Aili felt as if her sphere was being pulled apart by claws of fire. She tried to focus on something else, but there was nothing aside from the dark forest, the pressure of the abbot's power against her own, and the monks getting ready to attack her people as soon as she faltered. At least most of them were panicking for the violent trembling under their feet. She could only hope that the monks guarding Suimer would be taken by surprise as well and not notice the boat floating away with the sphere she'd helped steal. Saia's plan, revisited by Rabam as a diversion.

"Innocents will die," the abbot screamed, and to his credit he managed to distract her for a mere instant.

Between resisting the pain and keeping up a semblance of a barrier to protect her people, she couldn't even formulate an answer. She focused on the village's entrance, hoping the next monk to come out would be Rabam. She had a bad feeling about it all, a different kind of pain that felt like the cold of empty rooms.

“One thousand,” Lada said under her breath, holding up her sphere with both hands.

Aili knew it was foolish, but wished for her to count faster, as if it was her words that decided the passing of time. The trees were shaking so violently now she could see their roots emerging from the earth in places.

The monks were pouring out of the village now, immediately falling to their knees once outside as if the earth could protect them. Sentinels dropped their weapons to clamp their hands over their ears, as if it could stop the tremor in their bones. Others held onto rocks, trunks, and even each other not to fall down. Aili considered breaking her own sphere just to make the pain stop.

A loud crack higher up was followed by a shadow the size of a small house tumbling down the mountain. Aili let the barrier shrink to calculate its trajectory. The boulder was flattening trees and breaking smaller rocks on its way to the sea, but it didn't look like it was about to crush a village.

It didn’t, at least, until it changed direction. Now the walls of Suimer were directly on its path, and it was gaining speed.

"Run," she whispered to her companions. She expected them to argue like they always did, but this time they bolted without a protest.

She stopped withdrawing her connection to the mountain and everything became still, except for the boulder.

She waited until her people were outside of the abbot’s reach before raising a wall of debris and dust with her winds, the kind that would take several minutes to fall down again. She took flight, leaving Lada’s hands: she knew that the sentinels could still reach the rebels, but if she didn’t hurry, there would be nowhere for them to retreat back to.

The boulder was still gaining speed, slipping from her grasp at every bounce. Toward Suimer, and everything Zeles had built with his sacrifice.

______________________

Daira walked fast toward the exit, clutching the three coins and a bottle of cloud water to her chest. She looked conspicuous amid everyone running to safety, and yet she couldn’t bring herself to go faster: she was still stunned by Rabam’s scream as he fell backward into the hole.

The magnitude of her choice weighed her down. She knew her days as a prior were over, and even on the off-chance she got reinstated, there was no point in having a government if the abbot was an ever-present, all-powerful being inside the village. If she had to serve a god, she preferred Aili. After all, she was doing everything she had accused her, Saia and Rabam of: betraying the monks, the village, and all they believed in. She expected the abbot to stop her. The enormity of what she was doing seemed too big not to be noticed.

She stumbled outside, pressed between two groups of monks. The sentinels were too preoccupied with avoiding a stampede to even acknowledge her. The earthquake had stopped, even if there was still a distant rumbling somewhere.

She found a weapon on the ground and grabbed it, holding the coins and bottle awkwardly with the other hand. She charged the wall of dust in the distance, pretending to join the small horde of monks that was following Suimer’s rebels. She covered her face with an arm, in case the wall was more solid than expected. She felt the debris brush her face and every bit of exposed skin, then the cold air of the night. The only light came from two sentinels who had managed to bring a torch with them. They were advancing slowly, observing each tree in case there was a rebel nearby.

Daira stopped and looked back toward the village. They were just outside of the abbot’s range, unless he decided to leave for some unfathomable reason. Her disappearance might have been one.

She examined the sentinels on her side of the wall of debris: seven in total, slowly growing with the few who were brave enough to cross the barrier. She flexed her hand around the spear: she wasn’t strong enough to win a fight against trained warriors. Not alone, at least: she needed to reach the rebels before the monks did.

She reached out for the nearest tree and closed her eyes. There were no traces of viss on the trunk, so she stumbled to the next one, and the next, until she found a fresh trail full of fear. She set off alone, in the dark, with only a speck of viss here and there to guide her. Still, she was proceeding in the right direction, faster than the sentinels, at least until they managed to organize themselves.

