by Jodi Meadows
Orrin glanced at Geral, and their baby in her arms. No one else said anything.
“We’ll work out the logistics,” I said, as though the argument had never happened. “I’ll let you know when to be ready. Pack what you can, but do it quickly and secretly. We’ll all leave at the same time. Deborl doesn’t want me to leave Heart.” He’d campaigned hard for my exile, but now it seemed he preferred I were dead. “I doubt he’ll be happy with any of you leaving, either.”
Everyone nodded and began writing lists of supplies on their SEDs, discussing who would bring what and where they might be the safest when the caldera erupted.
When Rin got up to look at Sam’s hand, I slipped from the gathering and found my way to the large doors that led to the rest of the Councilhouse. Without thinking about where I was going, I wandered through the halls until I landed in front of my favorite painting.
It might have been a large eagle, except the feathers seemed made of flame. Ash from its pyre shone with sparks, and the lush jungle around the bird had dimmed in its light. In spite of the fire-bright bird, there was no smoke.
The painting was of a phoenix, or of someone’s memory of how the phoenix had appeared, because the beast on canvas was too beautiful to be real.
Once, I’d asked Sam if he’d ever seen a phoenix. He’d said no, which disappointed me. He was so old. He’d seen and accomplished so much. I couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t managed to see even one phoenix in his five millennia.
Cris had talked about phoenixes in the temple, before he’d fought Janan. He’d said phoenixes had imprisoned Janan in a tower, though not what Janan had done to deserve such a punishment. Meuric had also mentioned phoenixes. He’d said someone had cursed the sylph, and he thought phoenixes were behind it.
What had happened five thousand years ago?
I hoped the answers would be in the temple books. I just had to get them back. And translate them.
“Do you think phoenixes remember their past lives like we do?” Sarit’s voice behind me made me jump. “Sorry.” She stood next to me and looped one arm around my waist. “I saw you walk out.”
“It’s okay.” I leaned my head on her shoulder. “I just needed some time to think. So much has happened tonight.”
She nodded, admiring the phoenix painting with me.
“I asked Sam that question once.” I turned my face up to the painting again. “He said there’s no reason to believe they don’t remember every lifetime.”
“I hope you’ll be reincarnated, too.” She squeezed me. “Even if Range erupts and we die, there will be a lot of people far away. It might take a long time, but eventually we’ll all come back.”
I lowered my eyes. “Sarit.”
She waited.
The truth crowded my throat. I almost told her what I’d learned in the temple, but I couldn’t take the pity right now. “If Janan ascends, do you think he’d keep reincarnating everyone?”
“Maybe.” She sounded hopeful. “I guess it depends why he’s returning. To rule? He’d want people he could rule.”
“Meuric told me he needed a special key to live once Janan ascended. It seems like if you don’t have the key, you don’t live.” In the temple, Cris and Stef hadn’t thought Janan would reincarnate people, either. Since their memory magic was broken, and Meuric had never been subject to it, their prediction seemed the likely outcome to me.
“Oh.”
“You know that I’m trying to stop Janan from ascending, right?”
“Of course. Stopping him means stopping the eruption. But . . . What about reincarnation? Will his death stop reincarnation?”
I nodded. “It stopped during Templedark.”
“Yeah, it did.” Sarit shuddered, and her tone grew husky with grief. “So either way—it ends. No matter what happens next, this will be our final lifetime.”
“There’s a cost to reincarnation,” I said.
She looked at me, concern darkening her face. “What is it?”
When I’d told Sam, the truth had nearly destroyed him. And when Stef and Cris remembered—
Stef had been unusually nice to me ever since, and Cris had sacrificed himself to save me. I didn’t want to hurt Sarit, but she deserved to know the truth. Everyone did. And maybe she would remember. Maybe I could help break her memory magic, like I had Sam’s.
“Newsouls.” The word almost choked me. “Whenever someone is reborn, Janan takes a newsoul.”
“And does what?”
I closed my eyes and repeated what Meuric told me in the temple. “They’re being eaten.”
“Oh. Oh, Ana.” Her voice broke.
“Instead of newsouls being born, Janan takes the souls’ power and reincarnates an oldsoul. It worked like that for five thousand years, until Menehem was experimenting in the market field one night, while Ciana was dying.”
“The first Templedark,” she whispered.
“Janan wasn’t able to catch her soul, because he was asleep. So years later, I arrived in her place.” The first, but not the only. Not anymore.
“Menehem did the same thing last year.”
“Yes. Both to allow more newsouls to be born, and because he wanted to see if it was possible to stop Janan. He was just curious.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, a frown pulling on her mouth. “And because of his actions, so many souls are gone forever.”
And new ones would replace them.
“This is all just so—so horrible. None of it’s fair.” She hugged herself and stared at the ceiling, tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. Black hair cascaded down her back in inky tendrils. “Not everyone will believe that Janan will stop reincarnating us after he ascends.”
I waited, but she didn’t say what she believed.
“All those people will see your actions as a choice: a choice between oldsouls and newsouls. So.” She lowered her voice. “If you let Janan ascend, he’d keep reincarnating the rest of us. But he’d keep consuming newsouls.”
