a drawer. “Paper is so temporary, don’t you think? Many of our oldest records have been copied dozens of times, simply because the pages don’t last. Like someone else I know.”
I kept my eyes on the bundle of pages she carried. “What is that?”
“The other problem with paper is if you spill something on it, or burn it, whatever you kept on there is lost.” She dropped the pages on the table; they spread out and settled without order. Even so, I knew what they were. Music. Bars and notes and tiny doodles in the margins. AI-4, AI-10: they were pages of a longer piece.
My hand was as heavy as a brick as I reached for the title page and turned it toward me. “Ana Incarnate,” it read, no fancy flourishes or underlines with it, just a tiny butterfly in the corner.
It was the waltz Sam had written for me. My song.
“Don’t hurt it,” I whispered.
“Paper is so temporary,” she repeated, looking pointedly at the fireplace.
“No!” I threw myself across the table and scooped up pages, but Li was faster.
She ripped the pages from my hands and tossed them at the fire. Paper fluttered, some into the flame, and some drifted to the ashy hearth.
I lunged across the room and rescued as many sheets as I could, but fire singed my hands. No matter how many I saved from the flames, Li balled up more pages and threw them in, laughing.
When she was bored, she wiped her hands on her pants and headed for the door. “Go to bed. You have a long day tomorrow.”
I patted out the last of the embers with a dish towel and struggled to put the pages in order. My hands stung as I sifted through the delicate sheets. Some were salvageable; others were burned so badly they hadn’t been worth rescuing, as black blotted out the bars of music.
Those pages went in back. Maybe Sam would know how to save them. Determined to see him try, I eased the pages of my song into a stiff notebook for safekeeping.
Forget Li. Forget the Council. If this was life in Heart, I would give up my quest. I’d rather never know where I came from than let Li destroy everything that mattered to me.
I went upstairs to get my knife.
There wasn’t much to pack. My song fit inside my backpack, along with a few other necessities. For the last two weeks I’d been too scared to escape. There were guards — Li made sure I saw them every morning — and I’d been afraid of what would happen if they caught me. Now I was more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t try.
I waited until the sun dipped behind the wall, casting the city in hazy indigo. Within minutes, it would be full night.
Dressed in the darkest clothes I could find, I tied and tucked my hair into a cap and picked the lock on the window. Stef had taught me, saying I shouldn’t be the only one in Range who didn’t know how; Sam had called her a miscreant.
Clouds covered the sky, threatening some kind of unfortunate weather. In the inky-dark yard, I found only fir trees and bushes, a small garden. Normal things. Most people had what they needed to be self-sufficient between market days, even Li.
Bored-sounding voices came from the north side of the house. No footsteps or swishing brush accompanied them, so they were standing still. Chances were they faced my window, hidden at an angle so I wouldn’t be able to see them unless I leaned out. And then they’d see me.
I hurled an old shoe outside. It landed inside a thick copse of conifers. Two pair of footfalls followed, and I hauled myself out of the window, turned to catch my toes on a ledge, and reached for a bare cottonwood branch. I hung two stories up as the footsteps came toward the house again.
Frantically, I swung myself into the tree, which obliged me with silence. I stayed huddled on the thick branch until the guards were settled. When they went around to the house — discussing whether or not I’d tried to escape, or just wanted to tease them — I scrambled down the tree and into the brush on the far side of the yard.
When everything was quiet, only a breeze and night birds singing lullabies, I crept around to the walkway. As much as I wanted to run, I made myself stop and listen every few steps.
Past the walkway and onto North Avenue, I sneaked through the city, keeping to shadows. When I had to cross intersections, I held my breath and sprinted, hyperalert for sounds other than that of my shoes on cobblestones. Sleet pattered to the ground. I was almost grateful for the noise to blot out my footfalls, but it blotted anyone else’s, too.
The city seemed bigger for every step I took, and the temple farther away. I ran down North Avenue and stopped short at the market field. So much empty space. I imagined a shadow of me streaking across the field and my stupid black clothes pressed against the white buildings.
Great.
Sleet tapped harder on the city, glistening under the iridescent light. If I didn’t move, I’d turn into an ice statue right here.
I searched the gray-lit area and listened as long as I dared. I still had to get around the Councilhouse, not to mention find some kind of entrance into the building, and a way to get Sam out. Just because I could pick the lock on my window didn’t mean I knew anything about the soul-scanners used in the more secure parts of the city.
“No more stalling,” I whispered, and pushed myself across the market field. Too loud. My shoes slapped the cobblestones. My breath hissed and whitened the cold air. I held the straps of my backpack to keep it from bouncing, but that didn’t stop the contents from jostling. Forget someone seeing my stupid black clothes against the building; they’d hear me coming first.
After an eternity, I slipped on wet stone and landed against the Councilhouse wall, bounced off, and crumpled to the street as breath whooshed from my chest. I coughed and gasped into my sleeves, waiting for my vision to clear before I tried sneaking around the building.
Black clothes. White building. Sam would have anticipated this. Anyone would have. Anyone but me. I hated being new.
Once again confident in my ability to breathe, I searched the field. Sleet glittered on the cobblestones, making the road slick. But the weather came from the north, so as soon as I was on the south side of the Councilhouse, I’d be out of the worst of it. I hoped.
I started around, keeping low, but the building was twice the length of the market field; it would take forever if I insisted on creeping. I made a run for it. Cobblestones slid under my boots, but I didn’t stop. Up one side of the half-moon stairs, behind the columns that guarded the doors, and down the other side of the stairs. The market field stayed clear.
Meuric’s house loomed on the corner of the southwest quarter. Lights burned upstairs, but no silhouettes stood in windows, waiting to catch me misbehaving. Li and the guards wouldn’t check on me until morning. By then, I’d be out of the city.
Thunder rumbled in the north. Worse storms were on the way.
I slipped around to the south side of the building and brushed ice off my clothes and backpack. Shivering, I checked Meuric’s house one more time — nothing — and crept around in search of the window I’d seen before.
The temple shed just enough light to see by. As much as I hated the strange patterns that shimmered across its white surface, I was grateful for the light as I looked for a way into the Councilhouse, like the side doors that led into the library.
Yellow light came from a window only hip-high, sliced with iron bars. I knelt and peered through the glass as more thunder growled.
The room was mostly belowground, lit with old-fashioned bulbs like Purple Rose Cottage. I couldn’t see much from my vantage point, but bars divided the room into several sections with cots and toilets. Cells. One sat just beneath my window, but I couldn’t see anyone in it. In the next cell over, Sam slumped on a cot, facing away and talking with someone I couldn’t see. Glass muffled their low voices.
I tapped on the window. Sam’s back straightened, and a face appeared in the window right in front of me. Startled, I fell to my butt and smothered a yelp in my mittens. Stef grinned and fiddled with latches. The window slid up, and warm air billowed onto my face.
“Whew.” Stef shivered. “Cold out there.”
“It’s sleeting.” I wrapped my mittens around the bars.
