Incarnate

Chapter 25 Trapped

LIFE TUNNELED ON my new focus: guarding myself from Li.

There was no music in her house; she’d removed all recordings in preparation for my arrival, insisting such nonsense would only distract me.

Every morning, she woke me before dawn, rushed me through breakfast, and had me running laps around the house by the time the sun crested the city wall. Fifteen the first day, and twenty when I got through fifteen without trouble. A few more laps left me winded to her satisfaction, but after a week, she decided I should run thirty. Only my loathing kept me thrusting foot before foot when I couldn’t see straight anymore. The sulfuric reek from a fumarole on the other side of the wall didn’t help.

After I caught my breath, I worked on strengthening exercises until lunch. As far as I could tell, she just liked to watch me struggle. I’d never thought of myself as weak or out of shape, but after meeting Sam and his friends, it had become apparent I was smaller than average. I’d never be as tall as Li or as muscular as Orrin — not in this lifetime — so there was no point in making me strain.

She explained about working at the guard stations and showed me the equipment, but I wasn’t allowed to touch anything. She taught me nothing about weapons or how to defend myself.

Maybe she was afraid I’d use my training against her, but I was more concerned about the attack Meuric had hinted about. If a hundred dragons descended on Heart, I didn’t want to be the only one without a laser.

Sam’s knife stayed under my pillow where Li wouldn’t find it.

After lunch, I got to study fascinating subjects like plows, irrigation systems, and the first efforts to install sewers beneath Heart, made even more challenging by the caldera and geothermal everything around the city. Most days, I fell asleep across my books, and woke to Li’s smirk and declaration that I’d never be a productive member of society.

I was not permitted to continue the training Sam had scheduled for me, let alone visit Sarit or Whit. I didn’t dare ask about Orrin or Stef, and mentioning Sam earned me a sharp slap on the wrist. Apparently that didn’t count as harming me, because when Meuric was present, he didn’t care.

“Can I see Sine?” I tried one evening. “She’s on the Council. Hardly a corrupting influence.”

“Keep your sarcasm quiet.” Li finished her soup and slid the bowl aside. “You’re not fit for company until you can hold a conversation that doesn’t revolve around what you want.”

Not counting Sam and his friends? I wanted music and dancing, to translate little dots and bars into something unimaginably gorgeous and real. I wanted to know why I’d been born, to understand this mistake that gave me someone else’s life. I wanted to know if I’d be reborn after this life, allowed to continue everything I wanted to begin.

“I hate you,” I whispered.

Li slammed her palms on the table, making spoons and bowls clatter as she stood. Her glare darkened. “Whatever you think you feel? It’s not real. You’re a nosoul. You don’t feel. You barely exist. In a hundred years, no one will remember you were ever alive.”

“You’re wrong.” I knew I shouldn’t have spoken, but my muscles shook with the strain from a fortnight of physical exhaustion and emotional torture. “People will remember. Sam made sure of it.”

The rage cooled from her eyes. “Is that so?” Dread cut me deep as she crossed the kitchen and reached into a drawer. “Paper is so temporary, don’t you think? Many of our oldest records have been copied dozens of times, simply because the pages don’t last. Like someone else I know.”

I kept my eyes on the bundle of pages she carried. “What is that?”

“The other problem with paper is if you spill something on it, or burn it, whatever you kept on there is lost.” She dropped the pages on the table; they spread out and settled without order. Even so, I knew what they were. Music. Bars and notes and tiny doodles in the margins. AI-4, AI-10: they were pages of a longer piece.

My hand was as heavy as a brick as I reached for the title page and turned it toward me. “Ana Incarnate,” it read, no fancy flourishes or underlines with it, just a tiny butterfly in the corner.

It was the waltz Sam had written for me. My song.

“Don’t hurt it,” I whispered.

“Paper is so temporary,” she repeated, looking pointedly at the fireplace.

“No!” I threw myself across the table and scooped up pages, but Li was faster.

She ripped the pages from my hands and tossed them at the fire. Paper fluttered, some into the flame, and some drifted to the ashy hearth.

I lunged across the room and rescued as many sheets as I could, but fire singed my hands. No matter how many I saved from the flames, Li balled up more pages and threw them in, laughing.

When she was bored, she wiped her hands on her pants and headed for the door. “Go to bed. You have a long day tomorrow.”

I patted out the last of the embers with a dish towel and struggled to put the pages in order. My hands stung as I sifted through the delicate sheets. Some were salvageable; others were burned so badly they hadn’t been worth rescuing, as black blotted out the bars of music.

Those pages went in back. Maybe Sam would know how to save them. Determined to see him try, I eased the pages of my song into a stiff notebook for safekeeping.

Forget Li. Forget the Council. If this was life in Heart, I would give up my quest. I’d rather never know where I came from than let Li destroy everything that mattered to me.

I went upstairs to get my knife.

