Infinite

5 PHOENIX

“THEY’RE DEAD?” I lurched to my feet, SED tumbling off my lap. “No—”

Everyone was speaking at once, outrage and grief flooding the room in torrents. People shouted, “Deborl will pay!” and “We need to call the guards!” Several people pulled out their SEDs, but Stef lifted her voice.

“Stop!”

Everyone went silent.

“Here’s the truth of the matter.” Stef looked around the room. “We don’t know who’s involved with Deborl. He and the others escaped prison during the earthquake, that much we do know, but how? Did something shift and free them? Did they do it on their own? Or did someone help them, knowing the earthquake and eruptions would be the perfect cover?”

“No one can predict earthquakes,” Moriah said.

“Deborl might be able to.” I cleared my throat. “He replaced Meuric as Janan’s Hallow—Janan’s representative—and since the earthquake was connected to Janan’s ascension, Deborl might have known something would happen. When friends visited him in prison, he’d have been able to warn them and ask for assistance.”

Stef nodded. “But how he did it isn’t as important as the fact that he did escape. I asked all of you to come here for one of two reasons: either Deborl is an immediate threat to you, or there’s no question where your loyalties lie. But everyone else? We don’t know. We have to assume they’re with Deborl.”

Forty people against the world.

They began muttering among themselves, and I caught Sam’s eye. He flashed a sad smile, like he knew I thought this was hopeless.

“So what do we do?” Lorin asked. “We won’t change everyone’s minds about newsouls, or siding with Deborl. Not even if we can find proof that he killed half the Council. He’ll convince them he did the right thing.”

“Like I said, we leave.” I bent to pick up my SED, and put it into my pocket as I sat. “I’ve already been exiled.” Did that still stand if half the Council was dead? “I want newsouls to leave, too, for their protection. As for the rest of you? You can stay, or you can go with the newsouls. They’ll need your help.” Assuming they could travel far enough from Range in the event of an eruption. If the only way to stop the eruption was to stop Janan, then the future looked very bleak. But I would try, even if it killed me. “The safest thing for everyone—newsouls and oldsouls alike—is to go far, far away.”

“Then we all go—where?” Lidea asked.

I shook my head. “Talk with Whit and Orrin about where the safest place will be. Far away. That’s all I can guess.” I pressed my mouth into a line and glanced at Sam, who just looked sad. “There’s something else I have to do, so I won’t be going with you. Not the whole way, at any rate.”

“Where Ana leads, I follow.” Sam managed a half smile.

“I’m going with Ana and Sam, too.” There was a deeper meaning in Stef’s words. She was the only one other than Sam and me who knew what Janan was, and what he did to newsouls. The time she’d spent inside the temple had opened her mind, shattering the memory magic that had kept her ignorant for five thousand years.

“I—I’ll go, too.” Sarit met my gaze. “I’m not completely sure what’s going on, but I want to be part of this.”

“Thank you.” Maybe it shouldn’t have relieved me to know Sarit and Stef were coming on what would no doubt be a dangerous mission, but it did. Stef was Sam’s best friend, and Sarit was mine. They would help. They would make the journey more bearable.

“I’ll go along, too.” Whit looked at his hands. “Maybe an archivist will be useful.”

“You will.” If I managed to get the temple books again—and I had to try before I left—Whit might be able to help translate.

“I . . .” Orrin dithered, looking between Geral and Whit.

“You’ll go with Geral,” Whit said. “And Ariana. They need you.”

Orrin nodded.

“I’m going to stay,” Armande said. “Someone needs to stay here and keep an eye on Deborl.”

Stef nodded, but from the edge of my sight, I caught Sam looking down. Armande was his father in this life, and they were close friends as well. He’d lost Councilor Sine, and now he was losing Armande.

“I’m sorry.” Armande didn’t look at Sam or meet anyone’s eyes. “It sounds cowardly that I don’t want to go, but—”

“It’s not cowardly,” I said. “It’s brave. It’s going to be dangerous here. You’ll have to hide. There will be constant earthquakes. You won’t even be able to stay at home or open your pastry stall, because Deborl knows we’re friends.”

Armande nodded. “I understand.”

“Then it’s settled,” Stef said. “Everyone but Armande leaves.”

“What about Emil?” Whit asked. “He should come, too.”

Emil the Soul Teller wasn’t in the library.

Stef shook her head. “No one else. We don’t know who might be working with Deborl.”

“Emil wouldn’t. And neither would Darce. There are lots of people we should take.” Whit stood and faced Stef. “We can’t leave them behind.”

“I agree with Whit,” Orrin said.

“Of course you do.” Stef rolled her eyes. “No, we’ve taken a chance on people before. Anyone remember what Wend did after Ana invited him to our meeting about newsoul rights? He told Deborl about our plans. Together they killed two pregnant women, caused another to miscarry, and almost killed two more. Including Geral.”

Lidea, formerly Wend’s partner, dropped her head like his actions were somehow her fault.

