by Jodi Meadows
“Ana! Sam!” Sarit’s voice was high and wild. Then she squeaked. “Oh. Oh no, I’m so sorry. I forgot. I can go away.”
I scrambled off of Sam’s lap, smoothing my clothes as my face ached with a blush. Sam pulled his knees to his chest and shifted uncomfortably.
“Oh, you guys.” Sarit covered her face. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I—Yeah. I’m going away.”
“It’s fine,” Sam said, his tone clear that this was not fine. His clothes were crooked and his skin flushed. “Just tell us what’s going on.”
Sarit bit her lip, glancing between us.
“There are so many things I could say right now.” Stef appeared behind Sarit, wearing an expression of awkward amusement. “I hope you both understand what a great effort it is for me to withhold comments.”
“And we appreciate it.” Sam’s voice was tight.
My heart thudded—not in the fun way—and every bit of me burned with embarrassment. So much for having the whole night alone. “Maybe you should just tell us whatever you burst in here to say.”
Sarit and Stef sobered as they exchanged glances. “We found out what’s in the cage,” Sarit said.
Sam looked up. I didn’t move.
“It’s a phoenix.”
27
FLAMES
THE SPRING EQUINOX dawned cloudless and bright, with the whole world holding its breath. Even the constant rumble of earthquakes paused, leaving everything strangely silent and muted for the hours Sam and I moved throughout the mill, discussing our plans again, touching the supplies we’d carry tonight.
Using scraps she’d found in the nearby mills and factories, Stef had constructed gloves and boot covers that would help us scale the Councilhouse. She’d wanted to attempt making copies of the key, in case one of us was held back, but Sam wouldn’t let her take it apart in case it wouldn’t work again. Anyway, it seemed to me the key was imbued with magic, and despite all of Stef’s talents, she’d never be able to replicate that.
Sylph trickled through the mill halls, moaning and singing anxiously.
-They don’t like waiting for Soul Night,- Cris said. -They’d rather attack now.-
“There’s nothing we can do now.” I spoke quietly to keep from waking Stef and Sarit; they’d stayed up longer than Sam and I had, going out a couple more times to check that the mill was secure, and to set remote-activated diversions. “If we release the poison now”—which we didn’t even have—“Janan would overcome it long before Soul Night started and we’d have wasted everything.”
-They don’t like trusting the dragons to bring the poison.-
It was a little late for us to worry about that. “We just have to trust that the dragons want Sam and his phoenix song destroyed. They’ll help.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Sam muttered.
-What if the dragons spot the phoenix and think we’ve betrayed them?-
I shook my head. “It’s still covered. Deborl is supposed to unveil it only when Janan allows, right? So the dragons won’t see it unless it wakes up and breaks free of its bonds.”
What did Janan even want the phoenix for, though?
-What if-
“Stop.” I held up my hands. “We’re not going to do this. We’re not going to second-guess everything at the last minute. We’re not going to wish ‘if only we had more time’ or ‘if only we had a better plan.’ This is what we have. We need to make the most of it.”
Cris started to drift away.
The last thing I wanted to do today was fight with my friends. I made my voice softer. “I know they’re all worried. They’re all counting on me to stop Janan so they can stop being sylph.”
-I am, too.-
“I know.” Again, I remembered Cris lying on the altar, the flash of silver as he raised the knife, the gold of the phoenix blood still marking the blade after five thousand years. It was my fault he was trapped like this. He’d chosen what he thought would be death. But this—as a sylph—no. For saving my life, he bore the same punishment as those who’d tortured a phoenix in their quest for immortality.
As much as I wanted to help them, free them from this existence, the idea of so many depending on me was staggering. I was only beginning to learn how to do things for myself. I’d done everything I could for newsouls, which hadn’t turned out like I’d hoped, and now sylph needed me, too.
Another hour passed talking with Sam and Cris, trying to comfort one another, and encourage. But the sylph were right: waiting was the worst.
