Page 73 of Property of Prophet

“Thought so,” says Lily as she keeps her eyes on the rifle.

Prophet turns the eggs. “I don’t understand what they’re discussing.”

“Bullshit,” Hollywood says.

“Eat your breakfast,” Lily tells him.

Hollywood’s grin goes wider. “Yes, ma’am.”

Good. Let them have the morning.

The mountain will soon take enough from all of us.

Three ancient texts have become seven. Flint’s folder is halved into two smaller folders, each tabbed in a color scheme only he can read. Somewhere under the sprawl sits Lily’s dining table. He has been awake the whole night, same as me, though his vigil burned lamp oil instead of forest. Since the call went out, he has been building an archive inside his skull, page by page, cross-reference by cross-reference. This morning, the dragon has the stillness he only gets when the building is finished.

The rest of us prepare for war by sharpening things. Flint prepares by reading until the enemy has no secrets left, and in six centuries of riding beside him, his method has saved more of our blood than mine has. My fire wins fights. His pages decide them.

He waits until the plates are cleared, and everyone has found their place. Blade takes the head of the table without ceremony because the head of any table is where Blade happens to sit. Vex stands. Ranger leans into the wall with his arms folded, wolf-eyes half lidded, and Scout perches on the wooden box, where he can watch two windows at once. Prophet sits, which still looks strange on him after all these weeks, a mountain learning chairs.

Lily takes the seat nearest the lamp and opens a notebook. Not for comfort. For use. She sets a pen beside it, squares the page, then lifts her eyes to Flint the way a surgeon looks at scans before a hard procedure. Give me the anatomy, spare me the bedside manner.

Flint lays one hand flat on the oldest book. “I found the rite,” he says. “The one Calix is attempting. It has a name in three dead languages and the same requirement in all of them.” He turns the book so the table can see the faded script, columns of it, annotated in his own precise hand. “Incorporation of severed grace into a fallen vessel. It cannot be done with power alone. The grace resists, so it must be persuaded to stay, and the persuasion demands mortal life, freely offered.”

“Willing sacrifice,” Vex says.

“Willing sacrifice.” Flint’s finger moves down the column. “Not victims, volunteers. The texts are specific to the point of cruelty. A life taken by force is worthless to this working. A life laid down in faith is the mortar. Each one seals a fracture...” He pauses. “The rite requires forty-two.”

Heat climbs my spine, and the woodstove has nothing to do with it.

“Say that again,” I tell him.

“Forty-two.” Flint looks at me.

“That’s how many are outside.”

Blade’s head comes up. “You’re sure?”

“I counted every heartbeat, and soul-weight on the wind. Twice.”

Nobody speaks for a moment. The fire pops behind me, and Lily writes a single line in her notebook, and her pen does not waver.

Rooser sets his coffee down. “Well, that’s fucking inconvenient.”

“It isn’t an army. He’s arranged them,” I say.

Vex pushes away from the wall. “For what?”

Flint taps the book. “The rite.”

“Meaning?” Blade asks.

“Meaning Calix isn’t surrounding us with soldiers.” Flint’s expression goes flat. “He’s surrounding us with ingredients.

“Why forty-two?” Blade asks. “Why not fifty? A hundred?”

“Because it is six sevens,” Flint says. “Seven is Heaven’s number... completion, rest, the finished work. Calix cannot touch seven. Nothing of him has been whole since he fell.”

“So, forty-two is what, evil math?” Rooster frowns.