Page 132 of The Cerulean Sister
"They are bigger than I thought," Calliape says as I open my eyes and check that they are still in my arms. She brought us right outside the safe house door in the large cargo hangar where August’s ship rests in the distance, as if she had both the safe house and his ship in mind and we ended up right between them.
99 stands under the ship, pointing at a panel and instructing Thad, who nods and cranes his neck to view it.
"Thank you for speaking with the scholar, for trusting that it was ok," I say, still watching 99, who has not noticed our arrival from across the giant space.
"His sister-in-law left because her child was born spontaneously divine. She was keeping it from the temple and the father found out. They are both really nice, and she has a son now too." Calliape smiles.
"There are so many people in your village from Cosima, aren't there? I noticed them when we arrived."
"Mary helped a lot of them leave, my mother and Selene included." Calliape places her hand on the knob and pauses, like she can tell I am not going to follow her.
Sparks fly across the hangar where another man works on part of a ship, fusing together a giant metal piece. The sound blots out anything 99 could be saying, the spray of fiery amber sparks reflecting off his visor and the shiny details of his armor. It's a little mesmerizing to see him when he does not know he is being watched.
"Are you coming in?" Calliape's voice is a little amused by the obvious distraction.
My mind pulls me to the memory of what he said in my chambers last night, the almost promise he made for when we tethered again.
As if called from across the worlds, 99's visor locks in on me as he begins his powerful stride across the hangar. My stomach does a nervous flip in a way that it has not since we were strangers to each other. And when he walks through the sparks created by the man smoldering metal together, the embers bouncing off his armor without a single flinch, my stomach flutters for an entirely different reason.
Chapter
Thirty-Five
The ledgers are spread out across the dining table. Selene opens the oldest volume, tracing down the column of the last year before her departure. She quickly finds multiple women on that page who have been marked as deceased during childbirth, whose children were found divine and even some with the outer cities listed, where they made pilgrimages from.
With that as a reference, Calliape and I both take the two remaining and begin searching through, hoping the cruel patterns of the Temple of Divine Mothers come forth.
I hunch over the ledger most recently recorded in, starting with the entry of the divine child whose ritual I witnessed, intending to go backwards from there.
99 watches me from where he sits with August by the safe house entrance. Now that we have property of the Estate unlawfully in our possession, he has naturally made a blockade at the door. No one knows of this safe house, but I know it makes him feel better to stand guard.
The two of them speak in hushed voices while they wait for us to finish, not wanting to distract from the task. I glance up a few times to see his helmet facing me as I work, and the same twist in my stomach starts all over again.
"I have ten women on this page alone who have made the pilgrimage from an outer city or the birthlands and who have died in childbirth, all the daughters divine," Calliape says, looking up from the page and smoothing the tablecloth around her.
I can see the moment her face changes from the excitement of finding a pattern in her own ledger to the heavy reality of what it means.
"My rate is about the same, but I recognize something else too, this family name." I run my finger down the prior year’s record in my volume. "This woman comes from a wealthy line in Cosima. I have seen documents with their donations to the temple. She had a daughter and was sent home after no divinity was found, same case for most of the women who had sons."
"They are only targeting women who are not wealthy?" Calliape asks.
"Likely, and ones who they determine have less to go back to. No loved ones to come looking for them." Selene shakes her head. "They are sprinkled, almost hidden within all the high priestesses who give birth in the temple. At a glance, this is just a record. But there is an undeniable pattern in all of these."
We continue on into the evening, only the sound of our scratchy pens heard as we make notes and the flip of pages. Eventually, Selene stands to stretch her neck and asks August to take over for her while she starts a brothy soup.
He sits perfectly straight over the book, writing things down next to Selene’s notes, a little messier and slower than Calliape and I are. Watching him concentrate and try so hard to jot the names down in the same orderly columns as Calliape is a very sweet distraction.
However, it's a little odd that Selene asked him to take over for her at all. Even Calliape seemed to think so by the way her brow furrowed at the request. Selene made sure the open bookwas occupied by him before leaving into the kitchen, not wanting anyone else to take up her position. She also all but launched to that edition the moment I placed them all on the table.
I thought she was just a little overzealous that we managed to retrieve them from the library. Her excuse of wanting to see the records from her time made sense, but now I can't stop thinking about it.
I stare at the top of the binding across from me as August concentrates on its contents.
And then Selene's motive hits me hard, cramping the muscles in my chest. If these records go back three decades, then the entry for my mother’s would be there in the one she made sure to take.
"August." I whisper, but he doesn't answer, so I tap the top of his notes. "Can I see that one?"
"Hold on, I am in the middle?—"
