“They tend to divide the workers by their specialties,” I reply. “Talin’s mother is skilled in medicine. They might use her for the turbines or they might have her as a nurse to treat injuries the other prisoners sustain from the factories. We should head first for the prison infirmaries.”

“And what if they’re just holding her in there without assigning her to anything? What if they’re just punishing her?”

I shake my head. “Then they wouldn’t have taken her here. Constantine would have sent her to the labs. Torture is inefficient for the Federation in this district. They want to get something out of you here.”

Jeran nods, his eyes turning to the lines. His focus pauses on one some distance from us. Then he looks back up in Adena’s direction and signs again. “I’m telling them your idea of distracting the guards,” he whispers to me as he goes.

I wait in silence as Jeran watches for Adena’s signals. After a pause, he turns back to me, blushing, and wraps his head scarf tighter around himself.

“What?” I whisper.

Jeran just shakes his head, as if embarrassed. “Nothing,” he mutters. “That was Aramin responding this time, not Adena.”

“What did he say?”

“Nothing.” Jeran shrugs, his blush deepening. “He said he can tell it’s me from a mile away, and to readjust my disguise.”

Even through Jeran’s mumble, I can clearly hear Aramin’s gruff affection for him. I smile a little, my eyes darting up to the others. How closely Aramin must watch Jeran to be able to still decipher his little movements and graceful figure.

As I observe them, my mind returns to Talin. Hours earlier, I’d felt a tug of agony through our bond, sharp and bracing despite the distance between us and the fraying of our link. I’d stopped in my tracks, my face turning so pale that Jeran had asked me if I was okay.

The feeling dissipated the instant I’d tried to reach out to her, as if she had closed off her emotions to me. Since then, all I’ve gotten from her is a thin trickle of her pulse. Even that is laced with tension, everything about her coiled tight like a spring.

Something happened to her, and I don’t know what it is.

For once, my other voice attempts to soothe me.

Swallow the fear. Talin is alive, that heartbeat still steady. There is nothing you can do about it except to keep going. You hope for the best, even as you brace for the worst.

I look toward one of the towers looming against the night, a structure built with a narrow slit of a window overhead. “They flash a light through that slit every night,” I answer. “It tells the guards to shut the gates.”

The night turns darker, until the full moon rises and casts the entire district in its silver glow. We stay where we are, watching the lines outside the prison complex grow and ebb. Every prisoner looks the same—tired, dirty, cheeks sunken. Some of them dare to hum under their breaths. For the most part, the guards don’t seem to care.