happening. The spears fascinated her, and she tried many times to inspect their blades, and Yarrow had to stop her, fearing to provoke anyone.

Blue Tower was cleaner and better-maintained than Grey. Much of its interior was smooth white, like plain plaster or bone, and fewer of its windows were broken, and most of its passages were free of the debris of age. But as they went up the spiraling stairs in the outer skin of the tower, they passed rooms and halls where the floors were stained with blood, or where corpses were piled awaiting disposal. The smell was sweet and vile.

Occasionally they passed outer windows. Much of the palace still lay under a shroud of snow. Blue was a field of white like bleached linen; the twists and grooves of Black were sugared like candied angelica; Grey was invisible; the snow around Red was darkened with smoke. Only Yellow was green, still vibrant with the sick dreaming of the dead Lady.

At last they came out of the stairs on the edge of a wide circular chamber, ringed with benches descending to a round dais in the center. The domed, sky-blue ceiling was dotted with stars. It rested on square pillars, and past them was the parapet at the top of Blue Tower. The guards pushed Yarrow and the Lady onto a bench near the dais and told them to wait.

"For what?" said Yarrow.

"It's almost time for the audience. Then she'll decide what to do with you."

So they sat. Her feet aching and her back sore, Yarrow was grateful for the bench, then angry at herself for her own gratitude. The Lady went completely immobile and her eyes closed. Perhaps she was asleep. Certainly, her unsettling aura diminished. If her dreams were its source, they were now diverted elsewhere, like a stream, to turn a different set of wheels. But Yarrow was tired of wondering about the truth—tired of everything, in fact. She fell asleep herself.

When she opened her eyes, the room was noisy with a crowd. Half the benches were already full, and more people were coming in all the time. None of them sat too near Yarrow and the Lady. The mood was somber and anxious. All the gatherings Yarrow had been to were festivals, like Lady-day or Midsummer or the Weavers' Moon: she was used to people cracking nuts, joking around, playing games. She and Ban and Grith would run through the crowds, sampling festival food, looking at everyone's fine clothes, practicing their recitations for the various rites. Even the most solemn occasion, like Wakenight, was still a holiday. This was different. All the conversations she could hear were quiet, stilted, nervous. Children were shushed if they made noise. Guards stood at all the doors and in the aisles.

Yarrow twisted the ends of her sleeves until they were wrinkled and sweaty. Even if she found a chance to escape, somehow slipped away from her guards, there were too many people to get through. The Lady was still asleep. If she woke up cranky, she would cause absolute chaos. Yarrow could use that to escape, but by no means would she spark it by awakening the Lady herself.

A person in a simple blue houppelande entered, flanked by several guards. This must be the new ruler of Blue Tower. After the images in the Schoolhouse, the appalling vastness of the Lady of Yellow, and the vicious prickles of the baby Lady, this one seemed tame. She was a person of simple flesh, pale and thin, with a long face and long nose and long mouth. Chestnut hair was piled on her head and held with a coif of gold wire, ornamented with a finial like the one atop the tower itself. At first, nothing about her seemed different from anyone you might meet in the courts below.

But she had the aura of a Lady. And when she opened her mouth to speak, her teeth were gleaming lapis, and her tongue was blue and shining as a butterfly's wing. When she stood still, her hair slithered and shifted in its golden cage.

"The old Lady is dead," she said. "Long live the new."

"The old Lady is dead," the crowd repeated. "Long live the new."

Yarrow nearly spoke along with them, but stifled the impulse. This was not Grey; these were not her words to say.

"The signs all say that the Beast rises soon," the Lady said. Her lips lagged slightly behind the words, as if she were speaking by other means, and the mouth was just for show. "We are safe here, gathered into the tower."

"We are safe here," said the crowd. The words came to Yarrow's mouth, but she pressed her lips together.

"My mother was weak and would not do what was necessary. But we are safe now. It is a new era."

"It is a new era," said the crowd. This time, when Yarrow still did not speak, the Lady's eyes zeroed in on her.

"It is a new era," said the Blue Lady.

"It is a new era," said the crowd, but not Yarrow.

She glided to the edge of the dais and stared down at Yarrow. Her eyes had no pupils, just rounds of carved lapis. A sharp smell came from her.

"It is," said the Blue Lady slowly and deliberately, "a new era."

"It is—" Yarrow clapped her hand over her mouth, muffling the rest. To repeat, to join a rite, as she had not in weeks—the urge was in her very bones.

The Blue Lady lifted her left hand. The crowd followed suit. They were dead silent now. Yarrow grabbed her left hand with her right and forced it to stay in place. The Blue Lady snapped her fingers. The crowd snapped theirs. Yarrow was still.

The Blue Lady snapped her fingers again. "It is a new era."

Her subjects did as she did. What did she want? She asked nothing. She had no questions for Yarrow. Her stony gaze did not take in the stained and travelworn gown and wimple. She didn't even see the baby Lady. She saw only refusal.

She snapped her fingers again. The crowd snapped theirs. In Yarrow's lap, her own fingers twitched. Her skin was all hot prickles and sweat.

