Saia entered two more buildings, only to knock out the guards and leave with a new map in her fist. She could see shapes entering each one of them after she had finished, but she truly didn't have any more time to investigate what the rebels were doing.

She felt the exact moment when her time ran out and panicked for a few instants, but still forced herself to advance: sure, the engineers had come back from their breaks and sure, they had probably alerted the guards multiple times already, but as far as she knew her shard was in rebel hands. It only unnerved her that she didn't know for how long, or how they got it, or really anything else regarding its circumstances.

She kicked open the door of the next building, expecting guards that were either too drunk or too busy pretending to work to notice her until it was too late. It took a while for her to register that she was staring at five birdguards. Thankfully, only two of them noticed her, since the rest was too busy yelling at each other and running around the room, clearly looking for something among the various clerk desks. There was a commotion going up upstairs, if the heavy thumps of running steps and bird-like screeches were of any indication.

She lunged at the closest birdguard and put them to sleep, but the other yelled an incoherent string of vowels right before she could knock them out too. The other three birdguards extracted the tridents even before looking at her, as if that sound had triggered some instincts or deeply ingrained training. Saia hesitated, looking at them. Now there were booming sounds coming from upstairs, like a giant hammer banging on wood.

“Open the door,” someone yelled.

Saia expanded her domain. The birdguards tried to retreat, but only one of them managed to escape through a window. Which wouldn't matter, if the shard was actually inside the building. Otherwise...

She didn't let herself linger on the thought and ran upstairs instead. The booming sounds were accompanied by the creaking of wood. She followed the short corridor and peeked beyond the corner: four more birdguards, hopefully all the surveillance left in the building, were trying to demolish a heavy door. Even the walls had been reinforced, which hinted at some important content.

The guards were too busy hitting the door with a trunk to notice her. It looked too rough and heavy to be stored in a place like that one, so they had probably taken it in from one of the nearby warehouses. She realized the guards downstairs had been looking for a key: if her shard was actually inside the room like she suspected, someone had closed themselves inside with it.

She expanded her domain one more time to look inside the room, since the birdguards seemed distracted enough they might not notice its golden specks of viss. Before she could see the other side of the wall, she felt her conscience flicker, as if she was about to fall asleep. She stopped, and the feeling passed. When she tried to expand her domain again, it returned, even stronger. She realized it was a threat from whoever was waiting inside the room: they had her shard and could deactivate her completely if she tried to reach them.

She let her domain shrink back to normal size. There was no way to put to sleep the guards from afar without including the room too, so she stepped around the corner and sprinted toward them.

They noticed the movement, but part of them was too aware of how heavy the trunk they were holding was to risk dropping it onto a fragile floor. Saia easily touched the plumage of the closest two, then the remaining ones as they tried to position their suddenly heavier load so that it wouldn't hurt their sleeping colleagues. In the end, she was the only one standing in front of the barely closed door. The wood was broken at the center and near the lock: two more hits, and it would have given way. She only needed one to dislodge it completely.

After the chaos outside, the small room seemed to belong to a different building entirely. There was a table at the center with a small round surface and a long stem holding it up. Three chairs were positioned adjacent to the walls, only two occupied by sleeping birdguards.

The only other piece of furniture in the room was another table, rough and with a rectangular surface, on which was placed the same machine for receiving messages that she'd seen in the navigation room. It was working under the expert care of a third birdguard. He moved his head to the side, pointing one orange eye at Saia.

“Just in time,” he commented. “The engineers have been writing non-stop for the past few minutes.”

Saia noticed at that moment that he was turning something in the palm of his feathered hand. It caught the light of a lantern bolted to the wall.

“I have your shard,” he said, standing. “As you have certainly guessed, I will know if you try to use your powers on me, deactivate you and leave you here for the birdguards to find.”

“Who are you?” Saia asked.

“My name's Nuras. Thank you for going along with our plans. It might not look like it, but we’re truly grateful for your help.”

He stood.

“We don’t have much time. Let’s go.”

He approached the window and raised a leg as if to jump over the border, despite the short drop to the ground on the other side.

“I have no intention of going anywhere with you,” Saia said. “Just give me my shard.”

“I will, in time.”

She crossed her arms and planted her feet a bit wider on the floor.

“I’m not going anywhere without my shard.”

He stepped back from the window and turned to face her.

“Then I can leave you here, you know? It wouldn’t change anything to me, but your life will be over.”

“Really? Well, I’m sure I can make the floor and ceiling collapse before you deactivate me.” She tried to project confidence, even if she wasn’t sure she would have the time to actually do that. “Then when your ‘collaborators’ come back they can take care of you.”

He inclined his head.

“You’re not the murderous type. You didn’t kill my collaborators when they tried to kidnap your engineer.”

“My engineer? I was forced to protect them.”

“Sure, but you could have gone about it in so many ways that would have left us with… Well, fewer collaborators.” He sighed. “And that’s why I’ll help you. What’s fair is fair, you were true to your words and an invaluable asset to our plans.”

“You claim you want to help me, but you won’t give me the shard?”

“I will, but not here. If you’d just follow me it would make everything easier.”

Saia didn’t trust him in the least. Not that she had a choice, as long as he had her shard.

“I have questions,” she said, partially to gain time to think, partially because she wanted to know who this person was before following him anywhere.

He looked out of the window, made a quick gesture Saia couldn’t interpret, then retreated again inside.

“My friends have caught the one who ran away. We have a bit of time.”

“How did you know I was escaping? The engineers haven’t noticed until now.”

She pointed at the tip of metal of the receiver, still lowering on the same spot of the paper now that there wasn’t anyone to move it aside.