“Stef’s right,” Sam said. “We can’t trust anyone else. We’ll all be leaving behind people we care about, but the risks are too high. If Deborl stops us from leaving, that’s the end of it.”

“Security over friendship?” Orrin asked. “Is that it?”

A few other people spoke up, arguing Stef’s fears or Whit’s anger. Their voices crowded the library, crescendoing into shouts as they struggled to make their opinions heard.

I surged to my feet. “Stop!”

The room went quiet.

“I agree with Stef and Sam. We’ve already seen what happens when we’re betrayed, and I won’t risk the newsouls’ safety. I can’t.”

Sam gave me a small nod, and Whit and Orrin slumped in their seats. “When did you lose faith in people, Ana?” Whit asked.

It was amazing he ever thought I’d had any, considering all I’d been through with Li and everyone who’d fought my entrance into Heart. People kept doing things to reinforce my aversion to trusting them.

“I have faith in you,” I said to Whit. “And Orrin. And Sam and Stef and Sarit and everyone else in this room. But I have to consider what’s best for the newsouls. If we don’t protect them, no one will. Perhaps other friendly people, like Emil and Darce, will announce themselves after we’ve gone. Armande can send them after us, or they can stay here and try to form some kind of resistance. But the newsouls need to leave now, while there’s still a chance they can survive the eruption.”

Orrin glanced at Geral, and their baby in her arms. No one else said anything.

“We’ll work out the logistics,” I said, as though the argument had never happened. “I’ll let you know when to be ready. Pack what you can, but do it quickly and secretly. We’ll all leave at the same time. Deborl doesn’t want me to leave Heart.” He’d campaigned hard for my exile, but now it seemed he preferred I were dead. “I doubt he’ll be happy with any of you leaving, either.”

Everyone nodded and began writing lists of supplies on their SEDs, discussing who would bring what and where they might be the safest when the caldera erupted.

When Rin got up to look at Sam’s hand, I slipped from the gathering and found my way to the large doors that led to the rest of the Councilhouse. Without thinking about where I was going, I wandered through the halls until I landed in front of my favorite painting.

It might have been a large eagle, except the feathers seemed made of flame. Ash from its pyre shone with sparks, and the lush jungle around the bird had dimmed in its light. In spite of the fire-bright bird, there was no smoke.

The painting was of a phoenix, or of someone’s memory of how the phoenix had appeared, because the beast on canvas was too beautiful to be real.

Once, I’d asked Sam if he’d ever seen a phoenix. He’d said no, which disappointed me. He was so old. He’d seen and accomplished so much. I couldn’t imagine how he hadn’t managed to see even one phoenix in his five millennia.

Cris had talked about phoenixes in the temple, before he’d fought Janan. He’d said phoenixes had imprisoned Janan in a tower, though not what Janan had done to deserve such a punishment. Meuric had also mentioned phoenixes. He’d said someone had cursed the sylph, and he thought phoenixes were behind it.

What had happened five thousand years ago?

I hoped the answers would be in the temple books. I just had to get them back. And translate them.

“Do you think phoenixes remember their past lives like we do?” Sarit’s voice behind me made me jump. “Sorry.” She stood next to me and looped one arm around my waist. “I saw you walk out.”

“It’s okay.” I leaned my head on her shoulder. “I just needed some time to think. So much has happened tonight.”

She nodded, admiring the phoenix painting with me.

“I asked Sam that question once.” I turned my face up to the painting again. “He said there’s no reason to believe they don’t remember every lifetime.”

“I hope you’ll be reincarnated, too.” She squeezed me. “Even if Range erupts and we die, there will be a lot of people far away. It might take a long time, but eventually we’ll all come back.”

I lowered my eyes. “Sarit.”

She waited.

The truth crowded my throat. I almost told her what I’d learned in the temple, but I couldn’t take the pity right now. “If Janan ascends, do you think he’d keep reincarnating everyone?”

“Maybe.” She sounded hopeful. “I guess it depends why he’s returning. To rule? He’d want people he could rule.”

“Meuric told me he needed a special key to live once Janan ascended. It seems like if you don’t have the key, you don’t live.” In the temple, Cris and Stef hadn’t thought Janan would reincarnate people, either. Since their memory magic was broken, and Meuric had never been subject to it, their prediction seemed the likely outcome to me.

“Oh.”

“You know that I’m trying to stop Janan from ascending, right?”

“Of course. Stopping him means stopping the eruption. But . . . What about reincarnation? Will his death stop reincarnation?”

I nodded. “It stopped during Templedark.”

“Yeah, it did.” Sarit shuddered, and her tone grew husky with grief. “So either way—it ends. No matter what happens next, this will be our final lifetime.”

“There’s a cost to reincarnation,” I said.

She looked at me, concern darkening her face. “What is it?”

When I’d told Sam, the truth had nearly destroyed him. And when Stef and Cris remembered—

Stef had been unusually nice to me ever since, and Cris had sacrificed himself to save me. I didn’t want to hurt Sarit, but she deserved to know the truth. Everyone did. And maybe she would remember. Maybe I could help break her memory magic, like I had Sam’s.

