Rabam scraped the piece of wood slowly, letting the chips fall in the small space between wall and bed. Every time he heard a noise, he hid his work under the mattress and laid down pretending to sleep for a few instants, enough to make sure that nobody was approaching to bring him a meal. He then carefully picked up again the screw he was using in place of a knife and the piece of wood he’d taken by breaking the divider between the sleeping area and the toilet and resumed his work.

After practicing so many times at Lausune, he remembered the pattern almost by heart. Still, he considered every line carefully, as if he'd started carving for the first time a week prior; a mistake would have meant starting over with sturdier wood, like the stool’s leg he had detached a few days prior. The fact he didn't know exactly how much time he had left made everything worse.

Daira’s plan was working for the moment, nobody had come to bring him to his execution, but it could be just postponed.

He was also worried the pattern wouldn’t be enough to amplify the effect of the magnet for his plan to succeed. Which wasn't much of a plan to begin with, more of an idea he could improvise on when the right moment arrived. He knew what kind of death the sentinels would have given him, he remembered how gruesome it seemed, even without witnessing it in person. But times had changed in many aspects; monks weren't used to killing anymore, even the ones who trained for it.

He could imagine the scene so easily his body tensed as if it was happening in front of his eyes. First, a group of sentinels, probably more than the usual two, would come to deliver him to the temple. Once there, the abbot and priors would have proclaimed the sentence, as well as the crimes he had committed. There would be a crowd of adults and a lot of sentinels, to the point many outposts would operate with half the personnel. Then, once each prior had taken their turn to condemn his actions and the abbot had concluded with a prayer to the gods, a sentinel would put a sword through his midsection and let him bleed on top of the shield. After that, they’d carry him to the crater room, through a procession that crossed most of the village instead of taking the most direct route. Only there he'd receive the mercy of having his head cut off, then his blood would be drained from his body and poured into the crater, for his viss to join the mountain's.

That last part didn't allow for an audience, since only a few people were allowed to enter the crater room. So he needed to act while he was still inside the temple.

He checked that the small magnet Daira had brought was well lodged inside the cylinder of wood. He planned to hide it between his toes before the sentinels came to get him, so it would be in contact with his body, ready to be activated. He’d feign calm, but not resignation. As soon as they addressed him and gave him a chance to talk, he'd invoke Zeles's name and pray to him, saying he was under his protection. The immediate reaction of the audience would be to consider him insane and lose a bit of sympathy in his regard. But then, the moment would arrive when a sentinel approached him with their sword, ready to thrust.

He could see the scene clearly, an idealized version of what would happen in a few days, or maybe a few hours. Him kneeling on the floor of the temple, likely with two or more sentinels keeping him down. The sword raising in the air, two hands clutching the hilt for a more powerful attack. The crowd watching in horror.

Then a mysterious force pushes the blade away. He cries out again for Zeles, praising the god for his help, saying that his powers can reach inside the village and attack whoever opposes him. Chaos and fear ripple through the crowd, an upheaval starts.

Or so he hoped. The sentinels could also decide to keep trying until he collapsed from fatigue, only to both receive a sword in his belly and reveal he'd been using a pattern all along. They could search him, or use their fists instead of weapons. It all hinged on the reaction of the crowd, on the chaos being enough to convince the priors to delay his execution again. Cold fear gripped him at the thought of those painted faces looking at him without a word. If they didn't react, or even if they didn't react with enough resolution, he would die.

The sound of a door opening in the distance made his stomach drop, the chill becoming sweat on his palms. He quickly slipped the cylinder inside his shoe, even if the pattern wasn't complete and still needed some lines to work. He waited for the steps to get closer with eyes wide open, facing the wall. Someone knocked on the vertical bars of the entrance.

“Food,” a bored voice said, dragging the vowels. Rabam slowly stood, legs trembling with relief. He stood in the corner of the cell while the guard opened the door and the helper accompanying her placed the tray on the small table next to the entrance. Rabam waited for them to leave, focused on his breathing.

