After a night of tossing and turning, Felix gave in and got up shortly after dawn, making his way out to the inn-yard. The air was cool yet, and slightly humid, and most of all blessedly quiet. He hoped it would stay that way. He needed to think.
Kraden was there already, sitting on a low wooden bench, one hand wrapped around a steaming cup of milky tea. "Shouldn't you still be sleeping?" he asked Felix, even as he slid over to make room.
"Shouldn't you?" Felix took a seat next to him, leaning back against the packed-earth wall of the inn, already starting to heat up under the light of the fledgling sun.
"Fair enough." Kraden gave a pointed glance in the direction of the jail. "What's your plan?"
He said nothing at first, absentmindedly scratching along his jawline, where new-grown stubble itched. He added that to his list of things to fix at some point, in between finding a boat, keeping everyone alive long enough to use said boat, and dealing with the new set of complications that had just been flung at them in the form of a mysterious, ice-wielding, possibly piratical, probably antagonistic prisoner.
Finally, Felix said, "He's an Adept."
"And?"
And they had no idea who he was, apart from that. He gave Kraden a sidelong glance. "He'll have to know what we're doing."
"And?"
How many more people were they going to drag into this? How many more lives-
How many other choices did they have? He looked away. "What makes you think he'll be on our side?"
Kraden took a slow sip of his tea. "What makes you think he won't?"
In a cramped cell in the Madran jail, Piers also rose with the dawn. He'd tried not to, tried to sleep for as long as he could to make the days pass more quickly (and when had he ever wanted such a thing before? He was surely going mad) but the lone window in the room faced east, and there was nothing for it. As soon as the light hit him, he rose, and groaned, and withdrew to the far corner, still safely in the shade. He curled up there and tried to pretend this wasn't real.
He stayed there for quite a while, moving only when someone came in with the customary rice, and retreating to the corner afterward. Later he'd get up and move about, but pacing too long made his head spin.
Everything was wrong out here, he decided, gazing dully at the flat patch of sky which he could just make out through the tiny window. The people were slow-witted and childish, the sun was too hot, too bright—even the air was wrong. It smelled of damp earth, not salt, and this too was an aggravation.
He'd started to dream that the walls were closing in.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. He was supposed to be in the open air, on the open water, on his ship, ages away from here. He was supposed to keep moving, to check the maps and make the notes and above all else bring the news with him back home. He'd once wanted, more than anything, to see past the Sea of Time—but he hadn't wanted this.
How foolish he'd been.
A sound from the doorway broke his reverie, and he looked toward the door, confused. Had Shin come back so soon?
No, he realized, as a figure stepped out of the shadows, not Shin. Nor the guards.
One of the strangers from yesterday, back again. Piers didn't bother standing to greet him. His visitor crouched in front of the bars, as he had the day before, angular face half-hidden behind the collar of his cloak. His eyes were deep brown, Piers noticed, a color that didn't exist in Lemuria.
They stared at each other.
At long last the other man spoke. "I talked to the townspeople," he said, in a low voice that Piers could almost imagine being pleasant. "Apparently not everyone thinks you're a pirate."
A lot of good that did him.
"Can you tell me where you're from? It's important."
No it wasn't. Piers stared him down.
The stranger leaned in. "Are you from Imil? Do you belong to a clan?"
He'd never heard of Imil, and was about to say as much, but something about the way this Outsider said "clan," gave him pause—but no, it couldn't be. Apart from that… thief, no one knew about them. No one should know—what was this one plotting? His eyes narrowed. "Do you always speak nonsense, or have I simply gotten lucky?"
As soon as he said it he wished he hadn't. He saw a flash of something in those dark eyes and looked away briefly, ashamed. He'd been here too long; their manners were starting to rub off on him.
Piers waited for the inevitable angry reply, but the other man only sighed heavily, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I told Kraden this was a bad idea," he muttered.
No further explanation was forthcoming.
He stayed like that a moment, brow furrowed—thinking, though about what Piers had absolutely no idea—and scrubbed a hand across his face. Eventually, he said, "You're not a pirate."
Fair enough. "No."
"You have a boat."
"A ship."
"You won't say where you're from."
Silence.
Who was this person, Piers almost wondered, and then reminded himself it didn't matter. None of this did.
The stranger regarded him impassively, and as the moments crept by Piers became painfully aware of how pathetic he himself must have looked, how grimy and disheveled, and the shame made the back of his neck burn. Indignity, on top of everything else. He told himself that didn't matter, either, but some part of him said maybe it did.
In the end, though, Piers said nothing, and the other man said nothing, and soon enough he rose and made for the door. He turned back at the threshold, as though he were about to speak, but then he appeared to think better of it and stopped himself, departing in silence and leaving Piers all alone.
