The Comfort Of The Knife

Amber’s laughter leaked between my fingers to drip in my ears.

“No,” she exclaimed.

Melissa circled her heart. “Promise it’s the truth. From ages eight to ten, Nadia had my mom working harder than she’d worked before. She ended up discovering a whole new spell just to remove the odor that’d linger in the fibers.”

I turned away from them and slid further down the seats. The main seat was a large L-shaped piece with a fabric upholstery. While the other was a simple two-seater that was pushed back-to-back with the driver’s bench. It even had a table—which Amber had kicked her feet up on when the drive had started. Leave it to her to be at home no matter the space. Me on the other hand, I had slid all the way down the neck of the L-seat in a vain attempt at escape.

“Temple, please, you have to tell me—,” she said.

“I don’t.”

She wrapped her arm around Melissa and pulled her in close. The two of them assumed the most pitiful looks they could—eyes wide and lips pouted. Amber even had tears well up.

“Please, Ms. Temple, tell us the story behind your piss-yellow past,” she implored.

I groaned and flung myself to the seat. Buried my face into it to hide the shame made apparent on my cheeks. Amber whimpered ever so gently you’d think I broke her heart. It thawed mine.

“Fine.” The duo cheered—even the bus driver chuckled. “I had nightmares, okay. Dreams where I was stuck in the Underside.”

As I spoke the intimations of feelings rose gently like sand being kicked up underwater. Beyond the shame there was a fear that haunted me back then. Every time my eyes blinked it would take me fast as dogs on a hare. In the shadow behind my lids I would recall the entities that filled my nightmares the previous night. Their forms a mockery of sense and propriety with implications that took many years to suppress. Eventually I tried to stop sleeping, but it just made me tired in the dreams. That was even worse because it meant I couldn’t run away as fast. Wasn’t as nimble as I needed to be to avoid what I knew lurked in the Underside.

Melissa said, “Nadia, I’m sorry. I never knew.”

A smile touched my lips—she was sorry and meant it. Even when she wanted to mock someone she’d pivot so fast to care. I was just touched that I was still worth some of it. Though when I propped myself back up she caught the tail of my mirth. Rolled her eyes and looked away from me as if to say, ‘No, we’re still not good.’ That smothered it back down.

“Well, glad they stopped eventually,” Melissa said. “You stopped sleeping over those years. Thought you hated me.”

“Never,” I said.

Melissa opened her mouth, but was cut off by Amber who leaned in front of her.

“Nope, not doing that,” Amber said.

“Not doing what?” I asked.

She searched my face and her brows rose. “You’re not slick, Temple. I’m not letting you get out of telling me your worryingly yellow lore. Especially if it’s gonna lead to you two acting all divorced the entire trip.”

This time I opened my mouth to speak only for Amber to pin me with those rose eyes.

“If you’re speaking it’s to tell the end. What made the nightmares go away?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It’ll sound ridiculous.”

“Let me decide,” she said and slid back in her seat. Melissa looked from her to me and nodded. Her chin the gavel that would cement their stance. I had to finish the story.

“Fine, I dreamed my way out.” Though not by myself.

“Really?”

“Yes.” There was a woman. Older than me though not by much. She had found me cowering in some library that Mom would’ve described as, ‘Escher-esque,’—another one of those names belonging to an artist she couldn’t show me. It was a good word though because space was wrong in that place. A maze in three dimensions where horrors lurked behind every shelf. Let alone the way the books would sing when night—or what passed for night—would take command. Their songs like the most soothing lullaby mixed with the tantalizing tones of a shaved ice seller pushing their cart. You couldn’t help but drift toward them like a leaf in the autumn wind. That was how she found me—hands about to open a book and obliterate my nascent ego. She had slammed my hands back shut, but her palms were so soft.

“But you were probably running the whole time those years. It doesn’t make sense that you’d just suddenly get away,” Amber argued.

