Saia tried in vain to remember the sequence of corridors and small caves that led from the temple to her and Aili’s room.

“Usually novices sleep with at least one or two other people,” Rades explained. “Roommates are chosen before the ceremony, but they start living together some months in advance, to make sure that they won't end up hating each other. Since there was no time for you to get to know everybody, we decided to put you two together. You seemed to be on good terms with each other.”

And he looked from Saia to Aili, as if asking for confirmation.

“Will it be forever?” Aili asked. “I mean, I think you made a good choice, I’m just curious.”

“No, certainly not. People change rooms all the time. You just have to make sure that everybody is fine with it and notify a prior. And if you have or adopt a child, you have the right to a house, either inside the mountain or outside.” He sighed. “Those are a bit of an experiment, for now. You have to get used to the cold.”

They followed him inside. The room wasn't large, but the furniture arranged along the walls of levigated stone made it a bit less suffocating. The beds were each against a wall, parallel to each other. There was a bench with pillows and sheets stacked on top of it, a wardrobe containing simple clothes and two extra tunics, and a wooden divider, bleached by the sun on one side, that was folded against the wall.

Saia stood at the center of the room, looking at the small window on the wall opposite the door. The rectangle of dim light it projected on the floor wasn't particularly wide, but there was enough space for a tank.

“How is it so warm in here?” Aili asked. “It's freezing outside.”

Rades looked embarrassed for a second.

“Thermal... Movements inside the mountain, I guess? They teach it at school, but I can't remember the exact explanation.”

Aili nodded, extending a hand to touch the wall. Rades cleared his throat.

“The bathroom is two rooms to the right,” he said, pointing in the same direction. “It's almost dinner time, so I'd suggest leaving your things here,” he glanced at the snake tails, “and eat something. I'm sorry for not leaving you enough time to rest, but I'm sure you'll feel better after a good meal.”

Saia left her bag next to the bed on the opposite side of the room. She pushed it under the bed with a foot as soon as Rades looked away.

They left the room and followed the corridor for a bit, then turned left, into another one. Just like before, they met a lot of people along the way, all more or less going in the same direction.

“How can you tell that it's almost dinner time?”

“We always eat at the same hours, so you get used to the rhythm after a while. And there are bells.”

They heard them as he spoke. Chime bells, somewhere far away.

After a left turn, Saia saw an open double door at the end of the corridor. The crowd around her was entering the room beyond, but Rades stopped in front of another one on the right side.

“This is the kitchen. You'll work here for the next week, until the ceremony, then we'll find something more suitable to your skills and aspirations."

The room was only illuminated by a rough wooden chandelier on the ceiling, which made sense considering the dozens of people inside, frantically moving in every direction. A single misplaced torch, a sudden movement, and she could imagine the chaos that would follow. Or maybe everyone would have continued working relentlessly through the fire without noticing it, judging by their focused faces.

Three big pots on three tables on opposites sides of the room were the center of the action. Each one was being watched and stirred by two monks, while the rest was putting away ingredients and cleaning the tools. Ebus was sweeping a corner of the floor with a mop, his back to the entrance. Saia thought about calling him, but she didn't feel like distracting everybody from their task.

“Do you remember how to get here from your room?” Rades asked them.

“Yes,” Aili said before Saia could shake her head.

“Good. You can eat, then.”

He guided them back to the mess hall. There were ten long tables in two parallel lines, half of them completely occupied. Rades marched straight to the only half-full table and occupied the closest empty chair. More people sat down in front and beside him. He pointed at the free chairs further to his right.

“We fill the spots in order,” he said. “This way we use the whole room and nobody sits alone.”

Aili sat on that side, while Saia circled around the empty end of the table to settle in front of her. The woman she sat next to smiled at her, and she was so surprised it took her a second to smile back. She wasn't used to being so close to a stranger, nor to receive positive attention without even exchanging a word first.

