Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-one
We returned to the Lyceum after classes finished.
Yael, Stefan, and Gidon looked up when we entered the scroll room. “We were wondering when you would return,” Yael said mildly. “Everything all right?”
I tried to smile, but it felt tight. Everything was not all right. The boy who I’d been living with for almost half a year had lied not only about his reason for coming to Talum but also about his core identity. “It’s been a busy few days.”
“I’ll bet.” Stefan inspected Daziel. “A high demon, huh?”
Daziel smiled sharply.
“What have we missed?” I asked.
“We’ve pulled all the words in the scrolls containing the characters we’re calling Z and I and cross-referenced them with our list of ancient names containing either,” Yael said. “The only noun we’ve thought of with both is Tzorybium. Unfortunately, no Language X words look like a match.”
“So we’re experimenting with words separately containing the Z and I characters,” Stefan said. “There’s a word starting with Z, with five letters—if that’s the Tribe of Zebulun, we’d have a few more letters, but it would also mean the letters aren’t a one-to-one match.”
Endless trial and error. That was how decipherment often went, until you had more keys.
Which. We might.
“We have news too.” I glanced at Daziel, twisting my amulet nervously, unable to get the words out.
“Do you want us to guess?” Stefan finally snarked. “Get on with it.”
While the boys stared at me, Yael followed my gaze to Daziel. Then she gave me a small, comforting nod.
I steeled myself. Daziel had lied because he believed if he told the truth, he’d be excluded from the scrolls’ decipherment. I didn’t want that to happen. Ideally, I wanted to prove his fear had been unfounded.
I wasn’t sure it had been. “Daziel has…information.”
“Information about the scrolls,” Yael confirmed.
I nodded. “We’re going to tell you. You’ll want to tell Professor Altschuler, and maybe others. But they might decide we shouldn’t have clearance to work on the scrolls. Daziel needs to be kept involved, so every time we tell someone, we need to make them swear they’ll keep Daziel involved.”
“You’re a fucking tease, Bat Yardena,” Stefan said, throwing his infernal juggling balls from hand to hand. He looked at Daziel. “She always like this?”
“Shut up, Stefan,” Gidon said, squeezing his head with both hands, as he often did when he was stressed.
“Why is it so important he’s involved?” Yael asked, her voice low.
“Because he has a stake in this too.” No one group of people should have knowledge on this scale over another. “Everyone has a stake. It’s not the kind of thing that should be a secret, so I won’t keep it one. It’s Daziel’s business—shedim business—just as much as it’s human.”
Gidon looked like he might rip his curls out of his head. “Is it about the magic being off?”
I spread my hands.
Yael pressed her thin lips together. “You’re not leaving us much choice.”
“Why are you the one who gets to decide what’s best?” Stefan asked.
I blew out a breath. “Look, I don’t love this either. I’m trying to do the best I can.” As the words slipped out, I realized how closely they echoed what Daziel had said to me.
“Will it be dangerous to give this information back to Daziel or the shedim?” Yael asked.
“I don’t think so. But Daziel raised the possibility the government might not want students knowing about this. They might try to cut us—and him—out.”
“Hm,” Yael said.
Daziel whipped out a contract and laid it before the others.
“You can sign or not,” he said. “I’m not trying to trick you.
I just want to stay informed, because I don’t trust the government—yours or mine, frankly—to move as quickly and as urgently as we should.
And this should help with deciphering the scrolls. ”
“What are we supposed to say to that?” Stefan said, grinning slightly. He scrutinized the contract and signed first. Yael took the pen next, then Gidon, and once all their signatures had been inked, they gazed at us expectantly.
I let out a relieved breath, then took another to steel myself.
Daziel took and squeezed my hand. Part of me wanted to yank my hand away, reject him with as much ice as I could muster, but though I was mad, the comfort of his touch spread through me like a glowing warmth.
“Daziel thinks the scroll is about the Ziz.”
My cohort blinked.
“Sorry,” Gidon said after a moment. “What?”
Yael had that narrow-eyed look of hers. “Explain.”
I looked at Daziel, in case he wanted to jump in, but he appeared to be having a staring contest with Paz. “He thinks the Ziz is hurt, or sick, which is why the winds are off and why the birds left. He thinks the scrolls explain how to heal the Ziz.”
They stared at me as though I’d sprouted Daziel’s wings. Then they stared at him.
“The Ziz is injured,” Yael said, as though processing the words, “and this is why the magic is off?”
