A miracle none of us screamed, but we were moving. The alarm went off in a perfect rhythm every two seconds, and Calren was saying something, shouting orders, but at that point I couldn’t have understood if he’d spoken right next to my ear. The panic wouldn’t let me.
“Go, go, go!”
Erith whispered, waving for us to follow as her magic lit up the palm of her hand, and she went back where we’d come from.
Nobody argued. That alarm kept ringing, though a bit faded now, and the sound of footsteps came from somewhere behind us. People—probably even Calren and Master Talik themselves—would be coming through here any second now, and we needed to leave before they saw us.
Because something told me that if they did, it wouldn’t be so easy to lie our way out of this, especially with what we had heard.
And if they knew that we heard them, what exactly would Calren and Master Talik do to us?
None of us wanted to find out.
35
We made it all the way to the beginning of the garden before we stopped to take a breath, to look around, see if we’d been followed, or if someone had spotted us.
So far nobody was calling and nobody was running anywhere around us, so we figured it was safe enough to gather in our usual spot. Nobody sat down this time, though, not on the bench and not on the ground. We stayed closer together, too, all of us between the two larger trees, looking about, waiting still…
“Anybody wanna tell me what an anchor is?” Seth asked first.
The others then erupted at the same time, talking over one another.
Do we look like Timekeepers to you?—
An anchor is an anchor—who knows what it means inthisplace?—
Who messed with them, and what in Time’s Trousers would it mean forusif we go into the next trial now?—
Who were they talking about?—
Who even knows how to bypass Diamond clearance?—
Does that mean they’re a Diamond?—
Do you understand what kind of systems Diamonds create—they’reun-bypassable!
On and on they went, but nobody was getting anywhere fast.
I stepped away to the side of the tree for a moment to get myself together, to try to clear my head and think aboutan answerfor a change, because we all had these questions.
The problem was, we hadn’t heard nearly enough.
Even so, one face stood out in my mind’s eye—one face. And when the others calmed down a couple minutes later, exhausted by their own questions, Levana said, “Do you guys think they meant…Sy?”
Yes. That was exactly who I thought they meant, too.
“He always has the answers,” said Seth.
“He always knows things about…things,” said Erith.
“Like today, when he knew that timeometers are illegal—did any of you even know that thing could exist in the first place?” asked Helen.
We all shook our heads.
There were more things to mention—like how everybody always looked at Silas a certain way when they first met him, and how secrets hung in the air around him like an aura, and how he inspired trust when speaking to you, but he rarely shared anything about himself at the same time. He knew how to get the sap out of the Tree of Years, and he knew that the Labyrinth was a giant machinery underneath the ground—not to mention he always had the answers to any question Master Talik ever asked in the workshop.
But at the same time it was Silas.
