Saia marched on the path that led to the lake. It was still morning; she should have returned to the kitchen to help with lunch, but she was pretty sure there were enough people there that they wouldn't have noticed her absence. She didn't know how monks who skipped their turns were punished, if at all. At that moment, she didn't care. All that mattered was that nobody had stopped her.

She almost didn't perceive the trees around her as she walked toward the lake, thinking fast, a single snake asleep in her bag for protection. She only slowed down when she saw glimmers of light pierce through the leaves, thinking that the sentinels and their binoculars had arrived before her. But it was just the sun reflecting on the surface of the lake. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky, which was good, because there weren't gods that could protect her if the cloud people decided to start shooting harpoons.

She hid behind a tree, looking for Adus. There were no movements near the lake, no chairs on the grass of the bank.

Which meant that he either had left, or...

“Oh, it's you.”

... or he’d seen someone coming and hid away.

Saia turned to find him half-hidden behind a tree. He casually folded his carving knife and put it away.

“Are you here to fish like yesterday?” he asked, glancing at the lake.

“Maybe,” she said, shrugging. “What about you, Rabam?”

He visibly steeled himself hearing that, in a vain attempt to hide his surprise.

“I want to hear the truth and ask you some questions,” she said.

He stepped back. She could see his hand go to the pocket with the knife.

“Are you a sentinel?”

“No, still a helper. Ebus mentioned an exiled half-brother who recently disappeared and I found out that his grandmother is the fisher. You asked me not to talk about you with anyone, and I didn't, but it wasn't difficult to put the pieces together.”

He hesitated, then let his hand rest against his leg, further from the pocket. He took two more steps back and glanced up toward the village.

“I’m on your side,” Saia added, since he was still silent. “I want to take revenge on Vizena, and it will hurt the monks too. That's why I need to know how you came here without the sentinels seeing you. Consider it a request for help.”

“What if I refuse to tell you?”

Saia stared at him, then shrugged.

“I guess I'll find another way to do this. I won't tell anyone about you, if this is what worries you.”

“I don't want to share that kind of knowledge. If too many people know about it, the sentinels will find out. If I tell you and you use one of the paths without being careful enough, they will find out all the same.”

“Is there something I can do to convince you to trust me?”

He seemed to think for a bit, glancing at the trees around them, probably to check that they were still alone.

“Walk toward the lake as you normally would. They've seen you come here, it would be suspicious if you never came out of the forest.”

He turned and started walking on an invisible path in the midst of the trees, avoiding any patch of light, stopping every couple of steps to glance back toward the village before continuing in a slightly different direction.

Saia left the shadow of the forest for the grass slope that descended toward the lake. She resisted the urge to look at the village. It was like being back at Suimer, with Vizena constantly observing her. After two years with Zeles as her god and three weeks spent in a godless village, that feeling was like a punch to the gut that stayed in place after the hit instead of retreating.

Rabam emerged from the trees near the shore and stopped under their shadow. He handed her a fishing rod and a folded chair.

“Set it up there, they'll think you're here to fish.”

He was pointing at an area near the lake, visible from above. Saia followed his instructions, planting the rod in the ground next to the unfolded chair, then retreated into the hidden area until she was standing some steps in front of him.

“So?” she asked.

“Tell me about your plan. Where do you need to go? What are you going to do?”

“I don't know yet, but I need to go to Suimer.”

Rabam shook his head.

“Too vague.”

Saia sighed and raised her eyes to the ceiling of leaves. She needed to get back to Suimer, obviously, if she wanted to face Vizena. But she couldn't do that alone, and the only entity powerful enough to fight against a goddess was another god. Zeles.

She flinched. After what she’d done, she had no right to ask him anything. Convincing him to help her would have been almost impossible. Still, she had to try.

She looked at Rabam.

“I need to visit Lausune too.”

“In which order?”

“Lausune, then Suimer.”

“When? What time of the day?”

“I don't know.”

“The sentinels don't stay in the same places. They move around, sometimes change the position of their posts entirely. I need to know this stuff.”

“When I say that I don't know, I mean for now. I'll obviously tell you before I go there.”

“And how do you plan to keep hidden once you're there?”

“Again, I don't know. Yet.”

Rabam lowered his eyes and shook his head.

“It's too little.”

“What about your plan, then?”

He stared at her, chin lowered, expression suddenly hostile.

“What do you mean?”

“You were exiled, but you came back here. You’re living outside the village and only your grandmother knows where you are. And me, but that was an accident, right?”

He kept staring.

“Most importantly,” Saia continued, “You hate the monks. Which means that you're probably here to get revenge on them because they exiled you.”

He shook his head again before she could finish the sentence.

“It's more complicated than that.”

“Yes, but whatever you want to do, it’ll hurt the monks, right? Not physically, I mean, but it’ll put them out of balance?”

“Yes. That’s part of what I want to accomplish.”

“Then I want the same thing. Let me help you. You’ll give me the information I need once you know that you can trust me.”

He propped his back against a tree trunk. He seemed lost in thought, so Saia went back to the fishing rod and pretended to check that everything was in order.

“What has Ebus told you about me, exactly?” Rabam asked.

She returned under the trees before answering, in case the sentinels could see her talk.