She saw a small light in front of her, waving through the trees. She slowed down: a part of her was glad she'd finally found the rebels, the rest dreaded meeting them.

Before she could catch up, an arm wrapped around her neck. A hand muffled her yell. She struggled, but quickly realized the rebel's grip was too strong to break. She yanked at their sleeve to get to their exposed skin. The bastard was wearing long gloves, like the ones of a smith.

"Shut up and stop moving."

“Davem, wait” a whisper came from somewhere to their right, followed by a frantic rustling as another person drew closer. "What if it's Rabam?"

"Didn't sound like him," the man holding Daira said, but his grip softened.

She realized his face was exposed, so she stopped pulling at his sleeves and extended an arm behind her head. The movement of her shoulder betrayed her intent, and he managed to duck out of her reach. They were in complete darkness now, since the group of rebels walking ahead had snuffed out the light. She heard them approaching, their worried whispers.

"Is it Rabam?"

"No," the man holding Daira said.

The light reappeared in front of her face, blinding her for a moment. She glimpsed another woman on the other side.

"Saia?" she called, her words silenced by the hand pressing over her mouth. The light went out again.

"She's the one they sent to negotiate," the woman said, but her voice wasn't Saia's.

"What do we do?" someone else whispered.

"Keep her as a hostage," the man behind Daira said.

"They don't care about saving their own people. Let's tie her up somewhere and leave."

Daira started to protest, but her words were unintelligible. She didn't know how else to convince them.

"Sentinels!" someone whispered, right before the light of a torch appeared from behind the trees.

The rebels retreated slowly, dragging Daira with them. The ones who had weapons extracted them and crouched behind the tree trunks, while the rest continued their slow retreat.

"There's someone," the monks yelled, and the torches became two, quickly approaching.

The light was barely enough to see, so Daira held up the bundle of coins and bottle of cloud water, wiggling them in hope that somebody would notice. The woman that resembled Saia took them from her hands. She closed her eyes briefly, and when she opened them they glinted in the dark.

"What does it mean?"

Daira pointed at the hand still muffling her.

“Davem, let her speak."

"She might yell and reveal where we are."

"They’re already coming.”

Davem let slowly go of Daira, even if his hand still hovered in front of her face, ready to silence her again.

Daira hesitated for a moment: she could still go back and help her people, nobody had noticed her leave with the water and coins. But then she remembered Rabam's face right before he fell down the hole and realized her mind had been made up at that moment.

"Rabam sent me," she whispered, trying to catch her breath at the same time. "I can help. I want to join you."

Her two captors exchanged a glance.

"I don't believe her," the man said.

"Aili had offered her to escape," the woman replied.

"Yes, and she refused. And where's Rabam?"

"He took the coins from the crater and told me to bring them to you." Daira glanced back at the approaching sentinels. "If you free me I can help you. They still trust me."

The woman looked at Daira for a long time, then took out a knife.

"Lada, no,” Davem hissed.

"I'm in charge for tonight," she said. Then, to Daira: "We're taking a braid."

She looked at the knife for a long time before nodding. Lada worked quickly. Each time her fingers brushed Daira’s scalp, she had to fight the urge of putting her to sleep before she could. Soon she was over and she was free of the rebel's grip. She started up the trail, massaging the patch of short hair left behind after the cut. There was no going back.

The sentinels had almost reached the hidden rebels. Daira marched ahead as fast as she could to intercept them first.

"Stop," she ordered, imbuing into her voice all of the authority she had left.

They obeyed, but she still saw their hostility at the light of the torches.

"Why are you here?" one of them asked.

"I was following them. They set up a trap ahead. If you keep going, you'll fall right into it.”

"We don't follow your orders,” the monk leading the group said. "Show us the trap."

"Right there," she pointed, a little to the right, away from the main group of rebels.

She stood behind while the monks advanced. When the two sentinels closing the line stepped beside her, she extended her arms to brush the back of their necks. She managed to grab their torch as they fell down, but couldn't hide the thuds of their unconscious bodies when they hit the ground. The other sentinels turned before she could choose her next victim.

