“You know him?” Jeran asks.
I nod. “I do.”
Adena slips out from the shadows as she and Aramin step throughthe open holding room door. She scowls at the soldier before something at his belt catches her eye. Then she stoops down and unhooks a satchel from his side.
“What is it?” Aramin whispers to her in Maran.
She opens the sack. “Explosives,” she whispers, nodding at the tiny sticks. “Probably to light the way in the dark. Look at the fuse triggers on them.”
Then she nods at Jeran. “Give me that lock. If we’re going to get out of here without putting Talin in danger, make them think we did it some other way than using a code.”
There’s no time to hesitate. Jeran hands the device to Adena, who begins working it into the lock. Farther down the hall come peals of laughter from a group of soldiers. They are slowly making their way over here.
I look back at Danna. What am I going to do with him? He’s crying now, his sobs muffled behind my hand, tears streaming silently down his cheeks. All I see is him as a young boy, with those gangly limbs and comically large ears, asking me if I’d ever visited Basea before.
But I’d also seen him drag a Basean boy out of his home during that invasion and shoot him dead. I’d followed after him when he told me to leave that other boy in his cage.
The other voice in me rises.
You know he can’t live. You have to kill him.
Beside us, Adena finishes inserting the device and pulls the fuse trigger. A blinding light glows red and white inside the lock, and even half a dozen feet away, I feel the heat of it. Jeran backs away too. Beside us, Aramin shifts to a fighting stance.
Then a new thought occurs to me.
I turn back to Danna. “The east and southeast city patrols have beenmissing from the festivities,” I whisper to him. “Do you know where they are?”
At that, Danna’s eyes widen and he shakes his head vigorously.
I grit my teeth. Talin’s tortured expression comes back to me now. I remember our stolen kiss, the desperate need I have to see her again. “Tell me again,” I snap, my voice a low growl. “That you don’t know.” My hand tightens against his mouth, and I know with a terrible certainty that, if I wanted to, I could break off his entire jaw with my unnatural strength.
Danna trembles under my grip. Finally, the shake of his head changes to a nod. I move my hand slightly for him to gasp out, “Lei works on the east patrol now. Remember Lei?” Another fellow soldier, shipped to Tanapeg instead of Basea last I heard. “She said they’ve been sent to the prison district’s water turbines. She’s been complaining about her double shifts there for the past couple of days.”
The water turbines. My heart skips. I have a vague recollection of that area inside the prison district, where much of the city’s water power is generated.
“Why are they there instead of guarding the festival?” I demand. Beside us, the flare burns through the insides of the lock. Jeran looks down the hall in alarm as the sound of soldiers draws nearer.
Danna starts to cry again. “Please, Red, I didn’t mean anything back when they took you—”
I don’t have time for this. I tighten my grip against his face again until he squirms in discomfort. “Why are theythere?” I repeat.
“A prisoner,” he gasps out through his sobs as I loosen my fingers slightly. “A prisoner—a new prisoner.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know! The Premier commanded it himself.”
The Premier commanded it himself.
That can only mean one person. The Premier must be moving Talin’s mother early.
“We have to go,” Jeran hisses at me.“Now.”
I seize Danna by the throat, then unfurl one of my wings with an agonizing scrape. The other voice rises to a fever pitch in my head.
You have to kill Danna now.
But I stare at him and cannot bring myself to do it. Every muscle in me screams in protest, and yet all I can see before me is my former patrol mate. I see his parents, with whom I’d shared plenty of dinners. His mother, smiling at me and offering me more food. His father, praising the crisp edges of my ironed uniform while he converses with my own father. His sister, hair braided, running around the table with my own sister.
