I glanced at Sam; he’d said we shared a birthday, hadn’t he? Why would Meuric say something different?

Sam didn’t seem to notice. “If I could have, I would have, but as you said, I was incapable of caring for anyone. I’m offering now.”

“And the fact that the law prevents her from living in the city?” Meuric asked.

“How many other newsouls have been born in the last eighteen years?” Sam’s voice was as hard as ice. “She’s the only one. The law was made against her. It’s inhospitable at best, and a death sentence at worst, especially since we don’t know if she’ll be reincarnated. And I believe there’s another law about that.”

I watched Sam, hoping for answers to a million questions—there was a law about my death?—but he didn’t acknowledge my stare.

The Councilors glanced at one another. Sine shrugged first. “I wasn’t for the law in the first place. If Sam wants to care for Ana, he should be allowed. She’s not hurting anyone.” She sent me a warm smile, but I couldn’t bring myself to return it.

Meuric nodded. “I suppose it would be a chance for young Ana to have a bit more guidance. Li was no doubt a capable teacher, but perhaps Sam will be able to help Ana find who she is so she can, as he said, become a contributing member of the community.”

“I don’t need another parent,” I started, but Sam interrupted me again.

“Then you’ll rescind the law?” If he wasn’t on my side, I’d hit him for talking over me all the time. How could I be my own person if I didn’t have a voice about my own life?

“Frase? Antha?” Meuric glanced at the other two Councilors. “We need a unanimous vote, since the others aren’t here.”

“On the condition that she obey a curfew and submit to lessons and tests.” Frase leveled his gaze on Sam. “To ensure that Ana has a quality education, of course. If she’s reincarnated after she dies, then we’ll have gained a valuable new voice. If she isn’t, well, we all know how Sam enjoys taking on new projects. This should keep him busy for a lifetime, and should any more newsouls appear, he’ll have the experience to aid them as well.”

I squeezed my hands together behind my back. The sting of raw flesh was the only thing that kept me grounded. I wasn’t a project. I wasn’t an experiment. I wasn’t a blasted butterfly.

“That sounds reasonable to me.” Antha lifted her chin and looked at me. “Will you abide by these conditions?”

My jaw hurt from clenching it, but I stopped myself from checking with Sam to see what he thought. I didn’t need his guidance. “Sure.”

“Then it’s settled.” Meuric used the arms of his chair to push himself up. “Ana will stay with Sam as his student. Progress reports will be expected and reviewed by the Council monthly. Why don’t you both come by the Councilhouse in the morning. Tenth hour. We’ll introduce everyone else and finish working out the details.”

Not a question or invitation.

After a round of overly polite welcomes—welcome home and welcome to Heart—the Councilors left, Corin left, and Sam and I picked up our bags.

He met my eyes briefly before motioning me to the door, and I couldn’t tell whether he was satisfied with the verdict or not until he said, “They planned that.”

Chapter 8

Song

“WHAT DO YOU mean?” I stepped outside, into Heart, onto a wide avenue. Conifers and hints of white stone houses filled the left side of the road. Smaller streets wound between the trees, which gave an illusion of privacy, though I got the feeling the plots of land each house stood on were large.

Sam motioned to an odd assortment of buildings on the right, stretching to the far side of the city, visible only because the wall was so big. “This is the industrial quarter. Warehouses, mills, factories.”

“Who does all those jobs?”

“Whoever wants whatever is necessary. Or, for example, if you want bolts of cloth, you can buy them during market day, since there are a few people who like working on those things, and produce more than they can use. It’s their job, and how they earn enough credit to buy food.”

“And those?” I pointed at a maze of huge pipes that ran between buildings. “You could fit a person in them.”

“Used for conducting geothermal energy. This part of Range is on top of an enormous volcano; there’s a lot of power just beneath the ground. We moved to solar energy almost a century ago, because it’s less potentially destructive, but we keep the pipes in place for backup.”

“I see.” I gazed up at windmills that reached higher than the wall. Above everything, the temple pointed at the sky. I couldn’t drop my head back far enough to see the top. Shivering, I turned my attention back to Sam. “Why do you need so much energy? It seems like there’s a lot more coming in than even a million people can use.”

“A lot of the power is used for automated city maintenance systems and mechanical drones that don’t need people to control them. Like snowplows or sewage.” He flashed a grin. “And when you get in trouble a lot, like Stef, you become very familiar with monitoring and cleaning those systems as punishment.”

“What if no one does anything wrong?”

He snorted. “There’s almost always someone. But on the rare occasion there’s not, we have to take turns.”

“Yuck.” I decided to behave. I didn’t want to spend my first—possibly only—lifetime scrubbing unspeakable things.

“I’m surprised no one’s come to greet you,” Sam muttered.

“Gawk. Not greet.” I followed him down the cobblestone avenue, doing my best to avoid dropping my bags while still taking in my surroundings. My first time in Heart since I was born, and the place was dead. “What did you mean before when you said ‘They planned that’?” He couldn’t avoid my question forever.

