“We have to move!”
The six of them skidded over the rapidly sinking roof of the temple. As they reached the edge, the ground rose to meet them.
Numir went first, sliding down the sloped wall of the temple on her feet until she was close enough to the ground to jump. Hadiza and Parthenia followed, sitting with their knees pulled toward them. Then Shara, her hand braced against the wall to control her descent.
“Come on!” Illya yelled, grabbing Ephyra’s hand and leaping down the wall. Ephyra glided after him, using him as a counterweight to stay balanced. When they reached the bottom, Illya landed on the ground, planted his feet, and turned to catch Ephyra’s fall.
The others were already running away from the sinking temple, the ground rippling beneath their feet. At last they reached stable ground and stopped, gasping for breath.
“I think someone really did not want us to retrieve that object,” Shara said. She glanced at Ephyra. “You do have it, right?”
Ephyra reached into her bag and withdrew the inscrutable leather ribbon. “For all the good it’ll do.”
They walked back to the skiffs under the setting sun. Ephyra’s feet dragged with exhaustion and defeat.
Shara made her best attempt to rally them. “I know we’re all tired after almost getting buried alive, so why don’t we just get some sleep and figure out what to do tomorrow.”
“We need to get out of the immediate area, at least,” Hadiza said. “We can’t stay here. Someone might have heard the commotion and could come poking around.”
Shara rubbed her forehead. “Fine. We’ll travel two hours in any direction and then sleep. Everyone get in.”
They all boarded the skiffs, Numir and Shara taking the helm of each. Ephyra turned the leather over in her hand, examining it. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Illya staring at it, too.
She shoved the leather back into her bag and turned her gaze to the horizon.
Later that night, Ephyra sat awake while the others slept, staring at the ribbon of leather they’d found in the temple. She needed something, any kind of hint that would tell her what it meant. But no matter how she looked at it, all she saw was the same string of letters, too random to form words in any language.
Maybe it was just a stupid trick. Maybe whoever was leaving these clues was leading them nowhere. She felt like she was no closer to finding the Chalice. And each day, Beru slipped further and further away. What if she couldn’t get to her in time?
What if she was already gone?
A rustling noise disturbed her thoughts. A figure rose, walking toward her. Illya. Of course.
Ephyra scrunched up the leather in her hand and watched him approach with narrowed eyes. “What do you want?”
He held up his hands, as though to pacify her. It was a gesture she’d seen his brother make a number of times. Based on what Anton had told her, he had learned it to placate Illya. She wondered who Illya had needed to placate.
“I just want to say thank you,” he said.
From anyone else, it would’ve sounded like kindness. From Illya, Ephyra suspected a different angle.
“What are you thanking me for?”
“Helping me get out of the temple,” he said. “Especially since you didn’t have to.”
She held up her wrist. “Did you forget that we’re bound by these?”
“You could have taken it off. Left me there.”
Ephyra stared. It hadn’t even occurred to her. “You claim to have information I need.”
Her skin prickled under his golden gaze. In the moonlight, his face seemed to glow. It made her wish she had left him to get crushed inside the temple. Maybe then his face wouldn’t be so infuriatingly pretty.
“All right,” he said, plopping down beside her. “I’ll show you what I found.”
Ephyra watched as he bent his head, drawing in the sand with quick precision. He drew a circle with a horizontal line through it. Next to the circle he wrote the number seven. He sat back, looking at his handiwork.
“That’s it?” Ephyra asked.
He nodded. “I had no idea what it meant, at first.”
Ephyra pressed her lips together. She did not want to admit that she also had no idea what it meant.
“But now that we have a clue from the temple, I understand.” He glanced at her and seemed to read that she had absolutely no idea what he was saying. “They’re measurements. This one is the diameter of a circle. It’s instructions on how to build a cylinder.”
