Chapter 5: Third Landing

On the eighth night I went up the stairs with my father's pencil in my fist.

It was a stub of yellow wood with a flat carpenter's point, and it was the only thing I had that could be called a weapon.

The tower slept.

I had counted the sleeping habits of three men for a week, and the one thing I had not counted was the one who slept least.

The stair to the lamp room turned past a narrow landing, with a lantern on a hook.

Magnus MacNaughton stood on it, with his back against the stone and his arms folded.

He had been there the whole time.

"It's the third landing," he said.

"I wondered when you'd get to it."

"I want to see the lamp room."

"You may see the lamp room at dusk, with Ansel.

"You may not go up it alone at night."

"Why?" I said.

"The gallery rail is rotten in two places," Magnus said.

I looked at him.

"You're lying."

"Yes," he said.

"I'm a poor liar.

"I never learned."

He should have been angry.

I'd braced for it all week, the roar, the hand on my arm.

He stood with his heavy shoulders against the wall and watched the pencil in my fist.

"Put your hand down," he said.

"It's a pencil, Mr. MacNaughton.

"What are you going to do, write me a bill?"

"I'd rather you did that than drop it."

I raised it higher.

I meant to hold it as a threat, and I felt my own mouth shake.