Phoenix

Knowledge

Ash's eyes were still closed when she returned to the present. The chain was still pulled tight around her neck, but there'd been a disturbance in the room, a shift in temperature, a draft bringing with it the scent of log fires and candle wax.

She didn't have time to place it. She was too busy having the seams of her mind ripped open, and all the empty spaces that had been occupied by loneliness and disorientation, flooded.

She remembered everything. The angle of her father's raised eyebrow, the exact pitch of her mother's laugh. She remembered the reports that had flooded in after they were taken away. Reports that had seemed familiar to her emptied mind at the time, like a thought caught between the head and the lips. Now, they hit her like a knee to the gut: "Watchmaker commits suicide after delusional rant claiming government conspiracies," the reports had said. "Wife in despair takes her own life."

They'd been reporting on her parent's deaths.

Suddenly, there was a loud grunt, accompanied by the thud of impact and shuffling of feet. Freia's fingers loosened and fell away, and her body crumpled to the floor, arms and legs splayed at awkward jutting angles. Ash keeled over as well, gasping and clutching her neck, the sudden rush of oxygen making her head spin.

She looked up to find Eli assessing the room with investigative precision, taking in the crumple of singed sheets, the blood dripping down Ash's arm, the charred rosette on the front of Freia's robe. She wondered what kind of scenario he'd conjured in his head. In no scenario did she come across as innocent.

"Are you okay?" he said.

She didn't answer. Not only because she couldn't speak, but because nothing was okay. Freia was a traitor, who knew about Jai. She touched Freia's temple. It was warm, mildewed with sweat, and the pulse point on her temple was still ticking. Alive. She shivered with both relief and fear. She was sure to expose Ash's lies as soon as she recovered.

Eli scooped Freia up and placed her on the bed. But before he could check her vitals himself, Freia gasped and shot into sitting position, hand flung out, palm up. "Crow," she muttered, head turning towards Ash. Her voice rose and she scrambled to the edge of the mattress, fingers clawed. "Crow!"

Eli pushed her into the mattress and held her down. "Get Oroton," he said through gritted teeth while Freia thrashed like a hooked fish beneath him.

"I'll kill her!"

"Now!" Eli hollered above Freia's senseless screams.

Ash turned and fled, clutching her head with one hand and her neck with the other. Through the dormitory, past dozens of curious onlookers, still bleary-eyed with sleep. She must've looked a sight, blood dripping down her arm, wheezing and clutching her neck where bright red dimples swelled on her skin where the links of the chain had left their mark.

Instead of turning left towards the Tavern and Oroton's room, she climbed the rope ladder, up and out into the night. Bare feet bruising the compact earth, she let them take her where they pleased—past lightning decapitated trees and jagged coal seam, up a loose dirt track, and down into firefly marshland.

Between the whistling reeds and trilling crickets, she curled into a ball and tucked her head under her arms. It was a futile attempt to hold in everything that was spilling out—the memories and emotions jostling for space in her head, filling the cracks and crevices, consuming all of her awareness.

As she sunk into a strange dreamlike wakening, an idea floated to the fore—taken from the amalgamated snippets of memories of her father's theories about time and space. And just like that, she knew what she had to do to save the Wanderers. Knew what her father was on the very brink of discovering himself. And if it worked, she might not only be able to save her people but the whole of humanity.

But as well as she knew it had the potential to save them, it could only be a last resort. The risks outweighed her certainty. And the repercussions of failure were dire. She would not attempt her father's plan unless she had no other choice. She just hoped that if the time came, she would be strong enough to pull it off.