But," Mara continued, "I'm not most people. And I don't take empire money. Not after what they did to my son." She spat into the dust. "So here's what I came to tell you: don't go to Ashmark. The garrison's set up on the east side of town, watching the main routes. You try to go through, they'll have you before you clear the first building."
"Is there another route?" Ilara asked, stepping forward. Her voice was steady, but Kael could see the tension in her shoulders.
"Maybe. There's a dry riverbed that runs north of the settlement, cuts through some rough country, but it bypasses the garrison checkpoint. If you're careful and time it right, you could get to the wells on the north side of Ashmark, fill your cisterns without being seen."
"Why are you helping us?" Kael asked.
Mara looked at him with eyes that had seen too much suffering. "Because the empire took my boy when he was fourteen, said he had divine sensitivity, and he was needed for important work in the Spine. I never saw him again. Got a letter four years later saying he'd died in a training accident." Her jaw tightened. "But I know what 'training accidents' mean in empire language. They used him up and threw him away."
She turned back to Tessa. "So if these two are running from that same machinery, I'm not about to help feed them to it. Even for twenty thousand marks."
Tessa and Mara stared at each other for a long moment. Some kind of understanding passed between them, the silent communication of people who'd survived in the margins long enough to develop their own codes.
"The riverbed route," Tessa said. "How bad is the terrain?"
"Bad enough that you'll lose time. Maybe a full day. And you'll need to scout it first—I haven't been through there in six months. Could be washouts, rockfalls, who knows what else." Mara pulled out a folded paper, rough map sketched in charcoal. "But it's possible. If you're desperate enough."
"We are."
"Figured." Mara handed over the map. "One more thing. The garrison commander? Goes by Captain Reeve. Young, ambitious, true believer in the imperial mission. Word is he's under direct orders from someone high up in the Engine Council. Someone who wants these two very badly."
"Lady Sereen," Ilara said quietly.
Mara nodded. "That's the name I heard. Doesn't mean much to me, but the soldiers talk about her like she's the hand of god itself. Or what's left of god, anyway."
The name sent ice through Kael's veins. He'd heard it before, in whispers from other mine workers. Lady Sereen Marcellus, architect of the God-Engine Project, the woman who'd turned titan corpses into the empire's primary power source. If she was personally interested in them…
"We need to leave," he said. "Now."
"Agreed." Tessa rolled up the map. "Mara, thank you. I owe you."
"Just survive. That'll be payment enough." Mara began walking back to her wagons, then paused. "One more thing. Whatever you two can do—" gesturing at Kael and Ilara "—be careful with it. The closer you get to the Spine, the more active the resonance becomes. I've been prospecting these lands for forty years, and I've never felt it this strong. It's like something's waking up."
"We know," Ilara said.
"Then you know you're sitting on top of a powder keg with a lit fuse." Mara's expression was grave. "Question is whether you're trying to stop the explosion or cause it."
She walked away before either of them could answer.
The two caravans parted ways, Mara's heading west while Tessa's turned northeast toward the riverbed route. As the distance grew between them, Kael found himself wondering which side of that question they were really on.
Were they trying to prevent Tharos from waking?
Or had they already accepted that it would, and were simply trying to survive what came after?
He looked at Ilara, found her staring south toward where the Spine lay beyond the horizon. Her expression was distant, abstracted, as if she were listening to something only she could hear.
"Ilara?"
She blinked, came back to herself. "Sorry. I was just… it's getting louder. The calling. Ever since that woman mentioned Lady Sereen, it's been—" She pressed a hand to her temple. "It's like Tharos is excited. Anticipating something."
"Can you tell what?"
"Not exactly. But I get the sense that Sereen is important. Not just as an obstacle, but as part of… whatever this is. Like there's a connection between her and Tharos that I don't understand yet."
Kael filed that information away, adding it to the growing list of things they didn't know but desperately needed to. The list was getting uncomfortably long.
They reached the riverbed by late afternoon. It was indeed rough terrain—a dried channel maybe thirty feet wide, bordered by steep banks and scattered with boulders that had tumbled down over centuries. The ground was hard-packed sediment, good for traction but rough on wagon wheels.
Tessa sent scouts ahead to check for obstacles while the rest of the caravan made camp in a sheltered depression. They didn't light fires—too risky with imperial forces this close. Instead, people ate cold rations and spoke in whispers, the normal evening chatter subdued to near-silence.
Kael found himself unable to settle. He walked the perimeter, checking sight lines and approach routes, mind churning through scenarios. If the garrison found them, if Captain Reeve was as capable as Mara suggested, if Lady Sereen's interest meant more resources would be committed to their capture…
Too many variables. Too many ways this could go wrong.
"You're going to wear a path in the dirt," Ilara said, appearing beside him. She'd changed into darker clothes, borrowed from one of the Sohm sisters. Less conspicuous than the orphanage grays.
"Can't sleep?"
"Can't quiet my mind." She fell into step beside him, matching his nervous pace. "I keep thinking about what that woman said. About the powder keg with a lit fuse."
"We could still turn back. Head west, away from the Spine entirely."
"Could we?" Ilara stopped walking, turned to face him. "Could you? Could you feel Tharos calling and just… ignore it? Walk away?"
He wanted to say yes. Wanted to believe they had that choice.
But the resonance in his bones, the echo that had been building since the moment they'd met, told him otherwise. They were caught in a current now, being pulled toward something vast and inevitable. Fighting it would just exhaust them before they reached the end.
"No," he admitted. "I couldn't."
"Neither could I." She took his hand, grounding gesture that had become habit between them. "So we go forward. We go to Ashmark, get supplies, avoid the imperials if we can, fight them if we can't. And then we go to the Spine and find out what Tharos wants so badly that it's willing to risk waking up after three hundred years of death."
"And if what it wants is us? If it wants to use us the way the empire wants to?"
"Then we figure out how to say no to a god." She smiled, dark humor in her eyes. "How hard could that be?"
Despite everything, Kael laughed. "You're insane."
"So are you. We're perfect for each other."
The words hung between them, carrying weight neither of them was quite ready to acknowledge. But Kael felt it—the shift from traveling companions to something deeper, something that had been building since that first moment when he'd heard her singing and his blood had recognized hers.
"Yeah," he said quietly. "We are."
They stood like that, hands clasped in the growing darkness, while around them the caravan settled into uneasy rest. Tomorrow they would attempt to sneak past an imperial garrison. Tomorrow they would risk capture and death for water they desperately needed.
But tonight, for just a few stolen moments, they were two people who'd found something unexpected in the worst possible circumstances.
Hope.
And maybe that was .