Chapter Twenty-One #2
She wasn’t flustered as she dropped her hand; I supposed you couldn’t afford to be if you presided over an institution like the Lyceum. “Not much point arguing with wild shedim. They aren’t making treaties and generally refuse to follow them, too, without a member of your court around.”
A civil servant entered, heels striking sharp against the marble floor, their gray uniform crisp. They spoke to the one minding us, who said, “You may go in.”
I followed Professor Altschuler and President Meissner.
My hand itched to take Daziel’s, but I resisted.
I wasn’t ready to be the one who reached out.
Still, we stood so close our shoulders almost brushed as we once more faced the semicircle of representatives.
I sought out Aunt Tirtzah, who gave me a reassuring nod, then the Naphtali councilors. One of them smiled.
“So.” The Chief Judge tapped his desk, upon which lay what I could only assume was a letter from the Lyceum informing them of the news. “The Ziz?”
The president started to speak, but the Chief Judge spoke over her. “I’m sorry, Meira, we need to hear from the demon. This is too much.”
“He’s a shayd,” I said. “Not a demon.”
The chief sighed. Everyone was always sighing at me.
Daziel spoke in a light drawl. “I think Lola Hawthorne has a far superior range than Fiona Maple, but I confess, I cannot take her seriously in villain roles. She is too young to have the gravitas to carry the part.”
Now I sighed.
The chief blinked, reflecting the confusion felt, I expected, by the whole room. “What?”
“You said you wished to hear from me.” Daziel examined his talons. “I thought you’d appreciate my opinions on the latest operettas.”
“We want them to work with us, remember?” I murmured.
He sighed. “Very well, yonati. If you insist.”
“We are supposed to believe this?” the chief said to Daziel. “The Ziz exists? And needs to be healed?”
Daziel nodded.
“This is ridiculous,” a man I didn’t recognize said. “Why are we entertaining this?”
“Because if you don’t, the winds will keep misbehaving,” I said.
Weren’t any of them paying attention? “Don’t you understand?
If the Ziz dies, natural magic will be changed forever.
It’s not only the air being affected—which is bad enough; what if the Maestril never comes?
—it’s also the land and sea. What if the maelstroms disappear?
We’re not going to have a livable world if we don’t save the Ziz.
” I paused, looking at the professor and the president.
This was going all wrong. “I’m sorry. You should tell them. ”
“She’s right.” The Lyceum president spoke in a calmer voice than my own.
“If the scrolls contain a spell for fixing the winds, this should be the highest priority of the Lyceum, the Sanhedrin, and the country. Especially if, as Miss Bat Yardena suggests, the other Great Beasts are unbalanced, and all of natural magic along with them. As such, the university is requesting extra funds for the decipherment project.”
“We have no evidence other than the demon’s—excuse me, young lady, shayd’s—word, though, is that not correct?” the chief asked. “Are there any other shedim we can ask? Someone who can affirm this boy?”
Everyone looked uncomfortable. “We haven’t had any shedim visitors in eight months,” a Danite councilor I remembered from last time said. “Our usual contacts have not responded to our initial queries about Lord Daziel.”
“Are you serious?” I remembered this speaker, too—Melanie, the one who didn’t like Aunt Tirtzah. “They’re ignoring us?”
Once more, the chamber erupted. I was beginning to think all the Sanhedrin did was argue. No wonder it took so long to get any policy enacted, if seventy-two people wanted to have their voices heard and the majority had to agree to get anything done.
“What if he wants the scrolls deciphered for other purposes?” someone said. “What if the scrolls really reveal a demonic spell?”
A Naphtali councilor came to my aid. “You can’t assume everyone is always lying.”
“Nor can we assume everyone always tells the truth!”
“Let us consider,” President Meissner projected in her loud, calm voice. I wondered why she was at the Lyceum rather than a councilor. Well, maybe she was more powerful in her own way. “If it is the truth, it cannot be ignored.”
“You ask for a very large sum for an ‘if,’ ” Melanie said.
“If the Lyceum is to devote its time and effort to solving the problem of the winds, and of magic, it’s reasonable for us to expect the government’s support,” the president said coolly. “This concerns all of us.”
“Yes, yes.” The Chief Judge sounded exceedingly grumpy. “Very well. We’ll vote on your funds in the next budget session.”
“Sir, this is giving far too much credence to the idea that this spell genuinely is tied to oddities with natural magic,” an older man said.
