A Court of Moss and Moonlight

Chapter 10

The wind at the top of the West Spire was vicious. It whipped Brynn’s hair across her face, stinging her eyes as she stared out the narrow slit of the window.

Below, the Obsidian Palace was a sprawling beast of black stone and flickering torchlight. The drop was three hundred feet, straight down into the jagged darkness of the ravine, bypassing the ballroom terrace entirely.

"I hate this," Brynn muttered, gripping the cold stone sill. "I hate this so much."

"The door is sealed," Kael said, his voice calm, though his chest was heaving from the fight with the machine. "The King’s guard will be welding through it in minutes. This is the only way."

He stepped up beside her. He didn't look down; he looked at the wall itself.

"The stone here is old," he murmured. "Older than the King. It remembers the mountain."

He placed a hand on the exterior masonry. A low hum vibrated in his throat, not a growl, but a resonant frequency that Brynn felt in her teeth.

Below them, the thick, dormant vines of ivy that clung to the tower began to shiver. They uncoiled, stretching upward like waking snakes, thickening and twisting together until they formed a rough, knotted ladder.

"Go," Kael said. "I will follow and seal the path behind us."

Brynn didn't let herself think. If she thought about the drop, or the corset restricting her breathing, or the robot smoking in the room behind her, she would freeze.

She swung her legs out the window and grabbed the magically reinforced vines. They felt warm, pulsating with Kael’s power.

She climbed.

The descent was a blur of adrenaline and muscle failure. The wind tried to tear her from the wall. Her gloves were shredded. But she kept moving, hand over hand, boot over boot, until her feet hit the loose gravel of the lower service path, a narrow walkway used by servants to circle the castle's base.

A moment later, Kael dropped beside her, landing in a silent crouch. Above them, the vines withered and snapped back against the wall, looking as innocent as weeds.

"The carriage loop is that way," Kael pointed to the east, where the lights of the courtyard glowed. "I cannot go there. The iron content in the air near the carriages... it interferes with my glamour."

Brynn looked at him. In the moonlight, the gold mask was stark and terrifying, but the eyes behind it were familiar now.

"The bridge," she whispered, breathless. "Tomorrow night. The old stone bridge near the river."

Kael nodded once. "Keep that chip safe, Wolf. It’s the only weapon we have."

He stepped back into the shadows and vanished, simply by stepping where the light wasn't.

Brynn ran.

She kept to the service path, smoothing her hair and checking her dress. The hem was dirty, but in the dark, it might pass for shadow. She slipped through a side gate, emerging right next to the line of waiting carriages.

The crowd was thinning. Nobles were streaming out, looking exhausted and slightly dazed.

"Brynn!"

Maeve’s voice was a harsh whisper. She was standing by the Donoghue family crest on the door of a black carriage, tapping her foot.

Brynn slid into line beside her, chest heaving. "I'm here."

"You look like you've been dragged through a hedge backward," Maeve hissed, reaching out to pluck a dead leaf from Brynn’s hair. "Mother is already inside. She’s furious about the snakes."

"Did you... did you get away with it?"

"Nobody suspects the girl who screamed," Maeve winked, though her hand was trembling slightly. "Get in. Quickly."

The carriage interior was upholstered in crushed velvet and smelled of lavender and stale anxiety. Lord Eamon sat opposite them, staring out the rain-streaked window. Lady Orla was fanning herself with a vigor that threatened to create a draft.

"Disgraceful," Orla muttered. "Snakes in the wine. I have never seen such a lack of discipline. The chaotic magic of this court is becoming... untidy."

The carriage lurched forward, the wheels clattering over the cobblestones as they began the long descent from the palace.

Brynn sat next to Maeve, pressing her arm against her cousin’s to stop her own shivering. She could feel the hard edge of the memory chip pressing against her ribs, tucked inside her bodice.

"It wasn't magic," Lord Eamon said. His voice was gravelly and low, startling them all. He rarely spoke unless directly addressed.

Orla paused her fanning. "What do you mean, husband?"

"The snakes," Eamon said, still looking out the window at the passing dark forest. "It wasn't wild magic. It was... a distraction. But the King? The King has changed."

Brynn’s ears perked up. "Changed how, Uncle?"

Eamon turned his gaze to her. His eyes were tired, rimmed with red.

"You are too young to remember the Before," he said heavily. "Before the Spire. Before the Masks."

"Eamon, hush," Orla warned, glancing nervously at the carriage driver’s partition. "The walls have ears."

"The carriage has wheels, Orla, not ears," Eamon snapped, a rare flash of temper. He looked back at Brynn. "When he first arrived... thirty years ago... he was a man. A powerful mage, yes. He defeated the Old dynasts in single combat. But he was flesh and blood."

"And now?" Brynn pressed gently.