“I had a guide, okay.” For that entire night she led me by the hand down hallways I had gotten turned around in a hundred times. It took two nights to escape. I had thrown my arms around her begging her to save me—and she did. Led me by the hand over silver sand dunes and through nocturnal jungles where star-filled clouds slinked through the trees.

“Was she hot?” Melissa asked.

My shock gave way to my guilt. “I guess, but I wasn’t thinking like that back then.” At least before her I wasn’t. She was the one who ignited the furnace of my heart. My first, and my hero. I would try to dream of her but it was impossible. I had witnessed true beauty and like all beautiful things it wouldn’t allow memory to mistreat it. Left me only with feeling.

“And so begins Nadia Temple’s deep affection for older women,” Amber intoned.

Melissa’s eyes flashed to her in disbelief. Then to me in examination. . . did I? The heart—I unfortunately admit—is the biggest traitor. I swallowed loud as a pin dropping on a headstone.

“I thought you just liked teachers,” she declared. Amber’s mouth opened wide as a tunnel. I clambered over the far bench to slide next to the driver.

“How long until Brightgate?” I asked—yelled.

The driver, a portly man in an indigo turban with an axe-dark beard, looked at me in shock.

“We’re not going all the way to Brightgate. We—,” he said.

“What’s he talking about, Amber?” I asked.

He patted the air and I lowered back in my seat. “I run the relay routes. You’ll be getting dropped off at a station outpost. No need to worry,” he said.

“A station outpost? Amber, we’re riding a train?” I asked, excitement building.

Amber crabwalked across the bus and laid her hand on my shoulder. Something in her eyes shifted—playful to intense. Her voice lost its jocular bounce.

“We’re going to be on time. Trust me, Temple,” she said. Each word a post to mark her stance.

“Okay,” I said. Then exhaled an anxiety that claimed far too much room in my chest.

The driver asked, “Are you all taking the Summoners’ Lodge exam?”

“We are,” I said. “That obvious?”

He chuckled, “Eh, you run enough of the routes—relay or longhaul—you start to get a sense of who’s traveling when. If they’re off to university, they'll travel just before summer’s end. A collective, then right before the solstice. When it’s only days after Omensday, then it can only be to go take the Lodge’s exam.”

“That’s very attentive,” I said.

“Thank you, you have to be if you’re fixing to ride in the parade. We’re all we got out here in these between spaces.” He then asked a question. “Why the Lodge, though? Driven so many of you over the years but I still don’t get it.”

I leaned my chin into my palm. Eyes narrowed to better see the blue shard of ocean that draped across the horizon to the west. There—where the sun kissed its reflection—I had hidden my vengeance. So far that only I knew what I was looking at. Then I slid my eyes across the water and back to him with an answer.

“It’s the knowledge. Besides the Public Record, there’s almost no one that just hands out information to people. At least not without tying them down to one place,” I said.

Amber shouted, “Wrong! The Lodge might let you roam but they tie you down with work. All Lodgemembers have a quota of missions they need to undertake in the Lodge’s name. Which is a whole other burden.”

“Please, that’s hardly the worst thing about the Lodge. The institution—if you could call it that—is just a den of violent layabouts that didn’t have the decency to die out back during the Changeover. It’s their work that makes them even vaguely redeemable,” Melissa retorted.

“Why take the exam if you feel that way?” the driver asked.

Melissa’s eyes locked with mine in the rearview mirror. I broke the gaze first.

“I have my reasons,” she said. “Though if you ask me more people should try and join one of the collectives.”

Amber and I both scoffed. Melissa regarded Amber with a pantomime of betrayal.

“And here I thought we were bonding,” she said.

Amber tussled Melissa’s hair. “We were. We were. Just, I wouldn’t be a good senior if I didn’t teach my well-intentioned but oh so misled junior the truth.”

“Which is?”

“That the collectives are controlling assholes. Like an art commune meets one of those Old World think-tanks. They’ll only take you if you’re bonded to the ‘appropriate’ Court in their eyes, and alls below, you better follow their mission manifesto or whatever.”

