Saia let the stranger knock a third time while she thought about what to do. He was probably a monk. She hoped he wasn’t there because he knew she was hiding Zeles in her house.

“I’ve seen you enter,” the man said in a trembling voice that made him sound older. “Open, please. I just want to talk."

He glanced at the window. Saia froze, but his eyes wandered further as if he hadn't seen her.

She stepped back. The obvious solution was waking Koidan up, but if the monks knew he was awake they’d just use the shard to put him to sleep, as they had just done. Plus, Saia didn’t like how resigned he had sounded when talking about going back to the temple. She couldn’t risk that he would just leave with the stranger.

She waited. The man made two steps to the left and sat down with his back against the wall. He took a fig from his tunic's pocket and started eating it, staring at the sea with his dark eyes. Despite his voice and the wrinkles on his face, his short hair was mostly black.

Saia clenched her hand around a curtain. She could have left from the backdoor, but doing so would have proved she had something to hide. At least he couldn't force her to open the door, or he would have already done that.

She opened the window a bit. The creaking made the man turn.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“My name's Coram. I'm here to make you an offer. Can I enter?”

Saia put her elbows on the windowsill. His accent made her think of the northern villages.

“What offer?”

The man smiled a bit.

“Straight to the point. Well, let's say me and my colleagues have noticed that you and your friend are working hard to help this village. I've asked around, and everybody agrees that you’re doing everything that Koidan isn't able to do anymore. We want to tell you the truth about,” he waved his hand in the air, “many things, and maybe give you a place among us.”

Saia stared at him in silence for some instants.

“I don't understand.”

The man looked around.

“I can't tell you anything more from here. Can I enter?”

“No.”

He pressed his free hand on the wall behind him and stood.

“Well, I have to go then. If you change your mind, go to the spot where the eastern border of the village crosses the forest. I’ll wait for you there.”

“You're crazy if you think anyone would accept. Especially now that…”

She stopped just in time, but the man nodded.

“Especially now that Koidan can't protect you anymore. Yes, I know. If you feel unsafe, bring a weapon with you, or that strong guard that helped you and your friend. Or don't come at all.”

He walked toward the market, still eating his fig.

Saia glanced at her bed from above her shoulder, considering whether to ask Koidan for advice. Zeles, she remembered. She hadn’t had the chance to ask him what name he preferred, but if he had revealed her his old one, it meant he considered it important.

She crossed the room and kneeled to pick up the sphere. His words from before made her hesitate. There was the risk he would talk to Coram, or do something else that would reveal she knew how to wake up a god.

After a second of staring, she wrapped him in the blanket, put it into her bag and stood. She opened the door a crack to check the street: the stranger was still walking in the distance, at a slow pace. She needed to follow him to make sure he left the village, and only then she could think about awakening Zeles.

She was about to leave the house, when she thought about Coram's remark about bringing a weapon with her. She closed the door and looked around the room: she already had a knife in her bag, taking one more wouldn’t change the fact that she didn’t know how to fight with it. Anything else was too big to conceal. That only left the snakes.

She filled her bag with the adults she could control through the glove, cursing when the water on their bodies dripped on the floor. After a quick glance around to make sure she wasn't forgetting anything, she closed the door and locked it.

She followed the distant figure of the man, walking close to the buildings. People kept their distance from him, staring as he walked past them. Saia felt her heart accelerate when she realized that the next thing they saw was her.

An old lady asked her who he was. Saia managed to step into a side alley before the small crowd that wanted to hear the answer could attract Coram's attention.

“I saw him talking to the teacher,” a man said, “just as the kids were leaving, can you believe it?”

Saia raised her hands before anyone else could speak.

“Just behave as if he didn’t exist. And ignore me too. I’m trying to understand why he’s here.”

They looked at one another. Saia didn't wait for an answer and returned to the main street. She couldn’t see the monk anymore, so she walked faster in the general direction he had taken. She found him two streets over, just as he was taking the path that led to the temple. Saia followed him, hiding behind the trees when he stopped to admire the view. As if he couldn’t see it any time he wanted from the top of the mountain.

Once at the top, he entered the building. Saia circled around it, bent over to avoid being spotted through one of the windows. She reached the one just at the left of Koidan’s statue and stopped to peek inside.

