Séverin did as asked, and when he stepped back, a new symbol took shape:
“The Eye of Horus,” breathed Enrique.
Envy flashed through Zofia.
“How…” she said. “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.”
Zofia turned to Laila. “Make him stop.”
Enrique bowed and gestured back to the image. “The Eye of Horus is also known as awadjet. 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 with 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,” saidSéverin. “My guess is that certain Forged Horus Eyes showed all the somno 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,” said Tristan.
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… andseeing. 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,somethingis 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 createactuallife,” said Enrique.
Across from her, Zofia noticed that Laila’s smile fell.
Enrique leaned out of his chair, his eyes uncannily bright.
“Ifthat’swhat 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? Because only one thing comes to my mind.”
Séverin sank into his 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.
