The huge glass dome that topped the Tower of Lives blazed in the evening sun, refracting light, casting rainbows down onto the white pebbles that surrounded the tower like souls thrown to earth. Jess smiled, recalling the first time she’d been inside it. It had been another evening, a week after her somewhat unorthodox acceptance to the Academy; all the new students had been taken in, one at a time, the rest milling around on the pebbles, watching as the evening light deepened into gold and hit the tower, blinding them.
The group of students had been strangely quiet; awe at the place, their acceptance, their decision to step forward and become Shards, the Assassins of Fate – and fear at what their new lives would entail.
Jess smiled at the memory of the group, all in their late teens and far too cool to be scared, huddling together for comfort, holding themselves apart.
Jess’s pulse had raced when her name had been called, and for one stupid moment she’d been frozen in panic: What if they’re taking us up there to kill us?
But of course, the other students had all come down, and the expressions of certainty, of peace on their faces fed the curiosity and hunger inside her.
She’d stepped forward to the teacher’s side and peeked around him to the interior of the tower.
He’d smiled kindly at her, confirmed her name, and checked it off on a list before turning to lead her in.
Although the tower was wide, tens of meters across, the inside was almost completely hollow. A wooden staircase, carved into the trunk, ran around the perimeter, spiralling slowly upwards against the walls until it reached the top and formed a balcony the whole way around. The slit windows in the walls allowed only a little light, but Jess had seen the dust dancing through the air, smelled the dryness of a place seldom disturbed.
At the top, railed walkways arched into the centre like wheel spokes. Jess remembered how she’d held her breath as she’d crossed, feeling the emptiness of seven stories below her, around her, teasing about her hands and feet and wanting to pull her down, over and down.
A wooden ladder, right in the centre where the spokes met to form a platform. The teacher had gestured Jess ahead, and she’d been halfway up before she realised he wasn’t climbing behind her.
“Go on,” he’d reassured when she’d look down, licking her lips nervously as her gaze accidentally drifted over the edge of the railings. “He’s waiting for you.”
Who? Jess had thought, before turning and resuming her climb. As she neared the top a strong, lined hand had reached down to take her, pulling her up and out…
And Jess’s mouth had fallen open, and she’d gazed in utter amazement.
She stood under an elaborately carved altar, and all around her as far as she could see – glass.
Glass in every imaginable shape and colour and form, some familiar shapes like goblets or plates, others abstract, swirling, twisted; some animals, some ornaments, some intricate, some plain. Thousands upon thousands of glass items filled the room, every one of them suspended by a shining thread from the crystal dome that roofed the tower, every one ablaze in the dying sunlight.
Jess had shielded her eyes from the brightness, but she couldn’t stop looking, drinking in the magnificence of it all. “What is it?” she’d asked. “What are they?”
The old man beside her had smiled. “They’re lives, Jessana.”
“Lives?”
“Yes, every one of them.”
“And… what do they do?”
“This is our record,” the man had said. “This is our commission. When the glass falls, the life is over. It is our job to ensure that that happens.”
“How do you know whose life it is?”
“The Interpreters.”
“Who are they?”
“They train for years, working with glass, learning it, feeling it, breathing it, until they know it intimately. It speaks to them, tells them its secrets – and they can tell from the colour, the texture, the shape of the glass who it represents.”
“How do the objects get there? What makes them fall?”
“Fate. More than that, nobody knows.”
