“The second thing is, even if we do go after them, who’s to say the wrong dragons won’t find us and kill us on sight? The sylph can protect us, but not forever. We’ll have to keep moving and keep looking for Acid Breath and his friends.
“And the third thing is that Sam is not consciously aware of the phoenix song, so it’s useless. I don’t want to make threats with a weapon we don’t know how to use. They believed me when I threatened them the other day, and they left. That will have to be enough. I won’t risk it again.” I dropped my voice. “I won’t risk you all again.”
The tent was silent for a minute, and Sam just looked at me, something indecipherable in his expression. “Then what do we do?”
“We came here looking for both help and a weapon. We’re not getting help. The dragons have made that very clear. But we did learn that the weapon we’ve been seeking has been with us all along. Sam might not know it right now, but maybe we can find a way to use it against Janan.”
“Which was what you originally wanted to do,” Sam said. “Use the weapon to fight Janan.”
I nodded. “We go back to Menehem’s lab, gather the poison, and return to Heart. Sarit can help us get inside.” If she was still alive. “We destroy the cage Deborl is building, and anything else that looks important to Janan’s ascension. We do whatever we must to wreck things. On the way, we learn as much about the phoenix song as possible and hope we can actually use it.”
Sam folded his hands. “All right. Then we head back tomorrow. Unless there are any other ideas?”
Stef and Whit glanced at each other but shook their heads.
In the morning, we packed our things and began the long journey back to Range.
21
NIGHTS
WE WEREN’T GOING to make it back to Heart in time.
A snowstorm smothered the world with white powder and wind, and though we trudged through it whenever possible, we had only twelve days before Soul Night. We’d have to hike extra, but even that wouldn’t be enough.
Twelve days.
It was well after dark when we stopped to set up camp. “I wish I’d been able to test the temple key on the prison.” I grabbed my food sack as sylph darted into the woods to hunt.
Whit looked suspicious as he and Stef put the tent together by lantern light. “Why?”
Stef let out a breathy chuckle. “Scientific curiosity. She gets it from Menehem.”
“I like to think I get it from being me.” I put no bite into my words, but I met her eyes. She needed to know I was serious. “Curiosity is just part of who I am. Like music.”
“All right.” She flashed a smile, but it was awkward and vanished quickly. Our relationship hadn’t recovered, not wholly. They talked to me now, and every night Sam moved his sleeping bag closer to mine, but even the most minor disagreement strained conversations.
“I just wonder about things. The other towers have all fallen into ruin without anyone living inside them. Janan is the only thing keeping the one in Heart intact. But it seems like if phoenixes made the towers, they should last forever, right?”
Stef shrugged. “Perhaps they would have stayed forever, had the sylph not been released.” She bent and tied the last of the walls to the tent. “Better go pick up our dinner. I’ll be ready to cook soon.”
At her dismissal, I hunched my shoulders and followed Cris into the forest, the beam of my flashlight illuminating the snowy world. By now, the other sylph had probably caught plenty of food, so I put in my SED earpieces and flipped to Phoenix Symphony.
I’d listened to the entire symphony a dozen times over the last week, and discussed it with Sam, but so far we’d heard nothing unusual in the music. The four of us even retranslated the passage I’d found about the weapon, but while that was interesting, it was not particularly descriptive of the weapon’s nature or purpose.
Our latest translation was Dragons fear the instrument of life and death. Or the song of the phoenix.
I grabbed a burned rabbit and dropped it in my bag, humming the flutes’ melody of the symphony’s fourth movement. It was a faster-paced, majestic-sounding movement, one of my favorite parts, which always made my heart swell up with fierce joy.
A hand closed over my shoulder. I jumped and spun to find Sam watching me with an amused smile. A lantern swung by his side. “Are you honestly not tired of that yet?”
I shrugged and pulled out my earpieces. “I don’t anticipate ever being tired of it, but if that happens, I’ll let you know.”
“I do have other pieces. Some better than that one.”
“This is the first piece of your music I ever heard. It will always be my favorite.” I paused by a fallen tree, whose death had given way to new life. Smaller plants huddled in the ground, waiting for springtime. “Besides, if there’s a clue about the phoenix song, surely it’s in the song you named after them.”