“Why would we . . .” Ephyra paused. She looked back at the leather ribbon in her hand, and the seemingly random line of letters. Slowly, she wrapped the leather around her wrist three times. The first letter on the ribbon now lined up with the fourth and the eighth. They were still a random jumble, but she suddenly understood how, if they were wrapped around the right size cylinder, they could line up to form words.
“Are you two awake?” a grumbling voice asked.
Ephyra turned toward Shara, who was rubbing at her eyes and standing. “Shara, look.”
She came over to them and stared at their markings in the sand, bemused. Illya explained what he’d figured out and she paused for a moment and then said, “We need Parthenia.”
“The sun’s not even up yet,” Parthenia complained when Shara poked her awake with her foot.
Numir let out a yawn, having woken when Parthenia did. “What, you need your beauty sleep?”
Parthenia batted her eyes. “Aw, you think I’m beautiful.”
“No, that’s not—I meant you need beauty sleep because you’re not—”
“Focus, please,” Shara cut in.
After Parthenia had inspected both the measurements and leather ribbon, she said, “We actually don’t need to build anything. If we know the diameter of the circle, we can calculate its circumference and then just measure out the space between the letters. Then we’ll know how many letters fit around it once, and we can simply count them off and line them up accordingly.”
Ephyra just stared at her. “I thought you studied languages.”
Parthenia tossed her hair. “We were taught the basics of all fields. This is very simple mathematics.”
Ephyra sat back as Parthenia did her calculations. The letters were spaced about three inches apart, and according to Parthenia’s calculations, the circumference they needed was twenty-four inches. She wrote out:
24 / 3 = 8
“Mark off every eighth letter,” she instructed.
Illya wrote the letters in the sand as Parthenia called them off. Ephyra peered over his shoulder.
When he was done, he had six lines of eleven letters each:
T H E T O M B O F T H
E Q U E E N H I D E S
T H E C H A L I C E O
F F E R A S A C R I F
I C E N O T O F B L O
O D B U T O F L I F E
“‘The tomb of the queen hides the Chalice,’” Ephyra read. “‘Offer a sacrifice, not of blood but of life.’”
She raised her eyes to Illya’s and saw her own exhilaration and incredulity reflected in them. Hastily, she broke his gaze, an angry flush rising to her cheeks to remind her that she did not want to share anything with Illya, and especially not this.
“The Sacrificed Queen,” Shara said. “It must be.”
Ephyra stood. “We should leave now and get as far as we can until the sun hits its peak.”
Shara hesitated for a moment but, to Ephyra’s relief, nodded. They woke Hadiza and prepared to leave, the others clearly as practiced at rushed departures as Ephyra was.
Illya started to climb into one of the skiffs. Ephyra took him by the elbow and tugged him back. “You aren’t coming.”
He watched her with careful eyes. “I’m the only reason you even know where to go.”
“Yes,” Ephyra replied. “And that means that your services are no longer needed.”
He grimaced. The others paused in their tasks, alerted to the brewing argument. Ephyra pr
essed down the part of herself that worried they had grown to like Illya more than her, that they would take his side.
“You can’t just leave me here,” he said.
“You knew this was coming the moment you convinced us to take you along,” Ephyra replied. “Unless you thought you’d be able to manipulate us into trusting you by now. I guess you’re not as talented as you thought.” She gave him a sympathetic smile drenched in condescension.
Illya met her smile with his own. “All right. You caught me. I thought I could get in your good graces, but alas. Perhaps you have no good graces.”
Ephyra’s smile tightened with irritation.
“But,” Illya went on. “If you leave me here, you’re certainly trusting that I won’t tell the Daughters of Mercy that you’re planning on stealing the Chalice. Or that I won’t send my own people to get it first.”
“Your people?” Ephyra scoffed. “Thought you said you turned on them.”
“Did I?” Illya replied. “Thought you didn’t believe anything I said.”
Shara cleared her throat behind them. “He’s right, Ephyra.”