Felix left the jail, mind reeling. He'd gone to the jail expecting to find—something. A reason to trust him. A reason to leave him be. Instead he'd only gotten more unknowns. Not a member of any clan? That might be a good thing… or it meant he was some kind of rogue. He hadn't seemed very roguish, though, half-silent and penned in behind the bars.
Even with the jail well behind him, Felix couldn't get the image out of his head.
I know what it's like, he'd wanted to tell him. I know what it's like.
When he returned to their room at the inn, he found Jenna sitting on the floor, the strange card and the odd little cube they'd gotten laid out in front of her, as Sheba and Kraden looked on, expectant.
"What are you doing?" he asked, dropping his pack near the door.
"There's something up with these," she said, without looking at him. "It reminds me of that pebble we got. It's like…"
"Like what?"
"I don't know. I kind of want to…" She picked the cube up, closed her hand around it. "Sheba, move over."
She did, and Jenna pointed to where she'd been sitting. "See that loose nail?"
He nodded.
"I can't explain it, but I think…" She took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
SLAM
He saw, just barely, a ghostly force reach out, and pound against the floor. When he went over to inspect it, the nail lay flush against the boards. Felix raised an eyebrow, and Jenna held up the little cube, grinning. "Aha! I guess we know what you do, now!"
He looked back to the pounded-down nail, impressed. Definitely a more useful trick than the pebble had given them. He wondered if it could be used in combat.
"Do the other one, do the other one!" said Sheba.
Jenna laughed. "Not so fast, miss bossy! I still don't know what this thing does."
Sheba stuck out her tongue.
She tucked the card away and with a sigh she turned to Felix. "Find out anything new?"
He sat at the edge of one of the beds, elbows resting on his knees. "Some of the townsfolk think he's innocent. The mayor thought so too; the pirate that raided this place fled to another town, so the mayor's gone after him. A lot of people think the prisoner helped with it, though. I couldn't get any information out of him."
Kraden cleared his throat. "Can you shed any light on it, Sheba?"
She'd gone out earlier to do some mind reading, but she shook her head, suddenly serious. "I don't know. I don't think he's a pirate, but I can't tell what he's doing here. All he thinks about is getting out."
Jenna waved a hand. "It doesn't matter what he is, he has the only boat around. What are we gonna do about it?" Before Felix had a chance to answer, a devilish grin spread across her face, and she held out the cube. "Jailbreak?"
Sheba's eyes lit up. "Jailbreak!"
"No!" said Felix, to pouts all around. "Half the town want him dead. If we break him out they'll want us dead, too."
"You're no fun," she muttered.
"You said the mayor went to another town?" Kraden said.
He nodded. "To the east. I don't know how far. He's the only one with the authority to free the prisoner."
Jenna slumped, dejected. "I guess we're stuck waiting here, then. At least there's curry."
That there was, bright red and delicious after days of increasingly-stale bread. Did they have curry where the prisoner was from, Felix wondered, and he thought again about sadness and ice and iron bars, and finally made the choice. "No."
The others stared.
"He's the only prospect we have. We're not leaving it to chance." He met their eyes, resolute at last. "We have to help him."
It was one thing to decide to help, but another to actually go through with it. Nonetheless, after an afternoon of questioning, some careful negotiation, and several rants about "no good pirate dogs," he had a strategy to go on and—best of all—a map to go with it.
He returned to the inn and found the others much as he'd left them before, though now Jenna held the card in front of her face, glowering at it intently. She was starting to go cross-eyed."What's the plan?"
In answer, he brushed their things aside and unfurled the map.
"Alhafra." Felix jabbed his finger at a tiny dot near the edge of the grubby parchment. The map, which showed Madra, Alhafra, and not much else, had taken a lot of their coin, and supplies had taken most of the rest, but if it all went to plan they could be there in a week, and hopefully back out of Madra by boat in two. "The people I spoke to said the bridge is out, so we'll have to take this route instead…"
"Across the desert?" said Sheba. "Sounds nice. It was so cold last night." She shivered, and Jenna shot her a strange look.
"I think that was just you."
Felix ignored them. "That's where the mayor's going. He took the elders with him, and some of the councilmen…none of them are Adepts, none of them are soldiers." His ragtag group wasn't much better, but at least they had psynergy on their side. It might be enough, he reasoned, to back up another group if need be. "Even if they make it there unharmed, the pirate's gotten away from them once already. We'll do our best to stop it from happening again."
"You think we can take on a pirate?"
He hoped it wouldn't come to that. "I think we have to try."