“What it sounds like. While they were taking their time getting to the guard station, they were deciding what they would offer. They made it sound like they were doing you a favor.”

I hmmed because I hadn’t caught that, but when I considered the conversation again, I agreed. “They don’t seem to respect you very much. Aside from insulting me, what did they mean by ‘projects’?”

He gave a dry chuckle. “Just that I tend to try something new every lifetime. Lots of people learn new things, because it’s simply easier to know how to do everything yourself than it is to realize your plumbing is broken and the only two people in Heart who could fix it are either away from the city or between lives.”

“So you know how to fix your plumbing. That’s not a crime.”

“But if I make it a point to learn something new every life and try—and sometimes fail—to keep up with old projects from previous lives, it makes me appear directionless. They think I’ve taken on too many things and don’t stick with enough of them.”

“Very contradictory.” I struggled to keep up with his long strides, especially now that I was carrying double what I had been. I didn’t blame him for his haste now that we were this close, but the day was considerably warmer than the past few weeks. My head buzzed with strain.

“That’s life.”

Apparently. “What did you tell Corin to make him change his mind about calling Meuric?”

Sam didn’t quite manage to shrug, thanks to the bags on his shoulders.

“About how useless I am? How I need help and would die if left on my own?” It was all probably true. I hadn’t lasted a day after leaving Li’s house.

“No, nothing like that.” His focus was straight ahead.

After fifteen minutes of trotting after Sam in silence, I said, “I don’t like Corin.”

“He isn’t a bad person. He’s just stiff and follows too many rules. Don’t blame him for what happened today.”

We turned down a street wide enough for five people to walk shoulder to shoulder. Bushes and tall evergreens lined the way. Other streets and walkways broke off from this one, but everything was still so far apart. Half the city’s population lived in this quarter, but I doubted they could hear one another if they hollered out their windows.

I caught sight of only a few houses, since most were guarded by trees and distance. They were all made from the same white stone as the city wall and temple, but their exteriors had been decorated differently. Some were plain, with merely serviceable shutters or glass in the stone openings. Others were more opulent.

“Are all the windows and doors in the same places on every house?” I huffed, trying to keep up with him as he walked even faster. Maybe if I got him talking he’d slow down.

“They are. Like I said, the city was waiting for us. The houses were already built, but they were shells with holes for doors and windows. The insides were hollow. We had to build interior walls, stairs, different floors—everything. You’ll see.”

I stopped walking. Jogging, rather. Trying to catch my breath, I knelt and let the heavy bag rest on the street. It had to weigh at least half what I did. My heart raced, and a cramp jabbed at my side.

“Ana?” Sam turned around and finally noticed I wasn’t there. He came back for me and crouched. “Are you okay?”

“No.” I scowled and pressed my palms on my face, damp with cold sweat. “No, I’ve been chased into a lake, burned, babied for weeks, then I walked half of Range to get here so a bunch of people who don’t know me can direct my life, and now you’re practically running away from me.” I slapped my bag, wincing at the shocks up my wrists and forearms. Darkness tinged the edges of my vision, receding as I took deep breaths. “You have all this time. Can’t you walk slower?”

A mask fell away from his expression as he dug a handkerchief from his pocket. He dabbed the cloth across my forehead and cheeks. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t paying attention.”

“You’re preoccupied.” I’d seen it before, a few times in the cabin when we talked about sylph or Li. Not that he ever admitted it.

“Excited to get home.” He stuffed the handkerchief away.

Liar. Well, maybe not completely a liar, but I wasn’t stupid. The mask had been there since we’d left the guard station. No, before. Sometime between standing up for—and interrupting—me, and the Council deciding what to do. Maybe in the same way I didn’t want another parent, he didn’t want a child. Though he’d said he’d take the responsibility . . .

But I wasn’t a child.

I lurched to my feet, bag gouging my shoulder, and nodded for him to continue. His mask returned, but he kept a slower pace this time. We didn’t speak as we turned down a few more streets and headed up a long walkway, and I caught my first glimpse of Sam’s house.

Like all the others, it was tall and wide, with a white exterior and the same placement of doors and windows. Nothing like Purple Rose Cottage, which had been small and wooden, perpetually dusty.

Shutters were painted pine green, and below each one rested a thick bush. Roses, perhaps. I glanced at my hands, thinking of the scars the purple roses had left. They were gone now, burned off in the sylph fire.

The outside had a generous garden, a few bare fruit trees, and small outbuildings scattered on the sides and back. Chickens clucked nearby, and cavies made quiet wheeking and bubbling noises in another building.

Sam walked beside me as we approached the door, green like the shutters. “What do you think?”

“Pretty.” But the stone walls and roof, the perfectly tended lawns . . . It all seemed cold. Ancient, and watching. When I glanced over my shoulder, the temple rose into the sky, even more sinister than before.

Sam didn’t notice my lack of enthusiasm, just found his key—what did he do with it between lives?—and opened the door wide to let me in first.