“And if I stop him,” I said, “then newsouls are born, but people I love won’t be reincarnated after they die.”
“Which means you decide newsouls. Over me. Over your other friends. Over Sam.”
“I wish this wasn’t my decision, but it seems it’s been given to me anyway,” I said after a minute. “I didn’t ask for this responsibility.”
“I can’t imagine having to make that choice.”
I was on the edge of admitting the rest of the truth, that everyone in Heart had agreed to the exchange knowing what would happen, but Sarit was already crying.
I kept my mouth shut. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Sam. It was too much. It would break them.
The only ones who knew were Stef and Cris. Stef was humiliated, and Cris was a sylph.
Sarit didn’t need to know.
She let out a long sigh. “I changed my mind. I’m staying with Armande.”
My stomach dropped. “What? Why?” She was supposed to come with me. She was my best friend. She’d said she was coming with me. “Is it because of what I just told you?”
“No.” She pressed her mouth into a line. “Maybe. But the truth is, I’m not good at trekking through the wilderness. I would, for you, but when Armande said he was staying, I realized I should, too. I don’t want him to be alone. Besides, I’m good at getting information. I’ll be useful to you here.”
She would be useful here. That didn’t mean I wanted her to stay.
Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about Janan. Maybe it was better to keep these things a secret.
We stood together for a moment longer, then she squeezed my hand and left the hall.
I stayed in the hall, staring at the phoenix painting and fiercely wishing my life were different. Better. I wished for a lifetime with Sam and my friends, a lifetime with music. Wasn’t that how life should be?
“I wish I were a phoenix,” I said to the empty hallway.
Soon it would be dawn. Yawning, I trudged back to the library and f
ound they’d turned off all the lights but one. Several people had left, but a few were dozing in chairs, or had taken blankets into small alcoves. Sam was reclined in the chair he’d taken earlier, a blanket draped across his legs.
I didn’t see Geral and Orrin anywhere—they were probably somewhere else in the library with the baby—and no one else was sleeping curled up with anyone. Well, too bad if I made them uncomfortable. I’d been promised cuddling with Sam, and I was going to have it. Right now.
After kicking off my shoes and grabbing a spare blanket, I turned off the lamp and found Sam in the dark. No one said anything as I nudged him to one side of the chair and curled in with him. With the blankets over us, he wrapped one arm around my waist, and we adjusted until we found a comfortable position.
“Remember when you said you wanted to move into the library?” Sam murmured by my ear.
“I didn’t mean like this.”
He kissed my neck, all warmth and pressure. “Where’d you go?”
“To look at the phoenix painting.”
“Sarit followed.” When I didn’t respond, he added, “Did she help?”
“She said she’s staying here with Armande. That she changed her mind.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Did she say why?”
I closed my eyes and found his good hand, tangled our fingers together. “I told her the truth about newsouls.” Part of the truth. If I’d told her the rest, how would she have reacted? Her decision strengthened my resolve to keep the oldsouls’ choice to myself.
“She deserves to know,” he said. I couldn’t find a response that wasn’t selfish or whiny, so I kept my mouth shut.
I listened to others shifting in their chairs, muffled voices coming from behind the walls made of bookcases. As dawn crept through the library, I dozed half on Sam’s lap, half on the chair. It wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t move. I needed to be close to him.
When I awoke hours later, still wrapped in Sam’s arms, most everyone had gone. A note from Stef waited pinned under a lamp, saying we’d be leaving not tomorrow, but tonight.
Because tonight, we were stealing back the temple books and Menehem’s research.
6
ARCHIVES
“SO THAT’S OUR plan?” It sounded too straightforward and easy to me, but what did I know? I’d never broken into a secure room of the Councilhouse before.
“Do you have a better plan? Get some rest before tonight. You’ll need it.” Stef gestured toward her sofa, which was shoved next to a small piano against one wall. Her parlor was cluttered, holding dozens of bookcases and only a few places to sit. Where Sam’s parlor had taken up most of his first floor, Stef had devoted only a small space for company. The rest was filled up with machines in various stages of completion. Stef didn’t get a lot of visitors, but that was by choice. She preferred going out.
When she climbed the narrow stairs and vanished, I glanced at Sam, who leaned in the doorway with his arms crossed and a worn expression on his face. “Well.” I nodded toward our bags piled up in a corner. “At least the most boring part is already done.”
A smile tipped the edges of his mouth upward. “Stef has really taken charge, hasn’t she?”
It was a relief. From the library, she’d dragged us to Sam’s house and forced us to pack as quickly as possible. Then, as we set up motion sensors and alarms outside Stef’s house, she’d explained her plan and everything we needed to do. Whit and Orrin were coordinating with the rest of the group, ensuring that everyone was protected as they moved through the city.
News of the Councilors’ deaths had spread quickly.
Deborl’s friends—those who hadn’t been imprisoned for the last week—were creating rumors about newsouls being responsible for the murders, as well as the earthquake and eruptions last night. If everyone would just band together to rid Heart of newsouls, everything would go back to how it had been. . . .