"Now," Eamon shuddered. "Tonight, when he raised his glass... did you see his wrist? Under the cuff?"

Brynn shook her head.

"It was grey," Eamon whispered. "Not like dead flesh. Like... polished slate. And there were lines running up his arm. glowing lines. Like veins of lightning trapped under the skin."

Brynn felt a chill that had nothing to do with the night air. Circuitry, she thought. He’s augmenting himself.

"He is consuming himself to feed the land," Orla said piously, though she sounded unconvinced. "That is the cost of the Crown."

"No," Eamon said firmly. "He is not feeding the land. The land is sick, Orla. Look at the wheat this year. It grows grey. Look at the river. It hums. Water should not hum."

He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.

"I remember the night the Spire was finished. Ten years ago. There was no masonry. No stone masons. Just... great metal birds that lowered the pieces from the sky. They roared like dragons but had no wings."

Helicopters, Brynn realized. Or construction drones.

"He is building something," Eamon said, sinking back into the cushions. "He is turning the world into a machine. And I fear we are just the fuel."

The carriage fell silent. The only sound was the rhythmic clop-clop of the horses and the rain beginning to drum against the roof.

Brynn stared at her reflection in the dark glass. Eamon didn't know the half of it. It wasn't just metal birds. It was servers. It was data. It was a GPS tracking system built into a medieval kingdom.

By the time they reached the manor, the rain was coming down in sheets. They hurried inside, shedding wet cloaks into the arms of sleepy servants.

"Bed," Lady Orla commanded, rubbing her temples. "We shall discuss the... incident... in the morning. I need a powder for my head."

Maeve and Brynn curtsied and fled up the stairs.

They didn't go to their separate rooms. They went straight to Maeve’s, locking the heavy oak door behind them.

Maeve immediately collapsed onto the rug, kicking off her shoes. "I thought I was going to die. I thought the Guard would see right through the illusion."

"You were amazing," Brynn said. She moved to the window, closing the heavy drapes to ensure total privacy. Then, she reached into her dress.

She pulled out the chip.

It was small, rectangular, and black. A standard SD card, probably 128 gigabytes. In her world, you could buy one at a gas station for twenty bucks. Here, in the candlelight of a Victorian-style bedroom, it looked like an alien artifact.

Maeve crawled over, staring at it with wide eyes. "Is that... a talisman?"

"No," Brynn said, sitting on the floor beside her. "It's a book. A very, very small book that holds millions of pages."

"Millions?" Maeve frowned. "How do you read it? It has no pages."

"You need a machine," Brynn said. "Like the one in the King's study."

"The metal beast?" Maeve shuddered. "Brynn, what was in there?"

Brynn took a deep breath. "The King isn't a god, Maeve. And he isn't a demon. He's... he's an engineer. Or a scientist."

She explained what she saw. The screens. The cables. The map with the red dots. The robot wolf.

Maeve listened, her face growing paler by the second. She didn't understand the words server or GPS, but she understood the concept of the All-Seeing Eye being a map on a wall.

"So he watches us," Maeve whispered. "Not with magic, but with... glass and wire?"

"Yes," Brynn said. "And that's good news."

"How is that possibly good news?"

"Because magic is unpredictable," Brynn said, turning the SD card over in her fingers. "But machines? Machines have rules. They have power sources. They have off switches."

She looked at Maeve.

"If he built this cage using technology, then we can break it using technology. I just need to find a way to read this chip."

Maeve looked at the tiny black square. "But we don't have a... computer."

"No," Brynn said, a slow plan forming in the back of her mind. "But my dad does. In Oregon."

"The world you fell from," Maeve said softly.

"If I can get a signal..." Brynn muttered to herself. "If he has a server farm, he has an output. He has to be broadcasting something."

She stood up and paced the room.

"Uncle Eamon said the river hums. Water conducts electricity. If the King is using the river to cool his servers... the connection might be there."

Maeve stood up and grabbed Brynn’s shoulders. "Brynn. Stop. You are speaking in riddles. You are exhausted. Your hands are shaking."

Brynn looked down. Her hands were indeed trembling. The adrenaline crash was hitting her hard.

"We have the piece of the puzzle," Maeve said gently, steering her toward the massive four-poster bed. "Tonight, we sleep. Tomorrow, we figure out how to break the machine."

Brynn nodded, the fatigue suddenly overwhelming her. She sat on the edge of the bed.

"Maeve?"

"Yes?"

"The date on the keypad. The code to get in."

"What was it?"

"1995," Brynn said softly. "That was the year I was born."

Maeve went still. The rain lashed against the window, sounding like static.

"That," Maeve whispered, "is a very unsettling coincidence."

"I don't think," Brynn said, blowing out the candle and plunging the room into darkness, "that it's a coincidence at all."