Bhundeli disappeared for hours the first time he left Thakur alone in his room. Thakur took to pacing while he waited, one hand on his chest, the other on the cane that let him hobble back and forth in the room while his mind raced. When he returned, Bhundeli returned leading another man in the white robes of a master.
“So you’re the one disrupting everything.” The new master told him. He crossed his arms to peer down his nose at Thakur. “So what’s the matter with you then?”
Thakur told him, and the new man walked around Thakur peering at him before he looked at Bhundeli and shook his head. “But what am I supposed to make of this? You say his spirit is traumatized? I thought spiritual trauma was a family thing, carried from birth or from some abuse by a parent. There’s none of that here.”
“There was an adept involved.” Bhundeli replied.
The surly master made a face. “A gunpowder adept. Yes. Who ever heard of an adept in the dregs though. Eventually they all end up here.”
“When I touched his spirit, it burned me.” Bhundelli said. “He needs to see master Khunawal.”
“And Khunawal won’t see him, yes I heard what you said.”
The new master eyed Thakur with distaste. “Is what you’re telling us the truth?” He asked.
Thakur glowered at him. “Why would I lie?”
“You know we have drugs that could make you tell us if you were lying.” The master replied. “I’ve seen men betray their own fathers on such drugs.”
“I’ve told you the truth.”
Bhundelli’s visitor gazed at him for a moment, then shrugged. “It’s good to check.” He turned back to Bhundelli.
“How am I supposed to help you? Khunawal won’t see anyone that doesn’t have a green ticket. That’s the rule. You’ve already broken those rules just coming down to this level, tombs beyond, I’ve broken the rules even more than you have, but there’s nothing I can do for a spiritual malady, especially if it’s as novel as you say.”
“Special circumstances.” Bhundelli replied. “When a patient has a malady someone in a higher tier thinks a lower tier can learn from, they can upgrade them to that higher level.”
“Ah. That.” The surly master scrunched his lips together as he regarded Bhundelli. “That’s supposed to be used to justify nepotism.” He finally replied. “Not help a charity case.”
“But we can learn from this. I’ve felt spiritual trauma, this is unlike any I’ve felt before. If master Khunawal would see him, I’m sure even he could learn from it.”
“Yes. I’d teach him a few things myself, if my meridians were open.” The master looked back at Thakur and thought for a moment. “Fine then,” he said, turning back to Bhundelli, “But I won’t be the only one to take a dive on this one if the Adept Finds out. I want other names on the paperwork, not just mine.”
Bhundeli grinned. “We’ll get them.”
The master nodded, and with a look at Thakur, marched out of the room.
“We’ll be back.” Bhundeli said, then he was gone before Thakur could open his mouth to ask about his wife.
Dozens of white robes followed and he told his story to each of them. Retelling after retelling. Some of them scowled at him, or scoffed at the idea of an adept in the pipes, or simply nodded and added their signature to the scroll until they had enough to move him in a chair with wheels on its side to a closet like room that took them higher into the tower, to a new room where he could look out at the city from a window high above many of the neighboring buildings while the white robes argued behind him.
A lot of it had to do with rules, and different colored tickets. It wasn’t until he was issued with a new yellow colored ticket and moved again, this time so high in the tower that he could look down at passing aircars while his stomach swam with vertigo, that someone in the robes of the red ticket masters finally arrived.
The white robes fell silent when he arrived, and Thakur turned from his window view to find them shuffling out of the way of a hunched old man in black robes trimmed with red. The black robe stared at Thakur as he stepped into the room, squinted, really, as though his vision were poor. Something less than physical brushed against Thakur as the old man squinted at him though and Thakur shivered.
“There’s something wrong with your spirit boy.” The old man said as he folded himself into a seat in front of Thakur. He gazed up at Thakur and gave him a crooked smile. “Why don’t you tell me about it.”
There were no more arguments about tickets and colors after that. The man sat and listened, and when Thakur finished, he told Thakur to wait while he went up to fetch the masters. Somehow he made the words ring with greater meaning than Bhundeli had when speaking of the other men.