I called back, “Is there any group you don’t have a dim view of?”

“Nope! That’s the beauty of the New World that you both are too spoiled to see. It’s a place where a rootless drifter, like yours truly, can go wherever she wants with no one to bother her. And a world where a bunch of folks with the same bug for travel can just go. Together only by nature of the way they’re going with no one to command them otherwise,” she said.

The driver roared happily. “Now that I can get behind. Ain’t nothing purer than Wanderlust,” he said as he mashed the horn. Up and down the parade it was echoed by artisanal honks, howls, and screams the drivers had designed for themselves back when they first hit the road.

“All the same, I wish you all luck with the prelims,” he said.

My brow scrunched in confusion. “The Lodge holds prelims?” I asked.

“Well—,” Melissa began.

“You did not learn about the Lodge’s exam structure during the last weeks of school,” I said.

Melissa smirked, “We didn’t, but I overheard what one of my aunts said after my cousin came back from her ‘vacation’ last year. Apparently the Lodge always does a preliminary exam before the actual exam as a way to weed out the folks too unqualified to realize they’re unqualified.”

“Like your cousin?” I asked jokingly. She wasn’t a cousin Melissa particularly liked from how she would complain about her for days after anytime they spoke to each other.

“Tiff loved to wear silk but lacked the patience to weave it,” she said.

Amber added, “The prelims aren’t even the real exam. Apparently the Lodgemaster designs each exam. Only rule is it has to have three tests. Other than that it’s free rein.”

I let their words settle as the road ahead sketched itself out to me. The driver nudged me gently—I must’ve looked worried.

“Hey, stick with those two and I’m sure you’ll get through the exam,” the driver said.

Which caused Amber to develop the scummiest smile. “Don’t worry Temple, I’ll carry you across the finish line.”

* * *

The teasing lasted for about another hour before I drifted to sleep. Maybe it was the fact that I wasn’t in the carcass of my home, but for the first time in a long time, sleep was peaceful. When Amber shook me awake I nearly screamed. My hand jutted toward the horizon and wrapped a fist over the sun. Loosened my fingers and found that my vengeance was still in hand.

“Temple, we’re here,” she said.

I nodded mutely and slipped from the bus. Sphinx sat next to the bags and examined the outpost. The place was small and quiet. Ahead of us was the station and the inn that sat right above it. While behind us, past the bus, was the road that would wind away from this grain of civilization and back into the free wilds.

The driver didn’t belabor the goodbye—parade-folk never did, he explained—and pulled away to rejoin the procession. We had only been on the bus for four hours, so I had no reason to feel anything about our parting. Yet still I felt. So I watched just long enough for the bus to melt into the burgeoning night.

“The way can’t be walked unless we make peace with where it splits in twain,” Sphinx said.

I took its cue and gathered my bags—Amber and Melissa waited for me. Melissa’s face was somber as her eyes trailed the mote of light that was our bus into the far distance. Amber only had eyes for me. Her smile was a thin spread just enough to carry her intention. I see you.

“Cmon, the rooms won’t book themselves,” she said.

We hauled our bags—Melissa and I seeing as Amber had some storage spell she still refused to share—and entered the station. It was a beautiful construction of stone walls and massive wooden pillars polished to a mirror finish. We padded across the central rug to the front desk where a woman—older and scarred—watched us with a small amount of contempt. I noted the book she hid away and realized we interrupted her reading.

“How many?” she asked.

“Three,” Amber answered.

The woman shook her head. “Only have two available. One bed each, and no pullouts.”

Melissa muttered, “Why not lead with that?”

“How are we handling rooms?” I asked.

Amber said, “I figured I’d go with you.”

“No way you and Nadia should share a bed,” she said. Her voice spiked in urgency only for crimson to bleed into her face. The fierceness of her disagreement surprised even herself.

Amber smirked, “You’re really bad at this divorced thing.”

“Stop saying it like that,” Melissa said. “Nadia can be in my room and just take the bathtub or something. There is a bathtub right?”