“That’s insane,” Stefan said. “The Ziz can’t get injured. Is the Ziz even real?”
“Counterpoint,” I said. “What if it is and can?”
“The Ziz—all the primordial beasts—they’re the strongest things in the world,” Stefan said. “I thought they were spiritual, not corporeal. What’s going to hurt them? God?”
“Each other?” I suggested.
Gidon looked confounded. “Wouldn’t we have noticed if the primordial beasts had earthly bodies?”
“Humans aren’t really in the habit of noticing things,” Daziel said lightly. “Sometimes it’s like you’re trying not to.”
All the humans in the room decided to ignore that.
“If this is real,” Yael said, leaning forward, gripping her knees, “if the primordial beasts are capable of being injured and affecting magic—this is a big deal. It needs to be addressed. All resources—the Sanhedrin, the Lyceum—should be on figuring out how to cure the Ziz and fix the magic.”
“I told you they’d want to tell people,” Daziel whispered.
“The Sanhedrin might not believe us,” I cautioned. “The information comes from Daziel, and they think shedim are mischievous and untrustworthy. Also, in case they decide we can’t work on the scrolls anymore, I think we should make copies before telling anyone.”
I half expected the others to argue, but it turned out no one wanted to give up the chance to be the one to decipher the scrolls, especially if it meant we’d be saving a divine beast at the same time. “Fine by me,” Yael said.
“Yeah, same,” Stefan said.
“You think this could fix the winds?” Gidon was less hesitant and soft-spoken than I’d ever heard him. “Because my parents have a vineyard. If the Maestril doesn’t come…”
He didn’t need to finish. We all knew: If the Maestril didn’t come, the soil and vines didn’t dry, the grapes and olives didn’t grow, the wine and oil wasn’t made, and there was nothing to sell. No income for the year.
Daziel stored Paz on his shoulder and finally looked at my cohort. “I hope so.”
“Then let’s start,” Gidon said.
~ ~ ~
By seven bells, we’d replicated the scrolls. With copies, we relaxed a little. “It’s time,” Yael said.
The five of us traipsed down the single floor to Professor Altschuler’s office. He looked up as we entered. Behind him, on the ledge of the tall, narrow window where sparrows used to land, a line of eerily neon beetles strolled across the sill. “Yes? What is it?”
Yael looked at me, and I took my cue. “We have something to tell you.”
Professor Altschuler kept laughing.
I’d never heard him laugh before, but now I remembered that before he’d been a tenured professor with an office in a tower, he’d been an adventurer, leading expeditions all over the country and abroad. He must have had a thirst for adventure, and this was an adventure.
“My apologies,” he said when he saw our faces, for I wasn’t the only appalled student. “It’s simply rare one’s research has such an impact. And this is—perhaps more dramatic than I expected.”
We all stared at him.
He pulled himself together. “I’ll go to President Meissner immediately,” he said, naming the Lyceum’s president, a woman I’d only seen a handful of times, usually striding about in the distance, looking awfully important.
“They’ll have to give us funding. No grant writing, no waiting—they’ll have to approve it today.
” He practically frothed at the mouth in excitement.
“Doubtless the Sanhedrin will have to be told—Bat Yardena, have you told your aunt?”
“Uh—not yet.”
“Tell her—we might be able to get an audience sooner, though I imagine they’ll expedite this.” He glanced at Daziel, less withering than usual. “I see why you want to be involved. Your people are concerned?”
Daziel constructed one of his haughtiest expressions. “Naturally.”
~ ~ ~
The very next day, Daziel and I once more waited in the antechamber for the Great Council of the Sanhedrin, alongside Professor Altschuler and the president of the Lyceum.
(I’d not been invited, only Daziel, but I figured I’d go along until they kicked me out.) Aunt Tirtzah hadn’t accompanied us, though I’d told her everything; she’d be inside at her normal seat.
I can do you more good from there, where the other council members will remember I’m their peer, she’d said.
“Good to meet you.” President Meissner shook my hand as we waited.
She was medium in height, weight, and coloring, with cropped hair and a furrowed brow.
Her clothes were simply cut from expensive fabrics, and while her amulet looked modest, I’d bet the stones making up the sun and stars of Issachar were diamonds; she came from one of the tribe’s preeminent families.
“And, Lord Daziel, I regret it’s taken this long for us to make each other’s acquaintance. ”
He ignored her hand, as supercilious as I’d ever seen him. “You mean you did not care to until you realized I was a high shayd, not wild.”