“Don’t believe for a second that those Marans can make it to the end of tomorrow,” one soldier scoffs to another as we pass them by a side gate of the complex.

  “They managed to hold off our troops for long enough at their warfront, didn’t they?” the other replies.

  “So? And now they’re here, sport in the stadium.” The first snorts. “You and Taran can place a bet. I’m not wasting my money.”

  “Aye, Taran would, if he weren’t sick tonight.”

  “Again?”

  We pretend to browse the wares nearby as they return to their guard posts. I glance at Jeran, who shakes his head in response. No mention of other prisoners from the train. No mention of the prison district or anything that would hint remotely at where Talin’s mother might be.

  “A double shift tonight for you too?” another soldier complains at yet another gate.

  Her friend nods. “For most of us. I think the General expects folks to be rowdy after the festivities tonight. He’s pulling some of us off duty in the seventh district.”

  The first sighs. “Ah, they always think that. Just let them run loose a bit.”

  They both laugh. We move on.

  “What’s in the seventh district?” Jeran asks me in a low voice as we go.

  “Prisons,” I answer, “and factories. It’s the walled district circling against the inside of the city’s wall.”

  “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’s not 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. Someone must 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. Another person 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.”

  Jeran nods once. He looks pale too, even under the evening light. “We don’t have much time,” he says quietly. And he doesn’t even have to explain his words for me to know what he means.

  The Federation has sunk its teeth into the land of Mara, churning up its earth in an attempt to find something of value left over from the Early Ones. But the cylinder we’d seen them pull out … it can’t just be a relic. I’d seen with my own eyes how those workers looked before they loaded the object and after, bleeding everywhere. There is something happening here that I don’t understand, but I can feel the darkness of it hanging in the air, a foreboding of things to come.

  It has come before, after all. The Early Ones were once mighty, and now they are gone.

  If Karensa figures out how to weaponize what they found in Mara, whatever it is that has hurt those men, then soon it may no longer be just the Federation that we need to stop. Soon, all of us may become like the Early Ones—annihilated by something we couldn’t control.

  16

  TALIN

  I’ve only ever known the Chief Architect of the Karensa Federation as a monster and a coward, a scientist who enabled all the anguish that Constantine has wrought.

  It’s an astonishing experience to sit here beside her and the mayor of Cardinia and hear her speak against the Premier.

  “Karensa values their premiers because of their perceived strength,” Raina says. “Their invincibility. Constantine’s father was a ferocious man who instilled fear in everyone he met. Constantine does the same. The people of Karensa who support the Tyrus family think of them as the ones chosen to inherit the power of the Early Ones.” She gives me a pointed look over her shining glasses. “But the Federation’s borders have become unstable. Conquered people can only tolerate so much. Now is the time to make our move.”

  “Our plan is to weaken Constantine before his public,” Mayor Elland continues. “Ensure their—as well as the military’s—support of our move.” She holds a hand out at Raina. “Fortunately, our Chief Architect has quite a way with manipulating the human body. Don’t you, Raina?”

  Raina winces at the mayor, but doesn’t disagree.

  The mayor winks at me. “She’s so humble, isn’t she? That’s Raina’s job in our rebellion—to make sure Constantine’s health is where we want it to be.”

  Throughout all the time I’ve been with Raina—while she’s been ordering wings grafted onto my back and steel infused into my bones—she’s been quietly working with the rebellion.

  Raina now coughs nervously. “The medication I’ve been giving Constantine has been sickening him for over a year. Gradually enough that he thinks it is a real illness, and looks to me to help cure him of it.”

  “And the military is primed for this?” I sign, skeptical.

  She must sense my lingering dislike for her, because she shifts in her seat and looks away from me.

  Mayor Elland looks questioningly to the Chief Architect to translate what I’ve said. Raina does, then answers, “The games that are about to happen are the right time to act. I will be increasing Constantine’s doses over the next week. It should cause him enough pain to make him visibly weak and thus unfit for rule. There are enough in the military ready to act against the Premier when we give the signal at the end of the games.”

  “All of our rebels will be in place at the arena, ready to ignite the overthrow,” the mayor adds. “The appropriate members of the military are prepped.”

  “And what happens afterward?” I sign. “Constantine is overthrown. Then what? What about General Caitoman? How will he react when you topple his brother?”

  “We have a council ready to decide on the next ruler,” Mayor Elland says.

  “We will handle the General when the time comes,” Raina says at the same time.

  Then she pauses abruptly, as if ceding way for the mayor to speak again. But the mayor just shrugs her agreement. After a while, the Chief Architect says, “At any rate, that’s not what you need to worry about. The coup is our main priority.”

  The mayor smiles thinly at me. “You, dear Skyhunter, will be the catalyst that flips the public to our side.” She taps at one of the papers in front of us. It’s a detailed blueprint of the arena where the games will be happening. “During the end of the games, we will call for the military to turn against Constantine. You, as the most visible symbol of his power, are to step forward with us. You will be the one to arrest Constantine and take him away.”

  Something in me bristles at the idea of taking more orders from these Karensan nobles, but then the impossible appears in my mind—turning to face Constantine and forcing him down from his throne, to twist his hands behind his back and lead him out of a screaming arena. The ability to strip him of his power just by turning away from him.