There were more strange things, now that she was sitting and looking around freely. The quiet, to begin with: people were talking to each other, but the tones were low and calm, making the background chatter almost pleasant to listen to. Then, she noticed a couple of people with a crimson sash around the waist, over the tunic.

“Who are they?” she asked Rades, nodding in the direction of the closest one, a monk with strong arms.

“He's one of the zoology scholars,” he said, narrowing his eyes as if trying to remember his name.

“No, I mean, why is he wearing a red sash?”

Rades looked embarrassed again.

“I can't really tell you now, sorry.”

Saia nodded and retracted in her seat.

More people entered the room and walked straight to their table. Saia recognized Haina, the chemist and his twin. They sat down, Haina and the twin next to Saia, Olus on Aili's side.

“I ran here,” Haina said. “I really wanted to sit next to you two. So, how did it go? I didn't follow everything, I always have to focus on the kids when we're in the temple. They're too little to understand why they have to keep quiet.”

“We asked some questions,” Aili said. “I feel like we shouldn’t have.”

“Yeah,” Saia agreed. “It wasn’t how it was supposed to go.”

“Not at all,” Olus said. “I mean, sure, nobody expected the discussion to veer toward floods and sea snakes. But something like this hasn't happened in about thirty years, so nobody really knew how it was supposed to go. Apart from the abbot, maybe, and the other elders.”

“The last time someone from the villages decided to join you was thirty years ago?” Aili asked.

“Yes,” a man's voice said behind her.

Coram sat down next to the chemist.

“It was me, actually. Worst decision of my life.”

But he was smiling as he said that.

“Where do you come from?” Aili asked.

“Erimur. I wouldn't mind a change of topic.”

Two monks entered with a wooden cart occupied by a pot and a pile of bowls. They stopped at the end of the first table and started filling them one by one before passing them to the sitting monks. Now the stream of people from the door was bigger and regular, enough to fill the remaining tables, with only a handful of chairs left empty at one extremity.

“Do you mind if I ask more questions?” Aili asked, looking at the monks around her. “Not about you personally, unless you feel like sharing something, but about the place and your rules. Just to get a feel for how you live here.”

“Sure,” the other twin said, while the rest nodded.

“Why did you insist so much on returning before dawn? Daira was especially worried about that before we got to the tent.”

“Well…” Haina began, looking at the others as if to check whether they wanted to answer in her place. “We have to remain out of the gods' influence if we want to keep doing our job.”

“Which is?” Aili asked.

“Helping people in times like these, when a god is fading. Restoring the god in question, and make sure that they don't abuse their power.”

“You're not very good at that,” Saia mumbled.

When Haina gave her a confused look, she shook her head and gestured with a hand for her to continue.

“Well,” she started, slowly bringing her eyes back to Aili. “Deities are very powerful, obviously. They could control us easily, or take our place. So there are some rules that we have to follow to make sure it won't happen. The most important one is to be out of a god's range before sunset, preferably inside the village.”

“It's because the sentinels can't see in the dark,” the chemist explained. “So they can't be sure that the god didn’t take the place of that monk during the night. It’s another reason why the torches outside the temples are always burning.”

“That makes sense. Have they tried that before?”

“Yes. We have records of it,” Coram said. “Some of them are pretty recent. What it was, a hundred years ago that a god killed a monk and built a statue that looked exactly like him?”

He looked around, as if asking for confirmation, and Haina nodded.

“The village was almost inside his range when the sentinels realized that something wasn't going as expected,” she said. “They stopped him in time.”

“How do you stop a god?”

“I fear you'll have to wait until after the ceremony.”

“And how did they realize it wasn’t the actual monk?”

“The sentinels communicate with the monks inside the villages by reflecting light with mirrors. The code changes often, so no one can memorize it once and trick us every time.”

“But we left some monks down there…” Aili started.

“What if the monk enters a building?” Saia cut her off, following a sudden thought. “The sentinels can’t see them there.”

