“Come on, come on,” he said. “Night is burning, and we have so much to look at.”
She shook her head and let him pull her to her feet. He led her along the stone gutters all the way to his window. Eli swung in first. He was calling for the servants before he landed, demanding food and a whole list of other things that made no sense at all. Nico shook her head and jumped after him, closing the window firmly behind her against the evening chill.
High overhead, ignored and unseen, the outlines of the enormous claws scraped harder than ever on the black dome of the sky.
CHAPTER
10
Heinricht Slorn sat cross-legged on the floor of his cell, staring at the mountain. Looking with that sight that his human mind could still barely comprehend, even after so many years, he could see the pulsing core of the mountain’s strength beneath the cell walls. The power of the spirit flowed like a glacier from its peak to its roots buried in the very foundation of the world. The Shaper Mountain surrounded him, cutting him off from the outside, and yet the more he looked, the closer he came to understanding the world he had seen in the mountain’s memory.
But as he studied the spirit, a tiny sound drew his eyes away from the mountain to the much humbler shape of the vent above his door. Strong as it was, the Shaper Mountain had no dominion over the winds. This deep in the mountain, the Teacher had been forced to create ventilation shafts so his human followers would not suffocate. The vent in Slorn’s chamber was far too small for a man of Slorn’s size, but not all men were Slorn’s size. His ears flicked as the tiny noise sounded again, the light, small sound of leather on stone. Slorn turned his head, bear eyes slowly moving back and forth across his tiny cell, but he saw nothing. In fact, he saw less than nothing, a blank emptiness that was itself telling. He smiled and focused his large brown eyes to see not as spirits saw, but the mundane shape of the physical world, and as he did, the man slowly appeared.
“Hello, Heinricht,” Sparrow said, flashing a superior smile as he straightened up from where he’d landed below the air vent. “Been a while.”
“Not long enough,” Slorn said.
Sparrow shrugged and leaned against the door, his shape flickering. Slorn blinked in annoyance, struggling to keep his eyes focused only on the physical world, the only place where Sara’s little weapon was visible.
Sparrow’s smile widened at his frustration. “Aren’t you going to ask what I want?”
“Why should I ask such an obvious question?” Slorn said. “You’re here to offer me freedom in exchange for joining Sara’s menagerie, correct?”
Sparrow shrugged. “Good guess.”
“It was no guess,” Slorn said. “You don’t have to know Sara long to know she would never let a situation like this slip by without playing her hand.”
“Way I see it, Sara has all the cards now,” Sparrow said, looking around at the small cell. “You’ve gotten yourself into quite the mess, haven’t you? Whatever you came to tell your former masters, they must not have liked it since you’re in a cell rather than at the head of a workshop where you belong. Sara can change that.”
“I’m sure she could,” Slorn said. “But Sara’s price is always too high.”
“All she asks is that you share your knowledge,” Sparrow said. “Is that so much?”
Slorn’s calm expression turned into a snarl. “I’ve seen how she treats her people, Sparrow. I’m already a bear. I have no interest in becoming a dog. Besides”—Slorn looked down at the floor, toward the mountain’s roots—“I have unfinished business here.”
“What business can you finish here?” Sparrow said, laughing. “The Shapers are so bound in by law they’ve locked away their greatest asset for a minor transgression from a decade ago. Such people don’t deserve access to talent like yours.” He pushed off the wall, walking across the tiny cell until he was barely a foot from Slorn’s muzzle. “Sara’s different,” he whispered. “She doesn’t care about pasts or traditions, only results. Come with me to Zarin and nothing will ever stand in your way again.”
Slorn looked him in the eyes. “And that is exactly why I’m not coming with you. I cannot work with someone who values only the ends and never the means.”
Sparrow’s face fell. “You’re not exactly in a position to judge, bear man,” he said in a low, sharp voice. “You were the one who led that poor, ignorant Spiritualist girl straight into the Shaper Mountain, knowing full well she’d never be allowed to leave. Tell me, Slorn, is that something a moral man would do?”