Talin’s mother. She’s here.

Everything in me swells in a tide, and my hands start trembling. I want to shout it through my bond with Talin, tell her exactly where her mother is being held, let her know we’ve tracked her down against the Premier’s every attempt to keep her a secret.

But telling Talin will do none of us any good. It could overwhelm her emotions so drastically that the Premier will suspect her of knowing. And if that happens, he’ll have guards on the alert instantly. He’ll move her mother again.

I think once more about the sharp pain I’d felt from Talin hours earlier, and dread prickles my skin.

So, with all my strength, I push back my desire to tell her. Instead, I return Jeran’s look.

“Is she well?” I ask him.

Jeran looks gravely at me. “She’s in bad shape,” he tells me. “They’ve beaten her. One of her hands is heavily bandaged.”

I think of the white-haired woman who had once fed us around her humble table in the shanties around Newage, of the way she had smiled at Talin. I think of the young mother who had fought against the Federation when they came storming into Mara’s capital, who had faced their onslaught without flinching once.

Was this what triggered Talin’s anguish?

I swallow hard and look back at Jeran. “Can they get her out?”

Jeran shakes his head, still deciphering the faint flickers of light against the silhouette. “Not alone,” he whispers. He seems to count something silently on his lips. “They say she is under heavy guard, and that they don’t think she can walk on her own.”

I nod. Then I turn my attention up to the footbridge.

If I take the same path the others did in getting into the prison, I won’t be able to get out the same way. Not with Talin’s mother injured the way they describe her. Now, I could try to fly her up, but judging from the way my wings have been damaged since Newage, I won’t be able to get the lift I need while also carrying her weight.

The other voice in my head rumbles its agreement.

You have to find some other way out.

Jeran takes the lead. As the night shifts and the guards rotate on the wall, we steal through the shadows and up into the trees near the footbridge. Jeran moves like the Deathdancer he is, each step nimble and soundless, crouching in the thickest part of the trees while he watches for a gap between the guards. As one of the guards turns away to talk to another, he leaps from the tree branches onto the wall and rolls immediately off the side, sliding out of view into the prison beyond the wall.

I watch him go, then study the guards on the wall for my own break. Minutes later, I do the same leap. I’m less graceful than Jeran, and my landing against the wall knocks my shoulder painfully against the rock, but I grit my teeth and slide over the side. There, I crouch along the ground before hurrying into the shadows of the prison buildings.