pointed arches with large winged beasts perched along the rooftops. It’s high up on a hill where a cliff cuts cleanly down to a roiling, restless sea.
“Did you know that the first documented references to angels were in the Song of Our Lady of Shadows?” Amina remarks. As Elder Octavio’s apprentice, she read as many texts as she could on the history of the Moria and Puerto Leones. Whatever hadn’t been burned by the king, at least. “About a hundred years ago, King Fernando’s grandfather changed them into demons, and turned angels into those fat childlike creatures the justices like to paint on their ceilings.”
Margo reaches over me and closes the curtain. “Enough. This is our first mission as a unit. We have to remain calm.”
“We are calm,” Amina says, tying and retying the knot of her hair. “As calm as we can be rushing into a prison no one has ever escaped.”
I tug on my tunic, restless. “Go over the plan once more.”
“Tomás will stay with the carriage,” Amina says. “While Margo and I clear a path to the south entrance.”
“I’ll take the north side,” I say.
“We meet in the center courtyard. From there, Gabriel said there’s a stairwell with a metal sun that marks the door to the high tower where the justices keep maximum-security prisoners.”
“Simple enough,” Amina says.
Margo shoots her a glare that could petrify. I know Margo, and I can tell she wants to remind the young Illusionári that she hasn’t seen the number of hours in the field that we have, hasn’t seen firsthand the way even the most straightforward of plans can go terribly awry, but now is not the time, and despite Margo’s courage, she’s sweating as much as the rest of us.
I won’t fail you.
Make sure that you don’t.
It’s taken a full day’s ride to reach Soledad.
I peek out the window. For a prison, there aren’t as many guards as I thought there’d be. We are still outnumbered, but we are not ordinary soldiers. We are Moria.
Tomás pulls the carriage to the side of the road, in plain sight behind two others. One of them looks like it must’ve come from the palace. I wonder if they’ve replaced Justice Méndez yet. I wonder what they’ve done with his Hollow.
“I bet you wish you’d stayed behind right about now,” Margo tells Amina, whose olive skin has taken on a green pallor as we check our weapons.
Her silence doesn’t inspire confidence, but this is our unit, and we have to keep going. We disembark from the carriage and go our separate ways.
Margo grabs my arm when Amina is a few paces ahead of her. “See you on the other side, Ren.”
I take her hand and we shake. Dez didn’t like to hug or say good-bye, but this feels different. It must weigh on her as it does me.
I scale the side of a wall, my feet searching for the grooves between the bricks. I pull myself up on top of the ledge. There’s only one guard on duty here. He has no idea that I’m towering above him until it’s too late. I jump, landing on his shoulders and bringing him to the ground with my weight. I immediately dig into his memories, searching for the layout of the prison fortress.
The port of Sól y Perla is bustling in the bright day. Seagulls search the beach for scraps of things to eat. He loves this city. Loves the way that there’s always something to look at, unlike his current post in Soledad, where the most exciting thing that greets him is the wailing prisoners. But that’s easy enough to ignore when the wind howls louder. Fellow guards posted at the docks wave at him.
It’s his only day off this month, and he decides to splurge. He pays ten brass libbies for a batch of fresh corvina to take home to his wife and son. He swings the pack of fish over his shoulder and takes a stroll to the docks to watch the ships set sail.
Superstitious local women in this part of the country like to come to the dock with baskets full of carnations. They rip the petals by the fistful and throw them at the decks of the ships as they pull out into the sea. The riot of color makes him stop and watch the latest ship. Men and women with all hands on deck trying to catch the morning gale that drags the ships out to sea.
I let go of