Phoenix Flame - Sara Holland Page 0,46

lock in the middle of the cabinet.

It takes me a couple of tries to get the key in the right way, but then something deep in the mechanism clicks. The whole front of the cabinet falls slightly open with the sigh of old wood.

I can feel the sweat pricking at my palms as I crouch and open the door wider. I don’t know quite what to expect—soul-silver? Money? Weapons? But as my eyes adjust to the dimness, I realize it’s papers, stacks of them, arranged into sheaves and tied with black silk ribbons. At first I feel childishly disappointed—that it’s not something more dramatic. Then I shake my head to clear it. Glancing over my shoulder once more to make sure I’m still alone, I grab the nearest handful of papers and undo the ribbons, stripping off my gloves and stuffing them in my pocket to work more efficiently.

The writing before me is in English, which surprises me for a moment, until I make out a few more words. Silver. Transfer. Soul. Then it makes a cold kind of sense. English is what everyone uses to communicate with people from other Realms, since it’s what we speak at Havenfall. Of course, then, it’s also the de facto language of the soul trade.

I’m looking at a spreadsheet, strangely mundane despite the old-fashioned paper and ink. Someone has drawn a neat grid of lines—I imagine them using a straightedge—and filled the resulting rows and columns with objects, numbers, prices, and notes. Not too different from the papers I found snooping around Havenfall, back when I thought that the Heiress—and then Marcus—was complicit in the trade. Reading the record, a pang goes through my heart at the sudden, unwelcome memory of doing something similar with Taya. Of sitting with her in the twilight dimness of my room, puzzling over nonsensical phrases, trying to put the pieces together into a narrative that fit in with what we knew of the world.

But I shove that memory away. Now isn’t the time to wallow in memories of Taya, wishing things could have turned out differently. That’s never a helpful thing to do, but it especially isn’t now, with a ticking clock and so much on the line. When any minute I could be caught and thrown out or jailed or worse. So I slam the door on my memories and return my attention to Winterkill’s records.

There are two additional columns on this page, one that didn’t appear on any of Marcus’s or the Heiress’s papers. It’s filled with words I don’t recognize, some of them repeated over and over again across several rows. It’s alphabetized, but that’s hardly helpful when I don’t know what they mean to begin with. Bairul. Banzon. Bhrima. Bulmont … It reminds me of roll call at school when a substitute teacher comes in, stumbling over all but the blandest of names.

The end of the thought snags, makes my heart skip.

Names.

Could they be? I look again, hands trembling. The second column has more of what could be names, but they are not alphabetized and there are few repeats. Could these be given names, and the first column surnames? Of … of Solarians?

My hands are already reaching back into the cabinet, like they have a mind of their own. I turn up the edges of the pages to get a glimpse at the names, and then let the paper fall again. Searching until I see a column full of N’s. Naasi. Naevan. Naimar. Naradeim. Narita. Natrath.

No Nahteran.

Disappointment is bitter on my tongue as soured wine, but I don’t let it stop me. I put that pile aside and reach back in, checking the names until I find the T’s. But that, too, is a dead end. No Taya.

I stare down at the paper, feeling utterly defeated and inadequate. There’s a next step. There has to be, but I don’t know what it is. I’ve caught so many lucky breaks. I’m in Winterkill’s office, but I’m still completely helpless to find a single one of the captive Solarians. To save them.

But then something catches my eye. The T’s start halfway down the page in my hand. But before that, it’s S’s. Specifically, a third of a page where the same two letters are repeated over and over again.

S.P.

My attention is caught, but I’m not sure why. I flip one page back. There it is again, except now the page is unbroken—a whole column filled just with S.P. S.P. S.P. The page below that is