Star-Touched Stories

by Roshani Chokshi

  Tristan barged into the room, his hands outstretched.

  “Look! I thought Goliath was dying, but he’s fine. He just molted!”

  Enrique screamed. Laila scuttled backwards on her chaise. Zofia leaned forward, inspecting the enormous tarantula in Tristan’s hands. Mathematicians didn’t frighten her, and spiders—and bees—were just that. A spider’s web was composed of numerous radii, a logarithmic spiral, and the light-diffusing properties of their webs and silk was fascinating.

  “Tristan!” scolded Laila. “What did I just tell you about spiders?”

  Tristan puffed out his chest. “You said not to bring him into your room. This is not your room.”

  Faced with Laila’s glare, he shrank a bit.

  “Please can he stay for the meeting? Goliath is different. He’s special.”

  Enrique pulled his knees up to his chest and shuddered. “What is so special about that?”

  “Well,” said Zofia, “as part of the infraorder of Mygalomorphae, the fangs of a tarantula point down whereas the spiders you’re thinking of have fangs which point and join in a pincer-like arrangement. That’s rather special.”

  Enrique gagged.

  Tristan beamed at her. “You remembered.”

  Zofia did not find this particularly noteworthy. She remembered most things people told her, and besides, Tristan had listened just as attentively when she explained the arithmetic spiral properties of a spider web.

  Enrique made a shoo motion with his hands. “Please take it away, Tristan. I beg you.”

  “Aren’t you happy for Goliath? He’s been sick for days.”

  “Can we be happy for Goliath from behind a sheet of glass and a net and a fence? Maybe a ring of fire for good measure?”

  Tristan made a face at Laila. Zofia knew that pattern: widened eyes, pressed down brows, dimpled chin and the barest quiver of his bottom lip. A pattern of supplication by way of rendering oneself infantile. Ridiculous, yet effective. Zofia approved. Across from her, Laila clapped her hands over her eyes.

  “Not falling for it,” said Laila sternly. “Go look like a kicked puppy elsewhere. Goliath can’t stay here during a meeting. That’s final.”

  Tristan huffed. “Fine.” Then he murmured to Goliath. “I’ll make you a cricket cake, dear friend. Don’t fret.”

  Once Tristan had left, Enrique turned to Zofia:

  “I rather sympathized with Arachne after her duel with Minerva, but I detest her descendants.”

  Zofia went still. People and conversation were already a cipher without throwing in all the extra words. Enrique was especially confusing. Elegance illuminated every word the Historian spoke. And she could never tell when he was angry. His mouth was always bent in a half-smile, regardless of his mood. If she answered now, she’d only sound foolish. Instead, Zofia said nothing but pulled out a matchbox from her pocket and turned it over in her hands. Out the corner of her eye, she saw Enrique roll his eyes and turn back to his book. She knew what he thought of her. She had overheard him once. She’s a snob. He could think what he liked.

  Minutes ticked by. Laila handed out tea and desserts, making sure Zofia received exactly three sugar cookies, all pale and perfectly round. Calm washed through her. She settled back in her chair, glancing around the room. Eventually, Tristan returned and dramatically plopped onto his cushion.

  “In case you’re wondering, Goliath is deeply offended and he says—”

  But they would never know the tarantula’s specific grievances because at that moment a beam of light shot up through the coffee table. The room went dark. Then, slowly, an image of a piece of metal appeared. When she looked up, Séverin was standing behind Tristan. She hadn’t heard him enter.

  Tristan followed her gaze and nearly jumped when he saw Séverin. “Must you creep on us like that? I didn’t even hear you come into the room!”

  “Appearing as if out of nowhere and cloaked in shadows is part of my aesthetic,” said Séverin, dangling a Forged muffling bell.

  Enrique laughed. Laila didn’t. Her gaze was fixed on his bloodied arm. Zofia knew he was alive and well enough, so she turned her attention to the object. It was a square piece of metal, with curling symbols at the four corners. A large circle had been inscribed upon the middle. Within the circle were small rows of stacked lines shaped like squares:

  “That’s what we planned for weeks to acquire?” asked Tristan. “What is it? A game? I thought we were after a treasure map hidden in a compass?”

