The Phoenix Thief

SIXTEEN

KILTER AND CATRIO forgot about everything but the lives that had played out twenty-four years earlier in the same places theirs now did. So many things they'd seen and used in the house pointed to its previous inhabitants. The wheeled chairs were now explained, as were the boxes of metal parts that were once in the workroom Catrío had turned into her infirmary. The location and richness of the house itself made sense now, as well, as did its isolation. So much fit together ­– except one thing.

"The Shev who burnt up... he can't have anything to do with my Shev, do you think?" Catrío picked up one of photographs she and Kilter were scattering all over the kitchen table, and pointed to one that had two young people standing with the woman, Eliva, who looked like a smiling version of Nátala.

The girl beside Eliva was undoubtedly Nátala herself, with her oval face and pale hair. The young man on Eliva's other side had more of Alishek visible in him, with his strong chin and air of quiet command that was noticeable even in the faded photograph.

"Any pictures we've found that have his name on them show he's a boy, or a young man. There's no armor anywhere. Unless... I don't know, perhaps – perhaps Shev is inside the armor? Ugh." Catrío shuddered. "Imagine living in armor that long."

Kilter shook his head as he pulled the box of photographs toward him and took out another handful. "No. Shev is empty. He's just armor."

"Empty?" Catrío's eyes were wide behind the messy locks of hair falling in front of them.

"Yes. Maybe he found the name Shev in the house here, and named himself that." Kilter shrugged. "I found the word Kilter."

Catrío shrugged, and for a while the two of them were quiet as they shuffled through the photographs.

There were several more images of Aletsavar with Alishek – bending over huge tables set in the very room Kilter himself had worked on the Girl in the Chancellor's house; standing in the doorway of a Warehouse with a huge machine behind them that must have been one of the building ones the Chancellor's grandfather used to build the city. Most of the photographs had Vilsha, Pierstov, and Dmal in them as well, and Kilter felt like he was struck in the stomach every time he looked at them. The photograph of the woman with the white-clad baby (actually Vilsha and the unrecognizably-chubby Kilter) even had Dmal among the people standing around the young mother and child. It was so strange. Kilter had looked down on all the people in the streets of Istravol and longed to be among them, but this, the ache filling him as he looked on his parent's faces, was so much stronger. They weren't just people. They were his people.

He looked up at Catrío, who, still in her white nightgown, looked younger than she was. "Do you remember your parents? What happened to you, to them, before Shev found you in the forest?"

Catrío set down the photographs she was looking at, and frowned at the tabletop. "I remember," she said softly. "I remember very well. And... and it has to do with the Phoenix, and your city, Istravol."

"How?"

"It took me a while to find, but I discovered some more entries Aletsavar wrote in the notebook – seems he didn't write long accounts like the ones I read aloud unless something big happened that he needed to process. The accounts are scattered throughout his notes and diagrams for all kinds of machines, but I pieced them together. A lot more happened after the Phoenix disappeared, but... but I didn't want to tell you right away."

Kilter crossed his arms over his chest. "Why? What did Aletsavar write about?"

"Mostly about Alishek not talking to him or Vilsha or Dmal any more, because they got in the way of him getting the Phoenix, but..." Catrío's voice grew quieter. "But also something he calls 'the Massacre'."