Rings of the Inconquo Trilogy

by A. L. Knorr

  Now to get the necklace. I pulled the note from my pocket where Sark’s tight but flowery script had recorded the relevant details.

  Gold necklace, Moughal Empire Exhibit, Shah Zafar, 1862

  Sark assured me it would be in Archives, and I had to liberate it. Having access to Archives was only the first step; there was more than one way this whole thing could go sideways. Archives kept exact records of everything pulled, including the weight. Even a slight change in the weight of a returned box would flag the item and send a report to the supervisors and security. With no supervisor around to override the system, Marcus or Charlie, the other night porter, would be obliged to keep me on the premises until they could rouse one.

  Just taking off with the artifact wouldn’t work either. The box would trigger the scanners built into the elevator doorway, and even if I left an empty box in a corner, I would only have thirty minutes before my failure to rescan the box would trigger an alert to security. Thirty minutes would be enough time to leave the building, but within an hour, I would be a fugitive and known artifact thief. I understood things were desperate, but I still hoped to have some semblance of a life to come back to when this was all over.

  When I’d presented my conundrum to Sark, he’d been unconcerned.

  “Work around it, or become a criminal,” he’d said with a shrug, the nonchalance in his tone chilling. “Either way, we need that necklace.”

  So, I’d come up with a workaround.

  The elevator doors slid open, and I was off down the corridor to the vault-like doors to Archives. I practiced my next lie for the sallow-faced young man––was his name Davenport?––who was clerk and gatekeeper for Archives during the night shift. During the day, several clerks dispensed items for examination or exhibits and catalogued the return of items. They were a quiet and quirky lot, which was saying something for a building full of archeology enthusiasts, and Davenport was the quietest and quirkiest. Some of the less kind workers called him “the mole-man”, but no one could deny that he had a moleish look. I steeled myself to deliver my practiced fib to a pair of dark eyes, slowly blinking behind overly large spectacles, set above a long, perpetually sniffling nose.

  I rounded the corner and nearly froze when I saw Adrian Shelton, my supervisor, standing in front of the Archives desk holding a clipboard.

  I was about to retreat when Shelton raised his head.

  “Evening, Dr Shelton.” I mustered some cheer. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  Shelton’s pale complexion drained to grey. He swallowed, put down the clipboard, and nodded in greeting.

  “Good evening, Ms Bashir,” he managed. “It’s a surprise to see you too. I thought you were on holiday.”

  After Kezsarak’s defeat, Daria had “whispered in a few ears” which not only kept me working at the Museum but actually saw me promoted to my current position in cataloguing. Without explanation, Shelton’s attitude had also changed, going from a workplace tyrant to a benign, occasionally permissive, boss. Even after a year, I didn’t trust the change. If Shelton was biding his time, this would be the perfect opportunity to destroy me professionally.

  I forced my voice to be steady, though my tongue felt dry as sandpaper. “Yes, but it seems my lecturers aren’t quite so lenient as you, sir.”

  Shelton nodded gravely and put on a sympathetic face.

  “The academic grindstone is relentless,” he replied sagely. “What do they have you working on?”

  Damn, the new, cowed Shelton was nearly as meddlesome as the old, spiteful one, it was just harder to hate him for it.

  “The eh … Mughul Empire,” I faltered. “An artifact from the mid-nineteenth century.”

  A flash, something suspicious and cunning, like the old Shelton, played across his features, then vanished. He smelled a lie, and that intuition burned in his cheeks, but his eyes told me he was not going to say anything.

  What had Daria done? Her recent displays of ruthless exploitation made me suddenly feel something like real sympathy for the man.

  “Is there a particular item you were looking for?” he asked archly. “Or were you just going to browse?”

  I felt the familiar tension of our former contention. I wanted to adopt that crisp, icy politeness that had become second nature, but it seemed like a petty response. He was beaten, and we both knew it. He may have been a bully, but I wasn’t going to take up arms against an enemy that couldn’t fight back.