"It is a new era," said the Lady. "Long live the new Lady." She let her hand fall. The crowd echoed her movement.

Yarrow wanted to sing the Lullaby of Reeds—it might soothe the Lady's cold anger—but when she opened her mouth to try, the Lady's own words came out.

"It is a new era," said Yarrow. Her shoulders sagged in relief.

"It is a new era," said the Lady.

"It is a new era," said the crowd.

"It is a new era," said Yarrow.

The Lady raised her left hand. The crowd raised theirs again. Yarrow raised hers. In unison, they snapped their fingers. A second time. A third time. The channels of obedience were deeply carved in Yarrow's soul, but even so, this was too easy. She was not commanded; she was compelled. But she had surrendered already. Her tired feet were forgotten; she straightened up; her pains were eased. A new era. A new era.

Snap.

There is work to be done, said the Lady; her true voice washed around the room like warm water. Fortifications must be built. Black and Red and Yellow and Grey are fragile, weak. Let the Beast take them. Blue must survive. Blue will survive. It is a new era.

Snap .

It is the lot of Blue to make, said the Lady. And make we will. Swords and spears and shields and poison. If the Beast comes to devour us, it will find not an apple but a belladonna.

Snap .

The others are weak and forgetful, said the Lady. They—

Click click click .

Yarrow shivered as if splashed. She wrenched her eyes from the Blue Lady. The child had awakened and was opening its stone eyelids one by one, each lid clicking into place. The next time everyone snapped, Yarrow was out of step.

The Blue Lady's rhythm and cadence faltered. Her lightless eyes turned to Yarrow and her seatmate. The Yellow Lady stared back. The air became charged and heavy, as if before a lightning strike.

What have you brought me? the Blue Lady said.

Why didn't she recognize her own kin? Grey, Black, Blue, Red, Yellow, all were kin, the five sisters' children. How could one not know the other? But then, Yellow had thought Yarrow herself was a Lady. They could be fooled.

What is this? said the Blue Lady.

The crowd's lips echoed soundlessly: What is this?

Yarrow edged down the bench, outside the palpable cone of the Blue Lady's attention, and stood up. Nobody noticed her. The thousands of eyes in the room were fixed on the younger Lady.

What do you want? the Blue Lady demanded.

In silent unison, the crowd repeated her question.

Food, said the other Lady. Her arms extended, clamping onto the Blue Lady's shoulders. Her mouth had learned to open very wide.

Yarrow fled up the aisle as the Blue Lady, using hundreds of throats not her own, began to scream.

Yarrow ran, her pack jolting against her legs. The stairs flew past her. The screams echoed after her. She tripped and rolled down several steps until a friendly landing broke her fall. Blood was trickling through the ceiling, down the stairs, leaching through the clean plaster walls. The screams were still echoing. On and on and on she ran, dizzy with the many rounds of the staircase. Her feet were killing her. The stairs had bruised her body all over. But the screaming would not stop.

I should have left her in the woods, Yarrow said to herself. She scrubbed at her streaming eyes. Why didn't I? She clamped her hands on her ears. A woman must not abandon a parentless child. But she tried to eat the flower. She tried to eat me . Why didn't I forget the rules just once?

She stumbled out onto the great marble portico and the white glare of the winter noon. Another tremor was beginning, and a soft sprinkle of snow coated her as she ran down the few outer steps. Roe was leaning against the wall of the terrace near the door to the Deeps. The screaming filled the courts of Blue.

"Roe!" Yarrow shrieked. "Roe, I'm so sorry!"

He did not answer. She ran to him, but even as she did, she knew the truth. When she touched him, he fell over, leaving a smear of blood on the marble wall. Whether he had been killed for letting her in, or whether he had simply been seen too close to the tower, she would never know.

The noise from the tower-top cut off abruptly. A mass of yellow fell over the parapet, tangled with a mass of blue. A loud drone of holiness hummed in the cold air. Cowering, Yarrow lost sight of them behind the rooftops. A moment later, the ground reeled. The air inhaled itself, then exhaled in a burst of prickling snow.

Everything was silent. Yarrow crouched by Roe's body, shivering until her stomach was sick.

Bit by bit, reciting the Litany of Leaves in scattered fragments until it clumped together as a whole, Yarrow calmed. There was work to do. She could go to pieces later.

Old Yarrow had always said to bury doctors whole, with apple seeds at their heart, so that the tree would consume them and turn them into something beautiful and useful. Though it hurt her aching body, she dragged Roe along the terrace to one of the beds of earth where a maple tree trunk stood with most of its limbs intact. She gently parted the lips of the spear-wound in his chest and placed a fig there, since there were no apples. She had neither strength nor time to bury him properly, so she tore frosty branches from the tree and covered him. Rite or no rite, that was all the grave he would get. Nothing would ever bring Yarrow back to Blue Tower.

She sang the Doctor's Elegy as she took up her journey again. Blue abutted the West Passage; if she could get in there, and head in the right direction, she would reach Black Tower that day. And if she did not, it was a matter of indifference to her whether she came to it at all.