Moments later, we were striding back down the tunnel.
“What is happening?”I pressed.“Mary!Tane?Answer me.Is Adalia banishing us?”
“Adalia is arrogant and reaches beyond her place,” Tane returned.“But she is not our greatest concern.There are soldiers at the gates.”
We re-entered the cells to the sound of hammering fists and low, hurried voices echoing off the wooden walls and floors.A monk shoved between Tane and I, pulling up his cowl as he went, while others streaked by in varying directions.
I saw Mary stagger as someone shouldered past her.I reached out to steady her, then sheltered her against the wall as two more monks hurried past, heading into the tunnel and out of sight.
Tane trickled from Mary’s eyes, and Mary blinked wholly awake.I started to step back, conscious of every place our bodies touched, even as my mind calculated our next steps.Get Ben and Grant.Get out of the monastery.
Mary looked as though she might be ill.She clasped my upper arms, keeping me in place as more and more monks ran past.“Give… Give me a moment.Tane has never been in control for that long while I was awake.The soldiers are looking for us, Sam.Adalia… her roots spread everywhere here.Everywhere.There is nothing she doesn’t see.And she blames us for this.”
“Does she intend to hand us over?”I pressed.
Mary shook her head helplessly, her face and lips inordinately pale.“She gave her word to protect us.But I don’t trust her.She was so angry.”
“There you are.”A breathless Grant shoved in next to us, Ben on his heels.Grant looked harrowed, while Ben looked so dour that even the panicking Servants of Adalia Day began to give us a wider berth.“Mary, are you well?”
“I may throw up,” she warned.
“Let’s do that outside, shall we?”Grant patted her perfunctorily on the back.“Time to flee?”
“Past time,” Ben grumbled.
I nodded.“If we are separated, meet where we left our gear and weapons.”
A bellow overrode the shuffling chaos of the hall.“To the courtyard!Everyone is to convene in the courtyard, now!”
A final few monks fled into the tunnel or rocketed down side passageways, then the soldiers were there.Rifles glinted, boots tramped.Mary inched behind us, towards the tunnel, and grabbed Grant’s robe to pull him with her—or hold herself up, it was hard to tell.
A rifle leveled at us.
“You four, to the courtyard,” a soldier snapped.
Ben shot the man a glare so full of sorcery, even I felt it.The soldier wavered, then ground his teeth and shoved the mouth of the musket into Ben’s chest.
“Try that again, Magni,” he hissed.Four more soldiers saw the confrontation and gathered in, all armed.“We are prepared for your kind.”
In the background, someone dragged a shrieking, bloodied monk out of a cell and shoved her into a line of her shuffling fellows.
“Well, this is looking worse and worse,” I heard Grant murmur behind me.
“Move!”another soldier yelled at us.
Prodded by muskets, we joined the flow of devotees.Footsteps, pleading and frustrated voices jarred against the walls, growing louder and louder as we reached the entry hall.Too many bodies were crammed into the tight space.Tall, narrow windows with murky glass panes filtered dashes of torchlight from the courtyard outside—more soldiers—and open doors spilled wafts of cold, biting air.
Mary shoved in front of me, and I pulled her into my chest, protecting her as much as I could from the jostling of the crowd.
Her breath ghosted across the side of my face as she leaned back to whisper in my ear.“Ben and Charles.They’re gone.”
I glanced around.We were being herded like sheep, dozens of faces and bodies pressed close, but none of them belonged to my brother or the highwayman.
I touched the Other.Lights sprang up—in the crowd around us, in the courtyard beyond.Ben was nowhere to be seen, hidden by his talisman, but I glimpsed Grant’s subtle indigo-grey somewhere behind us in the crowd.
I quietly translated this to Mary.
“Is Ben abandoning us?”she asked, her voice more defeated than accusatory.