  “A specific artifact,” I said, drawing the note out of my pocket. “I have some details pulled from an incomplete cataloguing entry.”

  I offered the note, and Shelton looked at it as though it was a venomous arachnid. He met my eyes and then forced his face to assume a neutral expression as he took the note.

  “1862,” he mused, “was this piece personally owned by the Shah or just occurring during his rule?”

  I searched my memory for anything that Sark might have mentioned but came up a total blank. “Eh … I … that is the entry …”

  Shelton nodded, doing his best to look sympathetic, but with that same suspicious gleam. “The entry was incomplete. I understand.”

  He handed back the note, a sigh of resignation passing his lips.

  “Well, I’m sure Mr Davenport can help you find it. I can’t imagine we have too many necklaces from that period floating around.”

  Like a devil summoned by the mention of his name, the doors to the Archive chirped, and Davenport emerged carrying several artifact boxes. He dumped them unceremoniously on a cart by the desk.

  “Have a care, Mr Davenport,” Shelton snarled, placing one hand possessively on the cart handle. “Several of those are irreplaceable. The same cannot be said of you.”

  Davenport sniffed once, then shuffled over toward the clipboard Shelton had been holding when I arrived. Davenport’s eyelids slid down and up with speed like molasses and gave another sniff that made his whole face twist.

  “Did you sign for everything?” he asked in a monotonous, instantly unlikable voice.

  “Obviously,” Shelton snapped. “You do realize this isn’t my first time, don’t you?”

  “Never hurts to check,” Davenport droned, taking his time to check the sheets of paper as Shelton seethed. “One minute, and you can swipe them out.”

  Shelton looked like he was about to rail further, but his eyes darted over to me, and he physically drew back. He crossed his arms with very slow deliberate motions.

  “By all means.” His words were a bad imitation of genteel. “Do your due diligence.”

  “Uhuh,” Davenport grunted as he finished perusing the sheets. He reached over the desk to strike a few keys on the workstation keyboard. The id card scanner chirped, and Davenport gave a nod before redundantly pointing to the device.

  “Please, scan your card here.”

  It was clear that not telling the lowly Archivist off for his superfluous instructions was an effort of herculean patience for Shelton.

  “Thank you, sir.” Davenport’s smile showed all of his small, brown-tinted teeth.

  “Very good, Mr Davenport,” Shelton mumbled, taking hold of the cart and giving me a parting nod. “Good luck, Ms Bashir.”

  With that, he drew the cart out in front of him and trudged back towards the elevator.

  I waited until I heard the elevator doors close. Something struck me as odd about the entire situation.

  “Davenport,” I began, assuming his attention and cooperation. “Does Shelton usually come down here to transport artifacts.”

  Davenport looked up from his keyboard and shook his head.

  “Not during the day,” he replied and went back to his mysterious key tapping.

  That was an odd way to answer the question.

  “Can you tell me what he was doing with all those boxes?” I asked, putting a hint of pleading into my tone.

  “Taking them to Collections,” Davenport answered without looking up.

  Collections was lower than Archives in the
Museum hierarchy; there was no way Shelton would be playing delivery boy. Thinking I’d misunderstood, I asked: “He’s delivering them for someone?”

  “No,” Davenport sighed and looked up at me with a contemptuous sniff. “He’s been working in Collections at night since your promotion.”

  “What?” I blurted. It was so bizarre I was certain he was joking. Davenport shook his head, the pitying look making him even more irritating.

  “You moved up as Shelton received probation,” he said as if it was all so matter of fact. “He didn’t dare ask for another student to replace you, and he doesn’t dare let things slack off for fear of being made redundant. So, he makes up the difference by putting in late hours Cataloguing.”

  “Oh,” I felt stupid and more than a little uneasy. I’d been overjoyed at being promoted to the department I’d always wanted to work in. If I were honest, I’d felt vindicated, that it was my reward for putting up with Shelton. Now, seeing what that had cost, even to someone like Shelton, it was more difficult to accept.

