Doormaker: Torchlighters (A Short Novel) by Jamie Thornton

Author:Jamie Thornton [Thornton, Jamie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Igneous Books
Published: 2019-01-30T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Gritty metal scraped Junle’s bare palm as she turned. A person stood on the pipe, against the crumbling stone opening, his outline sharp and angular.

He stepped forward. Starlight shined, lighting up Shun’s eyes and face. “What are you doing?”

“Stop! You cannot come out on the pipes like this.” She imagined him climbing up the pipes on the outside of the tower like she had been about to do—without harness or hand hook, in the dark, a splatter death-pattern hanging over his head.

Shun kept moving, until he stood so close she could feel the warmth of his body. He grabbed Junle’s hand and pressed it to his cheek. His cheek was cool from the night air even though his hand was warm. “I am alive. Junle, I am with you. You should have woken me.”

Junle shook her head.

“Enough,” Shun said. “I am here. You are climbing to the top of this tower for some reason. Tell me the reason and I will help. I must help. I cannot let the patterns control my every move …” His voice broke.

It was then that Junle realized, in spite of all his strong words and brave actions, he was as afraid of his splatter death-pattern as she was afraid for him. He battled his fear by stepping out onto the pipes to prove to himself that he would not let the fear that filled him also control him.

Junle’s heart ached. “I plan to do something very foolish.”

“We have spoken many foolish words to each other in this place.”

She knew that he was remembering their first kiss along with the dreams they had dared spoken aloud in this spot.

“But this is even more foolish.”

This brought a smile back to Shun’s face and his eyes lit up. “More foolish than stealing licatherin grime from the tower?”

Junle drew in a breath. “You know about that? Have the markers—”

“I get closer to you than the markers,” Shun said, an almost devilish smile on his lips. “It is time to turn foolish words into even more foolish action.”

“I am going to break into the debt room,” Junle said.

Shun’s smile dropped away. “You plan to destroy our debts?” Shun said, incredulous. They had spoken about foolishness but the look on Shun’s face said he had not expected something like this.

“I do not plan to destroy anything,” Junle said.

“But—”

“I only plan to change,” Junle said. “Think, Shun. If lists go missing, they will notice. But if all our lists are accounted for—but changed in our favor—we could earn release by caravan.”

Shun stilled against her, thinking it through. “How will this help the tower fall?”

“It will not,” Junle said. “But what if the tower falling has nothing to do with us? What if it shows only by when we need to earn our escape, and only if we seize it for ourselves?”

“But if the tower falls, then the debt is destroyed with it,” Shun said.

Junle shook her head. “Remember what the pattern showed. The tower crumbled only after we had left it behind.

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