“Cassius?” He’d been staring blankly off into space for almost a minute, and Yin had almost missed it because he’d been sitting in her blind spot.
“Hm?”
“What are you thinking about?” Yin asked.
“Uncle,” he replied, and blinked into an expression of shock and regret.
She squeezed his shoulder. “Help me gather wood, will you?” she said. “Kaveh’s building a nest for the pyre.”
“He really is a bird.” Breathing out a laugh, he set aside the herbs he’d been sorting uselessly, and got up to join her.
Further down the mountain, pine trees grew in thick abundance. “We’ll want cut branches as well as dry wood,” she said. “Kaveh says he wants to weave them, but… well, he also needs it to burn.”
Cassius hummed in agreement and set about gathering fallen branches and tying them into bundles. Yin had already fetched the ax from home, and tested the suppleness of each branch before cutting them.
She had a few full bundles of her own by the time she finally spoke.
“So what’s he doing stomping around in your thoughts where he isn’t wanted?” she asked.
Cassius shrugged.
“I suppose he never needed a reason to be a bastard.”
“Before my powers came in,” said Cassius. “When I was a child, and my father died—the first thing Mother did was find Maera. That was his favorite dog, or maybe Father was her favorite human. I remember she said Maera had to see the body, or she wouldn’t understand that he was gone.”
Yin’s heart sank. “Cassius…”
“I know he’s dead,” Cassius went on. “But he died before I could find it in me to fight him—”
“Escaping was defying him—”
“I didn’t see him die,” Cassius said flatly, as he shouldered his bundle of firewood. “And I didn’t get to say the things I wanted him to hear. So it still feels unfinished. I still feel like a dog that doesn’t know its master is dead.”
He was still kneeling, so Yin took the opportunity to kiss the top of his head before he could straighten up. Her heart went out to him; Kaveh had the braid hanging by the front window, and Yin herself would never forget the feeling of her father’s blood spilling thick and hot from his heart onto her hands.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’d have gone back to retrieve his head, but there wasn’t time.”
Cassius blinked, shifting suddenly as if startled. Then he laughed, a little helplessly, and straightened up with his burden. “His skull would’ve been lovely on the mantle.”
“An excellent conversation piece,” Yin agreed. “I’d have mounted it on the garden fence and called it a day.”
They were still laughing as they returned to the clifftop, debating the best ways to use human bones in decorating. Cassius was making an excellent case for converting a femur into a wall sconce as they came within earshot of Kaveh.
“What in Heaven and on earth are you two talking about?” he fussed.
“Femurs as wall sconces, do keep up,” Cassius said lightly. There was still a tightness around his eyes. Kaveh shot Yin one of his secret sidelong glances; he’d seen it too. He always saw far more than either she or Cassius liked.
Since the beginning, really.
The attendants to the Lord of the Cleansing Flame had all gone to bed. Only his high priestess, beautiful and ageless with her black-and-silver braid, still knelt and prayed before the altar and phoenix.
It was she that the Rain Emperor had sent his daughter to slay.
She had already taken care of the sentries outside. No fight, and no mess. Lightning could do many things, the least of which was stopping a heart. It should be easy to do the same to her target, but first she would have to get close.
From one shadow to the next she slipped, dagger in hand, hiding her footsteps beneath the woman’s chanting voice. Hunting a phoenix’s servant was not so different from hunting her usual quarry; demons had their share of supplicants, too.
At last she stole behind the altar and crouched there, warmed by the divine bird perched inches away. The high priestess stood beside it. Just a little closer, and it would be over.
She reached out to carry out the deed, and barely bit back a yelp when the phoenix smacked her hand with a wingtip.
“My lord?” she barely heard over the pounding in her ears.
“Just stretching my wings.”
“Are you uncomfortable?”
“I have only been holding this pose since dawn,” the phoenix said blandly.
“You should not feel discomfort. Your time may be approaching.”
“It is not,” the phoenix said sharply.
