Elegy for a Star

After a bit of fun, Scirocca and Almithara—a more sane Yysh than most—sat down to take another look at the ledger found in Madame Pava’s dwelling. They’d been poring over this bloodstained book trying to make out Pava’s writing. All of her words had been written in some sort of code, but it was in a scribbling that Scirocca couldn’t make out. Almithara was able to read it—barely—but she couldn’t decipher it. Together, they were slowly teasing out little bits of information at a time.

“Here, what about this part,” Scirocca said, “What’s this say? Rice?”

“Dache, actually,” Almithara replied, scratching a little at the scales that coated her body, all the way up to her chin and cheeks, avoiding her mouth and nose, “It means flower. Flowers, rather. Plural. But it doesn’t make sense here.”

“No, that helps,” Scirocca replied, “She’s been referring to her patients by different flower names. She must be referring to all of her patients here. Past, present, future.”

They had already discerned that there were at least two other giftless that died under Pava’s care. One of them may have been an accident, but the other one was directly due to Pava’s experimentation. She was testing the limits of her patient’s mind, folding their soul upon itself again, and again, and again. The patient’s mind broke, unable to tell who it was. Living five lives at the same time, with five sets of memories. Five minds. They went mad and killed themselves. Scirocca wondered if it was the doing of only one of them, or if it was all five coming to an agreement.

The more they learned, the more Scirocca was glad that Gwendolyn had put the woman down. Perhaps, however, that was staging Gwen onto the slippery slope that led to her mental collapse. She wondered what she could’ve done differently. “Nothing,” Scirocca told herself, “No one but herself could’ve saved her from that outcome.”

“This next bit here,” Almithara started, “Translated, it means ‘their deep moor blatant under makes poppy lightning.’ Nonsense to me, again.” She handed the translated version to Scirocca, who compared it to her notes once again.

“Something about… hrm… maybe a leyline? It says ‘magic place,” Scirocca replied after a thorough scanning.

Almithara nodded, “Verdona. Our literal translation for it is ‘magic place.’ Silly, huh?”

Scirocca nodded her head, comparing the rest and coming up with, “Subjugation rebellion?” She brought her notes over to Almithara, “Slave-make fight freedom.”

Almithara nodded her head, “Sounds right to me. A coup, maybe?”

Scirocca nodded her head, “A century ago, or so, a very young Mage-Empress put the city on lockdown. A lot of people were strung up. Executed. Political opponents, I believe.”

“There was a rebellion,” Scirocca added, looking back through the notes, “A princess from Krico.”

“Who won?” Almithara asked.

Scirocca shook her head, “Oh, you know how it goes. In rebellions there are only losers.”

Almithara nodded, looking through some of the next part. “This part just says ‘demon’ but in common imperial.”

“Any idea why?”

Almithara shook her head, “No. Maybe she was in a hurry? But then why didn’t she write in Yysh? Maybe that wasn’t the more familiar tongue, but it seems unlikely.”

Scirocco nodded, “What’s next?”

“Seven tossed party deep spider next,” Almithara said the random words with a sigh, “Looking forward to seeing what that mess means.”

Scirocca put it up against the incomplete cypher that they had, “Something about corruption and… let’s see… a cover of red. It reads almas. Does it mean a red sky?”

“Cloak.”

“A red cloak,” Scirocca nodded, “Corruption.” Scirocca sighed, “Maybe some red cloak corrupts the wearer.

“What’s that got to do with Tess?” Almithara asked.

“Nothing that I know of,” Scirocca sighed. What’s the next part?

“I know this one. We saw it earlier. Constellation. Barge power deaf.”

“Unseen constellation,” Scirocca nodded, “That’s interesting. Would have been nice to have Pava alive for this.”

“Yeah,” Almithara responded, “What about this one? It’s circled. ‘For lime garb haste target.’”

Scirocca leaned in toward the cypher, reading aloud, “That would be…” The phrase meant “head inhabitant,” but Scirocca didn’t want Almithara to know that. It was talking about Miri, a topic that Scirocca didn’t want to bring up to the Yysh. Scirocca said softly, “Says something about head.”

“What are the words you don’t have?”

“Gorlati morst sskt,” Scirocca’s pronunciation was probably terrible.

“Vivisection. She was going to open up Tess’ head.”

Scirocca nodded, thinking to herself, “Probably in a metaphorical way. She was trying to extract Miri.”

Almithara continued with the next line, “This one is… written strangely.” The Yysh leaned over to show to show Scirocca, “Look how this is written.”

Scirocca examined the ledger and saw one of the phrases written chaotically, as though each letter was scrawled with a heavy hand, scribbled in.

“Probably important then,” Scirocca replied, “Why else would she do that?”

“Here: ‘To More Halt A Mist Paw Land.’”

Scirocca compared it to the cypher. Her chest ached. She swallowed, certain that she was turning pale. “We don’t have that one. Something about a previous patient, but we don’t even have the words for the other part.”

“Shit,” Almithara grunted.

“I think that’s all we need to do for today,” Scirocca said, taking the ledger, stuffing the cypher into it and closing it up. She rose to her feet, helping Almithara up before she turned to the Yysh and said, “Thank you for your help.”

“Want to have a go before I head out?” The Yysh placed one hand on Scirocca’s shoulder, the other on her hip.

Scirocca replied bluntly, “No.” She added, “I have somewhere to be. Later.”

Almithara’s shoulders sank and she held her arms out helplessly, “Alright, then. Let me know when you want to do more.”

Once Almithara had left, Scirocca thought over the words that she had deciphered and hid from the Yysh, “Patient; Possessed since the arrival of the sky ink.”

The Black Sun was viewable from the surface centuries ago. Tess had Miri in her mind since then? Is that what Pava was saying? Tess was human; She couldn’t have even been alive back then.

She needed to talk to someone about this, but she didn’t know if Tess or Miri knew about it already and was keeping it a secret. She needed to talk to Mairaela. Perhaps Joyona too. Scirocca reminded herself that this wasn’t her business; It was only a casual interest of hers. She could just leave the information with Mairaela and ignore the rest. She knew that wouldn’t happen, however. Curiosity would get the better of her.

Especially now that there was a suggestion that Tess and Miri have been linked for far longer than either of them know. Who are they?