The woman nodded. Melissa turned back to us, “See, works out perfectly.”

“Hardly,” I said. “I’m not sleeping in a bathtub.”

“Well I want a bed,” she said.

Amber interjected, “I can share with anyone.”

“Then you go with Amber, and I’ll take a room to myself,” I said.

“Works for me,” Amber shrugged. “Two is fine. Can we get it on three keys? Two for one and one for the other.”

She huffed out an agreement. Revealed a large tablet-sized sorc-deck from beneath the desk. Her fingers rapidly input the rooms we’d be under. Then she slid it around to face us.

“Sign under sign in. Then you might as well wait in the station tavern while I set up those keys.”

The woman ambled off into a back room. An entity—see through and glasslike with a bright orange core—bobbed in the air after her. It had also been resting below the desk. We signed our names and swung a right toward the tavern. The place had the same rugged design as the lobby. The only difference was the addition of long bench tables that were little more than slabs of driftwood cut lengthwise and varnished with linseed oil.

We threw our bags atop a table, and Amber put in an order for two beers—Melissa begged off hers after she proclaimed herself a lightweight. So the two of us nursed our drinks while Melissa flipped through her book of proofs. The silence that stretched through the tavern was appreciated. . . and short-lived.

A heavy boot kicked a door in, herald to the herd of bullheaded men that stomped in from outside. Behind them trailed a nervous cadre of younger men and women—fresh graduates like Melissa and myself. The lead bullhead had his arm thrown around the smallest of the graduates, a guy who embodied “boy” more than “man” with a thick sheeplike haircut that emphasized his meekness.

“I’m telling you kid, with moves like those you’re not making it through the exam. Let alone the prelims. I mean look at ya, all skin and bones. Even your spirit felt thin out there,” he bellowed.

To his credit the boy protested, “That was just some spars. They’re not the full story.”

“Bah, that’s what all you losers say,” he declared while the others of his herd grabbed a round of drinks. “Spars are the only way you can see yourself clearly. If you freeze in the spar you freeze out there. Spell comes out too slow and you can be sure it won’t be ready in time.”

I lowered my beer—the taste had gone sour. Melissa stopped reading as well to instead examine the lot of them. Our distaste apparent that our gentle silence was spoiled by someone so vacuous. Still, we didn’t go say anything or tell him off cause Amber did that first.

“With prescriptive thinking like that I would’ve pegged you as a doctor,” she said. Downed her beer and strode over to the tables across the room that the people had claimed. “Though your face says otherwise. What kind of doctor looks like they ran into a wall on purpose.”

The man sneered and tried to wave her off. Amber caught his hand by the pinkie and ring finger. Gave a gentle twist and walked his hand—and thus the rest of his arm—away from the boy. Pried free, he bolted from the bench and took a spot behind Amber. She ignored him to instead look at the man’s hands.

“Look at that, just like I expected. Your hands are too pampered,” she said.

The man rose from his seat like a corpse to the surface of a shallow grave. He was taller than Amber, but that was only objectively. In my eyes—and from the faces on everyone else in the room—the real titan was Amber. Her presence dwarfed the man.

“Check again. These hands are calloused from decades of the best martial training of any collective,” he stated.

She mused, “A collective you say.” Amber hid her mouth behind her hand as she caught Melissa’s gaze. Mouthed out the word, asshole. Then turned back to him and shook her head. “If you stopped running into the wall the twentieth time you’d understand. See, your hands are calloused from training and sparring. It’s impressive, but those worlds are fake.”

Then I watched as her hand blurred through the air. A smear of color and motion. Only to stop right before she clawed out his eyes. His pupils dilated as they processed their aborted doom.

“These are the hands that matter. The kind where the blood seeps into the nail bed. Proof that you were in the shit and got out,” she said and only then lowered her hand.

The man took a step backward. “Like you’ve seen blood. You’re barely older than me.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” she said. “But even if we were the same age, I’ve lived more than you. My years so full of learning and pain that it’d take you a decade to catch up.”

