“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.
“Is that Deborl?” I whispered.
“I think so.” Sarit scooted closer to me. “He’s been hiding in the Councilhouse until he’s ready to address everyone. He says he’s in deep discussion with Janan, but he’s been doing a lot of delegating. Like someone in charge of building the cage, though they’re only given enough instructions for the next step, not the whole thing. Someone in charge of all the guards. And someone in charge of rationing food.”
“It gives him the air of importance,” Sam said. “Deborl likes to seem important.”
Sarit snorted a little.
In the distance, Deborl walked around to the front of the litter and climbed onto the edge. It only brought him up a little higher; he was short, barely taller than me.
“Now what are they saying?” Sarit asked.
Sam shook his head. “I can’t tell. Deborl’s voice doesn’t carry like Merton’s.”
We watched until the crowd began to disperse before we climbed off the roof and headed back to the mill. After assigning sylph to guard the building, we sent a few more to spy from shadows, and others to melt snow all over the city to help us avoid leaving tracks. Deborl already knew we were back in Heart, but that didn’t mean we had to advertise our location.
“I’ll start looking through SED messages and listening in on calls,” Stef said. “Maybe someone will say something useful.”
I nodded. “We’ve been doing a lot lately. Hiking across the world. Staying hidden in a locked-up city. It seems to me the best thing we can do until Soul Night is gather information, sabotage whatever we can, and go over every step of our plan for how to stop Janan from ascending on Soul Night.”
I wanted to do as Sam had suggested as welclass="underline" free the prisoners. They probably wouldn’t help us, but it would annoy Deborl.
“And keep hiding.” Sarit stayed at my side, feigning a smile, though her tone betrayed how desperately alone she’d been for the last months.
“Yes.” I looped my arm with Sarit’s. “And we’ll be together.”
“Look at your SEDs.” The next afternoon, Stef reclined against a stack of crates in the storage room, blankets cushioning her against the splintering wood. “I’ve sent a keyword-recognition program to your devices. The basic searches are already installed: messages with our names or the words ‘Janan,’ ‘cage,’ or ‘Soul Night’ will be sent to you, and voice calls with those words will buzz your SED so you can listen.”
Sam slouched and eyed his SED with distrust. “This thing is already confusing enough. You’re making it worse.”
“It’s not Stef’s Everything Device for no reason.” She smirked and waved him closer so she could help him. “Look, it’s not hard. There’s a buzz coming in now. . . .”
“This will make spying on others a lot less tedious.” I shifted through several tagged messages and glanced at Sarit, who was doing the same. “But no one seems to know what Merton brought back, only that it’s important to Janan. And I had guessed that.”
“Me too.” Sarit put her SED in her pocket. “I was thinking about the people in prison. You and Sam were talking about freeing them, right?”
I nodded. “They probably won’t want to help, but I want to do something. We can’t sabotage much without hurting people, and we can’t just tie up Deborl for a week; his house is too well guarded.”
Sarit grinned. “I think I know a way to get them out, but we’d have to wait until right before dawn.”
It didn’t take much discussion before I was convinced, and we spent the remainder of the evening preparing and going over Sarit’s plan until we were all confident we could pull it off.
Meanwhile, Stef kept an eye on her SED, monitoring calls and messages. We learned that people were afraid: afraid of Deborl and what he’d done to the city; afraid of Janan and what it would mean if he ascended, or didn’t; and afraid of the rumors of the newsoul returning to Heart. What if she ruined everything?
Hah. Maybe they thought I had a real plan that didn’t rely on dragons and poison and trapping myself inside the temple.
But it gave me a measure of satisfaction that people were afraid of Deborl and Janan. We couldn’t rely on anyone to help us—they were more likely to betray us out of fear, like we’d argued with Whit and Orrin in the library—but it was a relief to know not everyone was ready to welcome Janan.
After a short rest, our SEDs beeped an hour after midnight, and we all dressed in red, the same color Deborl’s guards wore. Our jackets and trousers weren’t exactly like the guards’ uniforms, but it was the best we could do with our limited resources and time; we were lucky to have all this cloth to begin with.
We left the textile mill, only a few sylph staying behind to guard it, and moved north toward the temple and Councilhouse. I tucked my hair into my cap as I followed Sam into the darkness.