Chapter 14 Tamira
TAMIRA
"Time for cappuccinos," Syssi announced as the butler began clearing dishes from the table. "Let's move to the family room."
Eluheed offered Tamira a hand up, and as she got to her feet, they followed their hosts to the other room. As they sat on the couch, she took Eluheed's hand and gave it an encouraging squeeze.
The lunch had gone well, in her opinion, and Syssi seemed eager to help, but whether her vision would provide the answers Eluheed was looking for still remained to be seen.
Their hostess walked over to the coffee station, and soon the hiss and gurgle of the espresso machine was followed by the rich aroma of brewing coffee. Tamira closed her eyes and breathed it in.
"Daddy!"
The high-pitched voice preceded the small blond tornado that came toddling into the family room, clutching a piece of paper in her chubby fist. "I made a picture!" she announced, weaving her way toward the coffee table.
Kian's entire demeanor softened as he looked at his daughter. "What do you have for me, sweetheart?"
"Not for you, Daddy." Allegra cast her father a haughty look and then turned to Eluheed. "For you." She thrust her crumpled creation toward him.
Eluheed accepted the piece of paper with appropriate solemnity and a dip of his head. "Thank you."
Tamira leaned over to look at the drawing.
Five shapes dominated the center of the page, rendered in yellow crayon with surprising definition for a child not yet two.
They were stars, five-pointed and clustered together.
Blue squiggles surrounded them, covering the rest of the paper in energetic swirls.
"It's beautiful," Eluheed said. "Can you tell me what it is?"
Allegra gave him a look that suggested she was questioning his intelligence and pointed at the yellow shapes. "Stars." Her small finger tapped each one in turn. "One, two, fee, for, five."
"And the blue?" Eluheed asked.
"Sky." She said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
"Of course." Eluheed studied the drawing. "My people consider the number five lucky." He turned to Kian. "Much in the same way as your people consider the number seven."
"Interesting." Syssi arrived with two cappuccino cups and placed them in front of Tamira and Eluheed. "For us, the number five is also significant. The five elements, the five senses, and so on."
"It makes sense," Kian said. "After all, we have five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot."
"Five is a sacred number where I come from," Eluheed said. "It represents balance and harmony." He held up the drawing. "So, this is a very special gift. Thank you."
Allegra beamed and clapped her hands together before running off to make another drawing.
Syssi returned with two more cappuccinos for her and Kian and sat down. "Allegra's development is fascinating. She keeps surprising me."
"Naturally." Kian lifted his cappuccino cup to his lips. "Our daughter is exceptional."
"She's adorable," Tamira said. "And I agree that those stars were remarkably well-formed for a child her age."
"She's obsessed with stars lately." Syssi took a sip from her cappuccino. "She draws them on everything. Yesterday I found a red star on the bathroom mirror, courtesy of my lipstick."
"She had to climb onto the counter to reach it," Kian added with more pride than exasperation. "We're still not sure how she managed that and when."
"Children," Tamira said, admiring the foam art Syssi had created. It was a delicate leaf pattern that she felt bad about disturbing while drinking.
"Allegra's drawing reminds me of Cyra's." Syssi leaned forward. "Yasmin's little girl drew a picture for Annani a while ago. She's only four, but she's showing signs of having the gift of prophecy."
"What did she draw?" Eluheed asked.
"She drew five stick figures lying on sand and called them pretty doll men. Annani was convinced that Cyra drew Khiann. She thought the other four might be immortals who were with him in the caravan. The reason I remembered this is that the number five seems to keep popping up."
Something stirred in Tamira's mind. A thread, faint but persistent, tugging at her attention. Something about the number five. Allegra's stars. Cyra's drawing. And something else, something that tickled her memory but couldn't coalesce into anything tangible.
"It's most likely a coincidence," Kian said.
The thread in Tamira's mind pulled tighter.
Five figures beneath the sand.
She set down her cappuccino as a memory surfaced, sharp and sudden.
"The chests," she said.
Everyone turned to look at her.
"What chests?" Kian asked.
Tamira's pulse quickened. "During the flooding on the island, when the harem was being evacuated, Navuh sent guards to help.
But they didn't help evacuate people. They came out carrying large chests instead.
We were all livid that they prioritized saving things over saving people.
We thought that the chests contained treasures that Navuh had hidden beneath the harem.
" She turned to look at Eluheed. "Remember I told you about that? "
He nodded.
"There were five chests." She turned to Syssi. "Five chests that were big enough for each to carry a person inside."
"Five men beneath the sand," Syssi murmured.
"We all assumed they contained treasure," Tamira continued. "Gold, jewels, something valuable enough for Navuh to risk lives protecting. But what if the treasures were people in stasis?"
The room had gone very quiet. Tamira could hear the distant hum of the air conditioning and the faint sounds of Allegra's voice from somewhere deeper in the house.
