Saia walked on the path the led to the lake. It was late afternoon, an hour left before dinner. She’d spent the day sleeping to recover from the previous night’s turn. She’d been lucky to have one, since it allowed her to have a free morning instead of having to train with the other sentinels. They used swords and spears, even if they were never allowed to carry them outside of the training room and the armory. The racks full of blades were impressive, but they didn't terrify her as much as the huge ballistae in the back of the room. Ancient technology the monks never used, that could only be brought outside through a rusty gate and a barely fitting tunnel. She wondered what kind of enemy could justify having those monsters always oiled and on the ready. Gods, maybe.

She took a deep breath and smiled at the distant sea: the giant weapons hadn’t been the only surprise of that week. After days of trying to breed her snakes, she’d realized that the problem was lack of space. With Ebus’s support, she'd asked for an additional tank, filled it in equal parts with soil and water, and put a couple of snakes inside it, a male and a female.

Two days later she’d been awakened by their furious hissing and splashing in the water. She’d checked the mound of earth, placed right in the middle of a patch of sunlight, and gently moved the soil on the surface: there was a shallow hole underneath, filled with small round eggs. Based on what her dad had told her, they would take about ten days to hatch. She’d freed the two snakes in the main tank with the rest of the adults, confiding in nature and sunlight to take care of the eggs.

She approached the lake with caution, checking her surroundings. She looked for a movement, a sign that Rabam had noticed her and was now approaching. She was so focused on the trees that she didn’t think to raise her eyes.

“Hi,” she heard, and jumped. He was sitting on a low branch, half-hidden by the foliage.

“How did you see me arrive?”

He climbed down.

“It’s been two weeks. I thought you changed your mind.”

Saia smiled, pointing both indexes at the belt around her hips: two leather strips that were the symbol of the sentinels.

"Yeah, I noticed."

He was smiling, but his eyes were darting between the trees behind Saia, as if he was expecting other sentinels to appear behind her.

She sighed.

“I've waited two weeks because I didn't want to give the priors the impression that I was nostalgic about the lake. And my turns are all over the place.”

“They do that with beginners,” Rabam said, looking more relaxed. “It's a mix of wanting to test your resilience and not knowing where and when you'd give your best.”

He headed toward the lake. Saia did the same, following a more visible path.

That morning, the daily rituals of the sentinels had been short. Half of them, Saia included, wouldn’t have worked that afternoon, since there would be a debate. Still, they were all required to be in the common room and listen to the list of what to look out for that day. Maris was never the one making the speech, adjusting the turns instead by moving the painted stones inside the holes of the grid in the center of the room. Each combination of color and letter represented a sentinel, each hole a location and a timespan of four hours.

Saia had observed the holes for a long time, without touching the stones for fear of leaving her viss on them. There were some patterns: first of all, the sentinels couldn’t have more than two turns in twenty-four hours, and when they only had one, it was probably at night or on fourthday. Second, the sentinels at night were kept at a minimum of two per location, and they never went far from the village. They were only there to spot anyone approaching, an easy task since it was impossible to climb the mountain silently in the dark without at least one light. Third and most important, everyone had at least two turns in the pool room during the week, one in the day and one at night. It was the most hated turn, since it required standing in an empty room for four hours despite the risk of someone entering from the tunnel being extremely low. Or so they thought.

“Have they changed the observation spots?” Rabam asked, stepping around a tree.

Saia tried to remember: even if the sentinels who worked in one post changed almost every day, the posts themselves didn’t; all of the holes that had been empty the week before were left empty the next week too.

“Not yet,” she said.

“Good. Let me know if anything changes. Especially in the first two lines and the third column, they’re the trickiest one for me to calculate.”

“And which ones are the most dangerous for me?” Saia asked.

They were on the grass next to the lake, now. Rabam was about to sit under a tree, but he stopped and turned to look at her.

“What do you mean?”

“We had a pact, remember? I became a sentinel, so you have to tell me how to go back to Lausune without being discovered. I don’t have decided on a date yet, but you can tell me something, right? What to be on the lookout for, what the ideal day to go would be...”

She trailed off, staring at his thoughtful expression.

“Sure,” he finally said.

He sat down.

“Based on the current turns, probably on fifthday evening. But I’d rather you wait.”

“Why?” she asked.

“Because I feel like there will be the conditions for me to act soon, and I need someone on the other side of the tunnel that won’t immediately give the alarm.”

Saia sat down some steps in front of him.

“I’ll be in the washing room on sixthday, first turn of the night. My partner will be Gaila, I know her a bit. I’m sure I can distract her long enough for you to enter.”

He lowered his eyes.

“I need to wait.”

“Wait for what?”

“For the monks to come back from Lausune. And I don’t mean just for the trials, but permanently.”

Saia thought about the monks that had left with Daira and Aili, trying to remember the ones that had settled in Lausune the day the two of them were brought up the mountain to meet the abbot.

“Why? You’re not going to kill anyone, are you?”

Rabam shook his head.

“No, but I can’t tell you anything more.”

“So what am I supposed to do? Wait months for you to maybe decide that it’s time to act?”

