Incarnate: Infinite Part 25

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 a.s.signing 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 well: 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 usa"they were more likely to betray us out of fear, like we'd argued with Whit and Orrin in the librarya"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.

Shadows pooled around us as we headed for South Avenue. We wouldn't be bothered unless someone got too close. Wearing the red laser pistols shoved into our waistbands, this was an opportunity to get a look around the city. As long as no one saw through our disguises.

As we came alongside the immense cage, I dared a glance. Templelight illuminated the bars and wires and troop of guards. Whatever Merton had brought back, it remained covered and unmoving.

"What do you think it is?" I muttered as Sam lifted a hand toward the guards around the cage. They waved back. For someone who spent most of his time writing music at home, he was alarmingly good at subterfuge. Stef was a terrible influence on him.

"I wish I knew." He hurried me along. Stef and Sarit would be waiting for us, since they'd gone straight to the market field. A big group would look suspicious, Sarit had said, because guards usually went in pairs. Since she'd been in the city the longest, I trusted her word.

After the dim road, the templelight was blinding as we crossed the market field to meet up with the others. We took a side door into the Councilhouse.

"Does it seem brighter to you?" Sam asked, shutting the door after a few sylph followed us in.

"It's been getting brighter these last couple of weeks," Sarit said.

Sam's voice grew heavy. "I wonder what it will look like on Soul Night."

The thought made me shiver. Four more days.

Sarit glanced down the hall, which was dark and quiet. Everyone was sleeping or wishing they were. She'd had lots of time to study the patterns and habits of guards, and while there was no time when it would be easy to sneak past everyone, the predawn hours provided the least resistance.

Shadows at our heels, we crept through the halls, straining to catch any sound of movement. Sarit's white-knuckled grip on her pistol never eased, but the building remained quiet, save the rumble and clatter of the world trembling beneath us.

Breaking into prison, it turned out, wasn't very difficult. Stef and Sam went in first, and after a few moments, they signaled Sarit and me to follow.

Three bodies slumped over a desk and chairs, clean burn holes in their temples. When I looked at Sam and Stef, they kept their eyes averted and motioned down a corridor. "That way," she said. "I'll unlock the cells from here."

I took Sarit's hand and dragged her with me. Sam and the sylph trailed after us, the latter keeping their heat low to avoid burning anything; we didn't want to leave evidence of their working with us.

Slumbering people crowded the cells, sleeping bags pressed against one another. There had to be a hundred people in this dark place of sweat and stench and hunger, with no empty floor s.p.a.ce in any of the ten cells. They sighed and groaned in their sleep.

I turned on the lights.

Several people burrowed deeper into their sleeping bags, while others didn't move. A few pushed up onto their elbows and blinked around.

"Don't be alarmed," I said, conscious of the sylph around me like a cloak, and my friends walking up behind me. "We've come to free you."

"Is that Ana?" Whispers and mutters erupted throughout the cells. A few shook others awake, and the prison grew loud with voices and rustling sleeping bags.

"The newsoul. She's back."

"She's going to get us all killed."

"Are those sylph?"

"Sylph!"

Within moments, every prisoner was on their feet and pressed as far back inside their cells as possible. One or two wept silently. Most just stared, terror in their eyes.

"Just like Menehem," breathed someone. "Come to kill us."

"I'm not here to hurt anyone!" My voice rang out over the cells. "We came to set you free. Stef is back there, ready to open your cells. But first I need you to know something."

The clamor of voices dulled, and gazes focused on me. I drew a few deep breaths to clear my head, but their fear and distrust was palpable.

"You've all been imprisoned for questioning Deborl, or refusing to follow his orders. Others have been killed." I met a man's grave eyes, and a woman's look of despair. "I know what you've suffered in the last few months.

"You know many of us left Heart and Range after the new year. Sarit and Armande stayed behind to watch and wait for our return. Because though I've been exiled, I swore I'd return and do everything I could to save Heart, the people here, and the people who left. I still intend to do that. Armande died at Deborl's hands several weeks ago, but Sarit was able to tell us what you've endured, and I'm here to tell you something: it will get worse."

"What do you mean?" someone asked, over the ripple of mutters. "I thought you were going to free us."

"I am here to free you." I straightened my shoulders and lifted my chin. "But Soul Night is coming, and Deborl is preparing for Janan's return. His ascension will trigger a series of ma.s.sive eruptions. Whit"a"his name caught in my throat, tangling with griefa""finished applying Rahel's seismic research to these signs, these earthquakes and dying plants and bulges in the land. There will be days and days of eruptions. The ash and pyroclasts will smother Heart and Range and all the surrounding lands. There will be nothing left."

"Do we all leave, then?" asked one of the boys, maybe a few years older than Sam and me. He kept eyeing the sylph, my silent, shadowy guardians.

I shook my head. "You can try, but you won't be able to outrun the eruption."

"Then what do we do?" asked a girl, a few years younger than me.

"I have a plan to keep Janan from returninga"from ascending." I bit back revealing exactly what that plan was. Everyone already thought I was like Menehem. No need to give them more ammunition. "I'm going to do everything in my power to stop him, but I can't do it alone."

