They came to a stretch of green lawn. There’d been no window in Call’s room, but if there had, this is what he would have been able to see: flat greenness, a fence in the distance, and trees beyond that.
Right now it was a scene of total chaos. Groups of prisoners were chained together, guards circling them. Others were being loaded into vans. Mages in olive green Assembly robes were running over the grass, waving their arms, trying to direct panicked, soot-blackened guards, officers, and prisoners in different directions.
One of the Assembly Members caught sight of Call and shouted for guards.
“Where’s my ride?” said Jasper, coughing. “I gotta get out of here.”
“You’re just going to leave me?” Call said.
“I know what happens if I hang around you,” Jasper replied. “I’ll get dragged into some horror show, with severed heads and Chaos-ridden. No, thank you. I have to win Celia back. I don’t want to die.”
“At least take these off me.” Call held out his chained wrists. “Give me a chance, Jasper.”
Guards were making their way toward Call now, talking to one another as though they were planning strategy. They weren’t moving fast though and with Call’s back turned they couldn’t see what Jasper was about to do.
“Fine,” he said, and edged over to grab Call’s wrists. “Wait — what are these made of? I’ve never seen metal like this.”
“You two,” a voice barked. Call practically jumped out of his skin. It was an Assembly member in a white suit — Anastasia Tarquin, he realized in a paralyzing moment of mixed relief and fear. Her silver hair was pulled tightly back and her pale eyes blazed. “Get over here. Now, now.” She snapped her fingers, her gaze sweeping over Call impersonally, as if she didn’t know him at all. “Hurry up.”
The guards stopped advancing, looking relieved that someone else was taking over.
Muttering imprecations, Jasper fell in beside Call and let Anastasia lead them across the grass. “Transporting the Makar,” she said, holding up her hand every time someone seemed to be about to approach or question them. “We have to get him moved as quickly as possible. Out of my way!”
A beige van was parked at the far end of the grass. Anastasia opened the back doors and hustled Call in. He couldn’t see the driver up front.
Jasper balked. “There’s really no reason for me to go in a car with prisoners —”
“You’re a witness,” Anastasia snapped. “Get in there, deWinter, or I’ll tell your parents you didn’t cooperate with the Assembly.”
Eyes wide, Jasper scrambled in behind Call. The van had benches along both sides and bars above head level that cuffs could be slotted into to keep the prisoners in place. Call took a seat, and Jasper went to a place on the opposite side. No one affixed Call’s handcuffs. Instead, the doors slammed shut, plunging them into cool darkness.
“This is weird,” Call said.
“I am registering a complaint,” Jasper replied in a subdued voice. “With someone. Someone will hear about this.”
The van lurched forward, taking a few turns and then speeding up on what seemed to be a highway. Call couldn’t guess where they were going. He wasn’t even entirely sure of the location of the Panopticon in the first place, much less where they might take prisoners in case of a problem.
He puzzled over the presence of Anastasia and Ravan. Anastasia had told him that she was Constantine Madden’s mother, and that since Call had Constantine’s soul, she would help him. Anastasia had been in charge of the elementals at the Magisterium. She could have engineered all of this. But if she had, what would she do next? The whole Assembly would be looking for Call. She couldn’t just take him to some remote place until things blew over. The whole Enemy of Death thing was never going to blow over.
He went over Anastasia’s involvement, the probability of this being a jailbreak, his fear of never seeing his dad again, his worry that Master Rufus would once again believe Call had been lying to him, and his concern that if they lurched around another curve he was going to get carsick again and again, with no new conclusions, so it was with a heavy heart that he felt the van stop. The back doors opened and light flooded in, making Call blink against it.
The driver stood in front of the open doors. She took off her newsboy cap. Long dark braids tumbled over her shoulders and a familiar grin lit her face. Call’s heart flipped over in his chest.
Tamara.
CALL STARED AT Tamara, absolutely stunned. She looked different. Or maybe she didn’t — maybe his memory of her had faded over six months. But he didn’t think so. He’d thought about her so much he couldn’t imagine he’d forgotten anything about her. Not that it mattered — did it matter? He realized he was still staring and that Tamara was probably expecting him to say something. He was saved by Havoc, who leaped into the van with a loud bark and began licking Call’s face with vigor.
“Jasper,” Tamara said, frowning at the other occupant of the van. “What are you doing here?”
“Have you lost your mind? You organized a jailbreak?” Jasper demanded, sputtering with rage. “And you didn’t even tell me so that I could visit on another day?”
“Sorry I didn’t check on your social plans.” She rolled her eyes, climbing into the van. Pushing Havoc off Call, her fingers going to the wolf’s ruff in a friendly gesture….
Call couldn’t speak. He had so much to say that it got tangled between the thinking of it and the saying it out loud. He was so happy just to be looking at Tamara, so happy that she still liked him enough to be helping him. And yet he knew there weren’t any apologies big enough for him to give her.
She looked at him and smiled softly. “Hi, Call.”
He felt as if he could barely swallow. Her face had changed subtly in the past half year, but up close she looked less different than he’d thought. She still had the same big, dark, sympathetic eyes. He spoke hoarsely: “Tamara. Did you — plan all this?”
“Not without help,” she said, ushering Call out of the van. He jumped down beside her, stretching his aching leg.
They were standing in front of a pretty cottage in the center of a clearing. A little lake was off to the side, with a bridge going over it. Standing in front of the house was Anastasia Tarquin, her white car parked in the driveway.
Anastasia was still wearing her white suit, now marked with soot. She gazed at Call in that way that made him incredibly nervous, as if he were watching a mother lion prowling toward him across the savanna.
“I’ll stay in the van,” Jasper said breathlessly. “Later you can drop me somewhere. Like a gas station, anything. I’ll get back on my own.”
“Anastasia helped me,” Tamara said, mostly to Call. “She let me go down to talk to Ravan.” She looked at her feet. “I didn’t have too many other people to talk to, after Aaron died and you were … gone.”
“You could have talked to me,” said Jasper, still in the van.
“You just wanted to talk about Celia,” said Tamara. “And nobody would talk to me about Call because —”
“Because they think I’m the Enemy of Death,” Call said. “And that I wanted Aaron dead.”