The Sun capital was like a snail’s shell in its shape, Leroh thought. He hadn’t been able to stop looking out the window of the coach in mesmerized anxiety since they’d departed the short-lived safety of the inn Pirria had told them of, where Mantis had chosen to pay for a hired carriage that might offer them better chances of blending in, and afford her the freedom to come and go without having to worry about leaving their beloved horses unattended.

  Wider circles turned smaller and smaller concentrically as the Sunman at the driver’s seat led them nearer to the behemoth that was the Sun temple in the very center of the city, poking its blue-tipped spikes into the skies above and mingling with the very clouds.

  Through the clean glass of the window Leroh saw a society booming with life, where seemingly every brick and stone was in use at the same time and no bit of air was left undisturbed. Constructions of modest size harbored families with young members in the dozens where several generations of the same family tree appeared to currently reside. Businesses churned out the fruit of hard labor to awaiting masses and they, in turn, spread like mites in all directions, promoting the incessant movement of what seemed like an interconnected system of lives all transpiring at that very moment before Leroh’s eyes.

  It came as no surprise that nobody paid him and Mantis any mind in their boring little carriage. They blended into the chaos like a drop of Rain in a lake.

  Leroh continued his observation of the strange city that had swallowed him like an insignificant crumb of nothing, as it distracted him from humoring upsetting thoughts. He found it strange to see grown men idle, sitting inside and playing table games, visible through drawn curtains; or young women of the Sun’s lower class milling about chatting amongst themselves on the streets. People in the prime of their physical vigor looked unconcerned and unburdened with responsibility wherever Leroh’s gaze fell, and it gave him pause. There looked to be a critical imbalance in the living of these servants, an abundance of resources that led to bizarre excesses in other areas. Human beings weren’t meant to have more time to spare than obligations, Leroh decided. The consequences to such an unnatural way of life were plainly manifested all around him. The evidence was in the overall meatier build of the Sunpeople, or the neglected children making a playground of the busy streets. This society free of the hardships of self-sustenance appeared to have devolved into an odd, tame and orderly debauchery, where whores walked in plain Sunlight among mothers buying bread for their children and, in town squares, instead of plays and performances, brawls took place, with people gathering to watch in mild interest.

  Leroh also noticed, with second-hand embarrassment and perhaps a little healthy curiosity, that people were far more open regarding their bodily urges than what he was accustomed to. He saw, while trying not to stare, that it was considered appropriate for people to kiss and fondle each other in public, a behavior that drew no attention from anyone but himself. Leroh was both appalled and admittedly a little intrigued by the Sunpeople’s lewdness.

  The closer they came to the castle, the more ostentatious their surroundings became. The larger circle where the lower classes resided left behind, they entered the smaller one within which assumed a notably higher level of wealth; then they moved to the next rank up, and later the one that followed, each with bigger houses than the last, and more visible luxury in the form of garish architecture and increasingly attentive landscaping on front yards. Fewer people began to pollute the streets until only what looked like the serving classes remained—the workers or slaves belonging to the highest echelon of Sun servants that inhabited the monumental residences of the Rays—moving in haste to perform duties of all sorts. Women in frilly aprons scuttled about with heavy-looking baskets or trolleys, carrying flamboyantly dressed children by the hand or in their arms or sometimes following after them, trying to keep pace at their heels but never reprimanding. Men were posted everywhere too, guarding, building, digging, fixing, carrying, cleaning. They all wore a type of hat that identified them as helping hands, a simple white coif that tied around the nape of the neck.

  Around them and claiming most of Leroh’s attention were homes as big as castles, and Leroh forgot for a moment all that he should be feeling and allowed himself to take in the once-in-a-lifetime sight.

  The richer Sun servants displayed their social standing in enigmatic ways he could not understand. Some houses had statues erected in their front lawns depicting the likeliness of strange men in livery, or nobles robed in bejeweled cloaks, holding artifacts or presenting golden palms to the observer like a predator might show its fangs. Artfully carved sculptures in rock and wasteful amounts of precious metals stood where a family Leroh would have previously considered wealthy might have chosen to display a flowerpot or wooden ornament. In every minute detail of exposed material one could see the work of hundreds of souls.

  “See anyone you recognize?” Mantis startled Leroh when she spoke for the first time since they’d sat side by side on the coach’s inner seats.

  “Here?”

  “Yes. This is where they should be working.”

  If they’re alive, is what she left unsaid.

  Leroh looked out into the world with more intent and tried to focus only on the faces of the servants. His heart rate suddenly picked up and his breath started coming in fast pants, but still he found he was not really looking. He was avoiding seeing, for the longer he stalled, the longer his mother and friends might yet live. He mentally shook himself and forced his eyes to focus on any one face.

  The first man Leroh saw was unfamiliar. Then he moved to a middle aged woman not too far from him, and he didn’t know her either. Nothing. No. Again no. Another. Not that one, or that one. That one there looked like someone he might have met? No, maybe not, just an unremarkable face.

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  No again. And no. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. NoNoNo.

  With every unsatisfactory result Leroh found himself looking more eagerly. The coach kept moving and leading him aimlessly through streets too beautiful for a person like himself, and on and on he kept glancing and gazing and staring at man after man and woman after woman for a sign of hope. None came for what seemed an eternity and a half. By the time Leroh spotted Tem, his cheeks and chest were drenched in tears and his trousers were nearly ripped off his thighs from clenching his fists on the fabric.