"It's most likely a coincidence," Kian said again. "No offense, but I don't like to assign too much importance to lucky numbers, whether it's five, seven, or three."
"There's more." Tamira met Kian's gaze. "After the flooding, Navuh built a strange glass enclosure in the basement of his mansion and filled it with sand. It was completely sealed off, and the construction was done in secret. We all wondered about it."
"It had its own climate control," Eluheed said. "The glass was really thick. Looked like the bulletproof kind. We assumed it was to protect valuable artifacts."
Syssi set down her cappuccino. "A god and four immortals in stasis would need specific conditions to keep them alive after so long."
Tamira felt a chill run down her spine despite the warmth of the room.
For five thousand years, Navuh had had Khiann and his companions and had been hiding them first in Baalbek and then on the island.
Or maybe he'd known where they had been buried, had dug them out only recently, and brought them to the island.
While Annani grieved, Navuh kept his terrible secret.
Syssi reached for Kian's hand. "This could be it. This could be where Khiann is actually buried. Navuh had him the entire time."
Kian's expression was cautious. "We can't be certain of that. Not without more evidence."
"But it makes sense." Syssi lifted her hands. "The Fates are trying to tell us something. The number five keeps appearing. The chests, Cyra's drawing, Allegra's stars."
"Even if we're guessing the location correctly," Kian said, "there's still the problem of accessing Navuh's mansion and extracting the chests.
Losham controls the island now, and I'm sure he's investigating every corner of that place, including that enclosed space in the basement.
That's what I would do if I were in his place.
In fact, I'd be surprised if he hasn't gotten to what was in there already, and if the treasure was, in fact, Khiann and his immortal companions, I fear what he might have done with them, especially since he would have no clue who they are. "
"He would know that they were important to Navuh." Tamira put her cappuccino cup on the coffee table. "Losham is smart, and he would not dispose of a strategic asset even if he doesn't know what it represents."
Syssi let out a breath. "I hope I'm not convincing myself that Khiann is in that glass enclosure because I love the idea of ruining Navuh's plans so much.
He's lying in that hospital bed, paralyzed but still scheming, thinking that he's manipulating everyone.
I can't wait to see his face when he realizes that his insurance policy is not working because he wasn't careful enough in hiding his bargaining chip. "
"That's why I doubt Khiann is there," Kian said.
"Navuh is too careful to be that careless.
He must realize that all of you saw the chests getting taken out of the harem and then the new enclosure being built in his basement.
It almost looks like he was showing you all of that on purpose to mislead you, and through you, to mislead us. "
That was a little far-fetched since Navuh couldn't have foreseen being taken captive by the clan, but Tamira didn't feel comfortable pointing it out to Kian and by doing so contradicting him. She needed him to be positively predisposed to her and to Eluheed so he would help them in their searches.
"He couldn't have known that he would get captured," Syssi said.
"Or that anyone would suspect what he had in those chests.
It was just a series of unfortunate events for him.
First, the flood that forced him to remove the chests from the harem, and then having to build that enclosure while his harem ladies were staying with him in the mansion. "
"He could have compelled them not to talk about what they saw," Kian pointed out. "And yet he chose to let them remember that. To me, it smells like one big misdirection." He shifted his gaze to Eluheed. "The visions you provided for Navuh, did any of them hint at his capture?"
Eluheed shook his head. "I didn't see that coming. The future is not predetermined. At any point in time, there are many possible futures, and small changes can have big impacts."
"I sometimes think about that." Syssi lifted her nearly empty cappuccino cup and took a sip.
"What if by glimpsing one possible future, people like Eluheed and me actually help bring that future into being?
Like in quantum theory, until something is observed, it exists as a range of possibilities.
But once it's observed, everything collapses into a single outcome. "
Eluheed smiled. "That would make us very dangerous people. I think that we are shown what the universe has already decided is going to happen."
Tamira liked this interpretation much better.
It was unsettling to think that seers could affect the future just by glimpsing the possibility.
Still, the information they'd deduced hadn't been obtained by a vision, and the question was whether they should act upon it.
In fact, she didn't see a way around it other than giving Navuh his freedom in exchange for Khiann's location.
She turned to Kian. "If I may speak plainly, I don't think you have a choice but to assume that Khiann is in that enclosure because the alternative is to agree to Navuh's terms."
He nodded. "I'm afraid you are correct, but that still leaves the problem of actually doing that. How can we get to Navuh's mansion, extract the chests or the bodies in stasis, and leave the island with them without getting caught?"
"You can bargain with Navuh for that information," Eluheed suggested. "Tell him that you know where to find Khiann, so freedom is no longer on the table, but that you are willing to negotiate with him for information that will help you retrieve him."
"I should do that as soon as possible," Kian agreed.
"First, to watch Navuh's reaction, which would tell me if we are guessing correctly that Khiann is indeed in Navuh's basement.
If he is, we need the extraction to happen before Losham discovers the treasure he's sitting on and moves the bodies somewhere else. "