“Ah.” A third guard nods, confirming that I must be a native citizen here. “Solamen hasn’t been talking to her blocks in weeks. Too busy with the solstice.”
The other two guards seem to lower their stances a bit at that. The first one shrugs at me. “Your unlucky week,” he tells us. “Wait until after solstice. You can ask about your aunt to her then.”
Jeran pretends to start crying. I shake my head, my voice turning urgent. “No, you don’t understand,” I tell them. “We can’t wait that long. Our aunt suffers from a lung disease. She won’t last a few days in this district, and we need to petition for her to be moved. Please. Isn’t there anyone I can talk to here? Can you pass along my message?”
The soldier sighs. “No exceptions and no moves. We’re all stretchedthin these days.” He waves his gun at me. “Move along with your cousin. Go back and talk to your local captain.”
“I can’t!” My voice gets more frustrated, and the other guards tense a little, their hands going back to their weapons. “Please. She’ll die here.” Up on the wall, two of the nearby sentries turn in our direction too, grateful for a little bit of drama to liven up their moods. Good.
“It’s the prison district,” the second guard snaps, growing impatient with me. “If she couldn’t handle being here, she shouldn’t have broken the law.”
The third soldier looks at the others, uncertain. “Come on,” she says, glancing at Jeran, whose beautiful face looks convincingly piteous. “Isn’t there anyone we can direct them to? Captain Mendal is still here for the night. They could talk to him.”
The first guard rolls his eyes and pushes us back again. “Get out of here,” he snaps. “If we stopped to indulge every desperate family member waiting around here at these gates, we’d never have time to piss in our pots.”
I repeat myself again, even more urgently this time, while beside me, Jeran stumbles. He grows weak against my shoulder, and I catch him as he slides faintly against me. I almost want to roll my own eyes at his performance.
The guards blink at him. “What the hell’s the matter with your cousin?” the first guard mutters.
“I’m sorry,” I say, helping Jeran stand. “He’s quite frail from a bad winter last year.”
The sympathetic guard starts up again. “I’ll go get Mendal.”
“Don’t you dare,” the second guard snaps, shooting her an annoyed glare.
Up on the wall, near the footbridge, I see a slight ripple of motion against the lengthening night. Adena and Aramin are on the move.The guards along the wall have all shifted in our direction now, intrigued by the spectacle of our inquiry.
“Get out of here, or I’ll make sure you both end up in prison with your aunt,” the first guard says, now drawing his gun and pointing it directly at us. “You can find out about her condition that way.”
The nice guard shoots him an annoyed glance before heading toward us. “Don’t mind Erik,” she tells me as she escorts us away from the gate. “He’s going to have a failed proposal on his hands soon. But you and your cousin need to leave. You can’t do anything for your aunt here.”
A part of me wants to talk to her some more. She reminds me of who I once was—stuck in this job, trapped in a world that wants me to tag along with its evil. I wonder if she knew Danna, if she would have been someone who’d speak up for me when I was first arrested or someone who would have stood quietly by.
But instead, I resist for a second longer as I pretend to struggle with Jeran’s unconscious weight.
When my eyes dart back up to the area near the footbridge, though, I notice that Adena’s and Aramin’s shadows are no longer anywhere to be seen. They’ve made their way into the prison, past the walls.
Time for us to go too. I pinch Jeran slightly, forcing him to yelp and stand up again. He blinks, feigning disorientation, as I guide him away from the gate.
“I—I’m sorry,” I keep stammering over my shoulder at the guard as she guides us to the other side of the street from the wall. “Thank you. I’m sorry.”
Then we turn and walk back into the shadows. As the guard returns to her post behind us and the others settle back into the boredom of their routines, Jeran and I cut down an intersection and make our way toward the footbridge area. We emerge onto the quiet street across from the wall there, near where Adena and Aramin had gone in.
I glare accusingly at Jeran. “You can make yourself surprisingly heavy, you know,” I tell him.
He gives me an innocent look. “I wanted to make sure you seemed like you were really struggling.”
I roll my eyes at him, then turn to look toward the wall. “Now we wait?” I whisper.
“Now we wait,” Jeran confirms.
The night air cuts through my clothes, and I shiver. If they find her, they will find a way to sign to us. And then what? Even if we find her, how do we get her safely out?
Either way, the answer changes nothing for us.
I’ll find a way to rescue Talin’s mother, or die trying.
31
