Rabam woke up in a cell. The rough stone walls made it look like a normal room somewhere in the monks’ village, but when he lowered his gaze on the furniture, he realized it was identical to the one where he’d spent the days preceding his exile: a bed with a flat mattress shoved in a corner, a separé hiding a toilet area, three full bottles of purified water on a table facing the wall, a rough stool in front of it and a drawer with clothes and some books. A torch in an iron holder illuminated the small space.

He sat up on the bed, trying to recall how he had gotten there. He remembered reaching the village with Ebus. There was a group of sentinels waiting for them, as expected. They ambushed them before they could step out of the trees, even if they were unarmed and didn't struggle. He remembered clearly a cold hand touching his neck, a sudden flow of viss, then nothing.

He stood and looked around, wondering if he had awakened spontaneously or the person who had put him to sleep had used their control on him, and in that case, for what reason. The answer came in form of far away steps from the corridor outside. They stopped right in front of the room's entrance, an opening in the wall covered by a frame of metal and a door made of vertical bars.

He stood from the bed and walked toward the wall opposite the entrance, putting his back against it before the approaching sentinels could yell at him to do the same. It was the procedure to follow before they entered, and he hated that his mind had recalled it so quickly, as if he’d never left his cell at all.

Two sentinels appeared on the other side of the door and opened it with a set of keys. Only one of them stepped inside, lowering his spear to avoid the room's stone roof, and stopped to the right. Rabam noticed they weren't particularly concerned about getting too close, which meant they didn’t fear him attacking. They had to have a big enough portion of his viss to control him. He resisted the urge to run a hand over his short hair to find the spot where it was missing.

“Follow us,” the sentinel at the entrance said. Her face was a bit familiar, maybe she'd been a new recruit when he was still a sentinel.

He followed them without hesitation. He’d given a lot of thought to how to escape in the past, enough to know he couldn’t succeed alone and without resources: the sentinels had taken his backpack, not before he managed to crush the pattern he had created to prevent them from discovering what it was.

Each cell was at the end of a curving corridor without other doors, isolated from the others. It was an incredible amount of wasted space, and the reason why there weren’t many cells to begin with. After all, most crimes were punished with exile or harsh working hours. He tried not to think what would be of him, if both exile and permanent residence weren't an option.

The corridors irradiated from a central room that was only connected to the rest of the village through the hall where the sentinels held their meetings. As they approached the entrance, a simple arch in the stone, he wondered whether it was the right time to ask whether Cailes and Ebus were safe or imprisoned. But even mentioning them could strengthen the monks’ suspicion that they were accomplices in his actions, so he held back.

The shadow gave way to a circle of suffused light, coming from the torches hanging from the walls. The room was small enough that the entrances to the various corridors were one right next to the other, only an armlength of empty space between them. He recognized the disposition of the chairs inside the room, identical to when he’d been interrogated after the sentinels had found him wandering outside without authorization: a semi-circle of chairs, occupied by the three sentinel priors and the abbot. There were two more in front of them, one free, one for a woman he supposed to be a consciousness scholar.

There were four more sentinels in the room: two armed of spears just behind the abbot, two with swords standing next to the door that led to the rest of the village.

“Sit here,” the sentinel in front of him said, pointing at the free chair. She then stood behind him with the colleague who had accompanied her.

He tried and failed to look at the priors and abbot in the eyes, focusing on the scholar instead. She offered him her open hands. He held his breath for an instant before taking them.

“You betrayed us again, Rabam,” Laius said, his blue eyes irradiating anger while his face and body remained perfectly calm.

Rabam didn't know what to answer. He expected him to start screaming at any moment as he'd done in the previous interrogation. It was the first time he'd seen him openly angry and not merely displeased, so it had left an impression.

Maris, like the previous time, was the one leading the interrogation.

“What's your family's involvement in this?”

He felt his heart accelerate.

“Nothing.”

“Liar. We know that…”

The woman let go of Rabam’s hands to raise her own.

“Wait. Something’s not right.”

She gripped his fingers tighter and closed her eyes. If Rabam focused, he could feel her viss buzzing against his own, even if the way his heart raced made it difficult to distinguish that sensation from the rest.

“Tell me Ebus isn’t your brother,” she said.

“What?”

She reached out, placing a hand on his cheek. He was startled, to the point the sentinels behind him stepped forward.

“But he is,” he protested

The woman shook her head without opening her eyes.

“It’s the truth, and yet…”

Rabam could feel her viss more clearly, to the point he instinctively leaned back to escape her touch. She let him go before he could get out of the way and firmly gripped his hands instead.

“Someone muddled his imprint. Now his lies shouldn’t be hidden anymore.”

Rabam tried to breathe slowly, knowing the tenser he was, the easier it would be for the monks to read his feelings. He knew he wasn't good enough with viss manipulation to conceal his emotions, but he'd have to hide at least Aili’s involvement. She was the only one who could save him from that situation, but she couldn't do anything if she was deactivated.

“I’ll ask again,” Maris said. “How is your family involved in this?”

“They’re not.”

“Lie,” the woman immediately said.

“They just wanted to help me.” Rabam quickly added. “They did it out of love, not because they wanted to harm you or the village. They feared that if you'd capture me again, I'd be executed.”

He frantically glanced at each of the priors, hoping for reassurance or confirmation. None came.

