After the Elders come the Elite Guard, who’ve arrived from their home in Burumu on the airship that passed over Elisha and me. The Elite Guard are the sharp talons of the Phoenix; they keep us safe from danger, although now they are much more ceremonial than in the past when monsters threatened us. In the time of the Rending, they formed to protect what was left of mankind. Now they serve as a reminder, and as a force against future dangers, should they arise. We stand upon them for support.
The Sargon lives in Burumu and is a lord below my father’s ranking. He is the Eye of the Phoenix, ever watchful for unrest or trouble. And there has been some in the past, for Burumu is a small island of limited resources, and things have become tense from time to time. But none of us want to go back to dark days, and so it’s never amounted to much at all.
And my father, the Monarch. He is the beak of the Phoenix, speaking truth and leading us all toward the future. His word is law. He lives here in Ulan, in the citadel, which is a smaller town than Burumu but it allows him the peace and quiet to thoughtfully govern us.
And me, his heir? I’m the Eternal Flame that ignites the Phoenix, the hope for the future of our floating world.
All of this symbolism is etched into my headdress. It’s no wonder it weighs so much.
My father wears a circlet of feather-shaped hammered gold, the plumes of sunbirds hanging along it in a much more subtle pattern. His face crinkles up again as he smiles at me, and despite the hundred pounds pressing on my head, and the weight of who I am in my heart, I smile back.
“Ashes, child,” he says suddenly. “Your foot!”
They’ve noticed. I can’t look down easily with the headdress on, but I can feel the attendants lifting my foot up and wiping it with cloth, maybe the hem of their own tunics.
“I lost it on the way,” I say sheepishly.
The doors at the end of the hallway burst open, and two of the Elder Initiates stride in. “Your Majesty,” they say to my father, the Monarch. “If you please.”
“Yes, well,” he says, looking at me worriedly. After a minute he laughs. “I suppose you’ll have to lose the other shoe, as well,” he says.
The attendants exchange looks.
“Sir, but Elder Aban will...”
“Oh, he can take it up with me later, if he survives the rise in his blood pressure.”
I love my father, and he loves me.
I kick off the spare shoe and bite my lip to hold back the delighted grin at the expressions of the attendants and Initiates. My father quickly squeezes my fingers before they place a red and gilded annal in his hands and a short ceremonial staff in mine, a golden beam that ends in a rich crimson plume that tickles against my sleeve.
I follow my father through the hallway, and then we are upon the steps of the citadel. The sunlight is blinding after the darkness of the corridors. The minstrels are plucking at the goat-string harps and the trumpets are blaring as the crowds cheer for their Monarch. Father looks noble and kind as he descends the steps toward the crowd. I wait at the doorway and watch him. Banners of crimson stream in the wind, and the giant statue of the Phoenix towers over the courtyard. There are garlands of flowers strung around her neck and bouquets of red and orange laid at her feet.
It seems a little ridiculous to me at times, but the annals and my governesses have always been clear—without her, mankind would have perished, consumed by the monsters that overrun the earth below. She saved us all with her sacrifice, and so we celebrate the Rending every year since, commemorating our deliverance from certain death.
My father has reached Elder Aban in the courtyard below, and the trumpets blare loudly as the crowd looks up for me. I take a deep breath and grasp the plume staff tightly, walking slowly down the stone stairs in my bare feet, one clean, one scuffed and dirty. I long to glance at Aban’s reaction, but I know I must look straight ahead into the crowd, smiling gently and looking wiser than I feel. The steps are grainy and rough and scrape the soles of my feet. Despite the bright sunny weather, the stone stairs are cold from the thin air up here in Ashra.
The crowd and minstrels are quiet, staring at me as I descend. I think only of how ridiculous it would look if I tripped headfirst, or if I burst into dance or suddenly turned and ran. I could end this whole ceremony, I think. It’s not that I want to destroy it, but the potential, just knowing I could do so, swirls endlessly in my head.
At last I reach the bottom step, and the crowds bow their heads. It all seems too silly to me. I walk through the village all the time with Elisha and no one bows to me. But today there’s such a separation I can feel it. They bend around me like heat bends around the wavering flame of a candle.
The Elite Guard stand in crisp rows to the side of the Phoenix statue. They’re dressed in uniforms of the customary white, with a single red plume pinned to their lapels. Some have golden pins or medals of iridescent shell depending on rank.
I see him immediately, of course. Jonash. He’s in the front row, at the right side of the lieutenant. It’s hard to miss him. He’s looking at me, too, his blue eyes shining and his dirty blond hair cropped neatly on his head. But there’s no time to think about him now. Aban has come toward me to receive the plume staff, and I place it in his old, shaking hands while my father reads from the pages of the annal.
His voice resonates through the courtyard. “So it was,” he reads, “that in those days, the land was covered with the thick darkness of a plague brewing. They came from every direction—creatures bent on destroying mankind and civility. On four legs, on six, on wings and in scales, above and beneath the surface of the earth. They knew only hunger, blood and malevolence.”
Elder Aban steps toward the Phoenix statue with my plume staff. I clasp my hands together over my dirt-stained dress, standing as still as I can. I can feel Jonash’s eyes on me, but I dare not look. I pretend that he’s not there at all, that he doesn’t even exist.
My father’s voice rises as he reads from the gilded tome. “But there was one creature who lived in light, not in darkness. In flame, not in bitter ice. There was one who was merciful and generous and giving. She saw our plight and took pity us. She gathered us under her wings, to protect us from the foul monsters outside.”
The people stare blankly ahead. We’ve heard this story. We hear it every year. But it’s distant to us. It happened nearly three hundred years ago. Well, two hundred and ninety-nine. We’ve never seen the monsters written about in the annals. We don’t even know if it’s true.
“The people walked from the mountains, from the valleys, from the oceans and the islands. We gathered upon this place, Ashra, when it was then part of the earth.”
Aban has placed the plume staff at the Phoenix’s stone talons and is backing away with his head bowed toward her. There is a small string in his hands, almost invisible unless you know it’s there. This is the big finale, the culmination of the Rending Ceremony.
“And then,” my father’s voice booms, “with a blast of her fiery wings, she tore the roots from the ground and rent the earth in two.” Aban pulls the string, and the plume staff erupts in a burst of flames that travels up the garlands around the statue. “She lifted us high above the darkness and the fangs and the endless hunger that infested the earth. She burned to ashes like the sun, raising us to freedom and deliverance.”
“May she rise anew!” the crowd shouts as the rings of fire blaze around the statue. The people cheer and wave their red banners as my father hands the