The Hall of Names, two thousand eight hundred steps.
The forty Stairclimbers had unloaded the wick segments and begun their descent unburdened, but by the time they reached this place, they could go no farther.
The trouble was not their legs. The true-silk linings Selden had substituted had saved them: not one of the forty had "spent his oil" and turned to ash at the summit, as had been planned. But after One Night of Dusk began, the darkness inside the tower changed in kind.
It was no longer the blackness of absent light, but a blackness with weight, pressing down layer upon layer like a soaked stage curtain. Through it, the chorus of the Dirges seeped from every brick in the tower. Above the heads of forty men who had spent half their lives there, their already-heavy fate-lines flickered under the song's enticement like forty lamps teased by the wind.
The old shift leader was the first to succumb.
The veteran Stairclimber of twenty-nine years slowed as he walked, stopped, then slowly turned toward the tower's heart. "The wick is crooked," he said with the serenity of a sleep-talker. "I'll go straighten it." And he began walking back—upward—toward the new wick burning with ash-fire.
Two companions tried to hold him and could not. The steadiest pair of old legs in the tower had become terrifyingly sure. Every step was precise; every step was carrying him into the ash-fire.
"He's gone rolebound!" a medical officer rasped. "The song is hooking their fate-lines. Don't drag him—the harder you pull, the deeper he'll sink!"
Then came the second man, and the third. The descending procession fell into disorder. In the dark, one man muttered that he had to go back and "carry it another stretch."
Another marched mechanically in place, as though the tower stair would never end. A third crouched and clutched his head, saying the steps were singing the lullaby of his childhood.
Viola stood in the middle of the Hall of Names, before the wall carved full of names.
She had one chance to wager on the old saying that old Vane had copied. She snatched Selden's little private ledger—the account the tower warden had kept in charcoal all his life, containing every pair of legs' true name and surname—opened it, and, by the light of an action lamp, called out the names one by one with every ounce of breath six sleepless years had trained into her.
"Otto Keil!"
The old shift leader walking toward the ash-fire faltered.
"Otto Keil! Number Eleven, Locust Tree Lane, harbour district! Your wife has kept a pot of geraniums on the sill for you for twenty-nine years, and they've been wilting for two—go home and water them!"
The old shift leader stood rigid in the dark. The lines above his head, shaken wildly by the song, flared and faded for several breaths. Then they steadied, like a lamp sheltered in cupped hands.
The old man's serenity shattered. Underneath appeared the bewildered terror of someone alive. "Where... where was I going just now?"
"Home," Viola said. Then she turned the page and called the next name.
"Jan Peter! Your son learned to walk just last month!"
"Cole!"—the young man at the rear of the procession jolted—"your master owed you the words 'your apprenticeship is over.' He didn't live to say them. I'll say them for him: your apprenticeship is over! Take charge of your shift and get them down the tower!"
One name, one life. The names struck into the darkness like nails driven through the planks of a ship in a raging sea. Names had been forbidden in the tower for fifty-one years. But now, before that wall, a Duskwarden returned forty names to their owners one by one, and before those rough, living names, the chorus of the Dirges retreated inch by inch.
Where there is a name, there is a road back.
Forty men formed ranks inside their names and descended the tower. Selden brought up the rear. As he passed Viola, the old man looked at her, and what lay in his eyes was heavier than the tower.
"Miss Duskwarden," he said, "what you called out today, this old man is going to carve into the Hall of Names. Right in the middle."
Leaning against the name-wall, Viola waved him off between gasps. In the action lamp's glow, the medical officer saw that her lips were white, drained of all blood. What she had drawn on to call those names, only her own lamp knew.
* * *
Below the tower, Dawn Tower Square.
Grey timed his move to the instant word came through the tower doors that all forty were down.
"Everyone is accounted for." In the belfry, he set down the communication candle, rose, and straightened the collar of his old action uniform. "The chain of evidence is complete. Emery supplied the wick, the ritual schedule left a window of darkness, the ash-wick burned through the tower, and the sky changed. The whole performance has played out. Now let's invite the leading actor offstage."