She hopped up onto the table and stole the man’s beer that he’d yet to open. Twisted off the cap and took a deep gulp. “Why are you talking about the exam anyways. Not like you’ve passed, or have you?”

The boy piped up, “He hasn’t.” Then squeaked as the man glared him back into submission.

“Even if I haven’t it doesn’t mean I don’t know anything. This’ll be my third time taking the exam,” he grumbled.

Amber took another sip. “Doesn’t that just mean you failed the other two times. Who’d want to listen to you?”

“Nothing wrong with failure, or sharing the understanding that comes from it. Though since I’m obviously missing something, what do you think the trick is to passing?” he asked.

His arms crossed—the idiot was confident that he had Amber trapped. Instead he had just given her a stage. She climbed atop the table—conspicuously ignored the bartender telling her to get down—and held up her hand.

“You only need five things to pass the test. One, an attack spell. Two, a defense or healing spell. Three, a spell for reconnaissance or general information gathering. Four, a trick.”

“Four spells, really?” he asked.

Amber dropped from the table back to the floor. “Only four. Cause that’s where the fifth thing is the most important,” she said.

Then took her remaining finger and jabbed the man right between the eyes.

“Smarts. If you’re smart enough you only need four spells to solve any problem,” she said.

With her display over no one dared to challenge her on her points. Instead silence crept back into the tavern and took a seat as everyone—even the blowhard—thought her words over.

The boy spoke first. “How many spells do you know?”

“Kid, never ask a lady her age or how many spells she knows.” She took a swig of her drink and thought over her answer. “Funny to say that though as it’s the same answer: thirty-two.”

Everyone gasped as her statement lit the air on fire—thirty spells would be someone with an entity at the rank of Marquis. General convention said by the end of each link you should have six spells of the corresponding rank. Unless you were a genius, the only people with that many spells were in their fifties and that’s if you made good time. I watched as Amber tilted the bottle back and stuck her tongue inside to snatch any errant drops—she was hardly a genius.

“You really had me going. Pick a better lie next time.” He called out to Melissa and I, “You two, how many spells do you have?”

Melissa went first, “I have six.”

I leaned across the table. “Seriously?” I asked. “You’ve had your entity for less than a week.”

“Why are you surprised? My family’s been bonded to Mutation for three generations. I have three books full of proofs.”

My mouth worked but nothing came out. I wasn’t surprised—I’d seen the mini-library of proofs and theses her family had added to over the years. My eyes fell and I searched the grain of the wood for what felt so wrong. I found it in a knot. She was ahead of me. For years I led and she followed with no complaint. And now she led and I trailed behind.

“How about you?” he called out.

I looked up to see Melissa’s befuddled expression and considered lying. Then I noticed Sphinx’s smirk—no doubt sensing the outline of the thought. In the back of my mind I heard the storm.

“Two,” I said.

If there was anything good about my answer it was that it lanced the tension from the room. Only for it to spill all over me.

“Now that’s bold,” he yelled. “Even Mr.Meek over there had more than two spells. Left it all on the sparring yard outside.”

The newly dubbed, “Mr. Meek,” laughed at me as well. “I don’t know if two spells will even get you to the sparring yard.”

“Well hold on, maybe she’s bonded to something really impressive. Like the Court of Dumb Luck!” he yelled. Galvanizing the room into an avalanche of belly laughs and creative jeers.

My fingers slid across the table in preparation to summon the chalcedony fire that was my most well-practiced spell. Before they did though Melissa reached out with a hand. Laid it over mine and gently pressed my hand to the table.

“They’re not worth it,” she said.

I scoffed, “I wouldn’t do anything.”

She scowled at my baldfaced lie, but didn’t challenge me. Only listened.

“I’m just stumbling in the dark and running into walls,” I said.

“Didn’t you put in some sort of teaching clause in your bond negotiation?”

I glanced at Sphinx who smiled softly as it held its own confidence. Then huffed in frustration.

