“I do.”
I do.
Zofia returned to the hairpin and lock, but something fluttered low in her stomach. The hump opened with a smallpop, revealing a glass tube on a velvet bed.
“Piranha solution,” said Séverin. “It’s what you’re going to use when you’re escorted to the greenhouse as Monsieur Ching—”
“It’sChang!”
“Chang, my apologies. Point is, you’re going to get us started. Tell me what you’re doing.”
“This isn’t my first—”
“Enrique.”
“Hmpf.” Enrique crossed his arms. “We arrive at Château de la Lune before midnight. You, Zofia, and Hypnos go off and feast and do what rich people do, even though I’m an honored botanist who has traveled over many,manyoceans and—”
“Enrique.”
“—and then we meet in your rooms and do a final rundown. Between the hours of threeA.M.and fourA.M., me and Tristan meet in the greenhouse. Then we break open the acid container, raise an alarm, and make sure the greenhouse is sectioned off.”
Zofia yawned. She already knew this.
“Correct.”
“Tristan will get us both gas masks so we can keep breathingafter we use Zofia’s chemical death trap, and we show up there again by the eighth hour.”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know why you’re so fixated on the greenhouse, though. What do you think is there?”
“At the very least, it’s a safe zone for keeping the Horus Eye. But I think it’s more than that. Why else would all the guards’ guns be loaded there and not elsewhere? It’s a little too interesting,” said Séverin. “But I won’t make any guesses until after the midnight feast. Hypnos is bringing something precious, or so he said. Under Order law, he can demand that any object he deems important be immediately removed and taken to the House’s most protected vaults.”
“The library,” said Zofia.
“Exactly. The House Kore matriarch will have no choice but to put away whatever it is. While Hypnos does that, I’m going to be tailing him and the House Kore matriarch.” Séverin removed his tin of cloves from his jacket pocket and popped one into his mouth. “Zofia. Tell him how the piranha solution works.”
“It’s hydrogen chloride and sulfuric acid, so the chemical process is fairly simple—”
“Not that way, Zofia.”
She pointed at the glass vial. “I’ve Forged the glass with levitating titanium. All you have to do is break it, then throw it into the air of the greenhouse. It will fall slowly and spray acid from top to bottom. But once you break it, don’t let it touch your skin. Unless you want to disintegrate.”
She started laughing.
Séverin and Enrique stared at her.
“See?” she said. “It’s like your joke earlier! Disintegrating!”
“Oh, Zofia,” sighed Séverin.
He glanced at his watch, his mouth flattening. “I need to take careof some things. I’ll see you when we exit. Separate carriages for all of us.”
As they approached the Château de la Lune, the silvery mist reminded Zofia of the light that split the metal Sator Square. She remembered how it felt to watch the letters of the Sator Square slide back and forth, how the numbers had aligned perfectly into a repetition of zeroes and ones. Enrique had called mathematics the language of the divine. When she thought about the power of the Horus Eye, her skin crawled. What it coulddodid not seem within human grasp, but that was the thing about numbers. They weren’t like people, who could say one thing and do another. They weren’t like riddles of social mannerisms or conversations.
Numbers never lied.
14