“Hm. Even so, perhaps your power yet wanes. If we hasten you back to your height, with the appropriate sacrifices, that could deliver us from the Rain Emperor’s threat.”
“You will do no such thing,” the phoenix hissed.
The priestess sighed again. “I will meditate on this in my chamber.”
Rustling, then fading footsteps. Behind the altar, she seethed as her prey slipped out of reach.
“I apologize,” said the phoenix, once they were alone. “But you cannot kill her.”
She spat on the temple’s polished floor. “If you didn’t want me to kill her, then why didn’t you warn her?”
“I did not say whether I wanted it,” the phoenix replied. “Only that you cannot.”
“I’ve been slaying demons since I was a child,” she shot back. “You think I can’t kill one priestess?”
“One, yes,” he said. “An entire temple full, wielding all the flames they can drag out of me? If you’d tried, you would have failed. And I’m not in the mood to be forced to the pyre with you tied up and screaming on it.”
“You’re a god to them, aren’t you?” she retorted. “Command them not to.”
“And you are the child of one. But I don’t see you telling your emperor where to shove his orders.”
She should have been furious at the dig, but she was mostly just shocked to hear a divine bird use that kind of language.
“Fuck!” Kaveh barked out when a branch snapped in his hands.
Cutting fresh green branches had been good thinking on Yin’s part; the wood was thin and wet enough to bend and weave. But it had been centuries since he’d done this himself, and his hands were clumsy.
The splintered wood had broken skin. Kaveh fretted over the scratch for nearly a minute. He even bled more when he was this close to his time.
Eventually his mild distress brought Cassius fluttering over, inspecting his hand and wrapping it to keep the little wound from getting dirty. “Sorry, we should have checked the branches before we—”
“I’m alright, for heavens’ sake,” Kaveh sighed. “It’s just… been a while.”
“Let me help,” Cassius urged. “I’ve never done it at all, but I can be an extra pair of hands.”
Between the two of them, the nest began to take its proper shape. The stone circle helped shore up the edges into a proper round shape, and the bowl in the middle was just the right size for Kaveh to sit when the time came.
Eventually Kaveh sat back on his heels, hands sore and raw from handling rough pine wood and needles. A stone circle, a nest of wood—this was a pyre. If he stopped here, he could consider it done.
“How are things going?” Yin called to them from the path. Kaveh turned to find her trudging uphill toward them, weighed down by pillows from the house.
“It’s a good start, but we’re not nearly done yet,” Cassius called back, inspecting their handiwork with a critical eye. “Why do you a—”
Yin dumped the pillows on top of Cassius. “Oh, that nest looks lovely, I didn’t know you could weave like that.”
“I’m out of practice.” Kaveh picked through the pillows that spilled off of Cassius, fretting all the while. “Are you sure about these? I don’t want to burn our good pillows.”
“I picked these out during Cassius’s end-of-winter cleaning frenzy,” Yin assured him. “He was going to replace them anyway, and you deserve a bit of comfort.”
Mollified, Kaveh fussed the pillows into his nest. “It’ll be nice to have somewhere soft to sit,” he said, half to himself.
“Ah!” Cassius snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot. I have to run back to the house for something. Are you alright up here, Kaveh?”
“Hm? Oh, yes, the hard part is behind us,” Kaveh reached for his basket, heretofore left to the wayside. “Just the fussy parts now. I don’t mind doing them myself.”
“Are you sure?” Yin asked, looking uncomfortably at Cassius. “There was something I wanted to do, and it might take some time…”
“Go, do it.” Kaveh made shooing motions with his hands. “Both of you, give me a rest from all your fussing.”
“I’ll be right back,” Cassius murmured, not to Kaveh but to Yin, and she relaxed.
Kaveh picked up one of the pillows as they left, considering it carefully. It was well-worn—well-loved, in fact. At one point, Cassius had declared it the softest and set himself to claiming it each night before either of the others could.