“You others, you have duties in the lower parts of the tower? Yes?” The white robes nodded as the old man’s head swiveled towards them. “You will no longer be needed here.” He waved a hand. “Go.” They went, but he stopped one of them with a word. “Not you, Bhundelli. You stay. Attend to him while I get the masters.” The old man gave him the same crooked smile he’d given Thakur. “You may learn something from them.”
Things moved quickly after that. The masters, true masters, men in the black robes with the red trim of the first true master, arrived to stand around the little room and wait while one of their number finished a surgery somewhere. “Examine him yourselves while you wait.” The old man told them. “If you have any ability with your breath, you will see why he is here.”
Khunawal was the last, a pinch faced old man withered by age who glared at the world through beady eyes. He did not stand with the others when he arrived but sat with a weary sigh on a stool in front of Thakur in order to meet Thakur’s eyes. He peeled a pair of specatcles from his eyes and polished them on his robes while he stared at Thakur.
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“Well?” He asked after he’d replaced them on his nose. “We’re all here. Why don’t you begin.”
And Thakur did.
Khunawal spat when Thakur mentioned the adept. “Gunpowder.” The master said. “As if destruction was the only value in cultivation.” He seemed to chew on something sour, before nodding for Thakur to go on. “And how long ago was all this?”
Thakur told him about the cycles and the conclusions the other white robed masters had come to before he was brought so high.
Khunawal shook his head. “You should have come to us straight away. You could have lasting damage from the shock, let alone the poisons you’ve described in that filth.”
“There is something wrong with his spirit.” One of the black robed masters said from behind Khunawal as he squinted at Thakur. “His spirit should not steam like that.”
“There is supposed to be a flame.” Another one piped up. “But there is nothing there.”
“There’s something there, otherwise he’d be dead.”
“I am perfectly aware of what you see.” Khunawal told them. “There is no need to gabble like pigeons.”
“Please.” Thakur hesitated before interrupting. “Sir, I, I didn’t come here for me. I thought, when the pain started, that I would die like the adept did, quickly, that is. My wife, Mayanna, she’s the one I came for.”
“What is the matter with your wife?” Khunawal asked sharply.
“She’s got a cough, and complains of fire in her lungs.”
“How long after you became sick?”
“A dozen cycles, maybe two.”
Khunawal looked at Bhundeli. “And where is she?”
“I…” Bhundelli spread his hands.
“You lost her?” Khunawal asked. “You bring a potential spiritual contagion to the top of the tower and leave its only victim in the green level? Probably being treated by some prepubescent ponce as we speak. Get her! We’ll learn more from her than we’ll ever learn listening to this one tell his story.” He waved at Thakur and Bhundeli bobbed his head in sort of half bow before he disappeared.
“She won’t, she shouldn’t, have anything to do with me.” Thakur said. “What’s wrong with me is I’ve been poisoned. I know that, but I know the poisons in my lake, they only kill the person that plays with them. They’re not… contagious.” A cold sweat swept up Thakur’s back. “Right?”
Khunawal put a hand up to one eye and peered through two of his fingers as though looking through a monocle at Thakur. “Mmmm. They should not make your soul steam either.”
Thakur was not allowed to see his wife after that. Not while the black robes poked and prodded him, or asked him questions about his interactions with his wife since getting poisoned. His very personal interactions with her.
He stood when Khunawal returned from interviewing her and faced the glaring master. “How is she? My wife?”
Khunawal looked at him in a way that seemed to communicate utter contempt and Thakur’s cane rattled in his hand with how tight he gripped it.
“I came for her.” Thakur said. “Tell me what is happening.”
Khunawal pinched his lips with one hand and regarded Thakur coolly for a moment, then shook his head. “Your wife is dying,” he replied, “from no malady that exists on the physical plane. There is something in her spirit, some part of her that has been corrupted. Her own soul is turning her body against her.”
