The mists were coming down. The fog was falling over the Friary. Even now, the tops of the towers were lost in it, the spidersilk bridges were striped with veils. Perhaps those down on the rooftop would not notice it in time, if he could get far enough ahead of them.
He came to the first crossbrace on the tower. Getting to the next ladder required that he move along a curved rod of grass as thick as his leg. Though this was rounded and the girders at Sanctity had been square, this was wider than the girders he had crossed in the drop shafts. Without stopping to think about it; Rillibee ran along the crossbrace and started up the second ladder, eyes examining the route above him. Where the ladders were. Where the bridges were. And where was the nearest cloud?
A howl from below greeted his run. Newcomers did not run across the braces! Though the allotted time had not elapsed, Highbones waited no longer. He started up the ladder even as some few below had the temerity to shout, “Time. Time. Unfair!”
Anger spurted in Rillibee Chime. Highbones had broken his own rules. What right had he to break his own rules?
Highbones did not acknowledge the shouts. After a moment, his followers started after him, Hardflight and Steeplehands in the lead with Long Bridge close behind. Topclinger did not follow. He stood aside, shouting, “You didn’t give him his fair time, Bones. You didn’t give him time.” Rillibee heard it. He heard the shout of approval that greeted it, as well, a dozen voices perhaps. Topclinger had his admirers.
Rillibee also heard Highbones below him, heard the threats, the sniggers designed to make Rillibee nervous, to make him tremble. Instead, the sound only fed his anger, making him move more surely and swiftly upward. There were three more ladders between him and the cloud that was sinking toward him. He had already memorized the ladders and bridges above it. He had seen one thing that would be useful if he decided to try life and several things which would do if he decided to die. Now, spurred by his anger, possessed by a devil of contrariness, part fear, part hate, he lunged upward, hands and feet pulling and thrusting while the howl of the climbers rose from below as the time was up and all of them leapt for the towers.
“Comin’ after you, peeper,” cried Highbones exultantly from below. “Comin’ after you.”
Rillibee risked one quick glance. He was already a great height above the ground. The bottom of the ladder below him was swarming with climbers now, as were those to either side. He lunged upward. There were two more runs along crossbraces which grew more slender the higher he went, and finally the ladder which led upward into the mist.
His anger made him tense. The tension made him gasp for breath, made his arms ache. Not so hard a breath or so aching an arm as would make him fall. Not yet. But he knew that could happen eventually. In time. How much time? The wet of the fog lay on his cheeks, cooling them. He climbed.
Suddenly the mist wrapped him, sweeping across him like a fabric so that he was muffled in it, all at once draped in an impenetrable gauze. Those below him could no longer see him or be seen by him. He was alone in the cloud with only the trembling of the tower to tell them where he was moving, to tell him where they came after him. He climbed more slowly, looking to his side, peering through the growing dusk. The thing he had been looking for appeared at last as a shadow, an extrusion of the tower into space, ending out there, lost in the gray mist, only a few feet away.
Rillibee untied the knot of his rope sash, unwound it from his waist, tugged his robe off, rolled it up, and tied it in the end of the sash. Clad now only in slim trousers and sleeveless shirt, he crawled out onto the spur, the line draped around his neck, the tightly rolled robe dangling against his chest. The spur had obviously been left over from the time the tower had been constructed, a crane from which tackle had been suspended to raise materials from below. It was supported from below by a series of diagonal braces. Behind him the spidery legs of the tower vanished in the damp gray of the cloud, just beyond the last brace he sat up and waited in a misty bubble where sound was muted.