We were sitting in the weaving room when Sam looked up and scowled. “Did you hear—”
The door flew open. Daylight flooded the room, and all the sylph swarmed toward the door, heat billowing off them.
Sylph songs turned to screeches a heartbeat later. Brass objects skittered into the room. Sylph eggs. Lids open. My sylph poured into the eggs like smoke through a flue.
Crashing sounded from the storage room, then footsteps.
Sam and I scrambled for our pistols as a dozen people in bright red burst into the room. Half of them dove toward the sylph eggs, flipping the lids shut before the sylph could escape. From the others, blue targeting lights shone across the room and turned on Sam and me.
A sylph peeled away from the shadows, burning through wool and skin and tissue. The stink of cooking flesh filled the room as another guard withdrew a sylph egg, twisted it, and flipped open the lid. Cris darted toward the hall where Stef and Sarit were coming, their weapons ready.
Everything was chaos. I fired my pistol, not thinking about a person there, only that they’d come to kill us. Trap the sylph. Take the key.
People screamed as lasers threaded the room. Wood burned and cracked. Machinery came crashing to the floor, and the reek of smoke permeated the room.
Sam dragged me behind one of the burning looms, then pushed me down so we were both crouching. “First chance you get, grab your bag and get out of here. Don’t wait for anyone.”
“But—”
“No. You have the key. You know the plan. It must succeed, no matter what.”
I clenched my jaw and peered through the flames, which licked across the old, polished wood of the fallen looms. The smoke caught in my throat, making me cough.
Stef and Sarit shot more guards, using a door in the hallway as a cover. Cris burned through people, struggling to open the eggs scattered across the floor, but he was incorporeal. He couldn’t touch anything.
“We need to get the eggs open,” I hissed.
Sam stood and shot the last guard before she could trap Cris.
The fire grew quickly, so we waited only a moment before the four of us crept from our hiding places and reached for the nearest eggs to free the sylph. Just as my hands closed around one of the brass devices, more guards poured into the room, targeting lights shining everywhere.
I flipped open the lid of my egg and let it go. Hot pain flared across my right arm as I grabbed for my pistol, but I ignored the sharp bloom of heat. My pistol was ready. I aimed at the door and shot. Someone dropped, clutching their burned leg. Around me, Sam, Stef, and Sarit were shooting too, though they had better aim.
A couple of sylph fluttered from their eggs, disoriented from being trapped for even a few minutes. But Cris rallied them and they dove in front of us, acting as shields, absorbing the laser blasts, as they had the acid from the dragons.
Smoke thickened in the room, searing my lungs. The fire licked the ceiling now, roaring as it grew. There was nowhere to hide.
With a sylph guarding me, I pushed forward and reached for another egg, but blue light—immediately followed by pain—shot across my fingers. I jumped back.
“Ana!” Sarit’s voice pierced the cacophony of fire and screams and sylph song. Red marked her bare arms, and her face was flushed with heat and pain. She shook back the black tendrils of her hair as she hefted her pistol and shot another guard. “Get your bag and go.”
Not without everyone else. I searched for Sam in the smoke-c
hoked weaving room, but I couldn’t find him or Stef. “Sam!” Smoke burned my lungs and made my voice crack. “Stef!”
One of the guards near me dropped, pistol burns crisscrossing his face. My sylph shield stretched as I bent to open another egg, but the heat of sylph and fire and pain made my head swim. I fumbled for the lid. My fingers caught with one another, feeling disconnected as the metal bit into them. My thoughts felt thin and faraway as I staggered toward the door and my bag there.
But I couldn’t leave without my friends.
“Stef!” I couldn’t see her. “Sam!” The smoke was too thick, and the fire too bright as it ate through the old wood of the mill, consuming walls and support beams and crates of woven fabric. My vision swam, fogging at the edges. When I searched for Sarit, she was gone, too.
Guards still flooded through the building, coming in from the door at the other end of the mill. Blue speared the smoke, aiming right at me, but my sylph caught the blast, then shifted around me where fire burned a loom. Heat poured into the sylph, smothering the fire a fraction before the sylph had to guard me again.