Sam turned and gazed at the piano, flexing his hand in his bandage. “This is possibly my last time with a piano, and I can’t even play it.”
“I’ll play the left hand.” We squeezed onto the bench together, his leg resting against mine. I leaned into him and inhaled the scent of soap and clean clothes. “What do you want to play?”
He twisted and met my eyes, something warm and seductive in his. “Just play.”
I stretched my hand over the keys and played a major chord. The music resonated through the house and burrowed inside me like hope. This piano had a smaller sound and a thinner bass than Sam’s, but it was still beautiful in its way. And it was a piano. I’d missed playing the piano.
Sam brushed a kiss across my forehead, finding a middle note to match mine. His left hand tightened a little over my hip, as though it hurt worse to not use it. He played four notes: three moving lower, and one higher. “I sent ‘Ana Incarnate’ with Orrin.”
I looked up. We were so close now, his breath rustled my hair across my cheek.
“While you were looking at the painting, Orrin asked if there was any music I wanted him to take when he goes with the others.”
“An archivist until the end, hmm?”
Sam nodded. “He understands how I feel about my music collection. It’s the same way he feels about his library. He and Whit have spent so many lifetimes building it.”
Like Sam had spent so many lifetimes writing music. Would any of it survive Soul Night?
“Most of the library archives have been digitalized, so he can easily take all that. But he was letting himself take one physical piece, too. One physical piece of our history, just in case they do survive. He wanted the newsouls to have something to pass on to future generations.”
My throat tightened. “Isn’t most of your music scanned into the digital archives?”
“Yes, and Stef sent it to all our SEDs.” Sam played the next few notes of “Ana Incarnate.” “But he understands what the physical thing means to me.”
“And out of all the music, you gave him mine?” There were so many others he could have asked Orrin to save. Phoenix Symphony. “Blue Rose Serenade.” “The Dance of Light,” or any of the other compositions dedicated to the names of years.
“It’s the most important to me.” He kissed me, just a brush of lips on lips. “After Li destroyed the original, we worked together rewriting the music.”
“I remember.” I could hardly speak around the tangle of emotions. Sam had been arrested, and Li had thrown the music into a fire. I’d tried to save it, but most of it was too burnt. When Sam had finally been exonerated and I moved in with him again, we’d spent a month rewriting “Ana Incarnate,” the waltz he’d written for me. And we hadn’t stopped there. He’d insisted we transcribe it for flute, too, and later he’d presented me with a flute of my very own.
“No matter what happens, I want that piece of music to live. When people hear it, I want them to think about what we tried to do, regardless of whether we succeed. And I want them to know that without you, Ana Incarnate, whatever Janan had planned would have just happened without opposition. You opened our eyes. I want that legacy to continue.”
“Oh.” I could hardly breathe. Once again, Sam had made me into something more important than I really was. “I don’t know what to say.”
He gave a wry smile and let his fingers dance across the piano keys. “You don’t have to say anything. Just play.”
Music flowed through the small parlor, like a river rushing around rocks and trees. While Sam played half-familiar melodies and whispers of something new, I found chords and countermelodies. Anguish flashed through Sam’s expression a couple of times. His piano was gone. His flute, violin, clarinet: all gone. We’d packed my flute—it would journey wherever we did—but the wound created by the loss of the others, it was still gaping.
We played until nightfall, when Stef came downstairs and we ate a small dinner of chicken and vegetables. I savored everything; it might be one of the last times we had hot, fresh food.
At midnigh
t, our SEDs beeped in unison, and slowly, I untangled myself from Sam’s arms and legs. We’d fallen asleep on the sofa, music still heavy inside of us, but now it was time to let everything go. Home. Heart. Relative peace.
I switched my SED to silent and double-checked that my knife was in my coat pocket.
“We’ll leave our bags,” Stef said, hitching an empty backpack over one shoulder. “Whit and a couple others will come to get them. We need to grab the books and research, and we’ll meet them at the east guard station. There will be vehicles enough for all of us. Hopefully we’ll be far away from Heart before Deborl ever realizes we’re gone.”
It was the same plan she’d announced earlier. I nodded.
Outside, flecks of snow stung my face as I pulled up my hood and checked my SED. The program Stef had loaded earlier popped up, reporting a cluster of small earthquakes I hadn’t felt. Then, conscious that the SED light might attract the wrong kind of attention, I shoved the device into my pocket and took Sam’s hand, letting him guide me through the dark. The only light was the temple, still blazing unnaturally bright.
Our footsteps crunched on the thin snowfall, and a breeze hissed through the evergreens. “Here’s what will happen,” Stef said. “I’ve adjusted the security cameras in the Councilhouse so they won’t record us. Getting caught won’t matter for you, Ana, since they’ve already exiled you, but it does for Sam and me.”
How much, though? The majority of the Council had been killed.
How long would they argue about what to do before they took action against newsouls or accepted Deborl back into the Council? What if they made him Speaker? I shuddered.
“The other thing is the soul-scanners.” Stef turned us down another path. “I took a peek into the scanner logs. It looks like several Councilors went into one of the private archive rooms while you and I were stuck in the temple, and then again the other day after you had the meeting with them.”