Once the steps were far enough from his cell, he approached the meal. It was different from the ones he was used to, more elaborated: cut tomatoes and salad leaves covered the borders of the plate, flanked by another circle of cheese slices. The grilled meat at the center had been covered in oil and a brown sauce with red hues, sprinkled with fragments of aromatic herbs. The food he had received up to that point had been simpler, like soup or bread and cheese. That abundance made him think of the last dish for a prisoner before their execution.

That thought was enough to make him forget any cramp of hunger he was feeling. He took out the wooden cylinder from his shoe and started working on it again, testing it more often. He added more expansion lines like the ones around the lenses of the sentinels' binoculars, even if that meant using more viss in exchange for a more powerful effect.

He hated that he couldn't measure time in any way and kicked himself for not asking whether they had brought him lunch or dinner.

In the end, enough hours passed for the fear to transform into exhaustion. He half-heartedly tested his work one last time, pointing one open end of the cylinder toward the torch's iron support. The pull was strong enough that he felt the wood scrape against his hand as the cylinder tried to slip out of his grip. He closed his fist tighter, without interrupting the flow of viss, and only obtained to lurch forward, out of the bed and onto the floor. He stopped feeding into the pattern, laying with his face down. At that point his stomach growled, and he decided it was pointless to keep ignoring it. Besides, it was easier to risk his life after a good last meal.

He hid the cylinder inside his shoe, just in case they came to take him while he was eating, and gripped the wooden fork. He attacked the meat, but the first bite gave him pause. He could swear it tasted like fish.

He was reminded of one of the first dishes Ebus had prepared him after starting his work as a cook. He had grilled a salmon and filled it with spices to the point it looked like a piece of meat, at least until he tasted it.

He pierced another morsel with the fork and wondered whether Ebus had cooked that too.

The guards never gave the prisoners knives, so he had to polish the screw he'd been using to carve and use it to cut the fish into small pieces. He wasn't sure of what he needed to look for, so he touched the food to check whether Ebus had left some traces of his viss, and for what reason.

He found a small piece of paper folded where the central bone of the fish had been. The paper was stained with oil and folded many times onto itself, no easy feat considering how rough and thick it was. But that was enough to keep the message scribbled in pencil inside legible.

They won't execute you. Delete your memories instead. Tomorrow morning in private, then ceremony at the temple. Send you to exile again. D. says people won't help you. Considered honor.

Rabam blinked, trying to make sense of the jumble of emotions those words had evoked. First, the sentence that he had hoped for, without daring to admit it even to himself: the execution had been called off. But of course the abbot still needed to make him into an example, so he had found another punishment: erasing his memories. That would also ensure he wouldn't be able to collaborate with Zeles anymore, and by extension with Aili.

He wondered how far they intended to go. There were only two people at a time trained in removing memories, since the knowledge was kept well hidden. Neither of them knew how to also read them, which meant they could only erase the ones formed between a point in the past and the present. He doubted the abbot had any intention to tell him how far, exactly, he wanted them to go. And maybe it was better that way, since the connection between him and Aili would be kept hidden. But he'd have forgotten his escape, meeting Saia, working for a purpose after two years of confinement away from his family. And if they touched Mili's memories...

He focused on the second part of the message: of course they wanted to present him to the people to show what happened to rebels. Deleting his memory in advance was a good move, since by that point he wouldn't know he needed to escape, and why. In addition to that, the scholars who specialized in memory manipulation would need quiet, so it was easy to justify why the removal had to happen in secret. That also made his plan completely useless, if there was ever any use to it.

He puzzled over Daira's words. He couldn't see how people would agree with his memory being removed, when they had protested for his execution. He laid down on the bed, thinking about it. He imagined himself as the monk he had been, maybe one of the sentinels that escorted a prisoner, a traitor, to his punishment. Even in that fantasy, he couldn't muster much sympathy for himself. He was glad nobody was going to be executed, but also aware of the danger a traitor posed to the village. A new exile was the ideal punishment, in a different village from the one the prisoner had escaped from. They were even wasting cloud water on him, the bastard.