Ephyra whirled on her. “Don’t tell me you actually believe him.”
“I don’t,” Shara replied, eyeing Illya. “But he can do more harm away from us than with us.”
“Horseshit,” Ephyra spat.
“He’s a liability one way or the other,” Shara said steadily. “So might as well be one we can keep our eye on.”
Ephyra turned back to Illya, burning with rage. He had played her, yet again. He’d thought about this, about every single move she would make. Every move he could make to counter it. And after everything, he still won. She couldn’t stand it. “Then we kill him.”
Dead silence met her suggestion. She watched Illya’s jaw twitch. Maybe that was the one possibility he hadn’t considered.
Shara barked out a laugh. When no one joined in, she paused. “You’re kidding, right? She’s . . . kidding . . .” She seemed to become less certain with each syllable.
“You said it yourself,” Ephyra said. “He’s a liability. Easiest way to deal with a liability? Get rid of it.”
“Behezda’s Mercy,” Shara groaned. “You’re serious.”
“Of course I’m serious,” Ephyra answered. It was starting to bother her, how ridiculous Shara seemed to find the idea. She looked around at the others and saw their expressions were also disbelieving.
“That’s . . . not really how we deal with our problems,” Shara said slowly.
“You mean by solving them?”
“By killing people.”
“He’s not a good person,” Ephyra said. “Trust me.”
“I don’t really care what kind of person he is,” Shara replied. “Except that he stays an alive one.”
“But—”
“I’m in charge here,” Shara said. “It’s my decision.”
“Oh, you’re in charge?” Ephyra said, whirling on her. “And why exactly is that? Hadiza’s the one who found Susa. Numir’s the one who got us there. Parthenia’s the one who got us into the temple. Face it, Shara, you’re no master thief. You’re just a girl who’s in over her head.”
Shara’s face went rigid for a split second. Then she relaxed. “Are you done?”
Ephyra gritted her teeth. She felt like rather than insulting Shara, she’d just spilled her own darkest secrets to everyone. Because everything she’d said was true about herself, too, wasn’t it? Ephyra was known as a vicious killer, as a specter of retribution, the Pale Hand. But she was just a girl facing an impossible task, and no matter how much control she thought she had, moments like this made her realize she’d never had any at all.
21
HASSAN
THE MORNING OF LETHIA’S CORONATION ARRIVED WARM AND CLEAR. HASSAN and Khepri woke early, dressing in the dawn light. He reached for her hand when they were done, tangling their fingers together.
“Whatever happens today, I just want you to know—I couldn’t do any of this without you,” he said.
She pressed a kiss to his knuckles instead of answering.
By sunrise, they were all gathered in the alchemy workshop to go over the plan one last time with the six team leaders, who would each disseminate the information to their squads of nine. They all wore regular civilian clothes, stashing away dark green scarves that they would use to cover their faces during the blockade.
“We think there will be up to four hundred guards stationed along Ozmandith Road,” Sefu said. He had led most of the intelligence gathering for the mission. “Khepri, Chike, and Arash will lead the blockade here, about halfway through their parade route. Meanwhile, Zareen and the alchemists will create distraction points at the statue of Queen Berenice and the Golden Square. They’ll set off the first smoke bombs once the dancers pass the blockade point. Hassan will arrive last, and we’ve scoped out a spot along the arcade where he will deliver his speech. We’ll have six more people to cover him.”
“The prince will stay back here until the blockade is in place,” Arash said, pointing to a side street.
Hassan’s gaze snapped up. “That’s not what we decided.”
Arash looked at him calmly. “Change in plan. We don’t want to risk you before our position is secure.”
“I can hold my own in a fight,” Hassan replied, forcing himself to remain calm. He should have guessed that Arash had something up his sleeve to throw off Hassan.
Arash made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Nevertheless. We don’t want anyone getting in the way while—”
“Getting in the way?”