There wasn’t much to pack. My song fit inside my backpack, along with a few other necessities. For the last two weeks I’d been too scared to escape. There were guards — Li made sure I saw them every morning — and I’d been afraid of what would happen if they caught me. Now I was more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t try.

I waited until the sun dipped behind the wall, casting the city in hazy indigo. Within minutes, it would be full night.

Dressed in the darkest clothes I could find, I tied and tucked my hair into a cap and picked the lock on the window. Stef had taught me, saying I shouldn’t be the only one in Range who didn’t know how; Sam had called her a miscreant.

Clouds covered the sky, threatening some kind of unfortunate weather. In the inky-dark yard, I found only fir trees and bushes, a small garden. Normal things. Most people had what they needed to be self-sufficient between market days, even Li.

Bored-sounding voices came from the north side of the house. No footsteps or swishing brush accompanied them, so they were standing still. Chances were they faced my window, hidden at an angle so I wouldn’t be able to see them unless I leaned out. And then they’d see me.

I hurled an old shoe outside. It landed inside a thick copse of conifers. Two pair of footfalls followed, and I hauled myself out of the window, turned to catch my toes on a ledge, and reached for a bare cottonwood branch. I hung two stories up as the footsteps came toward the house again.

Frantically, I swung myself into the tree, which obliged me with silence. I stayed huddled on the thick branch until the guards were settled. When they went around to the house — discussing whether or not I’d tried to escape, or just wanted to tease them — I scrambled down the tree and into the brush on the far side of the yard.

When everything was quiet, only a breeze and night birds singing lullabies, I crept around to the walkway. As much as I wanted to run, I made myself stop and listen every few steps.

Past the walkway and onto North Avenue, I sneaked through the city, keeping to shadows. When I had to cross intersections, I held my breath and sprinted, hyperalert for sounds other than that of my shoes on cobblestones. Sleet pattered to the ground. I was almost grateful for the noise to blot out my footfalls, but it blotted anyone else’s, too.

The city seemed bigger for every step I took, and the temple farther away. I ran down North Avenue and stopped short at the market field. So much empty space. I imagined a shadow of me streaking across the field and my stupid black clothes pressed against the white buildings.

Great.

Sleet tapped harder on the city, glistening under the iridescent light. If I didn’t move, I’d turn into an ice statue right here.

I searched the gray-lit area and listened as long as I dared. I still had to get around the Councilhouse, not to mention find some kind of entrance into the building, and a way to get Sam out. Just because I could pick the lock on my window didn’t mean I knew anything about the soul-scanners used in the more secure parts of the city.

“No more stalling,” I whispered, and pushed myself across the market field. Too loud. My shoes slapped the cobblestones. My breath hissed and whitened the cold air. I held the straps of my backpack to keep it from bouncing, but that didn’t stop the contents from jostling. Forget someone seeing my stupid black clothes against the building; they’d hear me coming first.

After an eternity, I slipped on wet stone and landed against the Councilhouse wall, bounced off, and crumpled to the street as breath whooshed from my chest. I coughed and gasped into my sleeves, waiting for my vision to clear before I tried sneaking around the building.

Black clothes. White building. Sam would have anticipated this. Anyone would have. Anyone but me. I hated being new.

Once again confident in my ability to breathe, I searched the field. Sleet glittered on the cobblestones, making the road slick. But the weather came from the north, so as soon as I was on the south side of the Councilhouse, I’d be out of the worst of it. I hoped.

I started around, keeping low, but the building was twice the length of the market field; it would take forever if I insisted on creeping. I made a run for it. Cobblestones slid under my boots, but I didn’t stop. Up one side of the half-moon stairs, behind the columns that guarded the doors, and down the other side of the stairs. The market field stayed clear.

Meuric’s house loomed on the corner of the southwest quarter. Lights burned upstairs, but no silhouettes stood in windows, waiting to catch me misbehaving. Li and the guards wouldn’t check on me until morning. By then, I’d be out of the city.

Thunder rumbled in the north. Worse storms were on the way.

I slipped around to the south side of the building and brushed ice off my clothes and backpack. Shivering, I checked Meuric’s house one more time — nothing — and crept around in search of the window I’d seen before.

The temple shed just enough light to see by. As much as I hated the strange patterns that shimmered across its white surface, I was grateful for the light as I looked for a way into the Councilhouse, like the side doors that led into the library.

Yellow light came from a window only hip-high, sliced with iron bars. I knelt and peered through the glass as more thunder growled.

The room was mostly belowground, lit with old-fashioned bulbs like Purple Rose Cottage. I couldn’t see much from my vantage point, but bars divided the room into several sections with cots and toilets. Cells. One sat just beneath my window, but I couldn’t see anyone in it. In the next cell over, Sam slumped on a cot, facing away and talking with someone I couldn’t see. Glass muffled their low voices.

I tapped on the window. Sam’s back straightened, and a face appeared in the window right in front of me. Startled, I fell to my butt and smothered a yelp in my mittens. Stef grinned and fiddled with latches. The window slid up, and warm air billowed onto my face.

