Then the phoenix, which has been chained to its perch, ignites. The fire blazes with the same bluish flame as the torch. Hypatia hurriedly pulls a handle on the side of the cage, which releases the ash into a chamber below that funnels it down into a glass jar. The phoenix’s ashes then sink to the bottom of the cage.
“In the morning, I’ll come in here with a bucket of white tincture, and I’ll find a grey-feathered baby bird flitting about in the cage. I’ll chain it to the perch, and then tomorrow night, I’ll do it all again. On and on. Over and over. This is the only existence it has known for the past one hundred years.” She holds her hands out to Fushi, begging him to return her elixirs. He shakes his head. “And if I do nothing, it will be all it knows for one hundred more. One thousand, maybe.” Her fingertips stroke the bar of its cage. “The only known phoenix in the world, and this is what we’ve done to it.”
I reach for the thread I felt between the bird and me, and I’m surprised to find it still there. It’s different, more distant, but the bond feels unbreakable. The phoenix is still here in a different form, and it always will be, no matter what we do to it.
And yet I agree with Hypatia that this is an intolerable cruelty. To take something so beautiful and magical and to chain it up, to lock it in a cage in a darkened room away from the sun, forcing it to die over and over again each and every day for our gain. To exploit it, even if it’s for the good of the people, it seems unconscionable.
If this is what our world requires, maybe it deserves to be ended.
But Hypatia’s plan won’t work, I realize. If she blows up this room, the phoenix will still endure. It’s immortal. They’ll find it in here, somewhere deep within the bowels of the Guild, and they’ll put it in a new cage. A smaller cage, with tighter chains. “Hypatia, I know you mean well, but you can’t free us from thiswith what’s in that vial. We have to let it go. We have to release it somehow.”
Just then, there’s a loud knock at the door, and a muffled woman’s voice travels through it. “Open up. We know you’re in there. There’s nowhere to go.”
Is there nowhere to go? No one but Hypatia has been in here. “Is there another way out?”
Hypatia shakes her head grimly. “Only one way in or out. They can’t get in, not unless they appoint a new Guild Mistress or Master. They’ll have to be anointed by the church.”
“Can you blast a hole in the wall? What’s on the other side?”
Hypatia knocks on the walls, which appear to be made of wood. “It’s lead underneath here. The explosion will be contained. Please, you must see that it’s the only choice. They’ll kill us either way. At least if we do this, it will have been worth it.”
She never intended to leave this room. That’s why she didn’t want us to come in here with her.
But I can’t believe that it’s the only option. “We have to surrender. Hypatia, Ronan is going to retake Faros, and when he does, he’ll free the phoenix. We just have to find a way to get the word to him. He’ll let it go.”
“Even if he wins, you said yourself that he can’t let it go. We’re dependent on it. I don’t know him the way that you do, but I’m sure he’d never choose this bird, as majestic as it may be, over his people. I’m not sure I would either, but I know that if it still exists, we’ll never be free from this. I have only had this job for seven months, and I’m a shell of who I was. I feel like I lose a part of myself I can never get back every time I cut its throat. Every time it looks at me, trusting me, and I stab it through the heart. You can’t imagine what that’s like.”
“I can,” I say. The way it looked at Hypatia is the way Ronan looked at me when I left him. I approach her, cautiously takingher hand. “I promise you, we’ll find a way to free it. But we can’t unless we live to fight for it.”
Seth crosses to the door, holding the handle but looking back for our approval before he turns it. “As little as I’d like to see our sister again, I’d prefer uncertain death at her hands to certain death in here. Are we agreed?”
“Agreed,” says Fushi, eyeing the ash pile in the cage. I’m certain he intends to find a way to take it, but he gives me an idea.
“Could we take it with us? In a pocket?”
“The door is spelled to kill anyone who tries with fire,” says Hypatia. That puts a wrinkle in our plans to free it, but I’m still sure it’s the right idea. “And besides. Feel it.”
I reach through the bars of the cage, and I can feel the heat coming from the ashes from more than a foot away. “It’s like it’s still on fire.”
“And it might cause a minor issue when one of us is found with a legendary bird in our jail cell. We leave the bird, and we surrender. Agreed?” Seth asks again.
“Agreed,” I say. I look at Hypatia, and she turns away from the phoenix in shame.
“Agreed,” she says, and Seth opens the door.
We trail out into the hallway with our hands held up, the guards clearly under strict orders not to enter the room. I note their white cloaks as they search us, removing our weapons. These aren’t Adria’s guards.
They’re the Order of the Sun. They’re loyal to the crown too, of course, but they’re part of the Temple of Vayla. Maybe they’ll remember their oaths to Ronan, believing him to be Vayla’s embodiment on earth.
A belief that I find I agree with, the more I think of it.
“Ser Lucia,” I say, recognizing their leader. She doesn’t recognize me with my short hair and Guild robe. “You helped uswhen we returned to the city at the beginning of the siege. We traveled with God-King Ronan.”
“Of course,” she says warmly. “That means you’re…you’re the God-Queen’s sister.” She makes some hand gestures to the guards, and they’re careful as they bind my wrists. They don’t afford the same treatment to Seth—she doesn’t make the connection, and though he tries to tell it to them as he protests, they ignore him. “She’ll want you brought to her at once.”
Seth pleads with me, and I roll my eyes as I speak up for him. “And my brother as well.”
“Of course,” says Ser Lucia, seeing the resemblance. “I understand you to be enemies of the crown, but out of respect for the Royal House, we’ll treat you gently as long as you don’t resist.”