Coram approached the deity and stopped just in front of the pedestal. He knelt and pressed a point near the border between Koidan’s feet. A large panel of marble slid aside, revealing a horizontal cavity. The monk took out a folded ladder and opened it just in front of the statue, the top just in front of its chest. He also extracted two tools Saia didn’t recognize before climbing the ladder. She watched in horror as Coram put the pointy end of a tool on Koidan’s chest, then hit the other extremity with the other. A piece of basalt fell onto the floor, showing the empty cavity where Zeles’s sphere had been.

The monk shouted something, then furiously climbed down. He put away ladder and tools, closed the cavity by touching another point in the pedestal, then walked around the room, looking up and down, behind the chandeliers and along the perimeter of the temple. Saia stepped aside to avoid being spotted while he examined the windows. As soon as he stepped away, she circled back toward the entrance and hid behind a tree.

A bit more time passed before Coram left the temple, fumbling in his tunic's pockets. Saia couldn’t see what he was holding, aside from a rectangular shape and shining surface. The man turned to face the mountain. Only his arms seemed to move, but the fabric of the tunic hid what he was doing.

He turned and marched down the path, a deep crease on his forehead. Saia followed him, hoping he would just leave, but he returned to the village instead. He only took side streets, changing direction every time he spotted some people in front of him. He only stopped here and there to look through some windows, hands cupped at the sides of his face. One time, a man yelled at him from the second floor, but he walked on without even glancing at him.

Saia didn't know for how long she had followed him, but her feet were pulsing when he entered Taitia’s tavern. She sat on the dock, hidden between a barrel and a boat, and took off her sandals. She considered dipping her toes into the water, but it was too dark to see whether there were sea snakes around, so she just kept her feet on the wooden boards.

The clock struck five times. Saia's stomach growled: she hadn't eaten anything since getting up. But she couldn't lose sight of Coram, especially now that he was looking for Zeles. She thought about his offer: if the sentinels really wanted to talk to her, that could have been a good opportunity to know more about them. Coram didn't seem to suspect her, so they had no reason to hurt her. And if they tried, she had her snakes, even if they could attack her too if she wasn’t careful.

He had talked about 'her friend'. Maybe he had already met Aili, wherever she was at that moment.

A good twenty minutes after the clock had struck six times, Coram left the tavern. He put a hand on the wall and stood there for an instant with his eyes closed before heading toward the beach. He walked slowly now, with a bit of a limp. Saia put on the sandals and hurried behind him. There was no cover on the beach, so she took a parallel path that ran through the trees. She could only see Coram's silhouette, dark against the setting sun. He just walked on, stopping now and then to look at something on the sand, probably some shell or pebble.

The road on which Saia was traveling started to curve, hiding the beach with the bushes growing to the right. Saia crossed the street and laid down, covered by the tall grass. She advanced on her elbows and knees until she could see the beach again. Coram was a bit behind, but he was still following the shore.

Something sparkled on the sand. Coram stopped and looked up, higher than Saia's hiding spot. She followed his gaze, but could only see the mountain. A light flickered in a cluster of rocks, a common spectacle that some people attributed to the shining surface of the mountain’s stones, others to its holy nature. Now they reminded her of the signals made with mirrors between boats.

She turned to find Coram looking straight at her, and even knowing she was hidden enough, she felt her heart accelerate. He started walking toward her, so fast he was almost running. Saia moved back, still laying down to avoid being seen. But it was useless if the people inside the mountain had told him she was there.

As soon as her sandals touched the bare ground of the road, she stood and wiped the dust from her clothes. She made some steps forward, slow enough to give Coram the time to climb up the slope. She hummed and looked at the sky, trying to give the impression she was minding her own business. She heard him panting somewhere behind her and turned. He had stopped on the side of the road, hands on his knees.

“Oh, it's you.” Saia knew she wasn't able to sound surprised, so she aimed for unimpressed. “Following me around isn't a good way to make me want to talk to you.”

Coram got closer. His nose was reddish, either because of the run or the visit to the tavern.

“Were you following me?” he said, still breathing heavily.

“What? No, I was going to the cave to do my job.”

He hesitated at that.

“Oh. It makes sense.”

He looked around and scratched his head.

“Well, I'm going in the same direction. Can I come with you?”

Saia didn't want to go back before she was certain he had left Zeles’s territory. But she couldn't refuse and follow him anyway, or the other monks would have alerted him again.

