Chapter 4: The Tower

Ysolene carried the card to breakfast and laid it beside her husband's plate.

Valerian read it once.

He set down his knife, very carefully, and a little curl of smoke rose from the edge of the card.

"We leave in an hour," he said.

"For the tower?"

"For your father."

The debtors' tower stood at the end of Lorien's river road, a fat grey cylinder with a market built round its feet.

It was noon, and the square was full of carts, geese and women selling pins.

A line of guards in the commissioner's green stood across the iron gate.

"No visitors," said the captain. "Lord Ignatius's order. The prisoner Hartlow is in solitary confinement."

"On what charge?" Ysolene said.

"Solitary confinement is not a charge, miss."

"It's Your Grace," said Valerian mildly.

The captain looked at the crest on the carriage door and swallowed.

"Your Grace, the commissioner has the authority..."

"The commissioner has the authority to move a prisoner, not to starve one. The baron is my wife's father."

The market had gone quiet around them.

A goose honked.

Valerian stepped up to the iron gate and laid one bare palm against the bars.

Ysolene saw the hinges first.

They went from black to dull red, and then to orange, and the bars began to sag.

Several women screamed.

The captain stepped back with his hands up, and so did every man behind him.

"Of course, Your Grace," he said. "I'd forgotten the order's wording."

Valerian took his hand away, and the bars hissed in the cold air.

"Do remember it," he said, "when your commissioner asks."

He offered Ysolene his arm.

She took it, and his sleeve was warm.

She walked into the tower with her head high and her knees not entirely steady.

Her father sat on a cot in a cell that smelled of damp and tallow.

He was thinner than he had been two days ago, and his coat was the same.

When he saw her he got up so fast he nearly fell.

"Ysolene! Good God. You look well. Why do you look well?"

"I got married."

"You did what?"

"To him."

She jerked her head toward Valerian, who had stopped in the doorway with his hands behind him.

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