“Newsouls.” The word almost choked me. “Whenever someone is reborn, Janan takes a newsoul.”

“And does what?”

I closed my eyes and repeated what Meuric told me in the temple. “They’re being eaten.”

“Oh. Oh, Ana.” Her voice broke.

“Instead of newsouls being born, Janan takes the souls’ power and reincarnates an oldsoul. It worked like that for five thousand years, until Menehem was experimenting in the market field one night, while Ciana was dying.”

“The first Templedark,” she whispered.

“Janan wasn’t able to catch her soul, because he was asleep. So years later, I arrived in her place.” The first, but not the only. Not anymore.

“Menehem did the same thing last year.”

“Yes. Both to allow more newsouls to be born, and because he wanted to see if it was possible to stop Janan. He was just curious.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, a frown pulling on her mouth. “And because of his actions, so many souls are gone forever.”

And new ones would replace them.

“This is all just so—so horrible. None of it’s fair.” She hugged herself and stared at the ceiling, tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. Black hair cascaded down her back in inky tendrils. “Not everyone will believe that Janan will stop reincarnating us after he ascends.”

I waited, but she didn’t say what she believed.

“All those people will see your actions as a choice: a choice between oldsouls and newsouls. So.” She lowered her voice. “If you let Janan ascend, he’d keep reincarnating the rest of us. But he’d keep consuming newsouls.”

“And if I stop him,” I said, “then newsouls are born, but people I love won’t be reincarnated after they die.”

“Which means you decide newsouls. Over me. Over your other friends. Over Sam.”

“I wish this wasn’t my decision, but it seems it’s been given to me anyway,” I said after a minute. “I didn’t ask for this responsibility.”

“I can’t imagine having to make that choice.”

I was on the edge of admitting the rest of the truth, that everyone in Heart had agreed to the exchange knowing what would happen, but Sarit was already crying.

I kept my mouth shut. I hadn’t told anyone, not even Sam. It was too much. It would break them.

The only ones who knew were Stef and Cris. Stef was humiliated, and Cris was a sylph.

Sarit didn’t need to know.

She let out a long sigh. “I changed my mind. I’m staying with Armande.”

My stomach dropped. “What? Why?” She was supposed to come with me. She was my best friend. She’d said she was coming with me. “Is it because of what I just told you?”

“No.” She pressed her mouth into a line. “Maybe. But the truth is, I’m not good at trekking through the wilderness. I would, for you, but when Armande said he was staying, I realized I should, too. I don’t want him to be alone. Besides, I’m good at getting information. I’ll be useful to you here.”

She would be useful here. That didn’t mean I wanted her to stay.

Maybe I shouldn’t have told her about Janan. Maybe it was better to keep these things a secret.

We stood together for a moment longer, then she squeezed my hand and left the hall.

I stayed in the hall, staring at the phoenix painting and fiercely wishing my life were different. Better. I wished for a lifetime with Sam and my friends, a lifetime with music. Wasn’t that how life should be?

“I wish I were a phoenix,” I said to the empty hallway.

Soon it would be dawn. Yawning, I trudged back to the library and found they’d turned off all the lights but one. Several people had left, but a few were dozing in chairs, or had taken blankets into small alcoves. Sam was reclined in the chair he’d taken earlier, a blanket draped across his legs.

I didn’t see Geral and Orrin anywhere—they were probably somewhere else in the library with the baby—and no one else was sleeping curled up with anyone. Well, too bad if I made them uncomfortable. I’d been promised cuddling with Sam, and I was going to have it. Right now.

After kicking off my shoes and grabbing a spare blanket, I turned off the lamp and found Sam in the dark. No one said anything as I nudged him to one side of the chair and curled in with him. With the blankets over us, he wrapped one arm around my waist, and we adjusted until we found a comfortable position.

“Remember when you said you wanted to move into the library?” Sam murmured by my ear.

“I didn’t mean like this.”

He kissed my neck, all warmth and pressure. “Where’d you go?”

“To look at the phoenix painting.”

“Sarit followed.” When I didn’t respond, he added, “Did she help?”

“She said she’s staying here with Armande. That she changed her mind.”

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Did she say why?”

I closed my eyes and found his good hand, tangled our fingers together. “I told her the truth about newsouls.” Part of the truth. If I’d told her the rest, how would she have reacted? Her decision strengthened my resolve to keep the oldsouls’ choice to myself.

“She deserves to know,” he said. I couldn’t find a response that wasn’t selfish or whiny, so I kept my mouth shut.

I listened to others shifting in their chairs, muffled voices coming from behind the walls made of bookcases. As dawn crept through the library, I dozed half on Sam’s lap, half on the chair. It wasn’t comfortable, but I didn’t move. I needed to be close to him.

When I awoke hours later, still wrapped in Sam’s arms, most everyone had gone. A note from Stef waited pinned under a lamp, saying we’d be leaving not tomorrow, but tonight.

Because tonight, we were stealing back the temple books and Menehem’s research.