When Rabka and Maisara returned home, Rabka lay down on her pallet and Maisara covered her mother with a blanket.
“Was the story true?” Maisara asked.
“How would I know?” Rabka dismissed. “I wasn’t there.”
Rabka stared up at the ceiling for a long while. Then she let out a strange cackle and said, “This is my punishment for taking another woman’s husband.”
That night while Maisara slept Rabka took out a different bundle, one she had kept all these years. She unwrapped the Chinese silk and touched Aadila’sjanbiya,the dagger her servant had used to kill Khalid’s betrothed. Rabka fingered the blade with only one regret: no one would witness her final act. Her death would have made a glorious poem.
When Maisara awoke the next morning, she found her mother dead with a Delphic smile on her face. She cradled her in her arms and cried tears so acrid they burned her skin. Now she had no one.
She paid for the burial with the gold coins her mother had fetched for the cards, and keeping the promise she had made to herself, set off for the desert like her father had done so many years before. She would walk the way of the Sufi and brush the sand from her heart.
***
With Rabka, my progeny severed our connection to the Oracle’s symbols. Rabka’s daughters went in three different directions, like a disbanded constellation that no astrolabe could measure. I often searched my mind’s eye for those lovely stars, but I never found them.
The cards, however, I could still see.
They left my descendents’ hands and were caught in the current of time like a piece of driftwood. I had to have faith that they would one day find their way to shore.
Wheel of Fortune
When Semele got on the train to work Monday morning, she felt like she’d entered a time machine back to the present. She had been translating all weekend. The past two days had literally flown by. She had turned off her cell phone and ignored the Internet—she’d ignored Bren too. She still owed him a call but couldn’t quite face him yet.
Right now she didn’t want to deal with the office either. She couldn’t care less about her meeting with Mikhail. They were supposed to discuss Beijing, but her focus on work was gone; at this point she barely had a grip on reality. She was immersed in Ionna’s story, still unable to fathom that Ionna had envisioned the birth of Baghdad and the House of Wisdom.
Had Ionna also seen the library’s annihilation in 1258 when Genghis Khan’s grandson razed the city? And what had happened to the Oracle’s cards? Where did they go after Rabka sold them to Jamal Azar?
Semele’s mind raced with possibilities. She was reading a bona fide prophecy, and the more she read, the more Ionna’s words were affecting her. Semele could no longer deny the sense of purpose that had begun to fill her. She was meant to find this manuscript. Two thousand years ago Ionna had foreseen that Semele would read her words, and Marcel had left them to her, knowing she was a part of the story.
How much did Theo know? This was the question burning in her mind now—and her gut told her he knew more than she did.
He is coming to see me on Friday.
Where did that thought come from? Goose bumps traveled down her arms. Was he really? And, if this was true, then why? The whole idea was unsettling. Even worse, she couldn’t stop the feeling that, before Friday, something terrible was going to happen.
***
A policeman stood at the entrance of Kairos’ building. “Ma’am, I need to see some identification before you can go in.”
“What’s going on?” Semele asked, digging out the work badge buried in the bottom of her purse. The officer scrutinized her picture and didn’t answer.
“Sign here,” he said. He held out a logbook and finally allowed her to enter.
Semele joined the huddle of people in the lobby, then spotted Cabe coming off the elevator. They made a beeline for each other.
“Hey. What’s going on?” she asked him.
“Didn’t you get my message?” He looked astounded. “I called you like five times.”
“Sorry, no… I had my phone off,” she mumbled, starting to feel light-headed.
“There was a break-in last night. On ten,” he stressed, lowering his voice. “That manuscript you told me about was taken.”
Semele covered her mouth in horror. The manuscript was gone? She could feel tears threatening to form and furiously held them back.
“I think you should tell the police you were being followed,” Cabe said.