Coram glared at her.

“Have you seen me enter the temple, by chance?”

She retracted a bit at that.

“Some people saw you. And they also saw you enter a tavern.”

“That isn't surprising,” Haina said, a bitter tone in her voice. “Have you drunk anything, Coram?”

He sighed.

“I’m fine, don’t worry. To answer your question, Koidan was already unable to do anything.”

“Yes,” Haina insisted. “He couldn’t use his powers and you didn’t boil the wine, I guess. You risked a lot.”

“What?” Aili asked.

“Nothing,” Coram said, staring back at Haina.

She held his gaze for a bit, then lowered her eyes.

“Nothing,” she repeated. “For now.”

“As I was saying,” Coram said. “We knew for sure that Koidan isn’t able to use his powers right now. And Daira and the others are ready to stay down there forever in case the sentinels have any suspicion that they're being controlled by a god.”

Saia raised her eyebrows.

“You must trust your sentinels’ judgement a lot.”

“The ones that went away know the dangers and are ready to live through the consequences. That's the nature of sacrifice.”

“Which god tried to climb the mountain?” Aili asked.

Coram sighed.

“I’m starting to regret sitting near you two.”

“You can't tell us?”

He looked at Haina.

“There are no explicit rules about this, right?”

She shook her head.

“None that I can remember. They're going to find out as soon as they enter the library anyway.”

Aili's eyes widened.

“There's a library?”

At that moment, the first bowls of soup were passed along toward the end of the table. It took a while before everybody had one and the pot could move on to the next table. Haina told Aili where to find the library and added that only monks were allowed there, so she had to wait until after the ceremony.

Saia ate fast, not paying attention to the monks talking all around her. She couldn't stop thinking about Haina's words: the monks had to make sure that the gods didn't abuse their power. It wasn't true. She knew it. And she wanted to know why.

“What do you think of Vizena?” she asked quietly, eyes on the soup.

“She's the goddess of Suimer,” the chemist said.

Saia glared at him.

“I know. I was born there.”

“She's alright,” Haina said. “I’ve never met her, obviously, but in ninety-seven years there has never been a problem that required our intervention.”

“How do you know that? Have you ever asked someone from there or you just guessed?”

The monks looked at each other.

“The sentinels never saw anything worrisome,” Coram said. “We don't send people down there without a reason.”

Saia let the spoon fall inside the soup and passed a hand on her forehead.

“So you were looking the whole time and never thought of doing anything to stop her?”

She saw their confused expressions and felt the urge to cry and smash the bowl on the floor at the same time. She did neither, only picked up her spoon and resumed eating, hands trembling. Up to that moment she'd pictured the monks as enemies, or at least Vizena’s accomplices, despite finding them to be fairly normal people. But they didn’t know about her, and that was worse than anything.

“Let's eat,” Coram said. “We'll talk more about this once we've finished.”

Saia nodded, not raising her eyes from the table. She didn't want to see Aili's expression, the implicit questions on everyone's face. She'd lost her calm, but she needed to be more careful later. Say only the minimum necessary, and get more information than what she was giving away.

Once everyone had finished their soup, Coram stood and gestured for Saia, Aili, Haina and the twins to follow him. They put the empty bowls on a cart next to the door, left the room and followed the corridor for a bit, up to an empty room filled with desks and chairs.

“Don't move anything,” Haina said, closing the door behind her. “It must stay clean for the kids tomorrow morning.”

Coram lit some candles around the room.

“Could you explain, Saia? Do you think that Vizena hasn't done her job or has hurt your people in some way?”

“She's manipulative. She has a precise idea of how everybody is supposed to behave, of how everyone’s life is supposed to be, and she does all she can to force people to follow that path. And she's always, always listening. She interrupts conversations when she doesn’t like where they’re going, uses what we say against us, reveals private information to strangers to force a connection that was never there. It feels like she's always breathing down your neck, and you can't do anything about it. Except giving in to all her requests and be miserable.”

