her jailer. He was glowering, as usual, and Miranda glowered right back.
She was about to make her traditional demand to be set free when she noticed something was wrong. The man’s scowling face was off, somehow, his dark eyes unfocused and glossy. That was all she saw before he fell forward.
Miranda danced back with an undignified squeal. The Shaper landed face-first on the floor with a hollow thump, his arms flopping beside him in a way that made her stomach twist. She stared at him for several seconds before an infuriating, familiar voice brought her eyes back up.
“Well, well. Still alive?”
Sparrow was leaning on the door to her cell, a smug smile on his thin lips.
Miranda took a step back. “You!”
“Your gallant hero,” he said, spreading his arms with a flourish.
Miranda took another step back, keeping her distance as Sparrow stepped into the cell. He was dressed in the same dull brown he’d worn to chase Eli, and though the color should have stood out like a stain against the pure white walls, she was having a hard time focusing on him. Slowly, subtly, she hid her hands in her pockets and began to wake her spirits, just in case.
“Why are you here?”
“To rescue you, of course,” Sparrow said, his voice all sincerity.
Miranda didn’t buy it for a moment. “If you think I believe that you snuck in here and killed a man to rescue me out of the goodness of your heart—”
“Perish the thought,” Sparrow said. “I’m here because Sara wants you alive and useable, which means not locked up. And I didn’t kill anyone, for your information.” He kicked the downed man with his boot. “It’s a paralytic poison. He’ll wake up in an hour with pins and needles like he’s never felt, but otherwise unharmed. Not to crush your ego, but Sara doesn’t care enough about your rescue to risk angering the mountain by killing a Shaper.”
“But freeing a prisoner is fine?”
Sparrow gave her a withering look. “My patience is very thin today, Spiritualist. If you would rather not be rescued, I can leave you here.”
“No, no,” Miranda said quickly, her shoulders slumping. “I’m in your debt, Sparrow.”
“You don’t know the half of it, dear,” he said, walking farther into the cell. “Shall we be off?”
“No,” Miranda said, shaking her head. “Gin and Slorn are still prisoners. I can’t leave without them.”
“Way ahead of you,” Sparrow said. “I knew you wouldn’t turn down an offer of escape, so I took the liberty of freeing the dog first. As for Slorn, he’s decided to remain in the mountain, so we’ll just have to make do without his sterling company.”
Miranda gave an incredulous snort. “You actually think I believe that?”
“I don’t much care what you believe,” Sparrow said. “But understand that Slorn is worth a lot more to Sara than you are. I would gladly trade you for him if I could, but the bear man said he had unfinished business with the mountain.”
“So you left him?” Miranda said, horrified. “Just like that?”
“Just. Like. That,” Sparrow answered. “I have many jobs, Miss Lyonette. Bear wrestler isn’t one of them. We came to an arrangement of mutual benefit to the reasonable satisfaction of both parties. Let’s leave it at that. Now, we should be going before the Shapers miss our friend here.” He tapped the prone man with his boot again. “Or before your overprotective dog gets nervous and decides to come find you himself.”
Miranda paled. She wouldn’t put it past Gin. “Fine,” she said. “How are we getting out?”
Sparrow smiled and slipped his hand into his pocket. “The Shapers must not think too much of you,” he said, pulling out something small, flat, and dark. “This cell is right up against the mountain’s outer wall, so that’s the way we’re going to go.”
“What?” Miranda said. “Through the wall?”
“A bit flashy, I’ll grant you,” Sparrow said, tossing the small, black object with one hand and catching it in the other. “But thanks to your overly inquisitive and suspicious nature, we don’t exactly have the luxury of time.”
Miranda’s eyes darted to the thing he was tossing between his hands. It was shaped like a teardrop, smooth, dark, and slightly wrinkled, like a peach pit. “What’s that?”
“One of Sara’s experiments,” Sparrow said, bending over and tucking the thing into the crook where the wall met the floor. “You may want to step back.”
Miranda’s eyes widened, but she obeyed, stepping back to the door to her cell while carefully avoiding the paralyzed guard. Sparrow followed a moment later. In the hall was the small cart that the guard had been pushing before Sparrow had interrupted him. It was loaded with plates of cold prison rations, which Miranda recognized far too well, and a stone pitcher of water, which Sparrow grabbed.
“This should do,” he said, hefting the full pitcher with both hands.
Before Miranda could ask what he meant by that, Sparrow turned and threw the pitcher’s contents across the room. The water flew in an arc, glittering in the mountain’s white light for a moment before splashing down on the peach pit Sparrow had left against the wall.
The moment the water hit, the thing exploded. Miranda jumped back as a sound like a breaking tree cracked her eardrums. She slammed her hands over her ears, but it did no good. The sound was as much spiritual as physical, throwing her spirits into an uproar. Looking up, she saw why.
The peach pit was now a tangle of roots and branches. The wood seethed like a nest of snakes, coiling and shooting in all directions. Roots dug into the white stone of the mountain, crumbling the rock as they pushed their way down. The cell wall came apart in chunks as the growing limbs, now covered with the first growth of new leaves, shot out in search of sunlight. The cluster of wood doubled in seconds. Whole chunks of stone were breaking off the cell walls, falling away as the newborn tree fought to reach the open air. The mountain began to shake under Miranda’s feet, but it was too late. With a final snapping crash, the tree broke through the last layer of stone and golden sunlight streamed into Miranda’s prison.
She stood there gaping for a split second before Sparrow grabbed her hand and yanked her off her feet. They jumped over the paralyzed guard, now dangling from the branches like a caught kite, and ran up the trunk of the newborn tree. Branches were still exploding from the trunk under their feet as great clusters of green raced to catch the newly won sunlight. Sparrow dodged them deftly, pulling Miranda up through the hole in the mountain and into the sun.
“You’ve still got that sea in you, right?” he shouted over the roar of the growing wood.
“What did Sara do to this poor spirit?” Miranda shouted back, nearly slipping when a branch suddenly sprouted under her foot. “This violates—”
“Shut up and answer the question!” Sparrow snapped. “Sea, yes or no?”
“Yes,” Miranda yelled. “Why?”
The tree bucked beneath them as the mountain wind tossed the branches. They were outside, but Miranda could see nothing but the backs of leaves. Sparrow grabbed her hand and pointed it down. “Make a chute of water here.”
Miranda tried to rip her hand away. “What do you—”
A horrible sound of snapping wood cut her off, and she whirled around to see the white stone of the Shaper Mountain chomp down on the hole the tree had broken. The trunk squealed as the rock clamped down, shaking violently as the mountain began to chew through the wood. Miranda grabbed for a branch to steady herself, but Sparrow still had her hand. He yanked her forward until she looked at him. The minute he had her eyes, he made a good luck gesture with his free hand and pushed her off the tree.
For a breathless moment, Miranda felt almost weightless as her feet left the pitching trunk. Then gravity kicked in, and she began to fall. She plummeted through the branches, grabbing for them desperately as she passed, but every one broke in her hand, too new and thin to stop her fall. Sunlight blinded her as she burst through the canopy into the icy air. The mountain towered above her, enormous and blindingly white against the pale morning sky. The freezing wind tossed her as she plummeted in free fall, unable even to turn and see what waited below. It was at this point, hurtling through the air, that her mind finally caught up with her falling body and she began to scream.
The sound was scarcely made before Mellinor answered. Water poured out of her. It flowed through the air, catching her fall in a series of pools. She splashed through each one only to drop to the next, but every pool