“Who is 'they', specifically?” Maris asked. “Your mother? Your fathers?”

“My brother. But not Cailes. He’s…”

He held back his words: the more he elaborated on the answer, the easier it would be for them to catch the lie.

The priors watched him as if expecting him to add something. When nothing came, it was the second sentinel prior to speak.

“His grandmother, the fisher, confessed about her involvement,” she said. "He was telling him the new positions of the outposts with this.”

She took out from her pocket a small mirror identical to the ones the sentinels used to communicate with each other. Rabam watched it disappear again inside her tunic.

“And who was giving her that information?” Maris asked.

Their colleague shrugged and looked at Rabam.

“She has her contacts,” he answered in her place. “And many people who owe her a favor. She never told me who they are.”

“Riena?” the abbot asked, looking at the scholar beside Rabam.

“What he said is mostly true. He likely doesn't know who the contact is, and it's likely that his family didn't act to hurt us specifically.”

“You won't exile them, right?”

“They have betrayed..." Maris began, but their other colleague, the second oldest after the abbot, raised his hand to stop them.

“You get the benefit of the doubt on this,” he said to Rabam. “It all depends on your next answers. What’s your involvement in Zeles's disappearance?”

Rabam raised his chin a bit.

“None.”

The abbot raised his eyebrows and looked at Riena.

“True,” she said. “He's feeling indecently smug about it, though.”

“Then what's your connection to Saia?” the abbot asked.

Rabam hesitated. He couldn't hide that he knew her. But she was far away, powerful and free of the monks’ control, so there was no risk in pretending she was the mind behind his actions. Not if it meant protecting Aili, at least.

“She organized everything and told me to act as I did.”

He hoped he'd put enough confidence in his voice, but Riena shook her head.

“Not quite. Saia's involvement is clear, but I'm getting a feeling she's not the only one he's working with.”

“Who told you to come here?” Maris asked.

“Entering the village was my plan since the beginning.”

Riena closed her eyes and frowned.

“Ask him about the details,” she said.

“Well, then... What about the cart?”

“My idea.”

“True. Keep going.”

“The tunnel?”

“My idea.”

“The books you've stolen?”

“My idea,” Rabam repeated, but he could feel his viss shifting with a new pang of anxiety.

Riena opened her eyes.

“There. We should focus on this.”

“Who told you to steal them?”

His mind was screaming Aili’s name. The only alternative was to say it was Vizena’s, but they would have known he was lying. They'd kept going and going, asking him that question for hours, until he'd give in. The same thing had happened the first time, when they'd asked him who he'd been meeting in Lausune, and he had put all of his efforts into not saying Milvia’s name, for fear they would hurt her, or even spare some of their precious and scarce cloud water to wipe her memory.

He needed to throw them off course before they started insisting on that point, and he could only do that by telling the truth. The most alarming truth he could think of.

“Vizena,” he let the name linger, hoping they would think it was the answer to their question, “Is actually Zeles.”

They looked at each other with confused expressions. Riena’s grip on his hands tightened.

“Care to repeat? Slowly and clearly.”

“Vizena is actually Zeles,” he enunciated.

Another secret given away. But it wasn't important for Aili’s plan, as far as he knew.

The older sentinel prior was the first one to break the silence.

“I’ve heard something similar from a boy who returned from a mission in Izgos. I didn’t give much credit to these rumors.”

“That's impossible,” Laius said, standing abruptly. “He didn’t have enough viss to fight two gods. He was dying years in advance compared to our calculations.”

“He's saying the truth,” Riena said. “I know it sounds impossible, but he's saying the truth.”

“It would explain where he’s been hiding this whole time,” the second prior mumbled, pointing at Rabam.

“Maybe Saia has given Zeles some viss,” Maris commented, arms crossed. “Or maybe Dore and Lorin are involved too.”

Laius inhaled sharply at that and started walking around the room, as if to put some distance between himself and that hypothesis.

“That would be a disaster. What is it, Rabam?” he suddenly asked, not even looking at him. “How did he get that viss?”

“From Saia,” he answered.

Riena nodded, looking defeated.

“Wait a second,” the second prior said, moving a strand of hair behind her shoulder. “We were all there when Zeles was killed.”

“It wasn't him,” the abbot said, staring at the door to the outside as a fugitive would. “Saia was there too. She brought him to us. She’s behind all this, and Zeles too. The plan we have in place might not be enough, if we don’t know the full extent of his resources.”

The three priors froze, as if it was something he shouldn’t have said. They probably thought Rabam didn't know about the plan.

“Why did you steal those books?” the second prior asked.

“We wanted information on the past of the mountain and the identities of the current gods.”

She groaned in frustration.

“That was obvious, we know what kind of information they contained. But why did you need to know that specifically?”

“I don't how.”

And it was true. He didn't know what Aili’s plan for those books was, even if she trusted her completely.

“We have them now,” Laius said, leaning against the wall. “We know who Zeles is, what he needs and what he's done. Saia is far away for the moment, she can't help him.” He stepped toward the chair and sat down. “I think we know enough to stop him. We need more meetings to decide exactly how.”

All the priors nodded except for Maris, who was deep in thought.

“I might have something in mind,” they said, staring at Rabam. “And if he wants his family to be safe, he will do what we ask.”