“We’re calling this web of atrocitiesProject Hierophant,” Larasaid. I liked the name. It fit. She tapped one of the empty dates. “These have to be events like stealing our swords.”
From the couch, Briony added, “Rhi went back to the Library of Amarante to look for information on the Chiorics.” She pulled a laptop out from under the couch and started typing quickly as she read the dates off the pinboard. I had no idea what she was doing, but the child was something of a genius with her computer.
I crossed my arms, staring at the pinboard for a little longer, willing some hidden piece of things to appear so that I could make an equal contribution. Behind me, Ember whispered, “I like your robe.”
A laugh bubbled up from deep inside me. I turned to wink at her, but one of the more recent dates on the pinboard caught my eye. It was six months ago, and it seemed familiar.
“I’ll be right back,” I said, rushing back to Ember’s bedroom to get my phone.
When I returned, I keyed in several codes to reach my calendar, scrolling back several months until I found the date. Sure enough, it matched. I set my phone down on the coffee table and thought hard. The women were quiet, clearly waiting for me to finish thinking.
“On this day, I met with an antiquities dealer in Midtown.” My jaw clenched as I struggled to regain as much of the memory as I could. “Poor guy had an infestation of Poltergeists, attracted to objects that hadn’t been properly cleared for sale.” This was the part I was struggling with, though. It had been nothing to me at the time. “A man came in, plain, unremarkable in nearly every way… like Fairchild. He asked after something called a thry?—”
“A thrysos?” Lara asked, her expression dark.
Ember gasped. “Surely not.”
I shrugged. “That might have been it. I can’t remember. The only reason I paid any attention was that the shop owner stopped speaking to me, and shook his head at the attendantwho helped the man. When his attention returned to me, he was visibly upset, and asked if we could take our conversation to his office.”
I paused again, remembering the rest. “When I left, the man was gone, but so was the attendant. I honestly just thought they didn’t have whatever it was the guy was looking for.”
Lara stood, taking up a footpath across the room, pacing. Briony watched, then turned her attention to Ember, expectation clear on her face. The teenager wanted an explanation.
Ember seemed to respond to her, patting her hand before answering. “The thrysos has been depicted in many different ways. Some say that Chiore carries one. That it is a weapon, a staff of sorts, that can kill a god… Or one of the Maere.”
Lara paused in front of the arched, leaded glass window. Backlit by the late morning light, she looked rather like one of the statues of avenging angels that could be found around the city. I could see how she got her moniker. “Some have also called our swords by that name. The word has as many meanings as our name does.”
“Maere?” I asked.
Now it was Briony’s turn to answer a question, and she looked pleased as a schoolchild. “Maere has roots in lots of words. It can describe the sea, or nightmares… it even has roots in some of the names of the original factions of warriors who populated the island, right?”
Ember nodded. “Yes, all that is true. Thrysos is not a word we commonly use on the island. It’s a human name for our tools, which is why it has an inconsistent meaning… much like the word Maere itself. But it could be referring to Chiore’s weapon, certainly.”
Rhiannon appeared in the doorway, dressed in a matching set of navy blue workout clothes, her hair pulled back tightly into a slick bun. “If the Chiorics are looking for a thrysos, it is because they want to cut us down.” She stalked towards the pinboard, staring at the date in question in comparison to theothers that had been identified. “I think we should assume they were successful.”
“No,” Briony answered. “They weren’t… How to explain this… The dates are a pattern of some sort. A mix of moon phases, though not allourmoon. They seem to be tracking a moon from a distant planet, Tyche. Some of these dates are when Tyche is in a kind of alignment with our moon… There has to be some significance here.” She turned her screen. “Does this mean anything to you?”
Ember glanced at the screen, then shook her head. “That’s not very precise, but you might be onto something. Rituals do typically follow an astrological pattern.” She pointed to several of the alignments in the simulation Briony had seemingly conjured from nothing. “Look, each is several degrees off; they’re all different.”
Briony shrugged. “I’ll keep working on it.”
Both Rhiannon and Ember nodded, while Lara simply turned to stare out the window. When she spoke, her voice was flat. “This is a setup. Surely you see it. Someone’s luring us in. Whether it’s some Chioric faction or the missing Maere, this whole thing is a trap.”
“Yes,” Ember agreed, standing up from the couch. She stared at the pinboard, frowning at the list of dates. “But what else are we going to do? Just leave the swords?”
“We could try to buy them,” I suggested. As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to take them back.
Ember leaned back on the arm of the sofa. “If they want us trapped, they’re not going to allow us to simply buy them.”
Rhiannon crossed her arms tightly over her chest. “So we have to be better than them. Faster. Get in, get out fast, before the auction even begins. That’s been the plan all along.”
Ember nodded, but as she did, she frowned. “The trouble is, if we assume this is a trap, then we have to assume they’ll assume we plan to do this the safest way possible.”
Rhiannon grimaced, then stared at the ceiling. “So, what do we do?Goto the auction?”
I drew a breath in. That would be dangerous, but it might also play to our advantage. Whoever was planning this would assume that we wouldn’t risk doing this the hardest way possible. But if we waited until the very last moment to steal the swords, we might actually take them by surprise. I shook my head at Ember. It was a wild idea, but it might work.
Ember smiled when I finally shrugged, tossing my hands into the air. “Guess we’re going to a party,” she said with a grin.
