Red is too far away for words to pass between us now, but I can feel his unmistakable presence as well as a trickle of images he sees. Rows of trees, lined too neatly on either side of him. A circle of buildings, all draped in tall banners. Curious crowds gathered around his cage. And a festivity of some kind, a fair being set up, all colorful tents and grass sectioned off with rope.
“Something is happening in the city,” I tell the others. “A sort of celebration.”
I turn and lead us down a narrow road that opens onto the lawn of a large circular building in the center of a square. Now we start to see banners hanging from the metal poles around the city.
“Midwinter, maybe?” Adena murmurs.
“It’s possible,” Jeran replies, “although my language classes taught me that the Karensans don’t celebrate Midwinter. Perhaps a difference in decorations?”
“Less white, more desserts?” Adena suggests at the sight of carts lining the streets, selling food on sticks.
As we walk around the circular building, still following Red’s pull on my mind, we reach an area where we get a better vantage point of this part of the city. A wide river slices through the roads, and over it curve steel bridges. Beyond it is a section of the city that appears less crowded, with none of the towering apartment buildings that we had just passed. Instead, there are tall hedges and shorter buildings arranged in neat courtyards that span at least a dozen blocks in each direction.
And then I see the array of colorful tents rising beyond the hedges in a wide, open plaza.
I nod and point toward it.
“Let’s go join the fun,” Adena says.
I step forward and am about to head down the terrace when a voice makes me freeze in my tracks. It’s cool and steady, one full of authority borne from a lifetime of power. It’s the same voice I’d heard on the night the Federation pushed past Mara’s warfront, when I’d witnessed Red’s terrible strength.
I whirl around and come face-to-face with the Premier of the Federation.
24
Gone are the harsh lines of his ornate battle uniform. Today, he’s dressed in a simple but luxurious robe of flint gray. His face is as sickly and gaunt as I remember but washed clean of the black paint, the dark circles under his eyes like bruises against his white skin. Under his faded brows, though, his eyes gleam like the edge of a blade. He smells of rose water and soap, and I realize that the circular building we’re beside is a bathhouse, where he must have just come from. All I can think is that he’s far too young to be ruling this regime in his father’s stead. Far too imperial for his delicate body. Far too ill for his age.
He regards us curiously.
The three of us kneel before him in sync. I keep my head lowered so that he can’t keep staring at me, so that I don’t have to reveal my silence. As I stare at the ground, my mind whirls. We’d been so intent on locating Red that I never even noticed him nearby, hadn’t even considered the possibility that the Premier would merely be wandering the grounds of his city. From the corner of my eye, I can see the boots of a small patrol of his bodyguards gathered in an arc around him, along with admiring—and fearful—citizens looking on a distance away. Maybe this bathhouse is a frequent stop for the elite of Cardinia, which means they must live nearby. The luxurious plazas on the other side of the river, near the festivities, must be the official government halls. Perhaps that’s where the Premier’s home is too.
As this jumble of thoughts rushes through my mind, the Premier shifts and addresses us again. His voice stays calm, but I can hear the sternness in it, the expectation of a proper reply.
Jeran finally answers in an apologetic tone. I glance up at the young man, only to find his eyes again locked on me. He seems to consider Jeran’s words before he tilts his head and repeats them, his voice hoarse and rasping.
Jeran looks at me as he tries to keep a calm façade too. “He says he knows you, Talin,” he murmurs at me.
I keep my face passive, but a cold sweat breaks out on my back. I wonder if he can sense the tension in my muscles. He’s only seen me once before—in that single, brief moment