He’d have to find a nice one to replace it, once it burned.
The cushions beneath the Oracle were old and faded—this was an old temple of the Thunder Dragon, and hadn’t been tended to in years—while his own cushion was finely embroidered with tiny jewels sewn around the edges, but if the Oracle noticed the difference, he didn’t seem to mind.
“Well, that will keep them out for a while,” the Oracle remarked. “Long enough for a nap, if you’ll excuse me.”
He wasn’t expecting an answer, but the Lord of the Cleansing Flame gave him one anyway. “You’re excused.”
The sight of the Oracle flailing off the cushions was certainly funny, though he wasn’t supposed to show amusement. Granted, it was difficult to see on the face of a bird, but Agape had known him long enough to spot it.
“Please forgive me,” the Oracle spluttered, righting himself. “I didn’t realize… er, that is…”
“That I could speak?”
“Your priestesses are very mysterious about you,” the Oracle replied after a moment.
“Here is what is mysterious,” said the phoenix. “The priestesses called upon you for aid against our former ally, the Rain Emperor. You brought us here, and told them that you needed to meditate and pray before me to summon a prophecy. And now you say you will not do either. So then, what is this?”
“I didn’t bring you here,” the Oracle informed him. “It was Uncle’s idea, or your priestess’s, I’m not sure which. She wanted to summon me to your temple to give a prophecy, but Uncle wanted to summon her to my temple to receive a prophecy, so instead of either getting what they wanted, they met in someone else’s temple. As for prophecies, I’ve already done all the prophesying I need, and I wanted a nap and a moment of peace, so I said the bit about meditating because it usually works.”
“Does it?” the phoenix asked thoughtfully.
“Try it yourself,” said the Oracle. “Do you really not have a name? Not even a nickname?”
“I had,” the phoenix began without thinking. He stopped. No, better to tell him. He needed to know. “Almost two hundred years ago, I had a temple attendant who called me ‘Red’ when no one else could hear. He spoke to me as you do—impudent, carefree, and charming. He was very dear to me. Agape sacrificed him upon my next pyre.”
The Oracle’s jaw twitched, his face carefully neutral. He opened his mouth, then closed it, before lying back on the cushions again. “You’re welcome to nap with me. Or is that another base, human thing? Do you eat, or is moonlight and stardust sufficient?”
The phoenix hissed sharply. “If Agape sees you behaving like this—”
“Would she throw me on your next pyre?” The steely edge in the Oracle’s voice startled him into silence. “I hope she tries. She and Uncle can strangle each other over it.”
The phoenix was quiet for a moment.
“I am permitted to eat certain spices,” he said. “And drink from the morning dew.”
The Oracle hummed. “This is the first time I’ve left my temple since I ran to yours, almost ten years ago. Uncle doesn’t let me go outside anymore, even with a guard.”
“Could you not foresee a way to escape him entirely?”
“Ha. Not how it works, I’m afraid.”
“How, then?”
“Fate is a river flowing into the sea,” the Oracle replied. “The past is a single, unchanging path. The future is always changing, calm one moment and stormy the next, and even if you know the winds and currents it can still drown you without warning.”
“Rivers change all the time,” the phoenix pointed out, and dodged the pillow that the Oracle tossed at him. “What are prophecies, in this metaphor?”
“Bits of driftwood I cling to in the storm.”
“And the Rain Emperor?” The phoenix ruffled his feathers and began to preen. “His soldiers attack our priestesses, and Agape wants to know how she’s fated to triumph. What does your driftwood say about that?”
The Oracle smiled serenely, and his eyes clouded over. “His power and throne are as immaterial as the clouds he commands,” he intoned. “For a chain is easily broken by its maker.”
The phoenix’s hackles rose. “What does that mean? What chain?”
“You don’t know?” The Oracle raised his eyebrows. “Why do you think we could barge into this empty temple without angering its god? The same chain that binds you, has trapped her for years.”