  I remember the way the people looked to me in awe during our arrival into Cardinia. The mayor is right. I’m the most visible example of his power. If the people see me turn away, they will know that Constantine has lost.

  “Why not kill him?” I sign.

  Raina looks away with a grimace. “That’s what I’d wish,” she mutters sullenly.

  But the mayor gives Raina a stern look and shakes her head. “Assassinate him, and risk a civil war among the people along with poisonous conspiracy theories,” she says. “Turn the public against the Premier, though, and it will work even better than death. His ferocious demeanor is meant to hide his deteriorating condition. But the whispers are already out there. All we need now is a moment in front of the entire public where we can stage a proper coup. And you are the trigger for that.”

  Raina shakes her head, as if in disgust, but doesn’t voice her objections. Again, I feel the hint of an old argument between the two women. “The mayor has a soft spot for Constantine,” she tells me with a sidelong glance.

  To my surprise, the mayor doesn’t deny it. Her voice softens slightly. “I knew Constantine’s mother,” she replies.

  The woman hesitates a little. In that hesitation, I hear something more than friendship. I hear an entire history that must have existed between this woman and the late queen. I hear an old, broken love.

  “Mother?” I sign, and Raina translates.

  “She died a long time ago,” the mayor says quietly. Then her gaze steels again, and she looks at both of us. “Constantine is a monster, just like his father. We follow the plan.”

  Raina nods. “We follow the plan,” she agrees.

  The walls I’ve put up around my heart lurch and threaten to topple. If all that I’m hearing is true—if there really is a chance for us to destroy Constantine and the Federation as it currently stands …

  But then I remember why I’ve pushed away all thoughts of my old friends. Why I’m terrified when Red and I connect in our dreams. I remember my mother, riding in those borrowed luxury silks.

  “There’s one problem,” I sign to Raina. “You can break down my link to Constantine all you want—but if Constantine has my mother under his control, I won’t make a move against him. I can’t.” I glance at the mayor. “Can you get to her? Can you hide her away on your estate?”

  The mayor tightens her lips. “I can’t do that, I’m afraid,” she replies. “All our plans work under the assumption that Constantine trusts Raina and me. He’s known me all his life, and sees me as something of an aunt. Raina de Balman has overseen his entire scientific campaign for his military conquests. We are two of his closest advisors. But if I suddenly request to keep your mother on my estate, he will immediately suspect us. We can’t risk it. I can’t keep your mother longer than Constantine wants her there.”

  I narrow my eyes at them. “If you don’t help her, I won’t help you.”

  “All of us have something significant to lose in this,” the mayor tells me, her gaze piercing mine.

  Raina holds up her hands. “We didn’t say we wouldn’t help her.” Then she leans over the table and touches one of my hands with hers.

  The walls in me go up, hiding my emotions behind their steel, and I pull my hand firmly away.

  Raina fixes a steady gaze on me, unfazed. “I know how you feel. My husband and son need to escape the capital before Constantine’s toppling too. I give you my word, Talin Kanami—if you promise to aid us in this, I promise we will get your mother to safety.”

  “Swear it,” I sign, my movements slow and deliberate.

  “I swear it.”

  My eyes go to the mayor. She nods once at me, and I recall the sympathy she’d had in her eyes when she’d told me to go see my mother yesterday morning.

  “I swear it,” the mayor repeats.

  Something is shifting under the sands of the Federation, weakening its foundations, and when it falls, it might take us all down with it. It’s likely that none of us will survive any of this. It’s even likely that somehow, in spite of Raina’s best efforts, Constantine has sensed the lurch of my feelings during this meeting and has already sent guards for me. We will be operating under constant fear of discovery. Of death.

  And yet, here we are. We may all have something to lose, but we have everything to gain. For Raina, it’s freedom for herself and her family. For Mayor Elland, perhaps it’s revenge for the loss of a love.

  And for me? Justice. For Basea, for Mara, for my mother. For myself.

  I find myself looking back and forth between these two powerful women, united in spite of the tensions between them, in spite of everything they could lose.

  And I find myself nodding at them.

  17

  RED

  The celebrations in the city go late, but some hours after midnight, everything finally settles down, and Jeran and I find ourselves squeezing into a space under a bridge not far from the arena. Along the horizon, I can see a little sliver of the National Museum’s silhouette, stark and abrupt against the sky.

  I used to cross this bridge every week with my sister and father to go to that museum. Laeni would probably wrinkle her nose if she could see me crouched down here right now.

  But it’s as safe a spot as any we can find. Patrols hate checking under these bridges because of the dampness and the stench of sewage bubbling up. When I was a boy, I used to gamble with the other new recruits for who had to keep the bridges free of people camping underneath them. Whenever I lost, I’d just take a reluctant peek under the arches, looking for people shivering among the wet weeds, before hurrying off to more interesting tasks. What a thankless, miserable job.

  Well, I’m one of those shivering silhouettes now.

  We stoop in knee-deep water. The quiet, sparsely populated night and our exhaustion have softened our fears, so we talk in low voices to distract each other from the wet chill of everything. Beside me, Jeran’s fingers run idly along his belt, as if he’s looking for all the weapons he used to have. I’ve learned over time what the idle gesture means.