Righteous Anger (Okal Rel Saga #2)

2.5: The Perfect Poison

Spiral Hall was a city in a bottle, and the bottle was the base of the Citadel below the Octagon and Fountain Court. The Citadel was part of the hullsteel cast that comprised the shell of UnderGelion, which meant that living in Spiral Hall was not particularly convenient. It was hard to attach things to hullsteel and impossible to drill holes because hullsteel absorbed stress until it shattered, and very little short of the sheering stresses in a shakeup could accomplish that.

How and why the dominant structures of UnderGelion were made of hullsteel was a mystery, but its citizens coped with what they had.

In Horth's case, that meant he couldn't get into Spiral Hall to visit Nanns Thris the next morning without descending all the way to the Palace Plain and climbing back up, because there were no doors or hatches in the hullsteel floor between the Octagon and the top of Spiral Hall.

After passing inspection by Spiral Hall's guards of honor, Horth found himself looking up at thin towers, heavily interconnected at all levels by an ad hoc collection of crosswalks and ladders. If there were elevators, he did not know where.

He asked for Thris and had a tower pointed out to him. Halfway up was Thris's aerie: an open level supported by pillars at the corners where visitors were received.

Lots of outside staircases, ropes, slides, hoists, and ladders were visible above street level and looked like they might get Horth closer to his destination, but none of them could be accessed without entering a building first. He didn't know any Spiral Hall families well enough to ask for right of passage, so he started out the slow way by hiking up Spiral Coil: a ledge jutting out from the inner wall that ascended at a fifteen degree angle from the bottom to the top.

The path was about two meters wide. In places, buildings encroached so close that Horth could have jumped across if he had been sure of his welcome. In others spots it was necessary to weave around things left on the walk, or negotiate his way past children more intent on their games than avoiding him.

Eventually, Horth had to make his way inward, off Spiral Coil. He studied the three-dimensional terrain ahead, set a course, and crossed over to a building with a ladder hanging down its side. After climbing that, he crossed a long suspension bridge to a public platform that served as a junction for half a dozen paths. A small hoard of children were playing there, ringing a miniature challenge floor where a girl and a boy staged a play duel. The lack of railings around the edge of the platform stirred a dim memory of Tessitatt telling Branst how safety barriers only encouraged Vrellish children to play on them.

Horth reached Thris's aerie via a ladder up the side of her tower. Diaphanous curtains in a medley of pastel colors hung over the opening, a couple of them gathered up in braided cords. Horth heaved himself over the sill of one open side.

He had dropped down on the inside before he realized that Hara had arrived before him.

Hara confronted Thris at a safe distance on the rubberized exercise floor that filled most of the aerie's interior. Neither had drawn her sword yet.

Ringing the exercise floor in a band about two meters wide were various cushions, low tables, and little cabinets full of things stored in drawers. A Vrellish man and woman dressed in open vests and loose trousers lounged on cushions, watching what was going on. A third Vrellish nobleborn was standing on the sill opposite Horth, lounging against a corner pillar as casually as if he was not twenty stories up in a room with four open sides.

"Horth!" Nanns Thris said brightly. "Good to see you."

Hara stood with her mouth locked in anger and her neck muscles prominent. "I am warning you," she told Thris. "Leave him alone."