That was the point, he realized, eyes closed. Cloud water was rare, now that the monks boiled every drop before drinking it and the gods purified the rest. Even in the rare instances when they had tried to resupply their stock, the water fallen from the sky was normal rain, without the properties they needed. The cloud people had realized their tricks had stopped working, especially since he had given them the sphere they sought. Which meant that the monks’ reserves were smaller and smaller, while the requests to use it from the scholars grew at every new discovery, not to speak about the god trials. He could see how the people would consider it an honor, to both escape death and take a gulp of that precious substance. He couldn't count on their help.

He knew he needed to open his eyes and get to work on a new plan, but he was too tired, and any genuine attempt at getting up was drowned by exhaustion.

Before he could realize he’d been sleeping, a flicker of panic awakened him with a gulp. He looked around, confused thoughts of executions, sentinels and grilled salmon swirling in his brain. Then he saw Ebus’s message on the floor and realized that not only he had slept, but he didn’t know how much time he had before his memory was cancelled.

He gulped, trying to drown the panic that was threatening to crawl out of his throat. He put his feet on the ground and felt the misplaced shape of the cylinder against the sole of his foot. He moved it in position between his toes, ready to be used. Then, he grabbed the mostly full plate and started eating it furiously, to calm both the hunger and the need to do something with his hands. He didn’t know what to do, his only plan had already been foiled, and it wasn’t particularly solid to begin with. The only thing he was sure about was that he couldn’t let the sentinels drag him in front of a scholar of memory. In that case, his best bet was to escape, or even just find a place to hide until they thought he had escaped.

He had only a few more minutes to think before he heard a door open and close in the distance. He instinctively approached the wall, suspecting they were coming for him.

He heard the voices approach and the tinkling of the keys. As soon as the first sentinel stepped into view, he activated the pattern. Nothing seemed to happen, but he focused on remaining still and impassible, on looking mildly curious and a bit scared like he did on any other day, instead of terrified of what he was about to do.

The sentinel with the key turned it inside the lock, then pulled the door by casually gripping one of the vertical bars. Rabam had been expecting it, and the man wasn’t using that much strength, but he still felt his foot slide forward.

“It’s not opening,” the sentinel commented.

The other one frowned and gave a firmer tug to the door. Rabam was about to slip forward and lose his balance, but he managed to stabilize himself by gripping the torch’s holder that was bolted to the wall. Fortunately the sentinels were too focused on the lock to notice any movement.

“Try again,” the one who was gripping the bar said, but the new attempt didn’t change the situation.

Rabam observed them exchange places, the key being passed from one to the other as he set his spear aside and tried again. Rabam observed his attempts with a racing heart, wondering what to do next, but his mind was blank.

“How long has it been broken?” a sentinel asked, and it took him a few instants to realize he was addressing him.

“It was a bit tough yesterday,” he said, voice trembling.

The sentinels looked at each other, each expecting the other to come out with a solution. Rabam just hoped they would both leave.

“I’ll keep trying,” the one who was already gripping the door said, “You look for a locksmith.”

His colleague nodded and sprinted away. Rabam endured the increasingly violent tugs and grunts of the one who remained until the other’s steps had disappeared again beyond the distant door that connected the prisons to the rest of the village. Then, he quickly turned until his heel was pointing at the door, without stopping the flow of viss.

The door was pushed outward just as the sentinel yanked one last time. The metal bars hit his face, pushing him completely off balance. He hit the floor with his head, only partially stopping his fall with a forearm.

Rabam sprinted forward, past the open entrance, and bent to touch the sentinel’s face with his fingertips. He desperately pushed viss forward, hoping the confusion and concussion would make the usually difficult task of putting to sleep another person a bit easier.

The man slumped onto the ground. Rabam looked around in the empty corridor, uncertain about what to do next. In the end, the fear that the other sentinel, could come back to find him standing there was enough to put him into motion.

He grabbed the sentinel’s feet and dragged him into his cell, then took his keys, the sword and the belt, that he expertly tied around his waist. He stepped out of the cell and made sure that the lock was well closed before walking down the corridors, his steps soft and hesitant.

He flattened as much as he could against the wall and held his breath when he saw the warm light of the central room. He stopped and waited for a sound that would point at the presence of sentinels, hoping they couldn’t hear his pounding heart or the suffocated breaths he was slowly taking.

