Janan nodded. “Yes. I understand your anger. Which is why I’m going to make you an offer.”
“You have nothing I want,” I growled.
Janan stepped around me, toward the cage.
“What are you doing?” My voice didn’t carry. He acted like he didn’t hear me. I checked around me. The people who’d dragged Sam and me here were gone, back with the crowd beyond the skeletons. I wondered what they thought of the two of us being up here. Like we were favored. It was so we wouldn’t try to escape, though.
Slowly, while everyone was distracted by Janan moving alongside the cage, I slid off my backpack. Was there anything useful inside? I tried to remember what we’d packed this morning. Medical supplies. Sticky gloves and boot covers; those were still on the roof. Flute; it would be a miracle if that wasn’t broken. A small tool kit Stef had scrounged for me. The knife Sam had given me a year ago. I wanted to scoot close to him and see if he was okay, but I needed to stop Janan. Sam would understand. He’d tell me to stop Janan first.
Janan drew his knife and slipped it into the cage and the cloth-covered bundle on the floor. My heart thundered as I crept closer. Surely he wouldn’t kill it yet.
The first rope snapped under the sharp blade. Then another. Was there anything I could do? I felt paralyzed, my thoughts thick and useless.
One by one, the ropes sliced apart and the heavy black cloth fell away.
It seemed a small sun appeared before me as the phoenix rose up and screamed, powerful and polyphonic. An orange glow turned white, and tears poured down my cheeks as immense wings lifted above its head, all glory and flame and black ash raining.
The phoenix was twice my size, with glittering plumage more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen. It had a hooked beak and great talons like a raptor, but I remembered the story from the temple books: the phoenixes hadn’t killed Janan and his warriors, because they didn’t want to end their cycle of rebirth.
Everyone gasped, and the crowd went perfectly silent as the phoenix gazed around at its captors.
I’d expected its eyes to be made of light, like every other piece of it, but when the large round eyes landed on me, they were black like moonless night. Like night if the stars had all gone out. They were deep and ancient and filled with sorrow.
Quiet rushed over the world. Even the blackness of ash outside the city seemed muted. Janan stepped onto a raised platform to address everyone.
“Five millennia ago, I searched for the key to immortality. When I was imprisoned for my knowledge, you came to free me, but I had another plan, one that would ensure we could all live eternally. Now I have returned to fulfill that promise.” Janan raised his voice. “Though I tried to protect you, I could not stop what you call Templedark or the slaughter that came that night. We’ve lost so many of our own. Nevertheless, we must begin to rebuild. As I’ve said, I want my people to be content.”
Janan turned his gaze on Sam, who pushed himself back into a sitting position. His shoulder was bleeding again, and his arm hung limp at his side. His skin was pale and shone with sweat as he edged closer to me, though his movements were slow and clumsy. He couldn’t do this much longer.
“Some,” Janan went on, “will never be content, knowing what they have lost. While I can do nothing for those fallen during Templedark, to show you I am not truly without heart, I will add one to our ranks.”
Sam looked at me. I looked at Janan. A low murmur rippled through the crowd.
“You’d make me immortal?” I asked. “Like everyone else?”
Janan nodded. “You and Dossam care for each other. You’ve fought hard to be part of this community.” He swept his arms over the crowd. “You were exiled, but that doesn’t have to be true any longer. You can live forever with your friends. With Dossam.”
My heart stumbled on itself. Life with Sam. With music.
“Ana.” Sam’s hoarse whisper drew me closer to him. Our eyes met, and he didn’t have to say what he was thinking. He’d already told me a thousand times.
He would choose me.
No matter the price, no matter the consequences. Sam would choose me.
My heart broke.
“You understand why I can’t, right?” I touched his face. My eyes ached with fresh tears. The salt stung cuts on my face.
He nodded. “I understand.”
I brushed my lips against his, then climbed to my feet to face Janan. Here was a chance to make the others see.
If there were any who’d been too afraid to speak up.
If there were any who’d wanted to make a choice, but hadn’t known how.
If there were any who wouldn’t stand for the slaughter of a phoenix and newsouls.
“What is the price of immortality?” My voice sounded wisp-thin, only a thread of a song, but I urged strength into it.
Janan spoke easily. “One life never lived. One tiny spark that will never know.” He motioned at the phoenix, which gazed over the assembly with unreadable eyes. “And this.”
Couldn’t everyone see how wrong this was? Whit and Orrin had insisted there were good people we were leaving behind. I wanted that to be true. I wanted them to stand up for what was right and prove all my fears wrong.
But no one moved.
What about the people we’d freed from prison? When I glanced over the crowd, I spotted familiar faces, but when our eyes met, they looked away.
“Five thousand years ago, you told everyone the phoenixes had imprisoned you because of the knowledge you gained, but that isn’t true. They imprisoned you because you captured a phoenix and tortured it.”
Everyone was silent. Staring.
