“Enough, Joan!” He says her name like an accusation. “Finish the instructions and we go.”
She looks to me. Joan. Black hair, dark eyes...so gentle, and yet so strong. Who was she on Earth?
“You know your task,” she says. “Once we leave your land, you are free to do whatever you like on your plot. But only obedience leads to advancement. Only obedience pleases the king.”
The boy, the king, William, releases her and holds out his arm formally. Joan slips her arm—marked by red fingerprints from his clenched hold—through his. The two of them walk together, with formal elegance, away from me and toward the Yellow Tower’s glistening spires in the distance.
I try to follow, to shout. I can’t. The commands hold.
Once we leave your land, she said, you are free...
I wait until they enter the edge of a field of tall grasses, then try again. This time my legs instantly surge into motion. I chase after them, and I summon the wind. The blue threads of power flood in and through me, racing like rapids. It is a thrilling rush. My power is back. I can get out. Weaving all the threads I can, I blast the wind at the king and the queen.
The power slams into something hard. The force of the collision knocks the threads away. The power stopped, but I’m still moving, still free.
I summon the air again. I carefully prod with the wind until it reaches an invisible barrier, a few steps ahead of me. It rises in a straight line along the dirt. My power can’t penetrate it, but whatever it is, the boy and girl walked through easily. I run after them.
The invisible wall meets me hard as stone. I collapse to the dirt with a loud grunt. A cloud of dust billows up around me.
“Wait!” I shout. “Joan!”
The girl pauses and glances back over the tall grains. “You may not leave,” she calls out. “Work your own plot. Courage begins there, and Yellow needs it.”
2
I SIT ON the dirt, hurting, and watch as William and Joan walk toward the palace. The plot before me, on the other side of the invisible wall, has parallel lines of grains. They are tall and golden and ripe for harvest, and soon they hide the glinting crowns of the boy-king and girl-queen.
The golden field has no weeds. No gaps. Whoever sowed it must have an ordered mind to plant thousands of grains like this. Other patchwork fields spread all around, with little huts like mine at regular intervals. In the distance, close to the Yellow Tower, there are a few two-story buildings like manor homes. Maybe Emma waits in one of those, lounging in silk, with a host of collared serfs, ready to greet her father and serve nine-grain bread and a tall glass of iced tea...
Focus, Cipher. This isn’t your first tower. Find a way out.
I stand and dust myself off. The collar feels tight around my neck, but my master, Joan, has left no command. Only an instruction: Bake a loaf of nine grains and you will advance.
It’s very strange, but it can’t be so hard.
First I need to test my limits. I summon the wind and weave the threads into a gentle breeze against the wall. The air meets the barrier and glides along it, but not a molecule passes through. I press my hands to the surface. It feels smooth as glass and doesn’t budge when I shove. I won’t try running through it again any time soon. Using the threads to explore, I follow the invisible wall as it goes left a couple hundred feet, then it turns in a ninety-degree angle, then turns again, and again, forming a perfect square around my plot of land. Going up, the barrier rises vertically until it is far above the ground, then it turns inward like a flat ceiling. I don’t have a way to measure, but my guess is that it’s a perfect cube around me. A perfect prison.
I figure the plots around me are enclosed in their own invisible walls. Each plot matches the shape of mine, and they look like dozens of separate little serfdoms. Some plots have tall, ripe grains. Others have vibrant green shoots. A few are fallow dirt like mine. One nearby has blooming sunflowers scattered randomly across the plot. The plots are set in a grid, meaning eight would border mine. Eight other serfs, plus me. That’s nine people, nine fields...and nine grains.
Bake a loaf...
It won’t be easy if I can’t set foot off my own plot. No one is in sight, but my neighbors must be in the surrounding huts. Blue made us work in teams and rise in classes. Red gave out tasks and paired boys with girls. Green sent us out into the wild in tribes. It could be Yellow’s way to make us cooperate. They want me to bake a loaf of bread...unless that’s only what the boy-king wants. Joan mentioned another command, by two people she called Elijah and the Widow. But the boy said they could be gone for good. Who are they? The leaders? Emma probably knows more. Maybe she had a reason for what she did. I desperately want to believe it.
Whatever it takes, I will not give up. I stare down at my scarred hands and foot. I earned the three crisscross scars in three other towers—Blue, Red, and Green—as I discovered my past. I was Paul Fitzroy, an American doctor, a father, a husband, and a mess. Somehow I died on Earth and came to the Five Towers. Here there is only one way out—the White Tower. I saw my mother go up into it, through the light in the Scouring. But I couldn’t follow her. I remember what Green’s leader, Daniel, told me. There are five of us with scars. The marked ones. When we find out why we’re here, Daniel said, then we can enter the White Tower. That’s what I have to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to play by Yellow’s rules.
I concentrate again on the wind. This time I weave it methodically, testing the wall in every way I can. First I funnel it into a powerful gust. The wall doesn’t bend. Then with scalpel precision the air slices at the barrier, but it might as well be a plastic knife against a diamond. Finally I prod every square foot of the invisible encasement, searching for some gap, some pinhole. There’s not a single opening or weak spot.
By the time I finish, I’m exhausted and only more certain of my confinement. But I do not panic. Not that I want to be stuck on this acre of dirt, but this is no worse than the starts I had in the other towers. It might even be better: an invisible wall and grains to grow. It beats hanging in a net, and no one has tried to drown me or send me after dragons.
I return to the hut and walk around it, counting five strides to pass each side. It is made of pale brown stucco, with only two openings—an open window on one side, and a plain wooden door on the other. Inside, the floor is the same dirt as outside, if packed a little harder. A pallet of straw lies along one wall, opposite from the earthen hearth where coals still burn. There’s a stack of chopped wood and a large clay jar on either side of the hearth. The jar is full of small, yellow kernels. I scoop out a handful and sniff. It’s corn.
A small wooden table and chair are in the center of the hut. The chair holds a stack of neatly folded clothes. I unfold them—light brown cotton pants and a yellow linen shirt with long sleeves. They will be more comfortable than the buckskin shorts and vest from Green. I change and find that the clothes fit well, as if made precisely for me.
The golden bread no longer steams on the table. The cast iron pan that holds it is cool to the touch. I sit and pull off a bite with my fingers. It’s cornbread. It tastes good. I spot a glass container of milk on the floor beside the straw pallet. I drink it to wash down the bread.
When it grows dark, I lay on the pallet of straw. Sleep comes, but it’s fitful. I dream of a vast cave lit by only a few small candles, and I know that it is my job to find someone there. Maybe Emma, or someone from my own past. Maybe Samantha. I search and call for them but hear only echoes. Small flying creatures emerge out of the darkness, flapping like bats. They dive at me. I try to fight them back, but they are relentless. They snuff out the candles’ flames one by one. I have no way to relight the candles. Smoke blinds me. The bats surround me and smother me.