“Has she ever killed someone? Or hurt them when they didn't obey her?”

Saia thought about it. As much as she wanted to say ‘yes’, she realized it wasn't true.

“Her punishments weren't physical. She would just control you even more.”

“Control you how? Take control of your body? Forcing you to do things you wouldn't normally do using her powers?”

Saia thought about the temple. But in order to talk about that, she’d have to explain too many things that had to remain a secret.

“Yes and no. She never used her powers directly, but she would always be there. Talking in your ear even more than usual, commenting on every action, complaining about everything you do. She became a constant presence in your life that you couldn't ignore, because she was a goddess, and you couldn't escape in any way. I know of two people who tried to commit suicide, but she wouldn't let them.”

“Which isn’t a bad thing,” Haina specified.

“No, but she didn’t do it because she cared. She just wasn’t done with them.”

Coram nodded, eyes pointed at the floor.

“You can stop her, right?” Saia asked, suddenly hopeful. Maybe that was all it took, to bring everything Vizena had done to the attention of the monks and let them use their powers on her.

But the glances the four monks were exchanging told her that it wasn't that easy. Only Aili was looking at her, with wide eyes.

“I had no idea,” she whispered. “She was always so nice to me.”

“She treats travelers well. Especially merchants.”

She thought about Orver and his employees, before she even knew his name, arriving and leaving whenever they wanted, while the inhabitants of Suimer were trapped there. And it could remain that way for at least a hundred years more, if the monks didn't do anything to stop Vizena.

“We can do something,” Coram said. “But it's complicated.”

Saia crossed her arms, but he looked like he hadn't finished speaking, so she refrained from asking why.

“Don't take it the wrong way, but the situation you describe is quite borderline. It would be different if Vizena was actually hurting people or controlling them with her powers. In that case we'd send someone to investigate without even thinking twice about it.”

“But?”

“But she isn't. So if you were to bring this situation up during a debate, the abbot will ask you for proofs and concrete examples.”

“I can only talk about what I've seen and experienced.”

“It might be enough, it might not. And even if it was enough and Laius decided to send someone to investigate, it's unlikely Vizena will actually be stopped. Punished, maybe, certainly admonished, but she'd be more or less free to do whatever she wants anyway. Provided she doesn't actually hurt or control people.”

“She is hurting people.”

“I believe you. But again, it's a difficult situation to navigate. She's technically taking care of everything a god is supposed to: food, shelter, security, a good enough economy based on a list of parameters that's too long to repeat, healing, and obviously officiating the rites and keeping the religion alive. Even looking from above, your village seems perfectly normal and thriving.”

“Couldn't you check anyways? Just because you trust me?”

“If she's as manipulative as you say she is, do you think it would make a difference?”

Saia thought about it. She could imagine her treating the monks like she treated all the other travelers, even without recognizing them. Her only hope would have been for someone in the village to testify how things were, but she knew that nobody had that kind of courage. Too much at risk, and they didn't know who the monks were or what they were capable of.

“No, probably not. But they don't deserve it.”

“I’m not telling you to give up. I suggest you get as ready as you can, gather proofs, think about what you saw and what she did. Every week on fourthday we hold a debate to take the most important decisions about pretty much everything. Once you're ready, I'd suggest you go there and speak up.”

“Maybe attend to some debates, first,” Haina said. “To make sure you understand the rules.”

Saia nodded. A thin hope, but it was the best possibility she had to hurt Vizena, at least for the moment.

They heard a distant sound of chime bells.

“Time to sleep,” Coram said, stepping away from the teacher's desk. “I suggest you don't stay up much, or you won't have enough energy to work tomorrow.”

Saia thought about the snakes she had to bind and looked at Aili. Her confused expression soon turned into a sigh.

“We'll do our best.”