Sunblind Serpent: The Zodiac Without A House

Marek had expected high-Cycle training to involve something considerably more impressive. He still did not know how strong Venielle actually was, but he could feel enough to know she was dangerous. Even Rhovan seemed more careful whenever she was around.

Instead of anything grand, however, Mara spent the next several minutes doing something that looked almost embarrassingly ordinary. She opened the same door, stepped into the room beyond it, came back through, then repeated the process from the opposite side. Each time, Venielle made her stop and identify which room she had started from, which one was being treated as the corresponding side, and whether the relationship between the two had changed simply because Mara had crossed between them.

”Again,” Venielle said.

Mara groaned. ”I already did it correctly.”

”You described it incorrectly.”

”But I still did it correctly.”

”And one day you’ll do it incorrectly because you convinced yourself that getting the right result meant you understood what you were doing.”

Mara looked toward Marek as though expecting support.

He considered it. ”She’s right.”

”Traitor.”

”I’m your brother. That’s different.”

”That doesn’t even make sense.”

”It does to me.”

Rhovan laughed quietly from near the wall. ’As expected of the Ophiarch... sharp-tongued enough that even his Goddess of a sister couldn’t hold a candle to him... though the Ophiarch’s sister is a bit...’

During the break, Mara joined another young Gemini Astrant to practice voice correspondence. Marek watched her reproduce the other child’s voice, lose the pitch halfway through a sentence, and immediately complain when Venielle made her start again.

’That child and the others...’ Something about them did not quite fit what Rhovan expected from newly awakened Gemini Astrants.

Only then did Marek turn toward Venielle. ”Mara said you mentioned Pisces before. What does any of this have to do with them?”

The change in her expression was so slight that Marek might have missed it several days earlier. Rhovan, standing a few meters away, also became suspiciously interested in the opposite side of the courtyard.

Marek noticed both reactions.

”A very old Pisces record is involved,” Venielle answered.

”A prophecy?”

Her gaze settled on him. ”That word came from nowhere.”

”People hide things using predictable categories.”

”That is not evidence.”

”Neither was your answer.”

Venielle looked at him for several seconds before glancing toward Mara, who had accidentally reproduced Rhovan’s voice while saying something insulting about his hair. Rhovan turned toward her with an expression of personal betrayal while the other Gemini child nearly doubled over laughing.

”A high-Cycle Pisces Astrant once experienced a dream she could not control,” Venielle finally said. ”That alone made the record unusual enough to preserve.”

Marek knew enough about Pisces from the reports released after Day 367 to understand why. Their Authorities frequently touched dreams, perception, and mental environments.

”How high a Cycle?”

”High enough that losing control of her own dream should not have happened.”

Marek opened his notebook.

Venielle noticed but continued anyway. ”She should have been able to recognize every part of it, alter what she was experiencing, or wake herself whenever she wished. For thirteen consecutive nights, she could do none of those things.”

Whatever amusement remained in Rhovan disappeared.

Marek caught his reaction and turned back to the lady. ”What did she dream?”

Venielle’s attention briefly shifted toward Rhovan before returning to him. ”That part isn’t mine to tell you.”

”Does Mara know?”

”Part of it.”

Marek immediately looked toward his sister. Mara was still practicing with the other Gemini child, apparently unaware that the conversation had shifted toward her.

He clenched his jaw, forcing himself to ask the question he had been trying not to think about. The possibility alone had been weighing on him since Venielle mentioned the record, and hearing the answer felt like it’d be better than letting his mind continue filling in the worst.

”Does the record say she dies?”

”No.”

Venielle answered so quickly that Marek believed her.

Something in his chest loosened before he could stop it, but another question remained. Whatever had drawn Venielle’s attention to Mara did not seem to come from anything Mara had deliberately done. She had told him the record did not say Mara would die, but that did not mean whatever awaited her would be painless.

”Does it say she gets hurt?”

”No reading of the record clearly says that either.”

He sighed in relief. ”Then, why does this record matter to Mara?”

Venielle looked toward Mara again. ”Because the dream does not have to be true to become dangerous. If enough people believe it concerns Mara, they may start acting as though it does.”

Marek stopped.

That answer was considerably more useful than he wanted it to be.

He lowered his eyes to the notebook. ”What happened in the dream?”

Venielle remained quiet for a moment before answering. ”Thirteen constellations. A world that reached the final day of a leap year and somehow continued into another day. Two mirrors that refused to agree about which answer was false.”

Marek stopped writing.

The first two details were already enough.

Thirteen constellations. A leap year that should have ended but continued into another day. Day 367 suddenly felt far too specific to dismiss as coincidence.

His pen remained above the page. ”And the person between the mirrors?”

Venielle did not answer.

Across the courtyard, Mara suddenly laughed after reproducing Rhovan’s voice almost perfectly while saying, ”My hair is naturally magnificent.”

Rhovan placed a hand over his chest. ”That is an unacceptable misuse of Gemini Authority.”

”It sounded exactly like you,” Mara replied.

”That is precisely why it is offensive.”

Marek barely heard them. His attention remained on Venielle.

”Whatever that record means,” he said, ”Mara decides what she does with it.”

Venielle nodded once. ”That is exactly what I told your mother.”

That answer stopped him more effectively than anything else she had said.

Marek looked toward Mara again.

She was arguing with Rhovan now, smiling as the paired patterns across her palms glimmered while the other Gemini children tried not to laugh.

Two mirrors.

One old Pisces dream.

’And Venielle clearly knew more about both than she was willing to explain.’

Marek disliked mysteries attached to his sister, especially the kind that came with old records, ancient mirrors, and people powerful enough to decide that Mara meant something before she even understood what they were talking about. What bothered him more was knowing that none of that gave him the right to make the decision for her. Mara had every right to decide which of those mysteries she wanted to face, which ones she wanted to walk away from, and how far she was willing to let the House of Gemini involve itself in her life.

’I just hope she doesn’t face them alone.’