Four action teams converged from the four corners of the square. Black-coated Duskwardens threaded through the prostrate, praying crowd and climbed the officiants' platform. Brass insignia were raised beneath the eternal dusk.
"The Vesper Bureau is conducting an investigation. Lord Emery, you are suspected of the grave crime of sacrilege. Please come with us."
The High Steward in his gold-threaded sacramental robe slowly turned around.
He showed no panic, offered no argument, displayed not even surprise. He merely smiled, spread his hands, and surveyed the city trapped in amber light. In that sonorous, compassionate voice, he uttered a sentence that seemed addressed not to the Duskwardens but as a report to something in the sky:
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"As promised — the offering."
Then he "went out."
It was not wax-death. It was more horrifying than wax-death. The gold-threaded robe collapsed where he stood like a garment from which the hanger had been pulled. Inside was no body, no liquid wax, only a cloud of fine grey-white powder.
A gust crossed the square and scattered it. The Duskwardens pounced on the robe and searched it, finding at the collar a wafer of wax carved in the shape of a human face—Lord Emery's face. On the back was a tiny inscription:
Decoy, seventh day. The original has gone elsewhere. Thank you for attending the performance.
"Find him!" The action leader's eyes were bloodshot. "The real man! When was Emery's true body last seen—"
"Seven days ago." Grey stood on the officiants' platform, his voice cold as iron. Seven days ago was the very day the captain had handed over his copy of the ritual schedule.
The man they had watched for seven days, the man who toured the Chandlery, presided over the rehearsal, and mounted the stage to offer sacrifice today—had been a wax face walking around in a sacramental robe. The real Emery had "gone elsewhere" seven days ago.
"Chief, then who are we supposed to arrest?!"
"No one left to catch." Grey looked at the dark-gold false sun over the tower and spoke slowly. "From the start, Emery, one of the four senior seats before the archbishop's throne, never intended to live to see today. He made a prop of himself as well and handed himself over seven days in advance."
The old inspector closed his eyes. When he opened them, his voice had regained a commander's steadiness. Yet the clerk standing nearby heard something unprecedented held beneath that composure—
"Send word to every team. The show on the ground is over. Every one of them was expendable; there wasn't a single leading player among them. Only one true stage entrance remains."
He looked up at the fathomless body of the tower, steeped in amber light. "Notify the Hall of Names: once the personnel are clear, seal the tower doors. From now on, only our Consultant and the one at the summit remain inside Dawn Tower."
"And," he added after a pause, "anyone who knows how to pray should pray. To whomever they like."
* * *
At the same moment, the city endured its long night.
As the eternal dusk entered its sixth hour, order in Kandelburg strained and snapped inch by inch. The number of rolebound incidents climbed from two digits toward three. The branch office's holding cells filled. Churches overflowed with throngs of worshippers. Long lines formed outside banks as people rushed to withdraw their savings—they could not explain what they feared, only that they wanted to exchange that "singing money" for anything else. The extra edition of the Evening Bell Gazette still had wet ink: Celestial Expert: Rare "Amber Halo" May Persist for Days. No one believed it. Not even the man who had written it.
Yet amid the city's confusion, small lights no one noticed shone with stubborn purpose.
In Saint Haven's Church in the harbour district, the hoarse old priest gave no sermon. He fetched a ladder, lit every candle in the church, then left the doors open and sat on the front steps, saying the same thing to every distraught passerby: "Come sit inside. You don't have to pray. It's bright."
In the Fogbank district, Mrs. Porter's windows blazed like a little lighthouse. The old woman had lit every night-watch candle and baked tray after tray of honey cakes, while half the street's neighbours gathered downstairs. Mick stood at the door imitating a certain person's manner as he beckoned them in. "Come in, come in. Mind the third stair—half an inch too high. Deliberately."
Thomas and Cheryl sat by the stove, hand in hand. Mr. Bill Clerk looked out at the false dusk and suddenly said, "Cher, I've worked it out."
"Worked what out?"