He was almost convinced there wasn’t anyone waiting on the other side of the arc, when a murmured exchange of words crossed the room. He felt his heart sink, but waited until they talked again to creep a few steps forward. He couldn’t see the sentinels, not without peeking out of the corner and risking being spotted, but he could see where they weren’t: in front of the arcs that led to the other cells. They were probably standing by the door that led to the village, just outside of view.

He needed a distraction to convince the guards to check one of those corridors instead of his cell. And if they saw him...

He lowered his eyes onto the sword, wondering how much he remembered from his training. Not enough to win against two sentinels, nor the ones they would surely alert. Everything had to be over quickly, if he didn't want the third sentinel to return with the locksmith while they were still fighting.

He fixed his eyes on the furthermost torch, right next to an arch to the right. Compared to the other entrances, it looked like there was a lower chance for someone noticing him, especially if he crouched on the darker side of the corridor.

He took out the cylinder from his shoe and laid down with his belly on the floor. He pointed the extremity with the pattern for pulling at the torch's holder and activated it with caution, sending a trickle of his viss. The only sign that it had sorted any effect was a violent flickering of the light. He increased the flux of viss, propping his free hand firmly against the irregular rocks of the floor to avoid being dragged forward. The light trembled in a more visible way, to the point a sentinel made a sound of surprise.

Rabam gave more violent tugs to the holder, hoping it would dislodge. He only obtained to bend it a bit, enough for the torch to tip forward and fall. Both sentinels exclaimed something as it rolled over the floor, only stopping at the base of the wall between two doors.

Steps approached it. The male voice that accompanied them became clearer.

“… happening here? Did someone touch this?”

“Not during any of my turns,” a woman's voice answered.

The man came into view, and Rabam froze. He recognized him as one of the sentinels that sometimes brought him food: he was at least forty, with twenty or so years of expertise at his back. He'd have recognized Rabam immediately, and he only needed to turn a bit to the right to see him.

He stopped pulling and retracted into the corridor, thinking about the next step. Meanwhile, the sentinel was bending down to pick up the torch.

“The holder is bent,” he said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

“Maybe once the locksmith arrives he can get a look.”

The sentinel nodded. Rabam realized that soon they would go back to their spots next to the door, taking away his chance of escaping. He panicked, looking for something else he could use. There was a sword at the man's side, so he pointed the cylinder at it and activated the pattern for pushing.

The sword moved forward in its scabbard, pressing against the wall. The sentinel let out a yelp of surprise, narrowly missing the metal holder just above his head. He tried to detach himself by pushing against the wall. Rabam gripped the cylinder tighter.

“What's going on?” the other sentinel asked.

“I’m stuck on something.”

“On what? There's nothing in this room.”

Rabam froze again when she came into view, but she was going straight for his colleague, pressed with the side against the wall.

Only at that point Rabam dared to stand and shuffle forward and to the right, where the arc of his corridor ended and another one began, just one armlength away from him. He made sure to keep the cylinder pointed at the sentinel the entire time.

“Help me with the belt,” he said.

As soon as they were too busy trying to detangle the sword from the rest to notice him, Rabam entered the closest archway in three tense steps and hid behind the corner.

The door that led to the village opened, making him freeze again. He retracted into the shadows projected by the lanterns, where only a glimmer of the room was visible. His gaze was captured by the sentinels' hall on the other side of the door.

Rabam's stomach dropped in seeing how many people were gathered around the turns' grid. He remembered how chaotic that room could be, when there weren't priors around. Sometimes they even participated in the chaos, except of course for Maris.

People gathered there before each turn to group with the colleagues that shared the same hours. If even one of them recognized Rabam, which wasn't unlikely after his most recent trial, they'd have captured him again in an instant.

The doors mercifully closed, letting two people through.

Rabam dragged himself away, through one of the arcs and down the corridor, hoping to find an empty cell at the very end. A conversation erupted between the sentinels in the room behind him.

