Read Online The Lost Heiress #2 by Catherine Fisher - Free Book Online

coyly to the end of the corridor and flung a door open. “For you, sweetie.”
    She peered in.
    A tiny room, with a bed and an empty hearth and a chest, and rain dripping into a pool, but when she’d crossed to the window and looked out she smiled, for the room was high in some turret, and it hung out into the sky over the tangle of lanes and courtyards and alleys far below.
    She was glad it was up on its own. She was already beginning to dislike the Tower of Song.
    “It’ll do,” she said, turning.
    Braylwin smirked from the door. “Yes. For keeping an eye on you, Carys.”
    It took her three days even to find a map of the place. In the mornings Braylwin would dictate long reports of the summer’s tax-gatherings to a harassed clerk who had been ordered to work with him.
    The man deserved a medal, Carys thought darkly, watching the sleek Watchleader tease and flatter and make a fool of him. Harnor, his name was. Once she saw him give her a quick, exasperated glance, but he never lost his temper, and Braylwin smirked and preened and invented endless imaginary accounts until he tired of the game and sent one of the men-at-arms to fetch his dinner. After that he spent the long, wet afternoons sleeping, or entertaining the gaggle of unpleasant cronies he called friends.
    Carys was rarely needed, but he kept her hanging around; only in the afternoons could she vanish without suspicion. “Take a tootle around,” he said once, filing his broad nails. “This place is a labyrinth, Carys, you’ll never find anything you need in it. Your friend Galen will love it, when we bring him in.” And he winked at her, so that she wanted to spit.
    One thing she realized soon was that the rain here was eternal. The weather must have changed since the Emperor’s time, because now the tower loomed constantly in its cloud of drizzle; all the long afternoons rain trickled in runnels and gutters and spouts, spattering through gargoyles of hideous beasts and goblins that spat far down on the heads of hurrying clerks. Always the roofs ran with water; it dripped and plopped and splashed through culverts and drains, or sheeted down, a relentless liquid gurgle that never stopped, until she started to imagine that this was the song the tower sang, through all the throats and mouths and pipes of its endless body.
    At first she wandered without direction, just trying to find her way back to the nearest courtyard, but she soon realized that was hopeless; once it took her three hours to find Braylwin’s rooms again.
    As she climbed the stairs wearily, Harnor was coming out.
    “How do you find your way around this warren?” she snapped.
    He looked at her in surprise. “The maps. How else?”
    “Maps? Where?”
    For a moment he glanced at her. Then he pushed the thick folder of paper under one arm. “I’ll show you.”
    He led her down three stairways and along a gallery that had once been painted with brilliant birds. Now only the ghosts of them lingered, and great damp patches of lichen were furring them over. At the end he stopped and opened a small door. “There’s one in here.”
    She went in after him warily, but through the door was nothing but a balcony, and looking down from it, she saw she was above a great echoing hall, full of desks and the murmur of voices. Coins were being counted down there, millions of them. She grinned, thinking of the Sekoi.
    “This is the map. There are many, and they’re scattered around the Underpalace. Would you like some paper? You could make a copy. It takes a while to find your way around otherwise.”
    As Harnor riffled through the file for a clean sheet, Carys watched him curiously. He looked pale, as if he never went outside. He found a piece and gave it to her.
    “Thanks. How long have you been here, Watchman?”
    “All my life.” He smiled sourly. “Forty years and more. Once I hoped I’d be a field agent, but not anymore. Too old.”
    She nodded, looking up at the map: an immense sprawl of