“They debated,” she said. “These things are never clear. Some thought the five would be warriors. Other said the five would come from the watchers, for after all, weren’t they watching for signs that the end of the dark age was near? My brother, when he first became a watcher, used to imagine he would be one of them, one day.”
Kate had whispered the name of Laysia’s brother to Nell, and she received this news sourly. “I thought the watchers stayed away from the Genius. All we saw them do in the city was run when anyone came near.”
Kate couldn’t see Laysia’s face when Nell said that. She had turned a little away at mention of her brother. After a moment, Laysia got up and set the chipped pitcher before them. She looked into it steadily, and suddenly Kate heard the lapping sound of water rising up from its round opening. Laysia set two cups before them.
“They run, but not out of fear anymore,” she said as she poured. The afternoon light danced along the stream of water as it spilled from pitcher to cup. “Once, they did. When the sanctuary was new, and they were small in number. They were weak then. All they could do was watch. Later, their numbers increased as they began bringing in the unwanted, like me. So over time they grew strong. It would be folly to think them weak. They are part of the power that is the mist.”
She looked up briefly at Nell, who flinched at the word.
“If they’re so strong, what do they hide for?” Nell asked.
The woman sighed.
“Again to the cherished debate.”
Kate looked at Nell for an explanation, but she only shrugged.
Laysia said, “It’s an old saying. Argument sharpens the mind, and so the sages often do it. And though one side may not prevail, still their reasoning is treasured and kept for the lesson it offers. Or at least it used to be so, before Tur Nurayim was turned from the council. He argued that the time had come to show our faces, to offer proof that the change could be turned back. He lost that argument to Tur Kaysh and the followers he gathered around him, which after a time included the council itself. Kaysh insisted there is nothing to salvage in the city. It’s evil, and the watchers must hide their faces until the time comes to punish it with the hand of justice.”
“Hand of justice,” Nell said quietly. “Is that something in your books, too?”
Laysia nodded and raised her hand, bending each finger in turn. The punishing hand of justice. Kate looked at her own five fingers and frowned.
At dusk, as the sky bled and the trees gathered shadows round their ankles and knees, the howl of the mist rose, bending with a whistle at the newcomers who dared traverse it. She watched as the girl Nell turned that way, wincing.
Laysia promised to return with the others and then set out through the falling light, wading through fireflies that rose from the grass to meet the shadows. She returned to the fourth gate in time to find slim figures bent in the dusk. They had just emerged from the fog. Briefly, she glanced at it — a white haze that stained the dark. Then she turned to the children and found herself momentarily tongue-tied at sight of their half-remembered faces. She called the names she had been given: Susan, Max, Jean. But there were only two.
The older steered the younger toward her as they climbed the last of the rise, stumbling. The older girl raised her head so her eyes caught the faint light of the crescent moon.
“Do you have my sisters?”
The thin moon and white stars could not brighten the wood, and so Laysia led them back through such darkness that they were forced to follow like the smallest of children, clutching her skirts. The girl called Jean sniffed and broke into tears as they went, and Susan hushed her. Laysia thought of nothing to say. She had failed to grow wise in the way other women she’d known had grown wise, full of the deep-welled passions of age — passion for children and the future. Instead, she had gained the meek wisdom of solitude. She wondered if Lan had become a father. She doubted it. They were lonely souls, she and her brother. He had been perhaps more lonely even than she, leaving home to give her life. If later he had pushed her away, sent her unknowing to a terrible fate, that did not erase the first gift. It never could.
Kate strained to hear it. Whatever it was Laysia had heard, whatever Nell heard, she wanted to hear it, too. She stood at the window, chewing a knuckle and watching the fireflies twinkle as the dark erased the lines between the trees and crept over the garden and took the sky. For a long time, she could pick out nothing but the chirp of crickets outside and the sound of Nell behind her, kicking a chair leg as she turned the pages of The Age of Anam, which Laysia had left on the table.
But a million years seemed to pass, or maybe two million, while she stood there. After a while, she noticed a faint rumble beneath the crickets. It vibrated warningly from the woods, an animal roused from sleep. She glanced back at Nell and saw her hunched down, her shoulders pulled in as she frowned into the book.
Eventually it receded, and Kate was back to listening to the empty night. She had begun imagining she could pick out the soft, combustive hiss of the fireflies by the time footsteps sounded outside. Nell reached the door first, leaping from her chair and flinging it open.
“Nell! You’re okay!”
Susan’s voice, sharp with relief, not dazed, not faint, the way it had been the other night.
Laysia stepped through the door, and
