enter through the music room, we probably have about fifteen minutes. Benjy will lead you to Kinok’s study in the cellar to steal the safe with the compass in it. Meanwhile, I’ll—I’ll take care of Crier.”
“That’s distraction two,” said Benjy. “That’ll keep the guards away from Kinok’s study. We get in, we get the safe, we head back to the music room. We wait for everyone until midnight. Then we run.”
“What of you?” said Idric, directing the question at Ayla. “Are we waiting for you?”
“Until midnight.” Out of the corner of her eye, Ayla saw Benjy shift his weight from foot to foot. He still hated this part of the plan, and Ayla knew there was a part of him that thought she wouldn’t be able to do it. To kill Crier. “If the clock strikes midnight and I’m not in the music room, you run. You leave me behind.”
Yoon opened their mouth to protest, but seemed to think better of it. Everyone else merely nodded, or did nothing at all. There were no illusions here. They weren’t friends, not with Ayla and not with each other, and there was a good chance that tonight would claim all their lives. They would leave her in a heartbeat. Ayla didn’t blame them one bit. The only wild card was Benjy.
Benjy, who was squaring his shoulders. “Two minutes,” he said. “Before we go—before it all happens, before everything goes mad—remember that tonight we’re forging a new future. Remember that we’re on the right side. The leeches killed our people. They burned our villages. They poisoned our wells. They slaughtered our children in the streets.”
He was barely speaking above a whisper, but he might as well have been shouting. Even the sea wind had gone silent to listen. The seven faces in the circle ranged from grave to anguished to furious, everything in between.
“The leeches think they can look down on us from their marble thrones and control us with an iron hand. They think we are no better than mindless cattle; they think we won’t fight back. Tonight, we prove them wrong.” He looked around the circle one last time, meeting everyone’s eyes again. “Are you ready?”
Seven nods, seven hisses of yes.
“Are you ready?” he said more quietly, just for Ayla.
She nodded. She didn’t trust herself to speak.
“All right,” said Benjy. “It’s time.”
Seven became four when Yoon, Tem, and Idric peeled away, melting back into the shadows of the orchard and the gardens beyond. Ayla, Benjy, and the others waited breathlessly under the sun apple tree, watching the dark expanse of the palace grounds. Seconds crawled like ants across Ayla’s skin, each minute lasting a thousand years, until—there.
A glow.
A flicker of orange light in a sea of black.
Then, a moment later, the flicker became an inferno as the oil-soaked roof of the stables caught fire. It happened so quickly: practically between one breath and the next, Ayla watched the fire spread across half the roof, then all of it, pale smoke billowing up into the night sky, obscuring the stars. She could smell it in the air—like a thousand oil lamps burning at once. The horses would already be panicking. Ayla kept her eyes on the stables until she saw it: a flash of light at the western corner of the burning building. Yoon’s tiny hand mirror catching the firelight.
“There,” Ayla said, nudging Benjy.
The mirror flashed once more. The distraction had worked; all the nearby guards were rushing to the stables to free the horses and put out the fire.
“Follow me,” Ayla said. She didn’t wait for a response before leaving the relative safety of the sun apple trees and heading straight for the palace. That morning, when she was late reporting to Crier’s door, it was because she’d opened one of the windows in the music room. Just a crack: not wide enough that anyone would notice. Just wide enough that it could be opened the rest of the way from outside. The six of them, Ayla and Benjy and the housemaids, skirted along the edges of the west wing until they reached that window. Benjy, the tallest among them, pushed it open, and helped Ayla and then the others get a leg up and over the sill. Then, silent as cats, they slipped one by one through the window and into the dark, empty music room.
Benjy was the last to enter. “Stars and skies,” he murmured, staring in something almost like awe at the instruments around them, and Ayla remembered