The Phoenix People

Chapter Ten

The room that Melody and I entered was simple. Desks lined the walls with chairs facing them. Most of the seats were filled with Lowborns hard at work. Almost every desk had drawings or letters tacked above them and heaps of papers atop them.

Melody crossed the room to a man sitting hunched over swathes of parchment. He occasionally shoved back his mussed brown hair impatiently as he scribbled furiously.

"Oak!" Melody exclaimed.

The man jumped, stuck his quill in an ink bottle, and leapt to his feet. "Melody?" he exclaimed incredulously. "Gods, it's good to see you! What are you doing here?" He wrapped her in a quick, fierce hug and pulled away. Spotting me, he asked, "Who's this?"

Melody pulled him aside, just as she had done with his wife, and began murmuring in his ear. This time, I couldn't overhear anything she said.

"Well," Oak said, turning back to me when Melody was finished talking, "it seems as though you will be staying with us for a bit, Princess Alexia. I do hope none of us have scared you yet." He extended his hand to me and hesitantly, I took it. It was most improper, a Highborn girl - especially the princess - shaking hands with a Lowborn man, but it seemed like the right thing to do when the Lowborn man in question was this soft-spoken scribe.

"I was hoping you could escort us up to the temple," Melody explained before I could reply.

"Not just stopping by to say hello, then?"

"Afraid not."

"Just as well. I was starting to get tired of numbers."

We left the room, many curious looks following us. Perhaps they overheard Melody's explanation, or at least our conversation, I thought. If nothing else, I was a strange Highborn in fancy clothing, and that was enough to arouse any rebel's curiosity.

"What do you do here, Oak?" I asked conversationally. I felt nervous asking questions while in Melody's disdainful presence, but somehow I could tell that Oak wouldn't mind.

"I'm a mathematician," he explained eagerly. "I crunch the numbers I'm given, gather statistics of my own, that sort of thing."

I was fair with mathematics, but it hadn't been my favorite subject to learn by any means. "Sounds important," I replied politely rather than tell him this.

"Everyone in Oak's family plays a very important role in the revolution," Melody told me, sounding proud of her friends.

I nodded, my thoughts drifting. It was still disconcerting to be talked to so familiarly - especially to be led around - by my former handmaiden.

"Played," Oak said darkly, dragging me from my thoughts, and it took me a moment to realize that he was correcting Melody's sentence. "Robin was a recruiter until..." His hands clenched into fists, jaw tightening, and he looked away.

We walked in silence down the hallway. It made me feel better that we were heading to a temple - they were protected spaces, after all. Wouldn't I be safer there while I was going through this?

Going through this. What was "this?" I was here because after the discovery of the Lowborn Eradication Initiative, guilt had began eating me alive for not realizing something was amiss sooner. I knew I had information that could be helpful, seeing as I as the princess herself.

Could I be the key to the Highborn's downfall, though? Was I that useful? Or would I have to fear persecution from not only my brother, but the people I now sought refuge with?

My troubled thoughts were cut short when we reached the end of the hallway. A door slid open, much slower than the previous entrances. Oak led the way, followed by Melody, with me bringing up the rear.

In the tiny chamber we crowded into was a steel ladder leading straight up into what seemed like a solid ceiling. Oak climbed up it quickly, obviously used to the ascent, and pushed on the ceiling, revealing it to be a trapdoor. Melody, who went next, was slower - after all, she hadn't climbed this route in five years. I stared at the dirt wall behind the ladder as I climbed. Now that I wasn't blindfolded and I knew the destination at the end of the ladder, it wasn't as long or heart-stopping as the original descent from Harmony's shop had felt.

Soon, I was poking my head above-ground and blinking as natural light took the place of the torchlight that had illuminated the base.

A woman was staring, surprised, at us. She was on her knees in front of a cot, where a pale, sweaty child rested fitfully.

This room was full of other cots, and as it was a rather small space, the effect was that of pure claustrophobia. Many of the Lowborns in the cots looked sickly. Some had obvious wounds. Other seemed rested and healthy. The few that were conscious either watched us disinterestedly or paid us no mind.

The woman who was staring at us was dressed in a medic's shapeless white gown, although hers, surely once pristine, now sported several disturbing stains. Her short brown hair was held away from her face with a jagged piece of cloth. Her dark eyes widened slightly as they surveyed us, finally settling on me. Seeing as I was obviously Highborn, and a stranger at that, this was no surprise.

"Oak?" she asked uncertainly, not removing her gaze from me.

"Hello, Moon," he greeted the woman, standing up and stretching. Melody and I hurried to follow his lead. "Can't remember if you were around or not when Melody here accepted a spy mission at the castle, but she's back now!" He gestured to Melody.

Spy mission. Melody had been spying on my family, on me, for five years. How could I be so dense as to have let a Lowborn pull the wool over my eyes? I had known before, of course, that Melody had a purpose as a rebel in the castle, but it was only now really sinking in - how much she had seen, how much she knew...

"Who's that, then?" Moon asked, pointing at me. I noticed that she didn't quite pronounce all of the T's in her words and tried to ignore her impertinence.

"Someone of grave importance," Oak replied solemnly.