RED
It’s close to midnight when we finally geta message from Adena and Aramin.
Jeran sees them first. He rises slightly from our cramped crouch under the deep shadows cast by the footbridge against the adjacent buildings. Then he nudges me and gestures toward the trees nearest the prison wall that are swaying in the night breeze. The silhouette of their branches slices the sky behind them into slivers.
At first, I have no idea what I’m looking at. My vision is keener than Jeran’s, sure, but I don’t know the many subtle signs he and his Shield have developed over their years together on the warfront. But when Jeran circles a small space before us, I finally see what he does.
One of the branches of the tree isn’t moving in the breeze like the rest. It’s still, as if being held back by hands, lit from behind by the moon.
“They’re here,” Jeran whispers. He looks on as the moonlight glitters between the branches.
Now I start to see more too. Against the bright moon is a second, flickering light between the trees, so faint it’s nearly overwhelmed by moonlight. It’s Adena, flashing Danna’s dagger in a distinct pattern.
I tap my fingers against my leg restlessly as Jeran waits for her entire message. In the glow of the night, everything about his expression looks wound tight, and for an instant, I think we’ve failed. We’ve followed the wrong clues and ended up at the wrong place.
Then Jeran lets out a slow breath and looks at me. He nods once. “They’ve found her,” he whispers.
Talin’s mother. She’s here.
Everything in me swells in a tide, and my hands start trembling. I want to shout it through my bond with Talin, tell her exactly where her mother is being held, let her know we’ve tracked her down against the Premier’s every attempt to keep her a secret.
But telling Talin will do none of us any good. It could overwhelm her emotions so drastically that the Premier will suspect her of knowing. And if that happens, he’ll have guards on the alert instantly. He’ll move her mother again.
I think once more about the sharp pain I’d felt from Talin hours earlier, and dread prickles my skin.
So, with all my strength, I push back my desire to tell her. Instead, I return Jeran’s look.
“Is she well?” I ask him.
Jeran looks gravely at me. “She’s in bad shape,” he tells me. “They’ve beaten her. One of her hands is heavily bandaged.”
I think of the white-haired woman who had once fed us around her humble table in the shanties around Newage, of the way she had smiled at Talin. I think of the young mother who had fought against the Federation when they came storming into Mara’s capital, who had faced their onslaught without flinching once.
Was this what triggered Talin’s anguish?
I swallow hard and look back at Jeran. “Can they get her out?”
Jeran shakes his head, still deciphering the faint flickers of lightagainst the silhouette. “Not alone,” he whispers. He seems to count something silently on his lips. “They say she is under heavy guard, and that they don’t think she can walk on her own.”
I nod. Then I turn my attention up to the footbridge.
If I take the same path the others did in getting into the prison, I won’t be able to get out the same way. Not with Talin’s mother injured the way they describe her. Now, I could try to fly her up, but judging from the way my wings have been damaged since Newage, I won’t be able to get the lift I need while also carrying her weight.
The other voice in my head rumbles its agreement.
You have to find some other way out.
Jeran takes the lead. As the night shifts and the guards rotate on the wall, we steal through the shadows and up into the trees near the footbridge. Jeran moves like the Deathdancer he is, each step nimble and soundless, crouching in the thickest part of the trees while he watches for a gap between the guards. As one of the guards turns away to talk to another, he leaps from the tree branches onto the wall and rolls immediately off the side, sliding out of view into the prison beyond the wall.
I watch him go, then study the guards on the wall for my own break. Minutes later, I do the same leap. I’m less graceful than Jeran, and my landing against the wall knocks my shoulder painfully against the rock, but I grit my teeth and slide over the side. There, I crouch along the ground before hurrying into the shadows of the prison buildings.
After all, getting into a prison is never the hard part.
I’ve never been to this area of the prison district before; I’ve never had a reason to. The enormous turbines that define this region are against the outer wall in the distance, still churning, and the sound of their groaning gears mixes with the slosh of water as they turn. My eyes scan the rest of the space.
Identical, dilapidated stone complexes line the interior of the prisonin gray blocks, housing quarters for most of the workers here. There are turbine factories, and from where I stoop, I can catch a glimpse through the windows of workers sweating as they churn the pedals by foot, making the turbines turn. Other buildings are giant storage sheds, their doors swung open. One contains a large water turbine that is being fixed by what looks like teams of prison workers. I can’t see what’s inside the second one from where I stand.
Then, farther down the road, I see a narrower building looming. It’s of the same gray stone, except with a small sign hanging outside over its entrance. The hospital, where they take injured workers to fix them enough so they can continue their labor.