  “So did I,” sighed Enrique.

  “My bet was that it was a map to the Fallen House’s lost stash,” said Tristan.

  “My bet was on an ancient book the Order lost years ago,” said Laila, looking terribly disappointed. “Zofia? What’d you think it’d be?”

  “Not that,” she answered, pointing at the diagram.

  “Looks like all of us were wrong,” said Tristan. “So much for blackmailing the Order.”

  “At least because all of us were wrong none of us have to play test subjects to whatever strange poison Tristan makes next,” pointed out Laila.

  “Touché!” said Enrique, raising a glass.

  “I resent that,” said Tristan.

  “Don’t call it a loss yet,” said Séverin, resolute. “This diagram could still be useful. There has to be a reason why the Patriarch of House Nyx wanted it. Just like there has to be a reason why all of our intel was on high-alert with this transaction. Enrique. Care to enlighten us on what this diagram is? Or are you too preoccupied with praying for my immortal soul?”

  Enrique scowled and closed the book on his lap. Zofia glanced at the spine. He was holding the Bible.

  “I’ve given up on your soul,” said Enrique. He cleared his throat and pointed at the hologram. “What you see before you might look like a board game, but it’s actually an example of Chinese cleromancy. Cleromancy is a type of divination that produces random numbers that are then interpreted as the will of God or some other supernatural force. What you see in this silver diagram are the 64 hexagrams found in the I Ching. I Ching is an ancient Chinese divination text that loosely translates to ‘Book of Changes.’ These hexagrams—” he pointed at the small squares composed of six stacked lines in an eight by eight arrangement “—correspond to certain cryptic words, like ‘force’ or ‘diminishing.’ Supposedly, these arrangements translate fate.”

  “What about the spiral things on the edge?” asked Tristan.

  The four symbols bore no resemblance to the Chinese characters or sharp lines forming the hexagrams.

  “That … That I’m not entirely sure,” admitted Enrique. “It doesn’t match anything recognizable from Chinese augury. Perhaps it’s an added on signature from whoever possessed the compass after it had been made? Either way, it doesn’t seem like a map to anything. Which, honestly, is disappointing, but that doesn’t mean it won’t fetch a good price on the market.”

  Laila drew herself up on her elbows, tilting her head to the side a little more. “Unless it’s a map in disguise.”

  “Why not?” mused Séverin. “Any ideas?”

  Zofia counted the lines. Then she counted them again. A pattern nudged against her thoughts.

  “This is nothing we haven’t seen before,” said Séverin cheerfully. “Remember that underwater Isis temple?”

  “Distinctly,” said Enrique. “You said there wouldn’t be any sharks.”

  “There weren’t.”

  “Just mechanical leviathans with dorsal fins,” said Enrique. “Forgive me.”

  “Apology accepted,” said Séverin, inclining his head. “Now. When it came to that code, we had to rethink the direction. We had to question our assumption. What if what we’re looking at is not just a map, but a hint to what it might lead to?”

  Tristan frowned. “A bunch of divination lines do not a treasure make, dear brother.”

  “Lines,” said Zofia distractedly. She tugged at her necklace. “Are they lines?”

  “That,” said Séverin, point
ing at her. “Is exactly the type of reasoning I’m talking about. Question the very assumptions. Good thinking.”

  “What if you shine it under a different light?” mused Tristan.

  “Or do those symbols at the four corners correspond to something that’s a hint?” asked Enrique.

  Zofia kept quiet, but it was as if the pattern had peeled off the metal square. She squinted at it.

  “Numbers,” she said suddenly. “If you change the lines to numbers … it becomes something else. We did a similar procedure last year with the coded Greek alphabet riddle. I remember because that was when Séverin took us on that expedition to Nisyros Island.”

  All five of them collectively shuddered.

  Tristan drew his knees to his chest. “I hate volcanoes.”

  Zofia sat up, excited.