“Arash, Hassan is just as capable as any of us,” Khepri said. “If it weren’t for him, we all would have died in the lighthouse.”
“I don’t doubt the prince’s ability,” Arash replied. “But this mission will be pointless if he gets hurt and fails to confront the Usurper. I think we can all agree on that.”
“Fine,” Hassan replied. “I’ll stay out of the way, on the arcade.”
“Now that that’s settled, I think the time has come,” Arash said.
They left the Library and dispersed into the streets in teams. Crowds were already beginning to gather along Ozmandith Road. The coronation procession would begin when the sun was at its peak, which gave them roughly thirty minutes. Khepri’s squad maintained their position at the midway point of the procession. Once the bombs went off, they would move in to block the parade. And then Khepri would light a black smoke bomb, signaling Hassan to take his position on top of the arcade that ran alongside Ozmandith Road, where his guard would be waiting.
From his perch on a rooftop that lined the arcade, Hassan ran through his planned speech in his head. He tried to imagine confronting Lethia. The last time he’d seen her was in the atrium of the burning lighthouse. She’d turned her back on him. Left him to suffocate on poisonous smoke. He wasn’t sure what he would feel, coming face-to-face with her again.
It wasn’t long before the pounding of drums announced the beginning of the procession. Hassan chanced a peek over the edge of the arcade and found Khepri’s team hidden in the crowd. Khepri and Arash stood together, eyes focused on the street.
In the distance, Herati soldiers dressed in gold and green marched forward. There were at least a dozen different groups in the parade—soldiers, dancers, musicians, fire twirlers, even elephants—that would precede Lethia’s arrival on her palanquin.
Hassan watched the fire twirlers go past, then the soldiers. It should have been the Legionnaires next. If it were Hassan’s coronation, it would have been. But by tradition, the Legionnaires were all Graced. And they had all fled or been captured.
Instead, a line of Witnesses marched down the processional. Hassan felt his chest go hot with anger when he saw them—welcomed members of the Usurper Queen’s court. How dare she.
Behind them, he could just make out Lethia’s palanquin, gilded gold and covered in rich emerald silk. The sight of it made his anger flare hotter.
A
crack, audible even over the volume of the crowd, struck through the air. The first of the smoke bombs.
The crowd seemed to think the smoke was part of the parade, applauding as the next ones went off, enveloping them in a cloud of red smoke. It covered the street, so Hassan could no longer see where Khepri and the others were. He would just have to trust that the blockade had been formed.
Another crack split the air, and Hassan saw a plume of black smoke—Khepri’s signal—rise from the center of the street. The crowd had begun to panic, realizing the smoke bombs were not part of the parade. Hassan scrambled to his feet, climbing over the lip of the arcade’s roof, to where his six guards were waiting for him.
Below, the crowd was a frenzy of movement. It was a moment before Hassan realized they weren’t panicking—they seemed to be rioting. Hassan stood frozen, looking down at the turmoil. People were hitting one another, ripping clothes, their faces distorted in anger and aggression. He saw an old woman baring her teeth, locking her bony hands around a man’s throat. A little girl clawing at her brother’s arms until she drew blood.
Hassan looked on, panic rising in his throat, trying to make sense of what was happening. Another smoke bomb went off and suddenly the horrifying scene came into focus. Dread turned his blood to ice.
Zareen. He closed his eyes, not wanting to believe it, but her words from days before came back to him. She had told him what she was doing. Inventing mood modifiers that could be dispersed quickly and indiscriminately. An alchemical gas that could calm people down, or wake people up . . . or cause them to unleash aggression.
More screams and shouts curdled the air. This wasn’t the plan. The smoke was meant to be harmless, a way to get people’s attention, to halt the procession, not—not this. They weren’t supposed to hurt anyone.
He wheeled around, facing the guards. “Did you know about this?” When none of them replied, he advanced. “Are there more smoke bombs?”
As the Shadow Rises: Book Two of The Age of Darkness Page 18