“That you committed a trust crime, whatever that is, you were exiled, and now you have disappeared and the sentinels are looking for you.”

“’Whatever that is?’” he repeated. "You don't know what a trust crime is?”

"No. But the village has some cells for people who committed murders or other bad stuff. They didn't put you there, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have sent you in one of the other villages if you were actually dangerous.”

He produced a bitter smile.

“Most monks wouldn’t reason like that.”

He sat down on the grass beneath the tree.

“A trust crime is when you act in a way that might hurt the monks as a community, reveal the position of our village, or share important information with the people down there.”

He nodded toward the base of the mountain.

“I’m a traitor, essentially. And they exiled me because the only way to ensure I won’t betray them again is to have a god control everything I do.”

Saia felt weird, standing up while he was talking. She sat too, legs crossed. She looked at him, expecting him to continue.

“Don’t ask me about the details of what I did,” he said.

“I won’t. I was exiled from my village too, you know. For...” She frowned, following a sudden thought. “For very similar reasons, actually. And I don’t like to talk about it either.”

He nodded, tearing a blade of grass in half. He looked for another one, fingers gliding on the ground.

Saia sighed.

“You can carve, if you want. I won’t get offended.”

He stopped, then the corners of his mouth twitched.

“Am I that obvious?”

Saia shrugged.

“I live with a restless person who can only calm down in front of a book. I know the signs.”

His smile became larger, then gradually disappeared as he took out a half-finished statue from a pocket and the carving knife from the other. He angled himself so that a ray of light escaping the canopy of leaves could illuminate the statue.

“There is a thing I need for my plan to succeed.”

“What is it?”

“There’s a tunnel that connects the lake to the pool. That’s where the water comes from.”

“Oh. I didn’t know that.”

“I plan to enter from there, when the time comes. But the monks know about the tunnel, and there are always two sentinels in the room, even at night.”

He stopped carving for an instant and looked at her.

“I need you to become a sentinel. Convince them to assign you at least one turn at night in the pool and tell me what day and time it will be. You’ll have to distract or neutralize the other sentinel once I’ll act.”

Saia blinked.

“That's... A lot more complicated than I thought it would be.”

He resumed carving.

“What do you mean?”

“I was expecting something like 'bring me this' or 'find out that'. Becoming a sentinel is way more difficult. I don't even know if I can.”

“You'll have to talk to one of the sentinels priors.” He stopped for an instant. “Or to the abbot. But you said he wasn't happy with you after the debate.”

Saia nodded. She raised her crossed legs and hugged her knees, hands clutched at the front. For the moment being, her speech at the debate was hurting her more than it was affecting Vizena.

“But if you find out something that might be useful, tell me,” Rabam said. “Especially about the sentinels' movements. My grandma is spying for me, but an extra set of eyes would be especially useful. She's also been trying to find out where the gods' shards are, but a lot of rooms are only accessible by more expert sentinels.”

“And you'll give me a path in exchange for this information?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

“Sure. I'll tell you something.”

“You know I'm trusting you a lot, right? I have no guarantee that your paths are actually hidden.”

He sat straighter.

“They are.”

“What if the sentinels changed their posts and your grandmother didn't tell you? At least some of your paths should be visible by now.”

He passed an index on the statue's surface. It was starting to look like a bird with folded wings, but she couldn't tell the species.

“The paths aren't fixed. I calculate them based on the position of the sentinels.”

“How?”

He turned the statue in his hands, clearly uneasy at the idea of revealing something more. Saia waited in silence.

“One of my dads is a cartographer. He had to stop his research for a while after they had me, but he always had books at home and the sentinels asked him for help anyways.”

“Help for what?”

“Deciding the position of the next posts. They change it once a month, and they always have to stay hidden from the other villages. He knew how to calculate them in a way that leaves as little blind spots as possible.”

“But not zero.”

“No, that's impossible. I studied that part of his work. I'm not as good as he is, but I know how to make these calculations. That's why I need information on where the sentinels are, where you plan to go and when.”

Saia nodded.

“Understood. And in the eventuality they find out...”

“You'll be captured and exiled.”

“Where?”

“The priors will choose. Each of the villages is associated with a set of crimes. There are some laws about how to decide where to send someone.” He shrugged. “I don't remember them.”

Saia felt a twinge of fear at the thought of being sent back home. Or to Dore's village. Or to any other village that wasn't under Zeles’s protection.

“I'll become a sentinel. But do everything you can to make sure that those paths are safe and the monks won't find out about me.”

He stopped carving to look at her.

“I promise. If you really manage to do what I asked, you'll be an enormous help.”

Saia nodded and stood. She sat on the chair and pretended to fish for a while, the scraping of knife on wood continuing quietly at her back. She looked at the lake, unbearably bright in the morning sun, thinking about the debate, Aili, and the first steps of a plan to bring Vizena down as she deserved.

The carving stopped, and the silence that followed was interrupted by a rustling of leaves. She turned to find that Rabam was gone. She stood with a sigh and put chair and fishing rod away under the cloth. She was about to go back to the village when she saw the bird statue, an owlet, propped against the base of the tree. She took it and observed it for a bit, appreciating the details. She couldn't find Rabam anywhere nearby, so she slipped the owlet inside her bag and returned to the village.