  “I can’t imagine that is very popular with Mrs Shelton,” I observed, then cringed as a wet, burbling sound came out of Davenport. It took a second to realize he was laughing, his brown teeth spread out in an unpleasant smile.

  “Don’t think she much cares now,” he chortled thickly. “They separated recently.”

  My stomach knotted, and not just at the sight of Davenport’s petty glee. What had Daria done? The demoness’s corruptive influence seemed to be bubbling to the surface with each new revelation.

  “Davenport, how do you know all this?” I asked, suddenly understanding others’ dislike of him.

  The Archive clerk sniffed, still smiling. “People talk. Some think because I don’t talk, I’m not listening.”

  It made a kind of sense, and I suddenly had to stop a train of thought that wanted to chase down everything I’d ever said while down here in Archives. I had bigger things to worry about.

  “Why are you talking to me then?”

  Davenport’s smile widened, and a chilling glint shone in his eyes.

  “Anyone who can knock Shelton down as many pegs as you did is someone I very much admire.”

  His grin suddenly seemed unctuous, and I didn’t like that he was looking at me so … reverently.

  “I need a necklace for Collections,” I said briskly, trying to shake off the oiliness I felt leaking over me. “The details are on here, but I don’t have a box number.”

  I laid the note on the desk, and Davenport scooped it up. He shuffled towards the doors, not even bothering to look at the note.

  “For you, Ms Bashir, anything.”

  ---

  I returned to Cataloguing, relieved to have the place to myself, and set up on a light-table. I arranged the sample ingots artifact box before slipping on a pair of latex gloves. Opening the artifact box, I drew out the necklace.

  It was a beautiful and delicately woven scapular necklace, the filament branches of rose gold interlaced with silver. The textured expanse shimmered softly, but I spied a few darker patches that had probably been for jewels. Missing jewels was not uncommon for a piece like this, probably having been plundered and then traded multiple times before reaching the Museum, but I muttered a thankful prayer that they were gone.

  My heart gave a little thrill as I peeled one glove off. Skin contact with artifacts was forbidden––to protect the artifacts from the oils on human skin as well as protect said skin from whatever might still be on the necklace––but if I was going to do this, I needed to do it right.

  I took the scapular in my hand and let my metallic sense plunge completely into its makeup, exploring every facet. Not simply the composition of its alloys or the tensions present in its curves and curls, but the way age had tarnished the “tune” of the metal. I felt the accumulated minor adjustments and traced every fractional impression made during its life. It took several minutes, but eventually, I’d traced over every square nanometre of the necklace several times. I felt its song vibrate through my touch and knew each trilling turn in the melody.

  I now knew this work of art, at least its material and spiritual makeup, better than any archeologist before me. I didn’t know the human who had fashioned it, but I knew their artistry intimately.

  I sensed something else: a resentful pressure in the back of my mind. I’d heard the veteran cataloguers talking about how some pieces felt off, but I’d only understood when I experienced it myself.

  I’d been cataloguing an ivory-handled knife with the remnants of a corroded copper blade, and I felt something akin to the tension I had felt while sitting in the hospital waiting room the night of my parents’ accident. Fear and desperation crackling below the surface. I identified the blade as secespita, a Roman blade used for cutting open sacrificial victims, usually animals but occasionally slaves or prisoners of war. Though a sickening revelation, it somehow seemed right given what I’d felt the entire time I’d worked on that artifact.

  This necklace had a different ‘wrongness’, but I did not have time to research its backstory, and for my purposes, it was unnecessary. I didn’t need the ghosts of the necklace, just the necklace itself.

  I laid the necklace down and held my hand out to the ingots. Spinnerets of the gold, copper, and silver rose from their respective ingots. The ingots would be noticeably diminished, but without clear tool marks or evidence of being smelted, the Museum would assume wear and tear of being handled extensively.

