“I’m not sure.” I bit my lip. “It was the loudest sound I could make, but also, everything loves music. Humans, sylph, even the centaurs when I played Phoenix Symphony that night. One of the boys touched my SED and looked—I don’t know—happy. Like he understood it.” Sometimes I felt like everything understood music, or wanted to.
A smile twitched at the corner of Sam’s mouth. “I miss playing music.”
“You can borrow my flute.”
“Ana,” Stef said, “you told Sam you know why the dragons attack him?”
The one with the song.
“I think I know.”
Sam paled, and I couldn’t imagine what was going through his head.
“When they asked me to play for them again, they had another conversation among themselves. One was worried I had ‘the song.’ Another said he couldn’t see it in me.” I shook my head, trying to recall exactly how the dragons had worded it, but my headache had been so powerful. The way my ears rang had made it hard to focus. “They were testing me. And then when they noticed you all on the cliff, one said, ‘The one with the song,’ and they all got worried. They could see it in you. They tried to lie to me then, saying they were getting rid of my distraction so I would play for them more, but—”
“But they came to kill me.” Sam’s voice was low and terribly even. “I’m the one with the song.”
I nodded.
“I thought they liked music.” Whit studied him. “Why kill Sam if they like music?”
“Because of what song he has. The song is the weapon. I mistranslated the symbols from the books. I thought it was a weapon they possessed, but it’s not. It’s a weapon they’re terribly afraid of.”
Whit snorted. “And that’s Sam.”
We all looked at Sam, who sat hugging his knees and biting his lip. Stubble darkened his chin, and black hair breezed above his eyes. “I don’t feel like a weapon,” he said after a minute.
“You don’t look like one either,” Whit replied.
I rubbed my temples, trying to piece together all their clues. “The weapon is the phoenix song. They were afraid Sam would use it against them.”
“What’s the phoenix song?” Whit looked at Sam, who shook his head and seemed lost.
“The only music I have involving phoenixes is Phoenix Symphony, but I wrote that long after dragons started making my death their priority.” Sam shoved his fingers through his hair. “Unless dragons can see possibilities of the future like phoenixes, I don’t think that’s the phoenix song they’re worried about.”
“They’re convinced the phoenix song can destroy them,” I said. “One at a time. All at once. I don’t know. It seems to me they should be more concerned about actual phoenixes coming around and singing at them.” But real phoenixes didn’t kill, so maybe they weren’t a danger after all. “Phoenixes don’t exactly travel far from their jungles, though, do they?”
One of the sylph shook its head. Cris. -The last time phoenixes emerged from their jungle was to curse the sylph.-
“Five thousand years ago,” Stef muttered. “So it’s not Phoenix Symphony, and they’re not worried about actual phoenixes. Because actual phoenixes aren’t a danger. But anyone else who knows the song is in trouble.”
“And that’s me,” Sam said.
I touched his hand. “That doesn’t seem fair.” Not that the dragons appeared to care much about fair anyway.
Something else the dragons had said, though, about my asking them not to destroy Sam, but also asking them to do it . . .
The thought flew away.
“I wish I could say it makes me feel better to know I have the power to destroy dragons.” Sam grabbed his water bottle and turned it in his hands. “I’d feel better if I had any idea what this phoenix song actually is and how to use it.”
“Would you use it?” I asked. It was strange, imagining Sam going out and singing at dragons until they were no more. The Sam I knew wasn’t that callous. He’d applauded my compassion when I couldn’t kill Deborl—though I had no doubt he would have shot Deborl if he’d been given the chance. Not after seeing him the night of the earthquake, when Mat had attacked us in the washroom. Sam had killed him and others. There was a darker side to Sam than the one I knew. There were thousands of years to Sam. I’d never know all of him. But he wasn’t a murderer.
“I don’t know,” he said at last.
“Well, I hate to be the one to bring it up.” Stef’s expression was hard. “But in spite of Ana’s success in speaking to the dragons, I don’t think they’re going to help us.”
“Me neither,” I said.
“What’s our next step?”
No one looked at me.
I looked at my hands.
Very slowly, Sam said, “What if we did know the phoenix song?”
The tent went quiet.
“Rather, what if”—Sam set his water bottle on the ground in front of him—“we let the dragons believe we know it in order to persuade them to help us with Ana’s original plan: use the poison, get the dragons to destroy the temple, and hopefully keep Janan from ever having a chance to ascend.”
I didn’t like that hopefully in there. It still sounded so unlikely, though it wasn’t as if anyone else had other suggestions. And now Sam was thinking up ways to make my idea happen again.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Relieved, because he believed in me? Horrified, because he’d risk his life pretending he knew something he didn’t? What if Acid Breath called his bluff?
“No,” I whispered.
Everyone looked at me.
“For one, we’d have to go after the dragons. They haven’t returned here. They can make the trip much more quickly than we can. We won’t have time to get back to Menehem’s lab and the poison if we have to go searching for dragons, too. Already, we’ll have to hike extra hours to get there in time.
“The second thing is, even if we do go after them, who’s to say the wrong dragons won’t find us and kill us on sight? The sylph can protect us, but not forever. We’ll have to keep moving and keep looking for Acid Breath and his friends.
“And the third thing is that Sam is not consciously aware of the phoenix song, so it’s useless. I don’t want to make threats with a weapon we don’t know how to use. They believed me when I threatened them the other day, and they left. That will have to be enough. I won’t risk it again.” I dropped my voice. “I won’t risk you all again.”
The tent was silent for a minute, and Sam just looked at me, something indecipherable in his expression. “Then what do we do?”
“We came here looking for both help and a weapon. We’re not getting help. The dragons have made that very clear. But we did learn that the weapon we’ve been seeking has been with us all along. Sam might not know it right now, but maybe we can find a way to use it against Janan.”
“Which was what you originally wanted to do,” Sam said. “Use the weapon to fight Janan.”
I nodded. “We go back to Menehem’s lab, gather the poison, and return to Heart. Sarit can help us get inside.” If she was still alive. “We destroy the cage Deborl is building, and anything else that looks important to Janan’s ascension. We do whatever we must to wreck things. On the way, we learn as much about the phoenix song as possible and hope we can actually use it.”
Sam folded his hands. “All right. Then we head back tomorrow. Unless there are any other ideas?”
Stef and Whit glanced at each other but shook their heads.
In the morning, we packed our things and began the long journey back to Range.
21 NIGHTS
WE WEREN’T GOING to make it back to Heart in time.