Author: Jodi Meadows

A curtain of black hair trembled as Sarit nodded next to me. “I do miss sleep.”

“Why don’t you two catch up and get some rest?” Sam said. “I’ll take a couple of sylph and check the area.”

I looked up. “Check for what?”

Sam grabbed his pistol from the bench. “Anyone who might have followed us here. Sylph can stand guard, but I’d feel better if I looked.”

He was a musician, not a warrior. But I didn’t stop him from going outside, because he was also a soul with a deep sense of honor and need to protect.

When he was gone, Sarit hugged me tightly and stood up. “Let’s find places for you to sleep. We’ve got lots of nice fabric. Do you want wool? Silk? Bison? Have some of everything.” Her voice held a note of weary humor, like she’d asked me over to her house for the night and wanted to be a good host. “This place doesn’t get used as much as it did before you came. Ciana was in charge of all this. While people still come here to weave and stock up before markets, it’s just not as busy as it once was. Not since Ciana.”

I nodded. The reminder of her absence must have hurt, especially for the people who were closest to her. Sam had been close to her.

“Anyway.” Sarit opened a crate and rummaged through bolts of cloth. “It will be a nice change from your sleeping bag. We can make you a pallet as thick and soft as you want, almost like a real bed.”

“That will be nice,” I said, because she was trying so hard. “Where have you been sleeping?”

“In the storage room. No windows. Close to the washroom and tubs. It feels hidden.” Her smile was strained. “There’s a second door there to the other hall, so I can go out either way if someone sneaks up on me while I’m sleeping.”

“Let’s all sleep in there.”

“I’d like that. It’s been terrible, being alone.” The bolt of fabric she held dropped when she pressed her hand over her mouth. “Sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t complain.”

I hugged her as hard as I could. “It’s okay. We’re here now.”

She trembled and whispered, “Thank you. After Armande—I was so glad when we could finally talk again. I didn’t think I’d get to see you so soon, and I’m so, so grateful.”

“We had to ride dragons.”

“I’d have ridden a dragon and a roc to be able to see you again.”

I pulled away and started unfolding bolts of woven wool. “How would you have convinced the roc?”

“Surely they like honey. Everything does. I would have bribed it with a whole jar of honey, even tied a bow around the lid.”

“I’m sure that would have worked.”

Together, we carried armfuls of our favorite colors into the storage room. It was filled with crates, so we arranged them into partitions for privacy.

“You and Sam are sharing, hmm?” She smiled a little.

I blushed. “Yeah. I mean, not . . . that. Yet. We were fighting.”

She nodded. “I remember.”

“We fought for a long time.” It had seemed like forever, anyway. “We weren’t talking or anything. And since then, we’ve been trying to ease back into everything, but we don’t want to ease too much, because what if—” I couldn’t say it.

“What if you don’t succeed in stopping Janan?”

I sat on a crate. “Or what if we do, and everyone in Heart is so angry they toss us in prison for the rest of our lives?” That seemed like a very possible result of success, though definitely preferable to failure.

“Hmm. I bet you’d like some private time.”

My cheeks ached with blushing. “Let’s talk about something else. Anything else.” Best friend or no, there were still things I wasn’t comfortable discussing.

She flashed a smile and held up a brilliant blue fabric, the color of the sky on a summer day. “I think you should have this one. It matches your eyes.”

We worked and chatted for a while, talking about anything that didn’t hurt. Sylph came in to warm the room and lurk in the shadows, and soon Stef emerged from her shower, clean and with her hair done in a complicated braid. Sam returned from his mission and hurried to wash up. Soon, we were all comfortably settled in the storage room, sharing a small meal and stories.

And then the earth shook.

25

BURDEN

A DEEP RUMBLE traveled through the earth, shaking the floor, causing lights to flicker. In the other rooms, machinery clattered and banged. A wooden beam snapped.

My heart thundered as Sam grabbed me and held me under a doorway. Stef moved to the opposite door, while sylph flew through the mill, wailing as the earthquake intensified. Windows rattled and glass cracked, but Sarit just sat in her nest of blankets and waited for everything to stop moving.

“They happen a lot,” she said when the world was silenced again. She stood up and straightened her clothes. “I’ll make sure nothing is broken.”

“We’ll go with you.” Sam left the doorway.

I grabbed our SEDs, and the four of us crept through the hall, looking inside rooms for anything out of place.

A few machines had shifted over the floor and one of the looms had a cracked frame, but everything seemed well, otherwise.

I slipped my hand into Sam’s as we followed Stef and Sarit around the mill, and Sarit pointed out all the things she’d done to keep the building from collapsing on her during earthquakes.

“They’re getting worse,” she said. “At first it was just one or two a day, nothing nearly as big as the one the night of the new year. But now we have four or five a day, and most of them are pretty strong. A while ago, Deborl sent people to dispose of all hazardous chemicals in the city; that way they don’t accidentally spill.”

I shuddered, trying not to imagine what kind of chemicals Menehem might have left in the city—chemicals that could eat through buildings and cause fires, and no doubt worse.