“Cris! Sarit!” My foot bumped something soft, and I stumbled over a body, the blackened corpse of a guard. I screamed and scrambled over him, toward the bags piled by the door.
Someone knocked me over as I reached for my backpack. My elbow and shoulder and head hit the floor, and the sudden pain shocked me back into alertness. I turned around and found a giant of a man bearing down on me.
Merton.
My sylph roared up between us, thick and black and burning. At the last second, Merton must have realized the sylph would block his shot. He turned and the blue targeting light beamed across the room, landing on Sam as he stumbled from the wreckage of a torched loom.
Stef shoved Sam aside.
Red and black welled up across her throat. A chunk of her hair seared off. Her eyes grew wide as she and Sam crashed to the floor.
My sylph surged up and wrapped itself around Merton. Three more shadows left their mostly dead targets and pooled over Merton, who screamed as his skin blistered and sloughed and blackened. The stench of burned flesh and hair overpowered the smoke. As Merton’s screams fell into gasps and gurgles, I looked away. I didn’t want to see him die.
Head spinning from the smoke and pain, I groped for my backpack and hauled it over my shoulders.
Bodies littered the floor, most of them burned beyond recognition. But the guards were gone. Either dead or dying. The fire still blazed, roaring across the weaving room and through to the other areas. I had to get out. But first I had to gather my friends.
“Sam.” I coughed out his name as I staggered over corpses. “Stef. Sarit.”
The sylph formed a line against the fire, absorbing what heat and flame they could to keep it from spreading, but it wouldn’t be long before the building collapsed further.
Stef’s eyes were wide and glassy. She wasn’t moving, but she gasped a little. The burn on her throat made a heavy dark line, surrounded by red.
“No.” I stumbled and dropped in front of her as Sam and Sarit approached, too. “Stef, come on. We’ve got to go.”
She blinked, long and slow, and her eyes rolled toward me, though she seemed unfocused. Her mouth worked, but no sound came out.
Sam reached for her, stopped, reached again. Tears dripped down his face. “You’re okay. We’ve got a lot of work to do, and we need you.”
She closed her eyes and mouthed, “No.”
Sarit leaned over and hugged me. Her voice was ragged as she spoke by my ear. “You have to go. Get Sam and go. I’ll release the rest of the sylph and tell them to follow you.”
Fire rushed around us, licking toward the door and the bags there.
“You have to come find us, too.” I took Sarit’s shoulders and held her at arm’s length. “I’m not losing you. Come find us after you set the sylph free.”
She glanced at her arms, speckled with burn marks. Her face, too, had dark bruises blooming, or smoke stains. I couldn’t tell. “Okay.” Her cough was deep and dry, and blood dotted her arm where she tried to cover her mouth. “You have to go. Promise you’ll stop him.”
“I promise.” Tears ached around my eyes as I hugged her again, then touched Stef’s cheek. Her skin was warm, but the heat wasn’t from within her. It was the fire’s. I searched for the words to tell her how much she meant to me, but nothing came. Nothing big or important enough. “I love you.” The roar of the fire crushed my whisper.
Somewhere else in the mill, wood crashed to the floor, and flames rushed through the hall.
Sam was petting Stef’s hair, repeating something that was lost in the cacophony. I wanted to let him stay with her, but Sarit glared at me and I grabbed his arm. “Let’s go.”
He struggled against me. “No.”
Footsteps clomped through the mill. More guards. “Come on!”
Sylph flew through the fire, holding it back from us, but the fire grew and their numbers stayed the same.
Stef wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see her breathing. Sarit bent over her, sobbing, but when she looked at me, her eyes were fierce and demanding.
I hauled Sam to his feet, and we scrambled over burned bodies. His face was dark with rage and smoke as he accepted the backpack I thrust into his arms.
Ten guards emerged from the hallway, air masks over their faces. I leveled my pistol and shot, and one clutched his shoulder as he turned and saw me through the smoke. He aimed back at me, then dropped as blue light flashed from Sarit’s pistol.