“Whew.” Stef shivered. “Cold out there.”

“It’s sleeting.” I wrapped my mittens around the bars.

“Ana!” Sam stood against the bars between his cell and Stef’s, reaching one arm toward me. “What are you doing? Are you okay?”

When Stef stood away from the window, I tore off one mitten and slipped my hand through. Our fingers scraped and caught, but my shoulder was already pressed against the bars; I couldn’t stretch farther. Resignedly, I pulled my arm free and held my fingers against my chest. “I’m leaving.”

He dropped his arm. “Leaving?”

I nodded. “Leaving Heart. Range if I have to.”

Stef glanced between us. “Did something happen?”

The mixture of cold and heat made my eyes water. “I can’t live with Li. Not for a few years, not even for a few more days. I have to get out, even if it means letting go of everything I was trying to find.”

Sam bit his lip. His face was dark and shadowed in the uncertain light, like how I’d first seen him by Rangedge Lake. “Did she harm you?”

“No. Just—” I shook my head. “She tried to burn your song. She’s going to keep doing things like that until — I don’t know — until I break. They’ll never let me see any of you again.”

“It’s going to be hard to see anyone if you leave.” Stef gave a one-shouldered shrug.

“That’s why I’m here. I came to free you all.” I met Sam’s eyes and hoped more than anything he’d say yes. “I thought you’d come with me.” It hadn’t occurred to me that he might not, but now, it seemed more likely he’d stay with his friends.

“Okay.” Sam leaned his forehead on the bars. His gaze stayed on mine.

Stef raised her eyebrows. “You know that when you’re reborn, you’ll be turned over to the Council. Your next life will be in here. And yours, Ana, if you’re reincarnated.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. Seventy or more years in this room, bars separating me from the world? It might not be my fate if I just vanished when I died, but it would definitely be Sam’s if he went with me.

“I don’t care.” Sam reached again, so I did too, and when our fingertips touched, he said, “It will be worth it.”

My shoulder hurt from pushing it against the bars. “I don’t know how to get you out.” Maybe I should have changed my mind now that I knew the price, but I couldn’t stay here, and I couldn’t survive outside Range by myself.

Not just that. Memories of the way he’d kissed me heated my insides. I’d always needed him, for music and refuge and reasons not to hate everything about my life, and now because he made my chest tight and he’d promised a thousand things. He was Sam.

“No.” Stef shook her head. “I’m not going to let this happen. Sam, you’re smarter than that. Ana, if you really cared for him, you wouldn’t sentence him to a lifetime of imprisonment and sewer maintenance.”

“He’s five thousand years old, Stef.” I pulled my hands off the bars in case she slapped my knuckles like Li would have. “Let him make his own decisions.”

Sam smirked, but the hint of a smile vanished when Stef turned on him. His voice deepened. “What Ana said.”

“Idiot.” She marched away from the window.

Sam frowned and turned back to me. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the diaries. I was trying to hide them from you, but only because I didn’t want you to worry.”

“I don’t care about that anymore. I think I understand.” A quick glance over my shoulder revealed no one had found me yet, but it was only a matter of time. My knees ached, and my chest itched from pressing against the white stone. “How do I get to the prison from the Councilhouse? Or is there another door?”

“Li was trying to kill you.” His expression was earnest. “I was searching for proof that she wanted to murder you using sylph. Menehem was working on something that might affect sylph, but I couldn’t find anything else about it. I went to her house the day of the masquerade, but she hid any information she had. She, and whoever she’s working with.”

We’d been doing the same research all along. He wanted to prove Li tried to murder me, using sylph so she wouldn’t be imprisoned for it. And I–I’d stumbled onto it, though I’d never quite recognized the threat as he did.

“I know about all that.” I pushed myself up to my knees again and held on to the bars. “It’s okay. Just tell me how to get you out.”

He flashed a hopeful smile. “Go around to the—”

Footsteps. He must have heard them, too, just louder than the wind around the building. And before he could order me to hide, thunder rumbled again and his eyes widened. Stef and Orrin — who was out of my line of sight — swore loudly.

“Go, Ana. Hide anywhere, and don’t come out until the thunder stops.” When I didn’t leave immediately, frantically trying to sort through my thoughts and emotions, he shouted, “Run, Ana. Dragons.”

I lurched to my feet and hurled myself in any direction. Meuric had said they’d come. History books said the same thing — sometimes hundreds of dragons. So I ran until I hit a white wall with a door. Shivering, I twisted the handle and glanced over my shoulder — no one yet — and threw myself into somewhere dark and still and heavy.

The air pulsed.

I spun, heartbeat thudding in my ears. No, not my heartbeat. The air. The walls. White light shimmered across a vast chamber. This wasn’t the Councilhouse. It was the temple.

New panic surged through me, and I darted for the door to escape. I’d rather deal with dragons.

But the door was gone.