"Sunrise," Thomas said. "Whatever that thing in the sky is, according to the almanac, the real sun should rise at seven-oh-four tomorrow morning. Thirteen hours from now."
He tightened his grip on his wife's hand, speaking as though checking an account he knew to be sound. "Wait for it. It'll come due."
* * *
Nine thousand steps: the cross-grating.
The tower warden's master key turned three times in the old lock, sifting rust flakes to the floor. The sound of the cross-grating opening stretched through the darkness like a groan. No one had passed through that gate in a hundred years.
The last thousand steps were exactly as Selden had said: no light, no handrails, no rules.
The first nine thousand steps, at least, were stone. These thousand were not. Sharlo set down a foot.
The step was solid, yet its solidity felt wrong—like a taut drumhead, like the boards of a stage. He crouched in the dark and ran his fingers over it. They found not the grain of stone but the texture of painted canvas.
Scenery. From step nine thousand and one onward, the tower ceased to be a tower.
It was a stage.
He continued upward. As he climbed, the darkness around him began furnishing itself with scenery. Dim outlines emerged on either side, row upon row and tier upon tier, like theatre boxes taking shape in fog.
Overhead hung the faint shadows of ropes and pulleys. Beneath him, the steps looked more and more like stairs leading to a stage. Here, the chorus of the Dirges receded into a distant backdrop, replaced by a more intimate sound:
Pages turning.
Something above his head was softly turning sheets of paper.
Sharlo did not look up. He knew what it was. For three months he had seen it a thousand times above other people's heads.
Now, for the first time, it was his turn. He could feel that faintly hot presence suspended above him like a lamp held too close.
"Writing my lines for me?" he asked as he climbed, his voice calm. "Save yourself the trouble."
The turning pages paused. Then the warm glow of a line of words appeared over his head, so bright that the steps beneath his feet cast shadows. He did not need to look up to read it. The words burned at the edge of his vision, amber, precise, and ornate:
【The Curtainbreaker will reach the top of the tower and accept his role.】
"Wrong word," Sharlo said.
He stopped on the dark stair and raised a hand, making a stroke in the air above his head like a teacher marking a pupil's work.
"There is no 'will' for the Curtainbreaker. There is only 'is.' And what I am doing—" He resumed climbing, step after step. "—is for me to decide."
The words above his head began to tremble violently. The words 【accept his role】 warped, struggled, and tried to re-form—【The Curtainbreaker will—】【The Curtainbreaker shall—】【In the end, the Curtainbreaker—】—but each attempt was left behind by the steadily ascending figure who paid it no heed. For the first time, the thing writing the script discovered that it could write whatever it liked above this man's head, yet nothing it wrote could bind the feet below.
The words went out.
The turning pages receded.
From the deepest dark came a soft sound, nearly inaudible and impossible to interpret. It might have been a sigh. It might have been a laugh.
Ten thousand steps. He had arrived.
The door to the summit stood at the end of the stair. It was neither tall nor imposing, just an old wooden door of ordinary size. No brass plate or crest adorned the lintel, only two keyholes side by side.
The one on the left was brass, polished bright with the sheen of long use. The one on the right was made for a double-rowed key and filmed with three centuries of dark rust.
Sharlo stood before it and steadied his breathing.
From his inner pocket, he withdrew Brandt's key. The double row of teeth met the right-hand lock. He inserted it.
A perfect fit, as though measured three hundred years ago. He drew a deep breath and turned it.
Click.
The right lock opened.
At the very same instant, the brass lock on the left turned by itself.
Click.
From inside the door.
With both locks open, the old wooden door slowly and silently swung inward. Beyond it lay neither wind nor darkness, but light—a kind Sharlo had never seen, ancient, constant, not dazzling, yet making him understand in an instant the true weight of the words "First Kindling." Within that light, the entire summit opened before him—
And in its centre, back to the door, stood a figure.
Very tall. Unnaturally tall.
The figure did not turn. It simply stood with its back to Sharlo before that three-hundred-year-old flame and spoke in a voice of perfect calm, as though it had waited an entire age.
"Come in, child."
"Your uncle was right. You are closer to the answer than the three of them put together."