They came back quiet, the stink of the Flesh Forest riding their clothes like a bad decision. Abel leaned the spear against the wall. Noah rinsed his hands at the basin and watched the water turn gray, then pink, then clear again if he let it run long enough.
Noah dried his hands and pressed the towel into his eyes until the light in the room turned soft. The anchor-lines humming at the base of his skull—one to Abel, one to Linnea—felt heavier today, like carrying two pails out to the well and back and then forgetting to put them down.
"Okay," he said, voice flat with tired. "So getting in is one problem. Getting past the children is the problem."
Abel nodded. "We can't plan like they're nameless guards."
"We won't," Noah said. He slumped into the chair because sitting down was faster than falling over. "I'm not… I can't—" He made a vague chopping motion. "We don't hurt them."
"No," Abel said. No argument at all. "We don't."
"Knocking out, maybe." Noah grimaced at his own words. "Not hard. Just… enough. Or something that makes them step away. Smoke? Lantern oil? Sleep-herb if Linnea can find it?"
"Linnea will know what's on hand," Abel said. "She'll also know when they're least there."
"Meals? Drill? Devotions?" Noah thought about the barracks, the way the kids moved like they were one animal taught to be many. "The Saint likes them seen. Parades. If he drags them to a chant, we might have a gap."
"We wait for her signal," Abel said. "Not before."
Noah nodded and let his head tip back against the chair. The wood was cool through his hair; his eyelids felt like they'd been sanded. "I hate waiting."
"Waiting is most of war," Abel said, gently enough that it wasn't a lecture.
"I didn't sign anything that said 'war,'" Noah muttered.
"You fell into it," Abel said. "Same as me."
Noah made a noncommittal noise. He could still see the Kindled girl's face from the hunt when she'd driven her little sickle up under the plate. Proud. Hungry for approval. Ten, maybe. His stomach turned.
"If it's them in the hall," he said, "we talk first. Ask them to fetch an adult. Ask them to take a message. Anything that moves them away without setting off the whole palace."
"They're trained to refuse strangers," Abel said.
"I know," Noah said. "I'm a stranger with a nice smile."
"You're a stranger who flirts with trouble," Abel said, dry.
"Same skill set," Noah said, letting his mouth hitch. The smile didn't hold. "If it does turn to a fight—flat of the spear, back of the knife. Tie wrists with ribbon, not cord. Lantern smoke if they press."
Abel looked at him then, a long, steady look. "We may not get to choose."
"We'll choose," Noah said quietly, because saying it made him believe it for a moment. "It matters how we do this. It has to."
Abel nodded once, as if he was filing that into the part of him that never forgot.
Noah dragged a hand over his face. The anchors hummed again, a low pressure that didn't hurt but didn't stop. "I could sleep for a week."
"Lie down," Abel said, already clearing a corner of the table that had become a map without a map. "I'll wake you if Linnea's runner comes."
"I don't want to miss her," Noah said. "If today's the window—"
"It won't be," Abel said. "She said she'd need a quiet shift and a reason. We'll hear."
"Right." Noah stood up, which was ambitious, wobbled, and sat again. "Okay. Ten minutes. Maybe twenty. I'll pretend it's strategy."
"It is," Abel said. "Being able to stand up counts."
Noah pushed himself to the cot and stretched out on his back. The false sun cut clean bars across the ceiling. The charm above the door clicked when a draft slid by, counting the hallway's air like an old habit. He let his eyes shut. The hum under his skull kept talking. He tried to let it be background instead of a task.
"Hey," he said into the quiet, voice gone small. "Do you ever think he already knows? That he's just… letting us run in circles because it's neat?"
"Yes," Abel said. No comfort in it, but no false hope. "And I think we have to move anyway."
"What if we don't make it?" Noah asked. "What if we get to the stairs and the Kindled look at us and that's it? Or he pulls everything down on our heads and we lose the plan and the pieces we've set up and—"
"Then we fail today," Abel said. "And try again tomorrow. Or Linnea tries. Or Cassian. Or a child who ties a red loop and remembers why it matters. We've already put more into the world than we found."
Noah let out a breath that almost counted as a laugh. "You always talk like that?"
"Only when necessary," Abel said. "You asked."
"I did." Noah rolled to his side and tucked his hands under his cheek. "Cassian…"
Abel didn't answer right away. He didn't need to. They both saw the same picture: cool cloth, fever, a voice at the bedside smoothing out the edges of a memory until it lay flat.
"I should've stayed longer," Noah said. "Pushed harder."
"You stayed as long as he let you," Abel said. "We're not the Saint. Consent matters."
"It's easier when it's a door," Noah said, tired smile scratching his lips. "Doors don't look at you."
"Some do," Abel said, and Noah huffed.
He let himself drift then, not quite asleep, not quite awake. He dreamed for a blink of a kitchen that didn't exist here, a smell of resin and orange that had no place in the Womb, a wrist-cord tied with careful, clumsy hands. It slipped away when his shoulder twitched. He opened his eyes to the same room and the same patient light.
"Time?" he asked.
"Not yet," Abel said. He was by the window, spear across his lap, eyes on the ribs outside like they were lines on a page he could read. "You slept twenty minutes."
"Felt like one," Noah said. He sat up slow. The hum in his head hadn't left; it felt steadier, though, like someone had put the buckets down for a second and then picked them up again properly. "If Linnea finds a window, how fast can we move?"
"Fast," Abel said. "We keep a bundle by the door. Rope, cloth, water. Nothing that looks like a raid if someone checks."
"Kids at the stairs," Noah said, mostly to hear it said so he would believe it. "We talk first. If it turns, we don't kill."
"We don't kill," Abel echoed.
Noah rubbed his wrist where Abel had tied a scrap of blue thread earlier, a joke turned into a promise. "When do we go if she doesn't signal?"
"When you have to see him again," Abel said. "After tonight. If he pushes, we move after. If he doesn't… we wait. The longer we stay, the more chances to make mistakes. And the more chances to learn."
"Balance," Noah said, and snorted. "Hate that word."
"I know," Abel said. "But you're good at it when you try."
"Don't tell anyone," Noah said. He stood, stretched, felt the pull in his back like a reminder of being a person. "I'll drink something and then we sit. If I don't talk, I'm not angry, I'm conserving."
Abel's mouth almost smiled. "I like you quiet. It's rare."
"Cherish it," Noah said. He poured water into a cup and forced it down. It tasted like clean stone. For a second he let himself lean his shoulder into Abel's arm and leave it there. "We'll wait for her."
"We'll wait," Abel said.
Outside, somewhere down the corridor, a kid ran past and laughed, the sound too bright for the day. The charm over the door clicked once, twice, then settled.
Noah breathed in. Breathed out. "Okay," he said. "When it's time, we go. Until then… we sit still."
Abel nodded. "We sit."
They did. Quiet, for once. Two men in a small room that smelled like resin and boiled cloth, holding their line and the little bit of mercy they could carry, waiting for a woman they trusted to tell them when the world would tilt.