  “Each of those hexagrams is made up only of broken and unbroken lines. If you make every unbroken line a ‘zero,’ and every broken line a ‘one,’ then it’s a pattern of zeroes and ones. It looks like some kind of binary calculus.”

  “But that doesn’t tell us anything about the treasure,” said Tristan.

  “The ancients were obsessed with numbers,” said Enrique thoughtfully. “It’s clear in their art. Which makes me wonder what else might be here. Maybe it’s not a strange calculus after all.”

  Enrique tilted his head. “Unless…”

  He pointed at the symbols tucked into the four corners.

  “Séverin, can you alter the image and break off the four corners?”

  Séverin manipulated the Mnemo hologram so that the four corners broke off. Then, as if the image were real, he shrank the I Ching diagram, enlarged the four corners and placed them beside one another.

  “There,” said Enrique. “I see it now. Séverin, place them in a block and rearrange the order? Turn the first symbol sideways, attach it to symbol two, symbol three should hang down, and the fourth symbol goes on the left.”

  Séverin did as asked, and when he stepped back, a new symbol took shape:

  “The Eye of Horus,” breathed Enrique.

  Tristan leaned out of his chair while Laila, suddenly alert, rose up off her elbow. Envy flashed through Zofia.

  “How…” she said, under her breath. “How did you see that?”

  “The same way you saw numbers in lines,” said Enrique smugly. “You’re impressed. Admit it.”

  Zofia crossed her arms. “No.”

  “I dazzle you with my intelligence. You’re secretly infatuated with me.”

  Zofia turned to Laila. “Make him stop.”

  Enrique bowed, and gestured back to the image. “The Eye of Horus is also known as a wadjet. It’s an ancient Egyptian symbol of royal power and protection. Over time, most Horus Eyes have been lost to history—”

  “No,” said Séverin. “Not lost. Destroyed. During Napoleon’s 1798 campaign to Egypt, the Order sent a delegation tasked specifically to finding and confiscating all Horus Eyes. House Kore sent half its members, which is why they have the largest supply of Egyptian Forged treasures in Europe. If there’s any Forged Horus Eyes left from that campaign, it’s with them.”

  “But why was it destroyed?” asked Laila.

  “That’s a secret between the government and the Order,” said Séverin. “All official documentation I’ve ever found suggested the Horus Eyes could reveal something. My guess is that certain Forged Horus Eyes showed all the slumber mode locations on Napoleon’s artillery. If everyone knew how to make his weapons useless, where would he be?”

  “What’s the other theory?” asked Laila.

  “Napoleon thought all the Horus Eyes were looking at him funny and so he had them destroyed.”

  Enrique laughed.

  “But then why have a Horus Eye on an I Ching diagram?” pressed Zofia. “If it’s a calculus of zeroes and ones, what would it even see?”

  Enrique went still. “See.” His eyes widened. “Zero and one … and seeing. Zofia. You’re a genius.”

  She raised her shoulder. “I know.”

  Enrique reached for the Bible he’d left on the coffee table, and started flipping through the pages.

  “I was reading this earlier for a translation I’m working on, but Zofia’s mathematical connection is perfect,” he said. He stopped flipping. “Ah. Here we are. Genesis 11:4-9, also known as the Tower of Babel passage. We all know it. It’s an etiological tale not just meant to explain why people speak different languages, but also to explain the presence of Forging in our world. The basic story is that people tried to build a tower to heaven, God didn’t want that, so He made new languages, and the confusion of tongues prevented the building’s completion. But He didn’t just strike down the building.” he said, before reading aloud: “… and they ceased building the city. Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth, but the Lord delighted in his creation’s ingenuity and deposited upon the land the bricks of the tower. Each brick bore his touch, and thus left an impression of the power of God to create something from nothing.”

  Something from nothing.

  She’d heard that phrase before …

  “Ex nihilo,” said Séverin, smiling widely. “Latin, for ‘out of nothing.’ What’s the mathematical representation of nothing?”

  “Zero,” said Zofia.

  “Thus, the movement of zero to one is the power of God, because out of nothing, something is created. The Babel fragments are considered slivers of God’s powers. They bring things to life, excluding, of course, the power to bring back the dead and create actual life,” said Enrique.