Rabam finally saw the cell. He approached it cautiously, scared to trigger a loud reaction from the prisoner inside. He saw a man sitting on the bed. He immediately stood in noticing someone approach. He was taller than Rabam, and broader, with the frame of a blacksmith.

“What do you want, now?” he growled.

Rabam realized he thought he was a sentinel, since he had both belt and sword. He considered how to use it to his advantage: maybe he could take the prisoner out and pretend to lead him to the washing room, hiding behind him as much as he could. But he felt uneasy at the idea of releasing a prisoner he knew nothing about. Sure, he could be just a traitor, but he could also have done something worse. He didn’t want to risk freeing someone else’s Loriem.

He considered going back and looking at the other cells, but the locksmith and the sentinel who had left to call him could give the alarm any second.

“I’m not a sentinel,” he said. “I’m a prisoner. I need to hide in your cell.”

He eyed his sword.

“I’m going to call the guards.”

Rabam took out the keys before he could say anything else. The man’s eyes went wide in seeing them dangling from his fingers.

“Let me hide here and we’ll escape together.”

He looked at the sword again, then his eyes shot back to the key. Rabam imagined he was evaluating how much of a danger he posed, and whether he could take him out easily.

The conversation in the main room had ended, so Rabam knelt to try and open the cell. As he took the first key in his hand, he realized it wasn't an easy task: they were all similar to each other. Only the one for the door that led out of the prisons could be distinguished at first glance, since it was different from the others.

He tried a couple of them, but the fact they didn't enter made him panic.

“How do I know you'll take me with you when you leave?” the man finally answered.

Rabam reflected on that while he tried one more time.

“I’ll give you the key to your cell. Provided I find it.”

He tried two more. The third one finally entered, but a yell in the distance startled him.

He turned the key in panic, grimacing at the loud screech of the door when he opened it. The voices of the sentinels in the distance became alarmed. Rabam closed the door behind him, remembering only at the last instant to turn the key again inside the lock and retrieve it. By then the sentinels must have known something was wrong, because there were fast steps going down the corridor.

Rabam stepped around the other prisoner and looked for a place to hide. He considered the separé for the toilet area, but it had a grid of wood that could betray his presence. He turned and saw the closet beside him.

As the steps approached, he climbed inside between the clothes. The space was small enough he had to stand half-crouched. He left a shutter open, the one farthest from the door, and hid behind the other one, aware that a locked closet could attract more suspicion than one looking recently used. The steps were so close his skin prickled with the feeling of someone standing right behind him.

“What's going on?” a sentinel asked.

Rabam didn't dare move nor breathe, for fear the keys in his pocket would rattle and betray him.

“Wondering the same,” the prisoner said.

“We heard the noise.”

“Must have been the guy who escaped.”

Rabam lowered his hand on the sword, his breathing so fast in that small space that he thought he could suffocate.

“Elaborate, quick.”

“There was a guy wandering here, dressed like a sentinel. He waited here a bit until you were gone, then he left.”

“Where is he?”

“I don't know. He didn't free me, so he can fuck off and die.”

Rabam relaxed, despite the clear threat in his words.

“We need to find him,” the sentinel said in the end.

He and the locksmith both ran away. Rabam waited with his heart thumping in his throat, welcoming the air in his lungs with gulps.

The shutter he was hidden behind was opened so suddenly he had to grab a hanging tunic to keep his balance. The prisoner was looking at him from above.

“I accept.”

Rabam produced a hesitant smile in front of those pointy eyes.

“Thank you.”

“You have three days.”

He turned before Rabam could process his words.

“What?” he said.

The man sat down on the stool in front of the table and bent forward with his elbows on his knees.

“If I'm not free in three days, I'll call the guards.”

“But…” Rabam started, then lowered his voice, realizing the sentinels could potentially hear him. “How am I supposed to know how much time has passed?”

“Nine meals. And I'm not sharing them.”

Rabam looked down at his sword, almost by instinct. The man smirked.

“Do you want to fight? I'm not scared of dying, but I assure you it won't happen in this hole.”

Rabam shook his head. He lowered himself until he was sitting on the floor of the closet.

“Three days,” the man repeated, and that was the end of their conversation.