“Is it normal for them to pull patrols from there for the solstice?”
I nod. “Normal enough.” Then I frown. “But something about the patrols here aren’t adding up.”
“What do you mean?”
I nod at the soldiers at the gates. “Ever since we arrived in the city, I’ve been tracking the symbols of the patrols wandering the streets. There are several patrols fewer than I remember them having during past festivities.” I glance down a thoroughfare. “Cardinia’s east city patrols should be down that street, but they aren’t. Neither are the southeast patrols, though they’re usually responsible for the area we’re walking through.”
“Does that mean the General’s spreading them thin?”
“It could.” I give Jeran a pointed look. “That’snot normal. This is the biggest celebration of the year, especially now that Karensa stretches from sea to sea. It means Caitoman needs them somewhere else, for something just as important as the solstice.”
At that, Jeran nods. “Perhaps they’re watching Talin’s mother.”
I’m silent for a while, but my head spins as I make a mental list of those patrols that seem to be missing from the festival.Someonemust be guarding Talin’s mother. If I can find out where those patrols are stationed, I might be able to figure out where Talin’s mother is being kept.
We go on around the edge of the complex. Each time we run into a group of soldiers, we listen as intently as we can. They talk about the arena. Their posts. Some complain of hunger, wanting supper. Others talk about news of more unrest at the border states. No more clues on Talin’s mother or her whereabouts.
We’ve almost made our way around the entire lab complex when a crowd of people gathered by one of the complex’s side gates halts us in our tracks.
The cluster seems to be lining either side of the path leading up to the gate, craning their necks in curiosity as a team of soldiers walk along. Even as we approach the scene, I can hear some of the soldiers shouting.
“Back away! Back away!”
As Jeran and I make it to an open pocket in the crowd, I see several soldiers calling for someone to open the gate while two others rush back up along the path to help the patrol heading toward it. As the gate opens, the rest of the patrol down the path comes into view.
And that’s when I hear an anguished moan that raises every hair on the back of my neck. My other voice springs to life in my mind, shaking, as if I’m back on the defensive in the Laboratory. It’s the kind of sound made by a throat filled with blood, something you recognize from the battlefield. It’s the kind of sound you’ve heard in glass chambers around you, moans that filled your sleep with nightmares.
A small team of soldiers and lab workers are hoisting a stretcher down the path, and lying on that stretcher is a struggling patient. The source of the moan.
Though the victim has bandages over his eyes, I recognize him immediately. He’s one of the workers from the dig team that had been on our train to Cardinia, the man in charge of securing the cylindrical artifact to the train car. I’d woken on the top of the train that night, freshly disoriented from my dream about Talin, to see this man retching violently over the side of their moving carriage.
Something has burned this man so badly that his skin is a mottled red, blistered and angry. The bandages around his eyes are stained with blood.
“What happened to him?” someone beside us asks.
Their friend just shrugs. “Nothing, I heard.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly that.Nothing happened.He was on the train from Mara back here to Cardinia.”
The stretcher rushes past us and into the lab complex. Scarcely has it disappeared from view when another comes in its wake. Anotherperson with the same injuries—a bloodied bandage over the eyes, angry red sores all over his body. The same skin-crawling moan. His head is turned weakly toward the crowd, his breathing laborious as he heaves a wet cough. Flecks of blood dot his shirt. It’s as if he’s bleeding from the inside out.
How the hell had these workers gone from being strong enough to haul the artifact onto the train, to lying there in a gurgling mess? Instantly, the memory of that enormous metal cylinder comes back to me, its unnatural silver surface glinting under the moonlight. The strange weight of it. A chill builds inside me and seeps down my limbs.
The hurried voice of another soldier comes to us as she rushes past. “They were still out in the square during the blessing of the new sculptures from Mara. Already saw some blisters on their faces then, but this…”
“That’s impossible,” says a lab worker who meets them at the gate to usher them inside. Then he glances at the crowd gathered around and seems to temper the rest of his words. He raises his voice. “Hey—get back, back! State business.Back!”He waves a hand impatiently at the rest of the patrol, and guards begin to physically nudge the crowd in either direction.
“We should go,” Jeran whispers beside me. His eyes linger on the two men on the stretchers, then flick up to me. “Something tells me it’d be best if we aren’t too near them.”
I nod, and in one motion, the two of us turn away from the scene. But the last image of the victims disappearing inside the complex stays seared in my mind. The chill in my body lingers.
“Do we know where they’re keeping that artifact from the train?” I reply as we go.
“Didn’t they unload it from the train with those enormous platforms?” Jeran says. “Where would they bring equipment like that in the city?”
I frown as I think through Cardinia’s locations. “There’s a military district near the central palace,” I finally murmur. Around us, people blur past, oblivious to what had happened near the lab gate and excited about the upcoming game. “Those platforms are typically for transporting larger weapons like catapults and cannons. Maybe that artifact had been moved with them to that district.”