“We bonded under some intense circumstances. I didn’t have much time to negotiate,” I said.

“Okay, so what about the Court? You know the ruling and advising Principles,” she said. “You can just deduce some proofs from that and work bottom up to some spells. You do know your Principles, right?”

My other hand clenched into a fist. She squeezed me in reassurance, but it felt more akin to pity’s clammy touch. I couldn’t even appreciate the fact that her eyes had a softness for me that was absent when we left home. The tavern’s laughter had bullied my eyes shut.

“Your keys are done,” the woman yelled from the front desk. Her entity dropped them at our table. Each one a thin wooden tablet with a room number one side and a trio of linked sorcerous phonemes on the back depicted in calligraphic strokes of Under-ink. The best medium for working mortal tier magic at complexity levels below shrines.

“Sphinx, get up. We’re going to the sparring yard,” I said.

I pocketed my key and snatched my hand back from Melissa. Added another fist at my side as I rose from the bench. She rose with me, but stopped halfway as she recognized the steps to the dance that had ended. That I ended. Her concern retracted and she lowered to her seat. Took a breath and regarded me with cool eyes as she opened her book again.

“Hope you learn something,” she said.

It might have hurt if I didn’t notice that the book was upside down. Who knew you had to practice how to be normal and divorced? I shoved the thought aside and dropped my bag onto Amber’s lap. She slung the bag over her back and flashed me a thumbs up. While Sphinx and I pushed through the door the crowd had come in from.

The sparring yard was a circle of soft dirt that was as dark as my Dad. I ran my hand through my hair pushing back the loose curls as I regarded Sphinx.

“I need to know more spells,” I said.

“Agreed,” it said.

“So you have to teach me.”

It demurred, “Mmm, now that’s a conclusion I don’t agree with.”

“Why not? You need me strong enough to get your vengeance and I need to be strong enough for mine. At this rate I won’t even pass the prelims. Let alone net the top score, so I can get into a room alone with Nemesis,” I said.

Sphinx curled in on itself atop the dirt. Its wings stretched and folded back in on itself.

“Sphinx,” I snapped. “You can’t just brush me off. We have our oaths.”

“Which you so helpfully remind me of, Nadia.” It hummed, “Unfortunately I have fulfilled that oath. You have your tool to seek your foes, and thus my onus is fulfilled. Even so, a trick is only cute the first time around. Otherwise you risk the ire of your audience.”

“Is that a threat?” I asked.

Sphinx smiled, “It’s advice so you don’t reach beyond your grasp.”

“Why are you getting in my way?” I asked.

Sphinx reached out with a paw and pressed it against my shoulder—I had curled up in anger. Its voice was soft like powdery snow. Yet its words carried that same chill down into my core.

“I am what you summoned me for,” it said. “You wanted a gatekeeper, and so here I am keeping the gate. If you want so badly, scale it. Otherwise I'll fulfill my existence and turn you away.”

I didn’t let the words rest long on my shoulders—the idea that I wanted to be turned away. It—it wasn’t something I could process. Sphinx removed its paw and sidled next to me. Its bulk bumped into the side of my knee and nearly caused it to buckle.

“Ignore that then.” Anger crept into Sphinx’s voice, “See broadly and perhaps conceive of a struggle beyond yourself. I’m alone in this world of yours. The lone spark of Revelation to be found in the dullness of the Real. Any works or thrones of the Court—save the one you stumbled upon—are most likely lost. In such isolation you really think I would fight this hard to not make you into the best sword possible? If so then we might as well slit our throats together and give up on this venture.”

I let my butt hit the dirt. Dug my fingers into the soil and listened. The edge that had found its way into Sphinx’s voice was uncharacteristic. It had a heat that broiled at the edge of fury. Hissed sharp as a kettle trying to catch your attention. I dusted my hand on my pants, and then laid it atop Sphinx’s head. Ran my fingers through its hair to scratch its scalp. A purr rumbled from within its chest. As my hand moved, so did its head to chase my fingers to the next spot. We sat like that as I processed its words. My memories lilted in the direction of the lindwurm and the game that nearly took Amber’s life.

