Folding the Sky

-20-

They wasted no time. The group scrambled back to their rooms to pack the few belongings they'd brought with them, and Jem met them in the lobby, explaining that there was a number of vacant warehouses on the other side of the bridge that could house them well enough and give them back the privacy Sorin had just stolen away.

Zuri would certainly miss the coziness of the inn, as she would the morning coffee and pastries in the lobby. She wasn't foolish enough to sacrifice her safety for her comfort, however. The undeniable fact was that their location, their identities, had been compromised. Right now they had to get away, and make some sort of plan with the little time they had left. Albeit, she had no idea what that plan would look like.

The warehouse Jem chose was nearly an hour's walk away, and when the five of them finally reached it, Zuri was sweaty and her shoulders ached from the weight of her backpack, which seemed much heavier to her now than it had been at the journey's start. At least the city noise was stifled here, like they'd stepped into their own little bubble.

Jem tried the warehouse door, and it squeaked open without so much as a struggle. She stood back, sighing. "Well. We'll have to add a lock on that somehow."

"That or pray no one bothers looking here," Zuri said, coughing and waving away a plume of sawdust. She followed Jem inside—Kalindi, Chike, and Aldric not far behind her—and paused in the center of the dusty cement floors. "Where...where exactly is here?"

It was broad space of alternating light and shadow, the walls made of molding brick, the roof a stretch of tin except for a long skylight that spilled triangles of sunlight down onto the floor. Cement poles, their paint peeling in sheets, held up the roof at intervals, the railings a geometric array of iron and steel bars that criss-crossed each other and glinted in the light of the grimy windows. It smelled strangely enough like a carpenter's shop, Zuri thought: old wood and plaster, the faint musk of dry earth.

"Don't know," said Jem, walking around in a slow circle, her head tossed back to examine the rafters. "But for now you can call it home."

Aldric slung his satchel down with a loud thump and sat down beside it, legs folded beneath him. "Oh, certainly. It's quite homely."

"We don't have time for luxury," Kalindi said, though her own discomfort was quite obvious. Each step she took was small, abbreviated, more of a tiptoe, and her eyes darted around as if tracking a moving target that wasn't there. "Not anymore, anyway."

Chike pulled the door shut behind them, joining Jem in the center of the floor. Sunlight turned his eyes a lighter, honeyed brown as he looked at each of them in turn. "Kalindi's right. Zuri may have bought us time, but there isn't much of it. We still don't know exactly what Sorin's methods are, so for all we know he's already aware we changed locations. We need to figure out what we're going to do."

"I still think I should notify my mother," Kalindi said.

Aldric rolled his eyes. "Like she'd receive your message in time, anyway?"

Jem offered, "Maybe by telephone?"

Kalindi was already shaking her head in defeat. "There isn't one in the castle; it's not safe. I would have to write her or send a telegram."

Zuri wandered to one of the concrete pillars, running her fingers along its ragged surface, white peeling away to reveal gray and mottled brown underneath. She said, her eyes trained at her hand, "We mustn't forget Sorin's warning. He told us not to do anything extraneous, remember? Contacting outside help probably counts towards that."

"So we're fucked, basically," Jem said, and Zuri flinched, for there was a frustrated edge in Jem's voice that hadn't been there before. "That is what you're telling me?"