She shrugged.

“Fine. But I have some questions for you.”

“All I wanted when I knocked at your door was a conversation. Questions were accounted for.”

“You can't blame me for not trusting a stranger. How do you know who I am, by the way? I've never seen you before.”

He started walking along the road. Saia went with him, keeping a couple of steps of distance between them.

“We’ve been observing your village for a long time. You probably already guessed that, but your god has disappeared. We knew it was going to happen, but not before two years from now. That's why we didn't immediately understand why you and your friend were working so hard, even though you both had jobs to think about. You spent all of your free time in the post office, and people tended to run to you as soon as something happened, so we started to suspect things weren't going as they should. The ship was the confirmation we needed.”

“For what?” Saia asked, realizing he wasn't going to add more.

“Oh, sorry. I'm still a bit…” He raised a hand toward his temple, then let it fall at his side. “For helping you. When one of the deities doesn’t tend to their tasks, we step in until the order is restored. I was sent to investigate, and now that we know Zeles, sorry, Koidan isn't helping you anymore, we’ll take care of your village.”

Saia held her breath when he said Koidan’s actual name. She glanced at the man, but he was looking ahead, at the slope they had to descend if they wanted to return to the beach. Saia let him go first.

“You're talking about other people like you. Who are you? And where do you live?”

She expected him to avoid the question, but it was important she asked anyway, lest he thought she already knew that.

“We're monks,” he said. “People who live together in pursuit of a common faith.”

“You mean like praying to the gods?”

He looked at her, then shook his head.

“The gods are a small part of it. We believe in order, in the viss inside of all living things, and in the sacrifice of some for the good of everyone. And we live inside the mountain.”

Saia wanted to ask so many questions, but feared to reveal the things she already knew.

“Why?” she only asked.

“To observe, and to live outside of the gods’ influence. Otherwise, they would be free to destroy us whenever they wanted.”

Saia stepped on the sand right after him.

“Why are you so sure the gods can't do anything to you? They're pretty powerful.”

Coram smiled a bit.

“I can't tell you this unless you accept my offer.”

“You haven't told me what it's about, yet.”

“I will, or rather, we will, if you’ll come with me up the mountain.”

“What if I wanted more time to think about it?”

“You won't have it. It's a test. We have to know if you'd trust us even when the events around you don't seem to make sense. Even if you don't know anything about us, apart from what we believe in. But don't worry: once you'll have heard the offer, you'll be given some time to consider it.”

Saia realized they were almost at the cave. She looked at the mountain, dark against the sunset-pink sky. The bag felt a bit heavier. If she were to go, she couldn't bring Zeles with her, as much as she wanted to. If they found him, all she had done up to that point would have been useless.

She gripped the leather strap.

“I’ll come with you. But first, I have to do something. It won’t take much time, I only need the cave.”

She pointed at the entrance in the wall of rock. Coram nodded.

“I’ll wait for you. But we have to go before the sun disappears.”

Saia started running on the sand. She only slowed down once inside the cave, startled by the echo of her steps. She approached the pool Zeles had created, eyes on the ground to spot any snakes before they could bite her exposed feet. After glancing behind her shoulder to check that Coram wasn't in front of the entrance, she took Zeles out of the bag and kneeled next to a rock. She put him down on the ground and tried to cover him with sand, but there was the risk that an animal would knock him aside and let his light shine through.

She looked around. The only thing that seemed good enough to keep the sphere hidden was the pool. She took out the woolen blanket from the bag, wrapped him until he wasn’t visible anymore, then added algae taken from the other pools. She immersed the bundle in the water and let go, watching as it sunk to the bottom. She covered it with some more algae and small rocks, then freed two of her sea snakes inside the water.

She stood: from afar, the bundle seemed just a rock covered in plants, and the constant movement of the animals would have discouraged anyone from looking closer. She walked backwards until she couldn’t see the bottom anymore, then turned around and left the cave.

She found Coram sitting on a rock with his back to the entrance.

“I’m here,” she said.

“Good. Our fellow travelers have almost arrived.”

He nodded in the mountain's direction. Two people were coming out of the forest. When they got closer, Saia could see that one of them, a woman she’d never seen before, was wearing a tunic identical to Coram’s. The other was Aili, waving at her without a hint of a smile.

Coram stood.

“Let's go. The path is long.”