The Dit mage stood still, as if listening. Amara pressed her hands to her hair to keep it from wafting out past the tree. The wind had picked up again. The woman wasn’t listening for her, though. Jorn had told her this, years ago. Mages would draw on the spirits for spells, then read their response in the rustling of trees, the rush of water rubbing against the shore.
Amara had almost forgotten that the topic of magic hadn’t always been off-limits.
She tried to listen, too. All she heard was the wind.
The mage pulled her hands brusquely off the rock and turned back to the path. Behind her tree, Amara stood as still as the dead, listening as the woman’s footsteps broke into a run, moving away from the granary.
The mage wasn’t after Cilla. Backlash cleanup, just as Jorn had said. Amara should go back and tell him. But … she’d been searching for a plan. She could ask this mage—a stranger, someone who wouldn’t tell Jorn—about the blackouts.
Amara ran. For the next minute she followed the woman through the woods, diving behind this tree and that, until a pair of silver rails sitting on raised earth abruptly bisected the road.
A moment later, Amara smelled something burning. Carefully, she moved closer to the rails. The trees thinned, robbing her of cover. The smell strengthened. Her own hands had stunk the same way yesterday.
She shivered. The sensation ran down her spine again and again. She pressed clammy hands together and made herself step through the trees so she could see down the rails in both directions.
The airtrain stood a stone’s throw away, gleaming metal except for a massive black stain on one side. That explained why it had stopped. Amara saw movement through the windows. She sneaked closer, until the voices drifting through the windows formed words.
“Lightning,” someone was whispering. “Lightning.”
“Just stay calm,” the Dit mage said. Amara saw the back of her head through the windows now, moving around, then dipping out of sight. “I’ll help you. All right?”
The voice kept whispering. A different voice said, “My father. How’s my father?” When the mage didn’t respond, a sob tore through the man’s words. “The weather was fine before—when—how is he?”
“It wasn’t me,” the mage said. Even from this distance, without seeing her face, Amara felt her irritation. “I haven’t used magic in months. I’m oath-bound. But I’ll get you to the carecenter, all right? Just let me put my hands here … This’ll hurt, but I need to …”
“Your magic will make it worse,” the man said.
“I’ve already prayed. The spirits might allow it. I’ll need a moment. Oh, curse the ministers!”
The breeze carried more of the burning-flesh stink. Amara fought back a gag. She approached, anyway, climbing over a fallen tree, hiding behind another one. If the mage was against the ministers, maybe she’d be safe to talk to. Amara hadn’t been sure. The Dunelands ministers had roots in every corner of the world, but the Dit were their strongest supporters—more out of spite against the Alineans than anything else. Jorn was an exception.
She’d always thought so, anyway.
The Dit mage disappeared from the windows. Amara peeked around the tree. A moment later, the mage stood in the pried-open train doors, stunned, looking exactly at where Amara hid.
“A spirit. You’re a spirit.” The mage stepped from the train. The earth squelched underfoot.
Amara should pull back. Run. Anything but stand here, half-hidden behind a tree, watching that mage with a single eye. If Jorn knew …
The mage went on. “No. You used to be? Were you possessed by one? But there’s still … There’s a presence …”
A presence. Ruudde’s words echoed: Whoever’s causing this will catch on and try again.
“Can we talk?”
A passenger stumbling from the train drew the mage’s attention, but only for a moment, as if afraid Amara would disappear if she looked away for too long.
Amara’s signing would give her away. If the mage didn’t rat her out, the airtrain’s passengers might. This had been a stupid idea, stupid and dangerous.
And that stink of flesh was so, so intense.
She pressed a hand to her mouth, turned, ran, left the mage’s shouts behind, forgot all about stealth and silence. The mage wouldn’t follow—she wouldn’t abandon the injured passengers—but Amara couldn’t slow. The smell stuck to her hands. Stuck to everything.
She only had to return to Jorn and pretend nothing happened, and …
That’d get her nowhere.
She stopped. Took a quarter turn. Stormed through a layer of wet leaves. Thorns and burrs clung to her winterwear. She found the temple within a minute, spotting faded stone that blended perfectly into the colorless, storm-drenched woods; if she hadn’t known it was there, she’d have looked right past it.
She’d always thought that if she prayed at a true temple, perhaps the spirits would forgive Jorn’s magic use and prevent accidents like the airtrain’s. He never prayed, to the point that Amara wondered if he’d ever sworn a mage’s oath in the first place. She’d asked him about it, back when he’d allowed questions, when sometimes he’d even smiled and indulged her. He didn’t pray at temples, he’d explained, because hired mages like the knifewielder might set a trap for him. He didn’t need to pray, besides: temple or no temple, the spirits understood why he called on them so often.
Amara always suspected it was nonsense, but that hadn’t stopped her from hoping that, if the spirits listened no matter what, sketching misshapen buildings in the dirt still stood a chance of catching their attention.
She crouched, steadying herself with one hand on the temple’s stone. She’d never touched a temple before. It felt icy cold. Let this work, she thought. Let the mage come back.
She searched around half-rotted leaves for a chalky piece of stone, and slowly, carefully, drew it against the temple. Even with ink she struggled to mimic Cilla’s letters, let alone with a rock this blunt, but she remembered the basics.
Mage, she wrote blockily, the chalk cold in her hands. Then, Spirit airtrain. Need talk. She’d probably misspelled it. The mage would understand, though, wouldn’t she? Market, she wrote next. Maart had a trip scheduled tomorrow. Market stallkeepers were so busy that you could get away with pointing and never speaking a word.
She’d find a way to go in his stead.
Amara stared at her letters with a mixture of pride and fear.
11
How come you’re not rehearsing with your friends?” Nolan asked, perched in Pat’s desk chair. The extra pill would need time to kick in. He had a hard time sitting still, though. He kept pushing the notebook on her desk back and forth and tapping his foot and spending a second too long in Amara’s world—
—Cilla was reading on one side of the room while Amara finished up lunch at the fire pit with Jorn and Maart, rootpatties in hand, acting as if nothing was wrong. Jorn was looking at her with prying dark eyes, but he hadn’t said a word about how long she’d taken to find the mage—
“—I am.” Pat frowned. “Our drama teacher makes us rehearse together in the gym, but we don’t have a lot of time since we also have to build the set. That’s why we need volunteers. I asked Mom, but she’s too busy working.”
Nolan held back a cringe. “Rehearsing with your friends at home, I mean.”
“I just don’t want to make a big deal out of it. What if I screw up?”
“You won’t. I promise.”
Pat fought a tiny surprised smile. Straight teeth pushed into her bottom lip to keep it in line. Nolan couldn’t recall the last time she’d taken anything he said so seriously. For a moment he wasn’t sure what to do with himself.