“We didn’t entirely expect it. We had plans for you, sure, but they had to be enacted later this week, during the end of the festival. Thankfully you went off-plans a bit earlier than tonight, so we managed to tighten our intelligence inside the factory.”

Later this week, he had said. Saia realized the Festival of Light would have ended at about that time. She remembered Hilon inviting her there, even if apparently it was just a way to show Filsun that she cared. Saia had asked to go to the zoological garden instead. The moment she went ‘off-plans’.

“We had to scramble,” Nuras kept explaining, unaware of the turmoil inside her head. “Fortunately, I was in position. Years of cleaning their floors as an unassuming janitor, years of gathering their feathers and grinding them into dust.”

He pointed at the shining blue plumage of his arm.

“In the end, I had enough to transform myself. Who would have thought that eating viss from animal people would turn you into an animal person yourself?” He made a pleased sound, halfway between a chuckle and the cooing call of a dove. “They never even suspected I was human. One day I just walked in and they accepted I was one of them. I was ready with my falsified documents and fake background, but they didn’t dig deeper than a passing glance. They were the only ones to own the eagles, I looked and acted like them, so why even suspect me?”

“So… You stole the shard?”

“No, that’s the beauty of it: I was here in the building with them, ready to relieve one of my colleagues at a moment’s notice. As soon as my collaborators signaled me that you had left the factory, I entered here and waited for your arrival. I didn’t expect you to waste your precious time facing my collaborators, I’ll admit. But I was ready: I incapacitated my colleagues and took the shard, deactivated you as a warning, and waited for you to complete all of our objectives. Alas,” he added, looking at the broken door, “They noticed.”

Saia nodded. She’d been right, then: the rebels didn’t always have control of her shard.

“Why did you even need my help to knock out the guards? And to do what?”

“I fear I can’t reveal our plans. But we aren’t many, keeping people asleep takes energies we don’t have. We didn’t even have the maps ready, the one that led you to this building was drawn a few minutes ago. But it all worked out perfectly. Do you want to go home?”

The question took Saia by surprise.

“Of course. That’s the whole reason why I’m here.”

“Then I’ll escort you out of the city. Unless you have other questions?”

Saia stared at him. She couldn’t leave without Aili’s shard, she knew that much. She didn’t trust the representatives to not kidnap her too, or use her as leverage to make Saia come back. But she had no intention of telling any of that to one of the same rebels who had killed one of their collaborators.

“Are there other shards here?” she asked instead. She’d have checked herself, but that meant expanding her domain.

“No. You’re the only god under our control, or at least, under the control of my group of guards. Other questions?”

Saia shook her head.

“Good,” Nuras said. “Let’s go, then.”

He jumped out the window, opening his arms to the side to soften his fall. Saia ran after him and landed on the ground beside him. He stepped back.

“Go on, I’ll tell you when to turn. Remember to keep your distance and not expand your domain, or I’ll be forced to deactivate you.”

Saia started moving between the buildings. The good thing about being escorted by a birdguard was that the few guards and clerks around didn’t spare her a second glance. She observed her environment carefully, from the trees to the ground to the buildings, looking for a way to distract Nuras long enough to take her shard back. At least she had time: they had to reach the bottom of the city, then enter the government building where she’d been welcomed to Iriméze, then wait for the giant chain to be extended. Plenty of chances to take Nuras by surprise.

“Turn right,” he said, some steps behind her.

She hesitated.

“But the elevators are this way.”

“We’re not going there.”

She turned right. There was the wall there, the vertical bridge connecting the fifth level to the top of the city. Someone, probably the rebels, had placed a ladder against it that led straight up. Saia could see a rope handrail at the top, shaken left and right by strong winds.

“You really want me out of the city,” she commented.

“Yes. Ideally before tonight, when the celebrations will begin.”

She reached the ladder and started climbing.

“Somehow I knew you weren’t doing this just out of gratitude,” Saia added.

“I am grateful, but your presence here is a nuisance. We can’t have you here while our plans go into motion. The representatives couldn’t control you properly, and we don’t have the same resources they do.”

The wind at the top was strong enough to give Saia pause. She had to use more viss to move forward. Behind her, Nuras was bent over, gripping the handrail with one hand and the three fingers of the other that weren’t holding the shard.

“Go on,” he said.

Saia stepped forward until she reached the border of the city. She looked down, but in the semi-darkness and with the fake clouds billowing out of the city she couldn’t see the ground below.

“Jump,” Nuras said. “I’ll drop the shard behind you once you’re gone. A fall shouldn’t kill you, right?”

Saia shook her head, almost distractedly. She was sure she could slow down her fall, expending a lot of the precious viss that remained inside her sphere. If Serit hadn’t stolen Aili’s shard, she’d have happily taken that chance to leave Iriméze. Nuras seemed sincere when he said he would drop the shard, but even if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been different than leaving it in the birdguards’ hands.

She observed the surroundings, trying to find a solution, but there was just barren earth and the intense wind that was trying to peel any intruder away from its surface. Nuras was fighting against the wind that tried to tear him away from the handrail, the tunic pushed flat against the front of his body.

“Go now, or I’ll deactivate you,” he grunted.

Saia jumped over the border. She let herself fall for a few armlengths, then expanded her domain and created the strongest wind she could manage. It took her one year of viss to stop her fall, one more to invert direction and gain speed. She only had seconds before Nuras realized what was happening.

Once at the top, she propelled herself forward with another year-worth of wind, strong enough that Nuras’s feet detached from the earth, forcing him to hold onto the rope with one hand and a half. He somehow managed to not let go of her shard even as he was yanked left and right, even as her wind slashed his skin. Saia reached out for his fist, closing her fingers around it in a way that only left a narrow gap. The darkness claimed her, followed by the distant feeling of falling back into emptiness. Then it was gone, along with any trace of consciousness.