She told stories in such a beautiful way.
“Well, according to this passage from Priestess Nomu’s diary, the world began with three types of fire. The golden flame, fierce and bright, the hottest and the most dangerous. The blue flame, slow and wormlike, always burning, always waiting. And the red flame. The one that’s said to burn even in the darkest of places. You’d think that they would devour one another, but the fires lived in harmony. Until one day.” She paused for dramatic effect, but then her eyes widened, and she placed her hand on her belly. “Phoenix Above, she’s kicking, Malhari.”
Leo took her hands in his and kissed her knuckles. “She wants you to finish the story.”
“Well,” and at this, Aahnah’s shoulders slumped. “There’s no ending. Not quite. Priestess Nomu just said that something broke the harmony of the fires. But she doesn’t know why.”
“Hmm.”
“What do you mean, hmm?”
He laughed, and he did not know what made him say it, what made him damn his wife with an idea, a curiosity that would drive her to madness. “Maybe you should finish the story. Find what Priestess Nomu couldn’t find.”
Aahnah rubbed her belly thoughtfully. “I’m no priestess but… I suppose I could ask Saayna…”
“She would call it blasphemous,” they said together.
Leo kissed her knuckles again, and then up her arm, her neck, until he was leaning over the desk and kissing her, cupping her face as she smiled against his lips.
“Malhari.”
“Hush.”
In one of her moments of lucidity, before the madness had claimed her, Aahnah had told him about her system. The shadows of the fire in the hearth curved around her face, and he remembered how, in that moment, he found her both lovely and terrifying.
“My initials.” She had laughed, and the music of it was like raindrops dripping from a ledge after a storm. “A. M. My maiden name.”
“And why would you use that name?” he had asked.
“Because Ravence is cursed, my love,” she had said calmly, as if she was stating a well-known fact. “Why should I use it if it’s cursed? Surely you know that better than most.”
Still, it was slow work, searching for order in his wife’s chaos.
He went to the shelves that housed Priestess Nomu’s writings, as that was where Aahnah had spent most of her time. Though Aahnah had marked the shelves, she had not told him her system of categorizing the scrolls. He thumbed through them, one after the other. Diary entries, prayer ceremony rituals, runes he did not recognize. The floating orbs bobbed and darted overhead as the hours passed. When he could no longer reach the higher scrolls, Leo stepped onto a circular stone platform. He hit his heel against it twice, and it lifted, carrying him up.
They stopped only when Arish realized the time. “Mother’s Gold, you’re supposed to have dinner with Her Highness now.”
With a sigh, Leo tapped his foot twice. It was as the stone platform descended that Leo noticed it. There, right beneath the golden number demarcating shelf 52.A. M., neatly inscribed.
Except this one was slashed through.
Heart racing, Leo scanned the scrolls. One of the parchments was neatly contained by a metal band, unlike the other scrolls he had seen so far. Stamped onto the metal was the feather of the Phoenix; it glinted red in the light.
Leo opened the scroll gingerly. The paper was delicate, as if it would dissolve in the slightest breeze. But there, clear in the lines of text, he saw the feather and the unknown rune. The same ones burned onto the priest.
Saayna had told him that the runes meant Daughter of Fire, but he wanted to decipher them himself. To find the nature of Saayna’s lie.
He glanced back at the shelf. Two more scrolls had metal bands. Sweeping them all together, he carefully tucked them into his coat.
“Reschedule my dinner with Elena,” Leo said when they had returned to his office, the flames crackling in welcome. Leo waved a hand to calm them, and they slowly subsided to glowing embers. “I don’t want to be bothered for the next two hours.”
But then the panel on his desk glowed. Arish bent forward, reading.
“It’s Jangir, Your Majesty.”
Leo slipped the scrolls in his desk drawer. Jangir Meena was the leader of the gold caps, and quite possibly his most valued informant. Leo had first met him during one of his early public appearances. Jangir had roared the loudest, sung the highest praises. But his flattery was not what had compelled Leo to take him in; it was the way Jangir had moved others in the crowd to cheer with him. How, when he raised his voice, it seemed to sweep through everyone else. It was Jangir who had swayed the public in favor of Leo during the anarchist rebellions, when Leo had still been a young king. Jangir was a politician, through and through. And Leo had learned to use him.
At first, he had given Jangir little tasks in exchange for small favors. A hovercar for tracking a corrupt official. A home overlooking the dunes for finding a rebel. An invitation to a ball for rallying support around the city’s costly infrastructure. But as Jangir’s influence and his band of gold caps grew, Leo found another use for them: as his eyes and ears throughout the country.