“You can’t teach me, can you?” I asked. Hand stalled to let Sphinx think properly.

It murmured, “Teaching isn’t Revelation. Even if I laid before you the wonders of the Court it would be pointless. Our nature is as much the process of understanding as it is the content.”

“You lost me,” I said.

Sphinx rocked its head in thought. “What did you feel the first time you slept with the maiden of Mutation?”

“I’m not telling you about the first time we had sex,” I balked.

“Think beyond the superficiality of the mechanics. What did you feel?”

My eyes tilted to the blushing sky as the sun lost itself in the depths of the horizon.

“Nervousness. I wanted to be confident for her. We were still so early in everything. Each touch and kiss a discovery of how we fit together,” I said. “So when we went there, I wanted to be so good that we’d do it again. But I was drowning in anxiety and didn’t know what to do.”

The middle fingers of my left hand curled against Sphinx’s scalp. Then made tight circles that elicited a groan of pleasure.

“It was her voice that broke the haze. I was so in my head that every move was wrong, but I had fallen so deep that I just kept moving my body hoping I’d be right eventually. When I was, Melissa all but sang to me. So I focused on her. Each tilt and toss of her body I followed and I listened. By the time we finished, Melissa’s voice was hoarse and I was in love.”

“Now, imagine if I found you before that night. Told you how it would end. What would happen?”

I wandered down the hypothetical. “I’d probably be fixated on every noise wondering if it was the noise. Probably go right by it without realizing.”

“And thus, any Revelation to be gained would be lost. Your romance dead without ever getting to live,” Sphinx said.

“Maybe it’d have been for the best. Avoid all this pain and awkwardness.”

Sphinx rolled onto its side—its head laid across my lap to catch my hiding eyes.

“That’s the wrong conclusion,” it said.

“Why?”

“Because then we wouldn’t have met.”

Its eyes held mine for an interminable number of moments. Then it rolled free from my lap.

It said, “All Revelations aid in walking the way no matter how small.”

“But discussions, like we’re having, are okay?” I asked.

Sphinx quirked a brow. “Yes,” it said hesitatingly, “they are. Revelation lives in the fertile jungles between voice and meaning.”

“Then, let’s talk. Is there anything you can say about Revelation? Like the Principles,” I said.

Sphinx frowned, “The concept is familiar amongst my betters, but I’ve never been taught.”

“You’d have to be taught?” I asked. “Thought you were all just born knowing.”

Sphinx rolled its eyes. “We are born knowing what we need to know as dictated by our betters. Though I might add that few things are born knowing their inherent nature.”

“Fair,” I said. Then marked out a table with twelve entries across and twelve down. Filled them in: Renewal, Passion, Stars, Caverns, Pyres, Seas, Storms, Gloom, War, Death, and Dream.

“The x-axis is the ruling Principle, and the y the advising. If x determines the territory then y determines the culture,” I said.

“And the Court becomes a country.” Sphinx stared at the chart. Shook its head, “I’d need time to ponder—.”

Its eyes snapped upward in the direction of our room. I fluttered my eyes and ignored the tears that poured as I activated the Omensight. Sphinx raised a paw and I traced it to the black and red threads of Hope and Sacrifice that twined thick as rope up to our room. Before I can speak, Sphinx shoots forward running through the dirt-drawn table. I nearly cried out in frustration—tables take so long to draft up—but then I saw its paw print. There was only one, strange as that was, and it landed perfectly at the intersection of Stars and Dream. Under the Omensight I could see the way the strands wove together into the color of Revelation. The smallest Revelations indeed.

I took off after Sphinx, and hopped upon its back. It flew around the inn toward our balcony on the third floor. We landed and my fingers were already crossed. On three we burst through the wooden doors to discover a person—their appearance androgynous and teasing—sprawled across the floor. Their blood a stream that wound its way underfoot.