And now, panic distorting his features, Meuric threw himself into the Council chamber without knocking. The door hung open a moment, letting his words into the hall: “I need everyone’s attention immediately!”
The door swung shut, muting the sudden cacophony of voices for a heartbeat before someone opened the door again and shoved Stef out. Papers fluttered in his wake, falling to the floor like afterthoughts.
“What’s going on?” Fayden surged up from the bench, his eyes on the closed door. “Did they like your trap? Are they going to let you make more?”
“I think so. I was only able to get through part of my presentation before Meuric came in and everyone jumped. He’s really scared about something.” Stef pressed his ear against the shut door. “Let’s listen. You too, Sam.”
I heaved myself up and leaned toward the door. Thumps, rustling papers, and raised voices came from within; the latter were mostly attempts to calm Meuric.
“They have him.” Even through the door we could hear the panic that edged Meuric’s words. “They took everyone.”
“Who?” asked one of the other Councilors. “What happened?”
“Janan and every warrior. They’ve been captured.”
“By whom?”
“By our new enemy.”
I held my breath, but if Meuric elaborated on the enemy, then the words were lost beneath the deafening bang of thunder. The entire Center trembled under the sound.
“What do we do?” asked a Councilor. Sine, maybe. The one from earlier. “Where did they take him?”
“I don’t know where they took the others, but Janan was taken north. Far, far to the north.” Meuric coughed, and someone comforted him. “Janan sought to deliver us from death. We must go after him.”
7
ONLY MOMENTS AFTER that declaration, someone opened the Council chamber door and shooed us away. The three of us retreated to Stef’s house, through the wind and rain.
By the time we reached Stef’s house, a small and worn thing, we were all soaked to the bone, shivering. We headed into the kitchen, where Stef lit the woodstove and grabbed towels from a cupboard.
“Do I want to know why you keep your towels there?” I asked.
Stef hurled a towel at my face. “Don’t judge if you want to get dry.”
I snatched the towel and scrubbed my face, hair, and arms as more towels flew across the room. We were quiet for a few minutes, all of us drying off while the rain pounded harder, drowning out all other noises. Stef’s house was an island.
“You live all by yourself?” Fayden asked.
Stef nodded and tossed his towel into a corner. “My aunts are next door. That’s all the supervision I can handle.”
“Ah.” Fayden eyed the kitchen table and chairs, all piled with parts and gadgets in various states of disassembly. “Can I move this stuff?”
Stef sighed and began rearranging his belongings. “This is why I live alone.”
“So you can cover every surface with your junk?” Fayden rolled his eyes and threw his towel into the same corner Stef had.
“Will they really go after Janan?” I shook my head and dropped into the newly empty chair Stef offered.
“You said Meuric sounded serious.” Stef shoved another empty chair at Fayden, who immediately sat and leaned back, front two legs popping off the floor. Stef shot him a frown.
Fayden’s chair thunked as the front two legs hit the floor again, and he looked at me. “I guess you think it’s a bad idea?”
I shrugged. “Janan has gone on lots of quests. People die every time. It just seems like sending more people on a quest to recover him—” I shook my head. “I don’t know. Never mind.”
Rain tapped on the woodstove chimney, filling the heartbeats of silence between the three of us.
The rain lasted through the night and next morning. Not until the afternoon did the sun finally peek from behind the heavy black clouds, illuminating the rain-glazed world so streets and houses and puddles glowed golden bright.
Bells clanged, summoning the Community to the Center, and within an hour, bodies flooded into the immense building. I stuck close to Fayden and Stef as we climbed the tiered seats, our footsteps ringing on the metal. Hundreds of thousands of people in the Community—save those working in fields, tending to the young, or infected with plague—crammed into the Center. When the seats were filled and all the aisles and overhead boxes occupied, they poured onto the field of unnaturally bright green grass, leaving only a narrow strip of ground between the front row and the stage.
The stage, worn and streaked with decades of dirt and shoes and memories, waited in the center of the field. Meuric and the other Councilors climbed the rickety stairs and waited for the roar of the crowd to dwindle.