“Go.” Below her, Stef was dead. Behind her, a trio of sylph held back the fire. Everywhere lay bodies and sylph eggs.
I dug my free hand into Sam’s coat and yanked him toward the door. Smoke billowed after us as we emerged into the hot light of noon. People gathered, and a medical vehicle came toward the mill.
“Where do we go?” I asked Sam, but he was looking back at the smoke-filled doorway. He coughed and wiped his face, smearing tears and ash over his cheeks. He’d just lost his best friend. He wouldn’t be able to help.
Avoid the people. They’d report us to Deborl.
That was a good first step.
Most of the people were westward, toward the main avenue, so I yanked Sam east, around the building. He ran with me, gasping and coughing. My breath was short and scratchy, and every time I looked over my shoulder, all I could see was the smoke pouring upward, a gray column against the clear sky and the intense light of the temple.
There were people, some pointing, some chasing. Some wore red, like the guards. I ran faster, though my backpack dragged at me and Sam seemed blind with tears and grief.
We ducked behind buildings, moving every which way. I tried to be smart about which paths we took, I wanted to be smart, but Stef’s final sacrifice, Sarit’s promise that she’d follow—
No.
Afternoon wore on as we ran along the edge of the industrial quarter, hiding in and behind anything available. Finally I found myself across East Avenue and in the northeastern residential quarter. A white house loomed above us. Evergreens huddled close to it. Dead vines and weeds littered the garden. The grass was long and brown. No one had been through here in a year, at least.
A darksoul home.
I glanced southward, toward the industrial quarter. The smoke had thinned, drifting across the sky like a memory. I couldn’t hear sounds of pursuit. The world around me seemed silent and dead. Even Sam just stared blankly, whispering, “It should have been me. She saved me.”
There was nothing I could do for his grief. Instead, I took his hand and guided him into the darksoul house before anyone came looking for us.
28
EQUINOX
THE DARKSOUL HOUSE was filthy, heavy with dust and neglect and age. I didn’t know who’d lived here before, but only memories occupied this space now.
My lungs still felt choked with smoke as I helped Sam onto a musty sofa. He collapsed over his knees, face buried in his arms. His sobs were quiet, br
oken, so I pushed down my grief and moved through the house to make sure we were alone. Maybe there was something useful.
The house was laid out a lot like Sam’s house, with a large portion of the first floor dedicated to art. Canvases covered the walls, while statues and wood carvings filled the main floor. Blankets protected the hardwood, though now the wool was tattered and gray.
In the kitchen, I found an old block of cheese. I cut off the mold and put the rest on a plate to take to Sam. There was bread on the counter, but it looked more like a compost pile than food.
I added a slab of dried venison to the plate and poured two cups of water. It wasn’t much of a meal, but it was better than nothing.
“Start eating.” I left the food by Sam and headed upstairs, where I found clean clothes inside cedar chests, and a cabinet full of painkillers and burn ointments. My arm and fingers throbbed where I’d been shot, but I’d been burned worse.
I took a few painkillers and brought some down to Sam, who was slowly cutting the cheese into slices.
“Here.” I handed him a few pills and finished slicing.
We ate without conversation. The food tasted old, sort of dusty, but it was better than starving, and it gave me the energy to check the windows for signs of anyone after us.
“This was Vic’s house,” Sam said after a few minutes. “He built most of the statues around the market field and carved the relief on top of the Councilhouse. Lots of other things, too, but those were the projects everyone talked about.”
“Is he the one who taught you carving?” Outside, the trees were white and motionless. “Like at your cottage and the shelves in your house?” Sam’s graveyard had been filled with beautiful statues of animals and people playing music. Even the benches had been art. And inside, the wall of bookshelves had creatures of Range etched into the edges. Herons, bears, elk, wolves, shrikes.
“Yeah.” Sam finished his water and stood. “He carved some of them, and taught me how to do it myself. I was never as good as him, and I had to be careful of my hands, but we became friends. I wanted you to learn from him, too.”