Legacy to Zero

15: Kitchen Knives

Harlow

As I rounded the corner, River Mahedi's familiar figure came into view. I shouldn't have been surprised, but I tensed anyway, my hand gripping the doorway to the bedroom so tight that my pulse bumped around in my stiff fingertips.

In the darkness, she sat on the countertop, with my kitchen knives beside her, pointed with the sharp edges to the outside. The shrill sound of her scraping the blade against a metal honing rod woke me up from my midnight slumber.

My words came in gravelly, cut with rough edges and syllables right from my throat. "How did you even get in here?"

"Jimmied the lock," she said flatly, not bothering to look up. She held her thumb on the heel of her weapon, dragging it across with a flick of her wrist. "Hello to you too, by the way. Thanks for asking how my day went. It was average. Besides the terrible part where I lost my favourite knife."

Right. I'm not going to ask what that's about. "That was probably the wrong question. I meant... more like... how did you know I was here?"

She flipped the blade to the other side and drew it across the honing rod. "That's a completely different question. It's also another one you know how to answer."

I sighed. I wasn't alert enough for this. Blissfully, she set the honing rod beside her and jumped off the counter, landing on the tiled floor without a sound. At the very least, she'd done me the favour of taking off her boots—in their place were sheer knee-high tights shimmering with tiny rhinestones and overturned at the top to cover two holes.

"You have something that I want," she announced.

Through half-open eyes, I watched her charge through the apartment. Drawers squeaked and flew open. On her way through the kitchen, she grabbed the knives—which blipped away into her dimension—and plucked a cookie to finish the leftovers I hadn't eaten. While she chewed, she lifted Astra's keys into midair, as though they were hiding whatever she wanted underneath.

She grimaced. "Please don't tell me you actually went and returned the archive files."

Relief hit me. I tried not to let it show on my face; it was nice to have information she didn't. As I shrugged, I stepped beside her next to the table and lifted the wooden covering for the hidden storage of the hollow interior.

"I made a copy."

"Thank you." She leaned in to stare at the hidden compartment. The fresh, pearl-white pages shone like snow when hit by a burst of light. "I was trying to remember why it sounded so familiar. These files—aren't they called Rachna's keys? Isn't that the name of a past council member?"

"Yeah, the files were written by Nahlee. She was a councilwoman's daughter. But the keys weren't real. It's just a story, an explanation for how magic broke into three."

River opened the files, her fingers gently handling the edges. "It's a firsthand account."

"The most unreliable kind."

"I suppose that's true," she replied. "Wouldn't hold up in court. But—by that logic, I'm not real, either."

I lowered myself next to her, rubbing my eyes as I backed against the couch. All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep. My essay research had at least amounted to knowing what River was getting at. "Those files never mention unbound magic."