We all leaned in, and one of the sylph broke away from the others.
“Cris.” I scooted closer to Sam to make room between Whit and me, and though Whit’s smile was more strained than welcoming, he edged toward Stef and patted the place beside him. “Sit with us,” I said.
Cris hesitated, seeming to look between the other sylph and us, all gathered around a bright lamp and things we’d brought from Heart. He wasn’t sure what to do. Sit with people who’d hated sylph for five thousand years, or stay with his new people. Suddenly, I felt rotten for asking him to choose.
The others were all waiting, too, watching Cris to see what he’d do.
“Why don’t you all come closer?”
Stef and Whit cringed, even as they nodded, and Sam went pale. It was hard to accept that while sylph were frightening, they wouldn’t hurt us.
But what about the sylph that had chased me on my birthday last year? Or burned my hands?
I’d have to ask Cris later.
None of the sylph moved to accept my invitation. “Come on,” I said. “We’re allies. We have friends in common. We have goals in common.” At least, it seemed like the sylph wanted me to stop Janan, if their singing earlier was any indication.
Gradually, the sylph eased toward us, keeping their heat low and their songs quiet. They left a good distance between us, but this was an improvement. I tried to smile at them.
Stef cleared her throat, and everyone’s attention shifted back to her. “Armande reports the curfew is tighter than ever. Several people have been imprisoned for disobeying. Even more have been imprisoned for skipping morning gatherings around the temple. Deborl insists they make amends for centuries of ignoring Janan. They’ve started building something inside the city, as well, but no one is sure what it is, just that they’re all to contribute. Some people have been sent to mine or refine more materials.”
“So even regular jobs are suspended?” Whit asked. “For whatever it is they’re building?”
Stef nodded. “It’s in the industrial quarter. It looks like they’re using the geothermal energy lines for something. And many of the warehouses have been destroyed. There’s a picture.” She turned the SED to share it with the rest of us.
As she’d said, a large section of the industrial quarter had been seized and razed. Where there had once been warehouses, now only a few odd buildings and skeletal tubes remained. Some of those were water lines or sewer lines, while others were for power generation. Along the far edge of the quarter, the textile mill, pottery workshop, and forgers were still standing. For now.
Whatever they were building, it wasn’t far along enough for us to guess its purpose. Something wide and flat, though that could simply be the foundation for something bigger, especially if they were gathering more materials.
“Just because we don’t know what it is,” Sam said, “doesn’t mean we don’t know what it’s for in the end.”
“Janan.” Stef nodded. “No doubt it’s to benefit him.”
“There’s so much we still need to know,” Whit said. “Which means we need to get back to those books. Ana?”
“I’m ready.” I glanced at Cris—or the sylph I thought was Cris. “Did you happen to learn how to read these books when you became a sylph?”
Cris hummed and trilled, almost like a chuckle as he shook his head. But before I could be disappointed, he twitched, and another sylph came forward.
I struggled for a pronoun. I’d always thought of sylph as genderless its, but it seemed rude to say that to . . . not their faces, since they didn’t have faces, but . . . Ugh. I addressed the new sylph. “You can help me translate the symbols from the books?”
The sylph nodded, mostly a vertical rolling of smoke.
“Great.” It would be a long night if we had to ask yes and no questions about the meanings of words, though. Still, we could start with confirming the words we already had. “Whit?”
He stood and headed for my bag, where I kept the temple books. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we’re not living in a cave.”
Sam leaned toward me—and the sylph. “He misses the library.”
I sighed. “I do, too. All the books. The well-lit reading areas.”
“The chairs.” Stef swooned dramatically. “I miss chairs. My legs are tired after all this walking.”
Cris whistled, like bragging he didn’t have sore legs.
“Ready?” Whit handed everyone books and notebooks, and we all got to work. Sylph floated around as we went through pages, confirming or attempting to correct our translations. It was difficult, trying to understand the sylph, but as the night deepened, I began catching on to their movements more quickly, and their trills and hmms, the moods conveyed by their pitch and the notes they sang.
When I glanced at Sam to see if he’d begun understanding the sylph, he smiled.