“What are we going to do?” asked Hypnos. “Without the Mnemo bug, we won’t know where to find Séverin and then we can’t find the map!”
“We don’t need Séverin,” said Enrique coldly.
Hypnos’s head snapped up. “What?”
“You said it yourself … the matriarch’s safe house will have all the answers we need,” said Enrique.
“But the lyre…” said Hypnos, looking to Laila.
“Séverin is after godhood,” said Enrique. There was a hard set to his mouth. “With or without us, he’ll get to Plague Island. That’s where we’ll find him. There, he can play it and save Laila. That’s all we need him for. After that, we never have to lay eyes on him again.”
“But what will Séverin think?” asked Hypnos, in a small voice. “Before he left, he told me all he wanted was to protect us…”
Zofia watched as a small muscle in Enrique’s jaw tightened. He looked to the ice for a moment, and then back to Hypnos. Enrique’s brows were pressed down into a flat line, which signified that he was angry.
“The only thing we need protecting from is him,” said Enrique.
Protect. Zofia remembered Enrique breaking down the etymology of the word. It came from Latin. Pro: “in front.” Tegere: “to cover.” Covered in front. To protect was to cover. To hide. Zofia moved her hand right above her heart, covering the place where the letter not written by Hela lay. When Zofia evaluated the possible outcomes, she knew the letter could only be a formal announcement of her sister’s death. Hela had been sick for months. Hela had almost died already. Zofia had failed to protect her sister … but she still had a chance with Laila.
Slowly, Zofia forced herself to listen to the others’ conversation. There was talk of secret Tezcat routes that would lead them to Venice, and how the members of the Order of Babel were still paralyzed from Eva’s blood Forging, which left them only a handful of hours to leave or risk getting caught. Zofia could hardly bring herself to listen.
Instead, she stared at the ring on Laila’s hand: ten days.
She had ten days to protect Laila. If Zofia could do that for her friend, then maybe she could make herself open the letter and learn Hela’s fate for certain. Until then, she would keep the letter covered. If she did not look, then she did not have to know, and if she did not know then perhaps there was a chance … a statistical impossibility, but a weighted number nonetheless, that Hela was not dead. Zofia reached for the safety of those numbers: ten days to find a solution for Laila, ten days in which she might hope Hela was still alive.
Hope, Zofia realized, was the only protection she had left.
4
LAILA
Laila picked her way through the shadows of a narrow brick alley, pulling tight the cloth that covered her face and hair. Around her, stray cats mewled and hissed, tumbling in the piles of trash. Wherever they were—she had lost track of the Tezcat route after the seventh switch—it was early afternoon, and a wind off the sea carried the stench of dead fish. In front of her, Hypnos laid his hand against a dirtied brick. Zofia stood beside him, holding up a Tezcat pendant she had torn off from her necklace. It was the only tool they had with them. Enrique’s research, Zofia’s laboratory, Laila’s costumes … all of it had been left behind in the Sleeping Palace.
The pendant glowed brightly, indicating a hidden entrance.
“This should be the last Tezcat route,” said Hypnos, forcing a smile to his face. “The matriarch said from here, the passage would open up right beside the Rialto Bridge. Is that not wonderful?”
“That is not how I would define ‘wonderful,’” said Zofia.
Her blond hair had come undone and haloed her whole head, while her blue gown looked scorched. Next to her, Enrique gingerly touched the bloodstained bandage around his ear, and just then, a fat cockroach scuttled across Laila’s mud-crusted slippers. Laila recoiled.
“Wonderful is a hot bath and a foolproof plan waiting for us on the other side,” said Enrique. “We don’t even know where we’re going to find this safehouse.”
“We have a hint…” said Hypnos before reciting the matriarch’s instructions: “On the island of the dead, lies the god with not one head. Show the sum of what you see, and this will lead you straight to me.”
“Which means what, exactly?” said Enrique.
Hypnos’s mouth pressed to a thin line. “That’s all I was given, mon cher. So we must make do. I’m going to check that this is the correct route. Zofia, will you come with me? I might need that fancy necklace of yours.”
Zofia nodded, and Hypnos pressed his hand against a particular brick. His Babel ring—a grinning crescent moon that spanned three knuckles—glowed softly. A moment later, they stepped through the brick and vanished.
Laila stared at the Tezcat door, a desperate laugh clawing up her throat.
When they’d first left the Sleeping Palace, she had almost imagined that things might be salvaged … but then Hypnos had revealed the matriarch’s “hint,” and Laila had known they were well and truly lost. Even if they made it to the island of Poveglia, what then? They had no instruments, no intel, no weapons, no directions … and no meeting point either.
Laila squeezed her eyes shut, as if it might conjure whatever she was supposed to have glimpsed in that Mnemo bug. In her mind’s eye, she saw Séverin’s cool, dusky gaze turning from her. She remembered catching sight of a half print of her rouge just below his collar from when she had kissed him in the night. Laila’s eyes flew open, banishing those images.
She hated Séverin. He had overly relied on her belief in him. He had foolishly assumed she would think there was no world in which he would hurt Enrique or Zofia, but he had underestimated how well he’d convinced them of his indifference. Laila could almost imagine him saying: You know me. But that was false. She didn’t know him at all. And yet the guilt stayed. Every time she blinked, she saw the shattered Mnemo wings, and she didn’t know what that moment of fury had cost them in their search.
Laila shoved Séverin out of her thoughts and looked across the alley to where Enrique stood. His arms were crossed, and his gaze looked distant and furious.
“Do you blame me?” she asked.
Enrique’s head snapped up. He looked horrified.
“Of course not, Laila,” he said, walking over to her. “Why would you think that?”
“If I hadn’t smashed the Mnemo bug—”
“I would’ve done the same,” said Enrique, his jaw tight. “Laila, I know how you felt … I know what it looked like…”
“Even so—”
“Even so, we are not out of options,” said Enrique firmly. “I meant what I said … we don’t need him. We’ll find another way.”
Enrique reached for her hand, and together, they stared up at the sky. For a moment, Laila forgot about the weight of death on her bones. She tilted her chin up, scanning the high brick walls. They seemed to be part of a spiral of ramparts separating the city from the sea. Overhead, Laila could hear the bustle of a market, and gossip in foreign tongues. The smell of baked bread flecked with honey and spices filled the air, pushing out the rotting stench from the nearby sea.