CHAPTER 46: THE EMPTY ROOM

  Aira returned to the tannery safehouse just after daybreak, her clothes smelling of smoke and pine, the phantom screams of the burning column still echoing in her bones. She needed sleep, oblivion, and to know that Kira was safe.

  Kira was nowhere to be found. Only a note on her pallet.

  Aira—

  I went back to leave a note for Larik and Soli. We didn't get a chance to say goodbye.

  I'll be quick. In and out. The Church isn't even here yet. I'll be back before you return.

  —K

  The date scratched at the bottom was yesterday.

  Aira read it twice, three times, as if the words might rearrange themselves into something less catastrophic. A trip to the shop and back should have taken two hours at most.

  She crumpled the note in her fist.

  Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

  But even as the anger flared, she understood. Kira loved them. So did Aira. She would have done the same thing.

  It was time for action, not anger. Aira grabbed her satchel, checking its contents by reflex: ink vials, needles, her notebook, an extra knife. She didn't know what she'd find at the shop, but she would be ready for it. She needed to move. Now.

  The streets of Port Veridia were different. A tension in the air, a watchfulness in the faces of the few people moving through the early morning light. Shops that should have been open were shuttered. A group of men stood on a corner, speaking in low voices, their eyes darting at every sound.

  Word had spread. The advance force's defeat at West Ridge would be known by now, at least in rumor. But so would the fact that Church soldiers had landed on the island. The occupation wasn't here yet, but its shadow had arrived.

  Aira kept to the alleys, her Danger Sense a constant low hum. The Church probably already had operatives watching the port. Every shadow could hide a threat. Every footstep behind her could be pursuit.

  The Garment District was quieter still. Aira circled to the back, approaching their shop from the alley. Stitches & Scripts stood dark, its sign swinging gently in a light breeze blowing from the harbor. The front windows were intact. The door was closed.

  But something was wrong. She could feel it before she saw it.

  She crept closer, pressing herself against the wall of the adjacent building. From this angle, she could see the back entrance, the one they used for resistance business.

  The door hung open. One hinge had been torn free, the wood around the lock splintered.

  Aira's heart hammered. She drew her knife and approached without a sound, her Silent Step glyph activated. The back room was a ruin. Bolts of cloth had been thrown to the floor. The hidden compartment behind the false panel stood open, its contents gone.

  The front room was worse. The sewing table had been overturned. Kira's designs, pinned so carefully to the wall, had been ripped down and strewn about the room. A chair lay broken in the corner.

  Signs of struggle. Signs of violence.

  But no blood. No body.

  Aira stood in the shambles of their dream, her knife hanging useless at her side. The stillness pressed against her ears like a physical weight.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Where is she?

  A sound from the alley, footsteps, quick but not running. Aira spun, knife raised, her Danger Sense spiking.

  A figure appeared in the broken doorway. Reyna, the older woman from Marek's cell. Her face was grim, her clothes travel-stained. She raised her hands when she saw the knife.

  "Easy. It's me."

  Aira didn't lower the blade. "Where's Kira?"

  Reyna's expression told her everything before the words came. That flicker of something, pity, maybe, or dread, that people wore when they carried bad news.

  "Put the knife down, girl. We need to talk. I’ve been watching the shop."

  "Where. Is. Kira."

  Reyna stepped into the ruined shop, her boots crunching on scattered pins from an overturned tin. She looked around at the destruction, her face grim.

  "The Church did a sweep yesterday. Harbor Master's loyalists, mostly, with a few soldiers from the advance force who made it into the city before we broke their column." She met Aira's eyes. "They had lists. Names of suspected resistance sympathizers, unsanctioned glyph-workers, anyone connected to illegal ink trade."

  "Kira shouldn’t have been on any list. She's a seamstress."

  "She was in this shop. That was enough." Reyna's voice was flat, factual. "They hit a dozen locations across the city. Arrested maybe thirty people. Your friend was one of them."

  The knife finally lowered. Aira's arm felt like it belonged to someone else.

  "Where did they take her?"

  "The old customs house by the harbor. They've converted it into a holding facility." Reyna paused. "The Inquisitors are using it for interrogations."

  Interrogations.

  The word hung in the air like smoke. Aira thought of Kira's hands, long delicate fingers that sewed such beautiful things, that had learned to cut fabric with such precision. She thought of what Inquisitors did to get answers.

  "How long?"

  "She was taken yesterday morning. A full day ago." Reyna's voice softened slightly. "Marek sent me to find you. He figured you'd come here."

  "I have to get her out."

  "That's suicide. The customs house is guarded. Inquisitors inside. You'd be dead before you reached the door."

  "I don't care."

  "You should." Reyna stepped closer, her voice dropping. "You're the one who burned thirty Church soldiers on the ridge. Word is already spreading, whispers of a storm script master in the resistance. The Church will be looking for you. If you walk into that customs house, you're not just throwing away your life. You're giving them their biggest prize."

  Aira's hands were shaking. Not with fear, with something hotter, darker. Rage. Kira was her adopted family. This was personal now.

  "She's in there because of me. Because I told her to wait. Because I left her alone."

  "She's in there because she made a choice. A bad one, but hers." Reyna's gaze was steady. "Don't make the same mistake."

  "So I just leave her there? Let them break her fingers and burn her skin until she tells them everything she knows?" Aira's voice cracked. "She doesn't know anything. She'll suffer for nothing."

  Reyna was quiet for a long moment. When she spoke again, her voice was different, harder, but not unkind.

  "Marek is working on something. A plan. The customs house isn't a fortress, it's a temporary facility. They'll move the prisoners after the main fleet arrives in two or three days. Before that happens, there might be a window."

  "Might be."

  "It's better than charging in alone and getting killed." Reyna put a hand on Aira's shoulder. "Come back to the safehouse. Rest. Eat something. Let Marek explain the plan."

  Aira looked around the ruined shop one last time. The overturned table. The scattered designs. The broken chair where someone, Kira, probably, had struggled against rough hands.

  I'll come back, she'd promised. And she had. Just not in time.

  "The plan," she said, her voice hollow. "What does Marek need from me?"

  Reyna's expression flickered, relief, maybe, that Aira wasn't going to do something reckless. Not yet.

  "He needs your glyphs. And maybe..." She hesitated. "Maybe that fire of yours. If it comes to that."

  Aira followed Reyna out of the shop, leaving the wreckage behind. The morning air was still cold, carrying the salt smell of the harbor and something else, smoke, distant but present.

  The Church fleet would arrive soon. Kira was in a cell, waiting for hands that would hurt her. And somewhere in Aira's journal, folded between pages of careful notes, was Galen's diagram for a hybrid glyph she'd never tested.

  A weapon the Church had never imagined.

  She thought of Galen's warning: Do not test this on yourself first. The cost could be your mind, or your life.

  She thought of Kira's hands.

  Some costs were worth paying.

  [STATUS UPDATE]

  Name: Aira

  Age: 20

  Level: 1

  Mental Canvas: 45 cm2

  Scripts Memorized: 24

  Humanity: 66

  [She is in the dark, little spark. The hands that sewed your dreams are now clasped in iron. The Church asks questions with fire and blade, and she has no answers that will satisfy them. You burned an army on the ridge. Can you burn down a prison? The diagram waits in your journal. The needle waits in your hand. What are you willing to become to save her?]