“I did not do this to her.” Thakur advanced on the master whose glare sharpened although the withered old man did not retreat. “This was not my fault!” Thakur curled his hands into fists and glared at the master before turning away to cover his face and press his hands to the cold glass of the window. “I didn’t know.”
The master cleared his throat. “There may still be a cure.” Khunawal said. “We have some, unique, experiences with spiritual parasites here. They are rare, exceedingly rare, but there is someone here who may be able to diagnose what has been done to you, and to your wife in turn. If she can, she may also be able to cure you, perhaps even reverse some of the damage done to you by it in the process, if, and only if mind, she takes an interest in you.”
The severe old master took some paperwork from Bhundelli who stood by the door. “I will make the arrangements.” He told Thakur’s back. “You’ll need a black ticket, to go beyond floor one twenty three.”
“Can I see her?” Thakur asked Bhundeli when Khunawal was gone.
Bhundeli opened his mouth to answer, but gave him a sorrowful expression before he said a word. “I, don’t think that would be wise.” He said. He looked at the floor. “Or permitted.”
Thakur turned back to the window and stared down at the streets hundreds of yards below.
“Besides,” Bhundeli added. “Master Khunawal issued her some sleeping medicine only a few minutes ago. She’ll be fast asleep by now.”
The Black Robes gathered when it was time for Thakur to ascend. Like shadows around a departing soul. Their attitudes were different this time as Khunawal paced down the short line of them and gave each a short nod before he turned to Thakur.
“We are going to see the Adept,” he told Thakur, as though it were a death sentence, or their only hope of salvation, “few meet her face to face. Few have the privilege of doing so unannounced and uninvited. As her acolytes, we,” he waved to the other black robed masters, “may do so, but it is a privilege we do not use lightly. There are scheduled times when we meet with her normally, and she has other business that she attends to, which we do not ask about. When you meet her, you speak when spoken to, you are courteous, you are obedient. Do I make myself clear?”
Thakur nodded and Khunawal pursed his lips.
“Make no mistake,” the Black Robe went on, “she is infinitely above you in station. With her powers she could save you and your wife, but make one misstep, one mistake that she decides is an insult, and she will not have to ignore your malady to see you die. She could kill you herself, and none of us would raise a word in protest. She is the Rose Tower. The heart of the city. Treat her with the reverence she deserves.”
Footsteps and the swish of a dozen black robes were the only sounds to accompany them as they led Thakur to the elevator and waited for it to take them up to the hundred and twenty third floor.
Guards in black body armor and oddly tinted red goggles met them in the small room at its top.
“Master Khunawal.” One of them greeted the master. He scanned over them as though in search of hidden weapons then waved to another guard in an armored booth who unlocked a heavy door.
“How is she today?” Khunawal asked as the door eased open.
“In the weeds, as usual.” The guard replied. He nodded them inside. “She’s expecting you.”
Thakur followed the other black robed masters inside.
Little changed in the Rose Adept’s inner sanctum, ever, as Thakur would later learn. The masters led him into the wide open room bordering the open balcony where wind chimes played serenely in a corner while a pool of water rippled at the center without an evident source of the disturbance. The glass doors over the rose garden balcony were closed on this day and the room was filled with the humid scent of earth and the fragrance of the roses blossoming amongst the thorns.
“Have you used up the moths I gave you already, Master Khunawal?” A feminine voice asked from the greenery.
Khunawal bowed, though the woman had not yet revealed herself.
“No, Adept. We have three of them still. We have brought another matter for your attention, one we thought, you would wish to examine yourself.”
The woman appeared, and Thakur’s eyes were drawn, as they always would be, to the utter void that filled the dark woman’s eyes. She did not smile as she looked at them, but caressed a rose bloom near her hand as her empty gaze moved across the group. Thakur met the eyes and saw for the first time, the small sparks that swam deep within whenever her head moved. “He is the one?” She asked.
“He is, Adept.” Khunawal replied.
She regarded them for a moment longer, then nodded and turned to fade back into her garden. “You may tell me of him.” She replied, “But come into the roses. I wish to be near them while they weep.”