  Across from her, Zofia noticed that Laila’s smile fell.

  Enrique leaned out of his chair, his eyes uncannily bright.

  “If that’s what the diagram is really about, then what does that mean about the Horus Eye?”

  Laila let out a long breath.

  “You said looking through the Horus Eye revealed something … whatever it could see had to be dangerous enough that the instrument couldn’t be kept in existence. What would be dangerous enough to threaten an entire empire? Something that has to do with the power of God?”

  Séverin sank into a chair. Zofia felt a numb buzzing at the edge of her thoughts. She felt as if she’d leaned over a vast precipice. As if the next words would change her life.

  “In other words,” said Séverin slowly. “You think this might be telling us that looking through a Horus Eye reveals a Babel fragment.”

  5

  SÉVERIN

  Séverin stared at the luminous dark of the Eye of Horus. In that second, the air smelled metallic. Like a prelude to a thunderstorm. He could almost see it. Gray rippling the sky as if it were hectic with fever. Fanged teeth of light flashing in the clouds—a taunt to snap. He couldn’t stop what would come next.

  And he didn’t want to.

  When he first heard about the compass, he imagined it would lead them to the lost treasure of the Fallen House, the only cache of treasure that the Order longed to grab hold of and would do anything to possess. But this … this was like reaching for a match only to find a torch. The Order had covered up their hunt for Horus Eyes, and now he knew why. If someone found the West’s Fragment, they could disrupt all Forging not just in France, but Europe, for without a Fragment to power the art of Forging, civilizations died. And while the Order might know the Horus Eyes’ secret, the rest of the world didn’t. Including many colonial guilds that had been forced into hiding by the Order. Guilds with knowledge of the Babel Fragments’ inner workings that rivaled the Order’s. Séverin could only imagine what they’d do to get their hands on this information, and what the Order would do to keep it out.

  “We’re not…” Enrique trailed off, unable to finish his sentence. “Right?”

  “You can’t be serious,” said Laila. She was pinching the tips of her fingers repeatedly, a nervous habit of hers. If she could help it, she never touched an object when she was distracted. “This could kill us.”
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  Séverin didn’t meet Laila’s gaze, but he could feel her dark eyes pinning him. He looked only to Tristan, his brother in everything but blood. In the dark, he seemed younger than his sixteen years. Memory bit into Séverin. The two of them crouched behind a rosebush, thorns ripping at the soft skin of their necks, their hands clutching one another’s while the father they called Wrath screamed their names. Séverin opened and closed his hand. A long, silver scar ran down his right palm and caught the light. Tristan had a matching one.

  “Are you?” asked Tristan softly. “Serious?”

  All this time, they’d been after an artifact that would be a bargaining chip to the Order. An artifact that would force the Order to restore his lost inheritance. Instead, he had information that was either a dream or a death sentence … depending on how he played this game. Séverin reached for his tin of cloves.

  “I don’t know enough to be serious. But I’d like to know enough to have options.”

  Tristan swore under his breath. The others looked shocked, even Zofia blankly stared into her lap.

  “This information is dangerous,” said Tristan. “We’d be better off if you just threw the compass at House Nyx’s door.”

  “Dangerous, yes, but the most rewarding things are,” reasoned Séverin. “I’m not saying that we approach the Order tomorrow and tell them we’ve got hold of one of their secrets. I have no intention to rush anything.”

  Enrique snorted. “Slow and painful death is far better than getting it over with quickly, sure.”

  Séverin rose to his feet. For a decision like this, he didn’t want to be eye-level. He wanted them to look up. They did.

  “Think about what this could mean for us. It could bring us everything we wanted.”

  Enrique dragged his palm down his face. “You know how moths look at a fire and think ‘oooh! shiny!’ and then die in a burst of flames and regret?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Right. Just checking to be sure.”

  “What about Hypnos?” asked Laila.

  “What about him?”

  “You don’t think he’ll notice what went missing? He has quite the reputation for … zealousness when it comes to his possessions. And what if he knows what the compass really contained?”