Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
A few moments later, Clara goes limp. Jeyk and Mitch are holding her up, but the Matrons push them aside, taking their places, then practically drag Clara back towards the Maiden Tower.
I didn’t want the night to end this way. I don’t want her to be alone, dealing with all that has happened. All that is still happening, the tolling bells remind me. But I am at a loss here. I don’t know how to process the events of the day. And this muddled confusion goes beyond the death of my father and the ringing of the bells.
I step away from the window and turn my back to it, looking out at the office. My office, but up until a few hours ago, my father’s office.
An office I didn’t even know existed.
Mitch is the one who brought me up here. His father became my father’s valet after Clara’s father died and there wasn’t a male child in her family to take his place. So Mitch knew about it because his father told him this afternoon. In fact, Mitch was probably getting his talk right about the same time I was getting mine from the Council. At any rate, his father thought it best that Mitch be the one to show it to me and help me deal with it.
So here I am. Dealing with it.
The problem is… I still don’t understand what I’m looking at.
This is what I do know: The office is four stories tall and is located at the very top of the Extraction Tower. Which, from the outside, looks like a blue dome.
But from the inside—I turn back to the windows—it doesn’t appear to be a dome at all. Because it’s all made of glass. This makes me curious about all the other domes on the major towers. Are they all made of glass too? Do they contain an office inside?
I don’t know. I don’t really care.
It’s very clear that my father didn’t use most of the space in here. All the furnishings on the three floors below me are covered in blue sheets coated in dust.
But this floor—I turn back to look at the space around me—was used. Nothing is covered in sheets. There’s a lot of dust, but Mitch said that’s because my father didn’t allow maids in here. Didn’t allow anyone in here, not even cooks. Which makes sense from my point of view because he always came home for meals, even lunch.
The room is circular, of course, since it’s part of the dome. And there’s a giant stairwell that spirals up from down below and winds around a central core about twenty feet in diameter. There is a door along the wall, so obviously this central core is a room of some kind. But I don’t even bother thinking about that right now. I just turn back to the window and stare down at the city. People are leaving the God’s Tower event center. Almost all the spoke-y bridges that cross the canal are filled. But I’m not interested in them.
My eyes find the God’s Tower. I’m interested in that. I am not quite eye-to-eye with it—the God’s Tower is the tallest thing in Tau City, hands down. But from here, it’s very close.
I feel a sense of… equality. Like the god in that tower and the Extraction Master in this one have some sort of understanding.
They look nothing alike.
In fact, the God’s Tower doesn’t look anything like the rest of the city. It is not built into the surrounding rocky hillside, for starters. There are no gentle corners and domed roofs. There are no neutral colors with blue accents. There are no golden lights shining from within.
If everything about Tau City is warm, and cozy, and inviting, then everything about the God’s Tower is cold, and sharp, and repulsive.
It’s black, for one. Not all of it. Some of it is a dark gray. And while there are lights coming from within, they are not a hazy gold mimicking sunshine. It’s a very harsh white kind of light.
No one has ever been inside, so I can’t say if it’s cozy in there. But given what I can see from the dome of the Extraction Tower, I’m gonna have to say there is a one-hundred-percent chance that it’s just as severe and hard on the inside as it is on the out.
It’s a contradiction. It’s always been in conflict with the city around it, and if I had to place a bet on that god being evil or good, just one look at the place he calls home is enough tip the scales in a certain direction.
How did I not see it?
How does everyone not see it?
Are they blind?
Are they stupid?
Willfully ignorant?
No. They are just naïve. And trusting. And good.
And it has just never occurred to them that the people they put all their faith in are nothing but liars.