“Thank you,” I whispered to Sam. “For earlier. For not panicking. For taking care of me when I did panic.”

He kissed my hand.

“I don’t know why I acted that way. It’s not like I’ve never seen someone die before.” I shuddered with the weight of memories. I’d seen Cris die in the temple. Li shot outside her own house. Menehem burned to death by sylph. Meuric falling apart on the Councilhouse steps—after I’d stabbed him in the eye and kicked him into a pit months before.

I’d seen too much death.

“Just because you’ve seen it before,” Sam murmured, “doesn’t mean it’s easier to deal with the next time. Whit was your friend. A teacher. And considering all we’ve survived together, a lucky shot with a pistol . . .” He stared down at his socked feet.

“I miss Armande, too. I wish we could hear him complain about the state of the market field statues, or too many people skipping breakfast.”

“He was going to start voice lessons.”

“And teach me how to bake turnovers.” I sighed and sat on a crate.

“It’s scary,” Sam said, “knowing they’ll never come back. Knowing that one day—maybe in just a few days—that will be us, too.”

I hugged myself. “We’ve lost so many friends in our quest to stop Janan’s ascension. We have to stop him, no matter what. We have to make their sacrifices matter.”

“We will.”

High-pitched wailing broke the quiet as a sylph flew through the door, singeing the wood as it passed through. Everyone jumped, and I strained my ears to find meanings in the cacophony.

Other sylph swarmed around their fellow, humming and singing to console it.

At last, Cris broke free. -Merton has returned to the city with his warriors. They’ve brought their prize. They’re coming up South Avenue with it.-

Without speaking, we were all running back to the storage room, fumbling for boots and coats and scarves. Then, more quietly, we sneaked into the night, keeping to the shadows. Sylph concealed our presence as we moved west, toward South Avenue.

Lights shone across the road, reflecting snow and white stone houses in the southwestern residential quarter, though those were mostly hidden by trees. People filled the street, shivering in the cold weather. Above everything, the temple rose in the center of the city, blazing like a moon crashed to earth.

“This way,” Sarit murmured. She took my hand and pulled me toward the pottery mill, a multistory building made of stone and wood. We entered through one of the small side doors, and she took us up a narrow staircase. “This leads to the roof, where we can watch. I try not to get lost in the crowd if I can help it.”

The stairs creaked under the four of us, and the heat from the sylph made the closed space unbearable, but then she pushed open a hatch and brought down a ladder. Cold, fresh air blew in, and we all climbed onto the roof.

“Stay low,” Sarit cautioned. “The templelight will give you away if you’re not careful.”

The dull roar of voices rose up as we crawled to the western edge of the roof. From here, I could see the four main avenues of the city, glowing under the light of the temple. The city wall stood bright white in a perfect circle, and from the Southern Arch, a brilliant lamp shone in on a large cluster of men and women wearing red from head to toe.

The group bore a litter on their shoulders, though whatever they carried on it was covered by a heavy black cloth, with ropes securing it. More supplies for the cage?

The cage itself stood right where Sarit had said: in the industrial quarter, where warehouses used to be. It was close to the market field—therefore close to the temple—and rose at least three stories into the air. Indeed, it looked big enough to hold a small troll, though the electric lines running into its base seemed unusual. Perhaps they wanted to shock whatever they were going to put inside it.

Whatever was being carried on that litter?

The procession made its way up South Avenue slowly. Their burden must have been heavy. Citizens of Heart followed behind them, their chatter loud and frenzied as they gathered in the market field. Focused lights blared down on the field as the red-clothed group called out a count, knelt, and then lowered the litter to the cobblestones.

The bundle trembled, but that might have been from the impact, not because it was alive. Or aware.

I sort of hoped it was dead, whatever it was.

“Can you hear what they’re saying?” Stef murmured, leaning closer as though a hand-width would make a difference. “I think that’s Merton in the front.”

Sure enough, the man in front was enormous, with wide shoulders and arms as big as both of my legs. Even from this distance, he was huge. As the crowd began to quiet down, I caught snatches of Merton’s speech.

“. . . months of travel . . . five dead . . . Janan’s glorious return.”

I shook my head. Sam seemed to be straining, too. Though we both had excellent hearing, Merton was just too far away.

“He’s talking about their journey,” Sam muttered. “But I can’t tell where they went. Or what they brought back.”

We all seemed to hold our breaths.

“Someone’s saying they want to see it.” Sam tilted his head, as though to hear better. “Merton is saying Deborl will reveal it only when Janan allows. I wonder how Deborl has been communicating with Janan while we have the key.”

“He’s probably just making things up,” Stef said. “Though that cage is really specific.”

“He could have Meuric’s old diaries and plans,” I said. Wind danced over our roof, making me shiver. “Meuric and Janan had lots of time to plan things, after all.”

Stef made a noncommittal noise, and we all peered into the distance as a smaller figure emerged from around the side of the market field.