  I gathered and pinched them into the precise proportions before fusing them into an alloy that matched the necklace. The process required effort, and sweat began to bead on my brow. Twice as I closed my eyes to focus, I looked up to see the floating mass of metal glowing with heat, as though I’d stuck it into a blast furnace. By the time I was done, I had a solid orb of rose gold before me. The easy part done, I rescanned the artifact box to keep everything kosher. I had a feeling I would be doing that a lot.

  The raw material fashioned, I began the painstaking process of spinning it out from its dense state into the woven scapular necklace. I started with just the rough outline, and after a few minutes, I had what looked like a knockoff version of the original, similar but lacking the delicacy and austerity of the original.

  Taking it from knockoff to ‘twin’ to authentic required me to adjust the metal composition of each curl and branch of the necklace. It took several hours. I shed my jacket as sweat poured, my body giving expression to the exertion of my mind.

  I had to go back to the original to check, but upon completion, there wasn’t a single difference between the two, even to my metallic sense. The emotional presence of the original remained, bitter and insistent, but otherwise, the necklaces were indistinguishable down to the microscopic, possibly even atomic level.

  “Work around it or become a criminal,” I mused. “That’s what I call a workaround, Mr Sark.”

  I held up my handiwork and couldn’t keep a smile off my face.

  ---

  My pride and exhilaration lasted until the elevator doors opened to the front lobby.

  I’d returned the original necklace to Archives, and even Davenport’s ingratiating manner didn’t bring me down. The new necklace was under my shirt. This is going to work.

  Then reality hit.

  Even though I wasn’t stealing a priceless antiquity, I was still walking out the Museum front doors with a few hundred dollars of precious metal around my neck. True, my clothing hid it, but it wouldn’t take much of a search. Exactly why Marcus would search me was beside the point.

  My breathing became rapid and shallow as the elevator doors opened. Marcus talked on the phone with his back to me while he searched through paperwork on the desk. I could hear the words, but none of them made sense with my heart pounding in my ears.

  For a long second, I stood there, frozen, certain that if I put one toe out of the elevator, the game would be up. Metro police would come bursting through the door. I would be on the floor my wrists zip-tied
together before I could blink. Some eager DI would rip the newly fashioned necklace off and hold it up for inspection by a hundred news reporters. Any hope of stopping Ninurta would vanish in a storm of sirens and flashing lights.

  The ridiculous and terrifying fantasy had me in its grip so long the elevator doors began to close again. Instinct kicked in, and I stuck my hand out. I moved, my gait stiffer than usual, and swiped my ID card as I went by the desk.

  Marcus called after me, but I was already passing through the front doors. I don’t know if I’d have broken into a run if I’d heard him coming after me, but thankfully he didn’t.

  It wasn’t until I’d descended into the glaring lights of the underground station that I felt my mind and body reconnect in a meaningful way. I gasped for air, my mind reeling under a heady mixture of fear and exhilaration. I moved towards one of the platform’s tiled pillars and leaned against it to catch my breath.

  With my free hand, I reached inside the front of my jacket and felt the necklace. Watching a train pull into the station, rose gold beneath my fingertips, I felt another smile spreading across my face.

  12

  Something wasn’t right. The train accelerated like a bullet-train. I gripped the arm of my seat as the G-force pressed against me. When the car finally burst into the light, the squeal of spectral brakes had an eerie keening note. The doors slapped open, and I staggered out, feeling the tension like a chill in the air.

  “Jackie, Professor?” I called, then realized with a start that my breath fogged in front of my face. Museum Station has always stayed at a moderate temperature, whatever weather the living world was having. I’d only experienced such a drastic temperature when Lowe went rumbly on meeting Sark. My ill-ease grew as I mounted the steps to the commons.

  “Professor!” I shouted more forcefully. “Jackie! What’s going on?”

  Jackie came skidding towards me as I crested the stairs, her face paler than new-fallen snow and frosty breath pluming from her like a steam engine.