  “THERE! There! That’s Tem! That’s my friend. Just there! That’s…my friend…” Leroh covered his wet face with his hands and collapsed into sobs. He was incapable of feeling any more shame, only relief and joy and pain.

  “Stop here,” Mantis ordered the driver at conversational volume, but the man seemed to hear, for he heeded her command and parked the vehicle only moments later. “Come, Leroh.” She unlatched the door and stepped down.

  “Thank you,” Leroh mumbled pathetically, wiping tears from his face with the already soaked sleeve of Teela’s shirt.

  “Don’t thank me yet. Come on.”

  He went.

  It was a long and terrifying walk over to where one of his closest friends was currently posted loading barrels full of waste onto a cart, but Leroh was too overwhelmed to feel the full spectrum of emotions he knew he should be experiencing. All that was on his mind was the devastating relief he felt and the possibilities now taking shape before him once again. He was not completely doomed to misery and loneliness, not if Tem lived. There was something left. One thing, certainly, at least.

  A man was with his friend performing the task alongside him, but if he was from Pirn also, Leroh did not recognize him. They both kept their attention on their work as Mantis and Leroh approached them walking arm in arm as before. Some of the other people on the street and working nearby peered at them curiously, but Leroh could not care about that. “Tem,” he said when they were close enough to be heard without yelling.

  His friend recognized his voice and lifted alarmed eyes to him. A long moment passed, then another. Tem looked Leroh up and down a few times, then seemed to pay special attention to his face and eyes. His mouth opened on an indrawn breath as if he were about to speak, but closed abruptly when he moved his assessing gaze to the woman standing beside Leroh as if he’d forgotten to look at her until now. His piss-yellow eyes widened and his posture became stiff as a board.

  “Tem,” Leroh called to him again, feeling a strange desperation to be acknowledged, to be addressed by him.

  “What are you doing here? What happened to you?” His friend spoke so quietly Leroh was barely able to decipher his words, needing to read his lips to make out what he’d said.

  “Is…” Leroh tried talking, but found he could not. His lips met each other and sealed any further words from escaping him. He swallowed what felt like a handful of sand and started shaking.

  “Leroh?”

  “Come with us, boy,” Mantis ordered his friend and pulled gently on Leroh’s elbow where her hand still rested.

  “Tell me what’s happening,” Tem demanded, distress more clear in his voice now.

  “Come with us, please,” Leroh was able to say.

  “I cannot. I’ve orders—”

  “I was not asking. Come now,” Mantis threw Tem a look that Leroh knew too well, and which made him speak again to avoid further interactions of the sort between his friend and the terrifying person at his side.

  “Please. I will explain, but come with us, just into the coach—just there—just for a moment. Trust me.” His voice was low and gravelly and communicated as much pleading as Leroh had intended to put into his words. He decided Tem must have heard the same thing, for after a few breaths of consideration, he nodded and took a careful step in their direction, looking around apprehensively at the other servants who’d witnessed their interaction.

  It was a long walk back to the carriage. On the way there Leroh could not keep his eyes away from Tem’s yellow irises, which in turn would not keep away from Mantis. He was looking at the woman as one would a growling wildcat.

  “She’s fine. She won’t hurt you,” Leroh whispered to him, and received a sideways look of shock and terror from his friend as a response, as dismayed to hear him speak like that in her presence as Leroh would have been upon their first acquaintance. In fact, he believed he’d worn the same exact expression several times on his own face thanks to Teela. Trying to soothe the tension, he repeated, “It’s alright, man. She’s going to help you. She helped me.”

  “Will you shut your mouth for a moment. You’re practically screaming,” Mantis scolded in a way that did little to reaffirm Leroh’s last words to his friend.

  Tem swallowed visibly and looked at Leroh with hurtful suspicion, but said nothing. It was only upon reaching the carriage that he finally opened his mouth. “My master will know soon that I was taken and by whom. We were seen,” he spoke in a volume that challenged Leroh’s hearing, seeming to cater that message only for Mantis’s ears.

  Leroh briefly wondered which master he was even referring to, but promptly decided to drop that train of thought, for he didn’t enjoy it.

  “Drive. Keep to the Rays,” Mantis directed the driver and, as the coach started moving, she brought her intimidating orange gaze to Tem’s. “I don’t believe that’ll be a problem,” she told him. “Now, talk.”

  She crossed her arms and reclined against the back of the seat, bringing her eyes to the window in an out of character gesture of relaxation. Leroh paid her no mind, and grabbed his friend by the forearm, demanding his attention.

  “Tem. Please,” was all he could say.

  The lad’s wavy black hair looked clean, more than it had normally been before. It hung loosely over his forehead now as Tem reached up to remove his coif with a hand and slumped over slightly. His chest was rising and falling slowly, and his throat bobbed as he swallowed once. Leroh studied him, trying to pry an answer out of him without having to ask, or to hear what had to be said. He needed to know so desperately and yet he could not bring himself to utter a question.

  “Kird’s gone. They’re all gone, Leroh. Your ma went, too. I’m sorry.”