“I’m telling you,” Nalu was saying, already in a foul mood after the hard ride down the mountain.“They know they have something of ours.We should just go in and take it back.”
“Remember the last time you took charge of a covert operation?”Hilo challenged.“I know the lay of the place,” he said to Etan.“I visited once a while back – ”
Nalu scoffed.“For what?”
“I wanted to see the frescoes they’re famous for, which you’d know about if you weren’t such a fucking goon – ”
“We’re so glad you know the place, Hilo,” Etan cut in, bored.“You take charge of figuring out where we’re going, then, because I’m giving us five minutes to get in and out.”
Hilo sputtered.“Fiveminutes?That’s not enough.”
“Five minutes,” Etan repeated.“And if we can’t find them in that time, then fuck them.This is Kai’s ridiculous goose chase and I’m only here because Mam was feeling indulgent.”
Kai scrubbed a hand across his face, struggling to focus as Hilo launched into a rapid-fire description of Soliz, its layout, speculations as to where prisoners might be kept.The air felt strange, charged, as though a storm was coming.The sun had only just peeked over the buildings behind them, but a cold sweat made his clothes stick to his skin.
“Hear what?”Etan’s voice startled him back to the present.
“I dunno,” Hilo murmured.“Thought I heard singing.”
They all quieted, even Nalu, who very quickly sighed.“I don’t hear anything,” he said.
“Well, it stopped,” Hilo snapped.
“Of course it did.”
A sickeningpoprang through him, not unlike the internal agony of a dislocated shoulder.Kai tasted bile and clamped a hand over his mouth, wishing for even a single gulp of wine, just enough to steady him.“What’s – what’s the plan, Lo?”
“We’re sneaking in,” Hilo said, ignoring Nalu’s respondingWaste of fucking time.“There’s an entrance for deliveries ’round the side of the building.”
“And if we run into anyone?”Nalu asked flatly.
“Silence them and move on,” Etan finished.“And hope that Kai can keep a lid on Menon long enough for us to get out without half the city becoming a casualty.”Etan’s eyes hardened as they slid over to Kai, his disdain all too familiar.
Kai wondered what he saw.A spoiled child demanding his way, he supposed.Or a liability.With his stomach in knots and his pulse thrumming hard in his ears, he was beginning to fear that Etan was right.
He registered a beat late that the rest were looking to him, too, waiting for him to say something.Etan clicked his tongue, impatient.“Move out, then,” Etan said, waving at them all to follow as he stole across the street and around Soliz’s high walls.
Kai trailed after them, understanding acutely that he’d failed in that moment.He couldn’t lead them.He could barely lead himself.
Why, he wondered for the hundredth time, did Menon leave Ione for him?
A bolt of ice broke the lock on the side door, and then Hilo led the way inside, his head tilted towards the ceiling at times, muttering aboutstunningdendriform ceiling vaults.Whatever he’d heard before was long gone now, their footsteps echoing in the cavernous silence.
“I expected at least some guards,” Nalu muttered sourly as Kai peered around a corner down another torchlit corridor.
The entrance hall yawned open before them, a pair of grand, ornately-carpeted staircases leading upwards on either side of a massive carved door.Muted noise emanated from inside, layer upon layer of hushed whispers – a great assembly of people, punctuated by the occasional high, keening cry.
A service, or a ceremony?Was this the source of the singing?
Kai hesitated in the shadows of the adjoining corridor while the others filtered out into the room.He glanced at each of them, their expressions varying between bored and cagey.Did they not feel it?The air itself buzzed, rhythmic, an insistent beat like the rush of blood through a human heart.
His heart.He pressed a palm over his chest, his neck.His hands shook.
Distantly, he heard Nalu curse, slipping.The floor’s wet, he was saying, kicking at a puddle of water pooling before the huge gilded door.
Water.Water.
Hilo whirled to face him, paling.He barrelled past them towards one of the staircases, waving at them all to hurry.“There’s a mezzanine upstairs overlooking that room.”He sent Kai a bleak look.“It houses their primary altar.”
