“Where’s Merle?” I asked, looking around. “He’s usually here, isn’t he?”
Will had been stretching his long arms, but now he lowered them to his sides and looked sidelong at me, brows raised. “Usually,” he said. “Why?”
“No reason. I just wondered if he was all right. He seems quiet lately.”
“I don’t think he worked out,” Will said.
That sounded offhand ... and ominous. I drank some water myself, trying to decide how to approach the subject, and finally abandoned subtlety. “Did he leave?”
“Yes,” Will said. “He left.” After an awkward second of silence, he nodded. “Thanks for the water. I need to get back to work. These rows won’t tend themselves.”
I walked back to the food hall to return the pitcher, thinking hard. Merle might have been able to leave without incident; they might have allowed that.
But I couldn’t believe it, not really. He’d seen the incident with Zedala. He knew the children were at risk, and that made him a dangerous witness indeed. They would never let him simply walk free, even if they hadn’t suspected him of being some sort of spy.
As I put out food for the pigs, greeting them with friendly pats, I ascended into the aetheric to get a glimpse around me. Merle had been solidly visible before, an easily recognizable target to locate ... but now I could see no sign of him. My attention was drawn instead to a spot of darkness on the aetheric, like a wide, violent splash of blood. It was in the field, and it was far beneath the surface.
It was the shape of a corpse. No ... not just one corpse. I counted four, at least, all buried deeply in the earth.
All fresh enough to retain their basic human shape, and the aetheric stain of their death struggles.
One of them had to be Merle.
The emotion of it hit me a moment after the factual information: Merle, as competent and careful as he was, had been killed. I was alone here. No friends, no allies, no chance of leaving with my life. Like Merle, I’d seen too much, asked too many questions. I was trapped.
But I wanted to be trapped. Didn’t I? Hadn’t that been my purpose in coming here all along?
Still, in that moment, seeing the blunt reality of what had happened to a man who had seemed, in many ways, indestructible, I felt fear, real and visceral. If I died here, I’d leave Luis and Ibby without ever really reconciling with them. They would believe that I hadn’t really loved them, really wanted to stay.
You’re not here to love them. You’re here to save them. And that, too, was true. I had been sent to this world as an avatar of Ashan’s wishes, and I knew that; he’d manipulated me into believing that it was my own will, but I knew the hand of the master at work. Ashan couldn’t lose this game, not with the position in which he’d placed me; if I couldn’t find a way to destroy Pearl, I would be driven to the last extreme, and destroy the human race that anchored and fed her. I was his cat’s paw, and if I was destroyed in the process, then that was a price both he and I knew to be acceptable, given the stakes.
I hadn’t intended to feel so much, or so deeply. Not for myself, and this fragile shell of flesh that sustained me, in any case. It should have been a temporary, uncomfortable prison, but instead—instead I felt as human, as afraid, as any of the people around me.
I spent the rest of the day feeling disconnected and alone, lost with my hideous secret beneath our feet. Will didn’t know, nor did the others. I thought the boy Warden, the one who’d buried me briefly, had been the one to carry out the executions. It was a neat, mess-free way of disposing of those they no longer needed; it would have been a horrible way to die, suffocating on your own grave dirt, but I didn’t suppose the boy cared.
He was a true believer, after all.
I was on my way to the food hall, exhausted and more than a little angry at my own indecision, when I saw a small shadowy figure lurking near the corner of my lodge building.
Zedala. She had managed to create a veil for herself, and done it well; I drifted her way slowly, almost by accident, and put my back against the side of the lodge wall beside her. The night was chilly, and she was shivering in her thin clothes. I was wearing a quilted jacket, which I stripped off and dropped beside her. She quickly picked it up and put it on with a quiet, trembling sigh of gratitude.
“What are you doing here?” I asked her. I kept watch for any sign of observers, but although there were people about, they didn’t pay any obvious attention to me.
Zedala continued to huddle in her veil, but finally replied, “I was looking for you. You tried to help me.”
“And?”
“I need to get out of here.” She looked up, and the faint, fading light shone on tear tracks on her face. “They say I failed. They say I’m not powerful enough; I’m not the one they need. So they say I’m going to go home. But I’m not going home, am I?”
I thought of the bodies under the tilled field. “No,” I said. “I don’t think they’ll let you go home.”
“Can you help me?” she asked in a very faint voice. “Because there’s nobody else. Nobody.”
I closed my eyes. The pain in her voice pierced me, but I knew what Ashan would want me to do. What the old Cassiel, the Djinn Cassiel, would have done. I knew I should have walked away, left her there in her tears and desperation, and preserved my chance to win the day.
But she had no chance without my help. None. By dawn, I’d be finding her corpse buried next to Merle’s. I’d be imagining a child’s last, frantic, desperate moments. A child whom these people professed to honor and protect.
I might be a good Djinn if I allowed that to happen, but I would be a monster of a human being.
I opened my eyes and said, “All right. Can you veil yourself until I come and get you?”
“I think so.” Zedala wiped her face with her sleeve and looked up at me with hope dawning warm in her eyes. “You’re going to help? Really?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m going to help. But you have to promise me one thing.”
“Okay.”
“You have to promise me you won’t stop running until you reach the Wardens. Tell them I sent you for help.”
She nodded solemnly, and I pushed away from the wall and went into the lodge. My shower seemed to take an eternity, as did the dinner that followed. Will tried to distract me with amusing stories, but my smiles were all halfhearted.
Oriana was gone, too, I realized, as I looked around. Merle and Oriana, both missing, both likely dead.
I would be next, or the child would. I couldn’t let her suffer for my mistakes.
After dinner, I willed myself to return to the lodge. Oriana’s bunk above mine was neatly made, but any personal effects were gone. Instead, it was ready for a new occupant, complete with the same welcome gifts she and I had received upon our arrival. I undressed and got into bed, and waited for the hours to pass.
In the full dark, I rose and dressed as silently as I could, went to the restroom, and pried open one of the small windows at the back. I would never have made it in my original Cassiel form, but Laura Rose was smaller and lighter-boned, and I squirmed through the narrow opening and dropped to the ground outside. The moon was dark, so I had only starlight to navigate by. Apart from the rustle of the wind in the trees, there seemed to be no one about at all tonight. I spotted the subtle glimmer of Zedala’s veil; she was where I had left her, close against the wall of the lodge building. I hesitated for a moment more, breathing in the sharp evening air, all senses alert, but I heard and saw nothing else.
I moved toward her under cover of shadows and crouched down next to her. She was wrapped in my quilted jacket, but still shivering. Nevertheless, she gave me a wan smile when she saw me. “You came,” she whispered. “You came.”