The rebels jumped out of the trees.

Daira stepped back while the fight broke out. Suimer's people had the advantage of surprise, but weren't as trained in combat as the sentinels. She planted the torch on the ground and stepped around the ring of fighters, putting the monks to sleep when she saw a chance. Soon she was out of viss and breath, but there were more rebels standing than monks. The sentinels realized how bad their position had become and started retreating. Daira deliberately looked away as they ran off. She joined the rebels, and they all resumed the descent without a word.

They only managed to get halfway down the mountain before they heard the sentinels again. It was a bigger group, a line of torches coming down fast. They didn’t even bother to hide.

“Ideas?” Lada asked.

“Run,” Daira said. “If we’re lucky, they won’t catch us all.”

They did, even if the rising sun made it easier to spot their movement among the trees. Daira didn’t have any doubts that all the binoculars of the village were trained on them. Words of her betrayal must have already reached the abbot.

Shapes appeared in the forest in front of them. Gray tunics, like the ones that were following them. Daira swore under her breath: she had forgotten how many monks were waiting in the villages. If they’d been alerted, there was no hope of escaping the trap that was about to close on their group.

The sentinels collapsed as one. Daira blinked a few times before the event actually registered in her tired mind.

“Aili!” one of the rebels cried out. A couple of them started pointing up.

A sphere of light fell into Lada’s waiting hands.

“Please hurry, there are a lot of monks around Suimer and they might be planning something.”

Daira received an additional message that nobody else seemed to hear.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’ve decided to join you,” she said out loud. Muttering wasn’t her style, especially when the conversation at hand could improve the rebel’s opinion of her.

“What about Rabam?”

Daira hesitated. Admitting she was the last person to see him alive didn’t seem like a good idea at that particular moment.

“It’s better if we discuss it in a safe place.”

They marched down the last stretch of forest before Suimer’s walls. The monks in pursuit had realized there was a goddess nearby and had halted far behind.

Daira wondered how they were all supposed to enter the village, when Lada and Davem were lifted by an invisible force toward the top of the wall. The rebels took flight one by one, leaving her there. She waited patiently, glancing around for traces of the monks’ presence. Only after a few minutes she began suspecting that Aili had no intention of letting her join the rebels.

She realized how foolish she’d been in taking it for granted just because Rabam had told her to go. Aili had wanted to help her once, but she had refused in no uncertain terms. She’d undoubtedly considered it a trick of the monks.

She wondered what she could say to convince her. Maybe leading with excuses might set the tone for a productive discussion. But gods could feel lies; she felt plenty of guilt, but wasn’t particularly sorry for anything.

The rising sun made her feel too visible. She concluded that speaking was better than saying nothing at all.

“The monks might kill me before the cold does,” she said.

The answer came swiftly enough to surprise her.

“The council is deciding whether they want to let you in.”

“You’ll need to extract viss from the coins I’ve brought you. I’ve done it multiple times, I could help.”

“I’ve told them that. It’s not my decision, though.”

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

“No. I wouldn’t know what the truth is.”

There was an instant of silence. The wind blew away a handful of dust from the top of the wall, and Daira stepped back to avoid it.

“We want to know about Rabam,” Aili said. “We were waiting for him.”

Daira focused on her viss to hide her apprehension. She decided to broach the subject from afar. She told Aili of how she discovered that the object that Rabam was carrying was useless, then looked for him everywhere and only thought of checking the crater room right when he was coming out of it. That he was badly injured, and had asked her to bring the coins to Suimer, telling her that Aili needed her help.

“Is he alive now?” Aili cut her short.

Daira took a deep breath. She relented control over her own viss, let her true emotions shine through.

“He fell into the crater.”

The answer came distorted, as if Aili was struggling to keep her voice under control.

“Voluntarily?”

“I… don’t know. I don’t think so.”

She felt the wind grow under her body. It carried her upward, and she struggled to maintain her calm when it wavered, wondering whether it was a normal occurrence or Aili losing control. Then she was high enough to see Suimer itself, and the crowd of people that had decided of her fate.

Despite the circumstances, she put on a smile, the same she’d been trained to use once she’d become an abbot. Unwavering, reassuring, and extremely fake.