Saphira's Arc

Chapter 2 of 3

Saphira did not go to the door. Not yet. First she had to learn who had reached inside her sight. The false vision had been planted among Dextric's cords. To touch those cords, someone had visited his archive. Dextric would know the names. So she walked back through the marketplace, past the swinging charms and stone stalls, to the old man beneath his glowing vine. "Someone came to your cords," Saphira said. "Someone handled them and left the lie inside. I need to know who." Dextric's blind eyes stayed white and still. His staff burned at the tip. "I cannot see faces, child. Fingers came and went. I heard them. I did not know them." His hand tightened on the staff. "Whoever it was moved like they knew my counting." That was the wall. Dextric kept the records, yet he was blind. He could not name the visitor. Saphira pressed her fingers to her cracked eyes and felt the dead end. A soft hiss came from the stones behind her. She turned. Bare footprints smoked in the frost on the marble floor. Each one blackened and steamed. The girl who left them wore a frost-white gown. Her hands were dark as wet soil. Her hair drifted upward, as if the sky pulled at it. Saphira knew her. Zypsie. Goddess-born, always drifting between the sky and the ground below. She sought Saphira's visions like everyone else, but she never met the oracle's eyes. "You're chasing a thief," Zypsie said. She crouched by the cords, careful not to touch. "I was here. Days back. I came for a reading and waited by his stall." Saphira stepped closer, keeping her gaze low. "You saw who handled the cords." "I felt them," Zypsie said. "The floor. Everyone burns a print if they stand long enough near me." She pointed at a stall's stone base. There, pale in the dust, sat a single scorched footprint that was not hers. Small. Booted. Pressed deep, as if the visitor had knelt at the cords. "Not a servant's boot," Zypsie said. "Temple sole. The kind worn in the sky places." Dextric leaned forward. "A sky boot. I heard buckles that day. I thought it was a pilgrim." Saphira stared at the print. The blind keeper could not see the visitor. But the goddess-born had marked the ground where the visitor knelt. The trail did not lead to a face. It led higher. To the temples above, where sky-soled boots were worn. "Then I don't need a name," Saphira said. "I need a temple." Zypsie stood. Frost curled away from her heels. "I walk between here and there often. I can take you up." Saphira looked at the scorched print one last time. The door in her vision had a watcher behind it. Now she knew the watcher wore sky boots. The trap was not below. It waited above.