"What do you need?" The girl stepped forward, sc.r.a.ping black hair from her face. "What can we do?"

"Where will everyone be when Soul Night begins?" I asked.

"By the cage," someone said. Others muttered agreement.

"All right. Then that's where I'm asking you to be, too. Disguise yourselves. Do whatever you must to keep from being caught until then, but I'll need you in that crowd. While Sam and I work, Stef and Sarit will be setting off distractions throughout the city, and we need people to point them out. We need to keep Deborl, Merton, and all of them away from what we're doing."

"And what will you be doing?" asked a man in the back of one of the cells.

I met his eyes, keeping mine hard and steady. "Doing anything I can to stop Janan from destroying everything."

"If we survive this," Sarit said, "maybe we'll be able to tell you everything Ana's done for Heart, oldsouls and newsouls alike. You wouldn't believe it now, but if we succeed, you will. If we succeed, you'll understand and believe what her friends already know: Ana can do anything."

I eyed her askance and frowned, but said nothing. They needed hope, and Sarit was giving it to them. Still, I wished she wouldn't use me as a vehicle for that hope. Yes, I'd do everything in my power to save Heart and the people I cared about, but my plan sounded crazy even to me. How was I supposed to succeed in this impossible task?

"Well," I said, "I'll certainly try."

Sam's hand curled around mine, and his thumb rubbed across my skin in a warm rhythm. He touched me all the time now, my hands or my hair or my back. The end of the world loomed nearer every moment, and time to touch each other was running out.

"And the sylph?" a girl asked. "How do they fit in?"

Black roses bloomed all around, and comforting heat enveloped the prison as the cell doors unlocked, then swung open. A trickle at first, and then the rest, the prisoners stepped out of their cells. They approached my sylph and me with only a little hesitation as I said, "They're my army."

26.

BELIEF.

"WE'RE GOING OUT for a few hours," Sarit said the last evening before Soul Night. The previous few days had been filled with planning and preparing and scattered napping, and all of us wore dark shadows under our eyes. "Stef has a few last-minute distractions she needs to check on. They involve fire."

I frowned. "You don't need our help?"

"Nope. It's a two-person job. You'll just get in our way." She kissed my cheek. "Get some rest. Or whatever." She turned quickly, but not before I caught the way she winked at Sam, and the sly look she and Stef shared as they left the storage room, then the mill. All the sylph followed.

"That was suspicious," I muttered, staring after them. "Why did she wink at you?"

"No reason." Sam spoke a little too quickly.

Hmm. I narrowed my eyes. "And on the subject of suspicious, why do so many of my friends' names begin with an S?"

"It's a good letter." He stepped behind me and pulled the hair tie from the end of my braid, and gently began pulling the sections apart from the bottom up. Red spilled across my shoulders. I stopped moving and let him, relishing the feel of his fingertips on the back of my neck, down my shoulders. Even though we were alone, Sam kept his voice low. "But technically my name starts with a D."

"That's right. Dossam." I turned and looked up at him, my head dropped back so I could meet his eyes. "Maybe I should call you Dossam from now on. It's what I called you before we met."

"If I'd told you from the start that my name was Dossam, would you have been using my full name this whole time?" He rested his hands on my hips, watching me with dark eyes and genuine curiosity.

"I'm not sure." Dossam had always been my hero. The musician. The composer. He'd been a legend to me, almost not real. The boy I'd met in the woods had said his name was Sam. He'd saved me. Made me believe I was more than a nosoul. He'd been my friend, the first I ever had.

If Dossam had rescued me that night, rather than Sam, I'd probably never have bothered getting to know him beyond his music. I'd have tripped over myself, fumbling for any kind of coherent thought. I'd nearly ruined everything when I did find out who he was, and by then I'd already liked him for him.

"You're having a lot of thoughts." He released my hips and touched my chin, bringing our faces closer together when he leaned downward. "Good ones?"

"Maybe." I raised myself onto my toes and kissed him, just a soft brush of our lips.

His mouth curved into a smile, and the heat in his voice made me shiver. "I have to confess something. I asked them to give us some time alone.

"Maybe it's selfish to want time alone with you right now," he whispered, "but a year ago I promised to show you a thousand ways I love you. I thought we'd have more time. An entire lifetime."

I swallowed hard.

"Anyway," he said, "I wanted something special for tonight. I thought about taking you on the roof with a telescope, if we could find one. I would show you craters on the moon, other planets, and stars. But it's too bright out to risk it."

With the temple shining like the sun, we wouldn't have a good view of the sky anyway. "The idea is noted, though."

Sam took my hands. "You would have liked it."

"What did you have in mind instead?"

"Music?" He searched my eyes and squeezed my hands. "I would give you everything if I could. Unfortunately, our options are limited right now."

I stood on my toes and kissed him, deeper than before. "Music is perfect."

He pulled away to dim the light until our world turned to dusk.

"Do you want to sit?" He glanced at a pile of blankets, rumpled from being used as a cushion.