“The phoenixes wouldn’t kill you for what you’d done, but they did give you eternity in a tower. Instead of repenting, you began exchanging souls. You reincarnated people because you couldn’t bear to be without them, and then you made them forget.”
Janan cocked his head and remained silent.
The whole city was silent, save ragged breathing and groans of dragons dying and the muted roar of the pyroclastic flow surging past.
No one was listening.
“It’s true.” Sam forced himself to sit a little straighter. “You stole our memories.”
Whispers sizzled through the crowd.
“You made them forget because you knew the guilt of trading a newsoul every lifetime would crush them,” I said. “You didn’t want them to know what you’d done.”
“You didn’t just trade their lives for ours,” Sam said. “You took newsouls, and you ate them. You consumed their souls for power. Our reincarnation was bought with that stolen life.”
“No. No.” The voices came from the crowd. Some of the people I’d freed from prison moved about the others, muttering and pointing.
“What I did before was wasteful,” Janan said. “Now I know a better way. One soul for infinite life. That’s all it will take now. No more death and rebirth. No more reincarnation. Just life.” Janan motioned to the phoenix. “And I have this.”
“I would die for other people,” I said, “and other people have died for me. We do it because of love. But I won’t accept an unwilling sacrifice. Not the phoenix, and not a soul that’s never lived.”
Janan nodded. “Very well. I was afraid you might feel that way, but I’d hoped otherwise. We will continue without you.”
The crowd hushed. Everyone watched me; I could feel their stares. Only, I had no idea what to do next. I’d hoped to inspire them, make them see the truth, but no one was moving.
No one was willing to speak up.
“Wait,” someone called. Someone from the prison? “You made us forget?”
“What was that about newsouls?” another asked, and voices poured from the crowd, talking to one another, shouting questions at Janan.
“They’re just newsouls. They don’t know what they’re missing.”
“We thought newsouls would replace us, but we’ve been replacing them this whole time.”
“We’ve had more than our share of lifetimes, and the cost . . .”
“I’m afraid to die.”
“The girl is right. We can’t do this.”
The questions and demands for more information intensified. I couldn’t believe it. They cared? Not everyone, but some were asking questions and pressing through the ring of skeletons, and Janan looked stunned, like how could they not accept the trade?
He didn’t understand the value of one life. He underestimated the impact one soul could have.
My friends had been right after all. There were good people here.
At my feet, Sam grasped my ankle. “Help me up.”
I bent and wrapped my arm around him, taking as much of his weight as I could bear while he found his feet. He swayed, but steadied himself and added his voice to those standing up to Janan.
“I won’t be part of this!” someone shouted.
Hope flowered inside me as people closed in on the cage, on Janan standing there with his knife. The phoenix watched people turn on their leader.
“Very well,” said Janan. “If you will not all accept my gift, I will give it to no one.”
“No!” Toward the back, someone threw a punch. A fight broke out, and screams again rang through the night. Blue targeting lights flared and people yelled, calling to Janan for help, but he just stood on the dais and watched chaos erupt through the industrial quarter. What was left of the city would destroy itself unless someone stopped it.
Stopped Janan for good.
But what could stop something like Janan? He was human, but immortal now. He had nothing to fear.
I’d once thought dragons had nothing to fear, but they were terrified of Sam and what he held. If the phoenix song was life and death, if it could destroy something as formidable as dragons, maybe it could affect Janan as well.
As the crowd pressed closer, louder, and Janan’s smile grew wider, I bent for my backpack and removed my knife and flute case.
“What are you doing?” Sam gripped my shoulder for balance.
“There’s a phoenix. I’m going to make it use its song. Unless you think you can do it on command?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes grew wide. “I don’t know how.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I understand.” He was broken. Dying. All his hope and confidence stripped away. I held his hand as he staggered with me to the cage while Janan was distracted by the fighting.
The phoenix was quiet now, watching everything, though I couldn’t guess its thoughts. I left Sam leaning against the bars while I searched for a latch. But if there were a way to open the cage, it was near Janan.
“Hey, phoenix.”
The black eyes turned on me.
“I want to free you.”
Its head tilted.
“But I need you to use the phoenix song. The one dragons are afraid of. Sam knows it, but he doesn’t know it. And his arm is hurt too badly to play my flute. I need your help.”
“You just go right up to anything and talk to it, don’t you?” Sam closed his eyes and smiled. “I love that about you.”
“Everything else has talked back so far.” I turned to the phoenix again. “I need your help. Please.”
The phoenix shook its head.
No?
Because it wouldn’t take a life and risk its own cycle of rebirth?
Then what was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to stop Janan? How was I supposed to ensure newsouls had a life?
I’d already failed the sylph.
Hadn’t I?
On the dais, Janan lifted his knife into the air. A man went flying backward, like the dragons had earlier. Janan was just adding to the chaos.
If he’d consumed the sylph when they entered the temple, were they already gone? Or slowly digesting as the newsouls had?
Fine. I’d try it myself. I lifted my flute and started to play.