“We should be giving credence to any leads on natural magic’s imbalance,” Aunt Tirtzah said sharply. “It’s worth the cost of investigating.”
“We’ll have that conversation when we discuss whether to fund this,” the Chief Judge said.
“One other thing,” Daziel said lightly. I winced, though I’d known it was coming. “We need help finding the Ziz, so when the spell is ready, we know where to cast it.”
“What?” the Chief Judge said.
“How are we supposed to do that?” another said.
“I know where the Ziz lives,” the one who’d suggested the scrolls were a demonic spell said sourly. “Wherever the demon needs his materials delivered. Maybe he wants to raise a castle! Or bring down a mountain! We’re not taking this seriously, are we?”
“He’s a high-ranking shayd,” Aunt Tirtzah snapped. “Yes, we’re taking this seriously.”
“He’s your niece’s betrothed,” Melanie said. “Honestly, Tirtzah, you should recuse yourself.”
“How the hell are we supposed to find a mythological creature?” someone else asked.
“Enough,” the Chief Judge said wearily. “One thing at a time. Meira, we’ll have an answer on your funding by the end of the week. After the scroll’s translated, we’ll discuss finding the primordial beast.”
“We can’t wait until then,” Daziel said. “We need to be ready to go with the spell immediately—”
The Chief Judge ignored him, banging his gavel down. “Dismissed. There is only so much world ending I can handle without getting an ulcer.”
~ ~ ~
Aunt Tirtzah stayed for further Sanhedrin business, so Daziel and I walked to her house alone, me on the sidewalks like a normal person, him zigzagging from wall to lamppost. “We don’t know how long it will take to translate the spell,” he said, frustrated.
“We can’t wait to start looking for the Ziz.
We have to be ready to cast it as soon as you figure out the words. ”
“I know.”
He groaned. “This is impossible.”
“You’ve waited five months already,” I said, alarmed. “Surely a little longer won’t matter.”
“Five months ago, the maelstroms weren’t malfunctioning nor was the river flooding, and there weren’t reports of increased earth tremors in other lands.”
His fraying calm worried me. Daziel had been so clear-eyed through all this. I didn’t like him losing his confidence—it turned out I’d been depending on it.
If I wanted to keep the both of us from spiraling into a panic, I needed to shore up our collective morale.
I tried to mimic my aunt and the Lyceum president, the way they spoke with poise and assurance. “Nothing is impossible. We won’t give up. We keep plugging away, and we keep asking for help, and we keep trying.”
He jumped down, landing in a light crouch before me, then straightened. It was night now, the brass lanterns glowing, moths with their feathery wings thick about them. He looked miserable. “Why are you being so kind? When I hurt you so much?”
I shrugged. “What else am I supposed to do? Scream? Cry? We’d still have this to deal with.”
He looked at me with large, mournful eyes. “You could forgive me.”
I laughed, scornful to cover up how deeply I was hurt. “Forgive you? I thought you—you— It was all a lie.”
“It wasn’t all a lie. Naomi.” He took my hands in his warm ones. “Nothing about how I feel for you is a lie.”
I stared down at his fingers, so much larger than mine, thick and blunt and disturbingly attractive.
I couldn’t talk about this right now. I needed to avoid thinking about us, to focus on politics and quests and research.
If I thought about us, if I thought about how he’d broken my heart, it would ruin me.
Before I could speak, the earth shook beneath my feet as though I stood on a ship.
I let out a cry, and in a heartbeat Daziel had grabbed me and levitated a few feet off the ground.
We stared at the pavement, and at the buildings and trees.
Everything shook for ten seconds, twenty.
I clutched my arms around him, feeling the beat of his heart, the breadth of his shoulders.
Daziel drifted back down when it appeared to have ended. “What the hell was that?” I asked, stumbling back from him. My body craved a repeat of the brief and sudden embrace, and I thought it best to put some distance between us.
“It felt like a quake,” he said. “Like in Ilthalit.”
“But we don’t have quakes,” I said, my voice high-pitched.
“They’re all intertwined,” he reminded me softly. “The Ziz, the Behemoth, the Leviathan. If one weakens, they all do.”
The wind picked up, and the sky rapidly clouded over. I shivered, gazing up. There was no moon to be seen, and very few stars. “Then we better figure out how to find and save the Ziz.”