Rabam was avoiding her gaze, looking now at the grass, now at the lake behind her.

“I don’t know. You don’t seem ready either, so I don’t understand why I should hurry.”

Saia started to lean back, then remembered that there wasn’t a tree behind her and straightened instead.

“The consciousness scholar they sent to Suimer is coming back soon. Maybe even today. I don’t know what they’ll say, but I’m pretty sure I won’t be happy about it. If the monks won’t do anything meaningful to address the problem, I’ll need to get ready and act.”

Rabam nodded.

“So I’m waiting for the monks and you’re waiting for the expert. If your thing happens first, I’ll help you, if mine...”

“I’ll help you,” Saia said, cutting him off. “I like this. Only... Don’t kill anyone or do something so bad I might regret helping you.”

“I won’t.”

She looked at him, but couldn’t guess whether he was lying. She extended a hand, palm upwards. Rabam frowned.

“What?”

“I need to know you’re not lying.”

He slowly reached out, stopping his hand before he could touch Saia’s.

“Isn’t this really dangerous? I could manipulate you, if I was better than you at influencing energies. You could manipulate me, in the unlikely case I had forgotten most of my training on how to use magic…”

“I need to trust that you won’t do anything to destroy my plan or abandon me in case yours succeeds first. And believe me, having the same amount of trust toward me would help you a lot.”

He hesitated, then put his hand down, touching his palm with Saia’s.

She closed her eyes, focusing on her own energies. She'd spent time with Aili and her books, perceiving the floating feeling of the viss inside her body, and, through the contact of their hands, Aili's. Calm, sadness and anger were the easiest to distinguish, and she could detect small variations of imprint, even if she couldn't always understand what feeling they corresponded to.

She slowly shifted her focus on her arms, then her hands, then followed the flux of her energies toward Rabam's hand. She only meant to give his viss the magical equivalent of a glance, a general survey to judge his state of mind. But she perceived a trail of sorrow, and followed it to a pool of sadness enveloping Rabam’s chest.

She had a similar one, buried in the center of her being, a cut-out trunk that still fed on its surroundings with deep roots. Rabam’s was a seed instead, still sprouting, still hurting.

An old instinct alerted her that she wasn’t breathing.

She opened her eyes with a long sigh. The flow of viss was still there, in the back of her conscience. Rabam opened his eyes too, the fresh trail of two tears connecting eyes and chin. He was looking at her with surprise, and she realized he had seen her pain too.

“I promise I will help you fulfill your plan,” she said. “Regardless of how mine will go.”

Rabam closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded.

“I promise the same thing: I will help you find the best paths to reach the villages and come back safely. And I promise that I won't physically hurt or kill anyone.”

It was Saia's turn to close her eyes and focus again on the viss that arrived from Rabam's hand. She found determination, lingering traces of surprise, but nothing that pointed to a lie.

She nodded.

“I have a question,” Rabam continued. “Will you crack Vizena?”

Saia felt herself retracting a bit, but didn't interrupt the contact. She looked at the leaves above them. She was sure Rabam could feel the anger that hearing her name had stirred.

“I don't know,” she finally said. “I feel like that's the only way she'll actually stop hurting my village. But I shouldn't be the one to make this decision. I didn’t put her in the position she is now.”

Rabam nodded. He retreated his hand, breaking the buzzing sensation between their palms.

“Why this question?”

“I’ve considered cracking a god,” Rabam said, relaxing against the tree behind him. “But there are worse things one could do to them.”

Saia leaned forward.

“Like what?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but a glance behind Saia stopped him. She turned: the sun was a lot lower than when she’d arrived. She looked back at Rabam, hesitant.

“You need to go,” he said.

She nodded and stood.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She headed toward the path that led to the village, but Rabam called her before she could step outside the shadow of the trees.

“Walk around the lake, first,” he said. “Pretend to look for something or enjoy the view, otherwise they’ll wonder why you came here.”

Saia nodded and changed direction. She followed the lakeshore, trying to walk fast, but not so fast that it would seem suspicious. She dared to glance in Rabam's direction only once she was on the other side of the lake: he'd disappeared, as usual.

She followed the path up to the top of the slope. She theatrically put a hand against her forehead and squinted at the sun, faked a surprised expression, then started a light run along the path, clutching the strap of her bag with two hands.

The colleague at the entrance barely looked inside before letting her pass. There weren't many people around the corridors, which meant that almost everybody was already inside the temple. She entered with caution, expecting the debate to have already begun, and sighed of relief when she saw that the stones were still being distributed. She was looking for Gaila and the other sentinels, hoping they had kept a spot for her, when she saw Maris marching straight toward her. Their expression was so serious that Saia thought they had seen her talking to Rabam.

“The scholar is back,” they said, instead.

She tensed even more at that. She glanced toward the area next to the well, where the abbot was talking with a woman. She recognized the one who had examined her and Aili before they were allowed to enter the village for the first time.

“I won't tolerate any rule infringement,” Maris said. “No matter what Riena’s going to say, you won't speak out of order or you'll immediately leave the sentinels. Understood?”

Saia nodded. She had a plan, this time, and wouldn’t have let anything disrupt it.