Sephryn looked at Errol. “You’re the self-proclaimed genius. Do you understand any of that?”
“Not really.”
Augustine sighed. “By placing a crystal inside the box and then applying its complement on the outside—the two will complete each other and the lock will disengage.”
“Inside?” Sephryn asked. “But if we could open the box to put something in, we wouldn’t need any kind of key.”
“Yes. That’s why it’s generally not an approach that can be used to any great effect.”
Errol cut in, “You have to persuade the . . . owner to help. Make them put it inside.”
“And how do we do that?” Sephryn asked.
“Well,” Augustine said, “people put valuable things in gemlock boxes. You could give the emperor an expensive gift. A wonderful bit of jewelry.”
Sephryn stiffened. “We never said anything about the emperor.”
Augustine smiled such that his eyes seemed to sparkle in the firelight. “A high-end, single-voice gemlock safe that is opened with a ruby key? I doubt there are two such devices in the city—perhaps even the world. That particular box was a gift from King Rain to commemorate the dedication of the city on what you now celebrate each year as Founder’s Day. My great-great-great-grandfather, or so, created that masterpiece.” He glanced at Errol. “And you’re right. It is quite sophisticated.”
Sephryn and Errol both looked at the bronze exit door, neither of them happy to see it was closed.
How long has he known? Was “Sapphire Sprite” a special code? Did “I ordered fruit pies for the occasion” really mean “I summoned the city guard”?
Sephryn felt her heart sink.
“The thing is,” Augustine said, “Nyphron never thanked Rain, never even acknowledged the gift. That grand gesture has long been seen as a snub to the Belgriclungreian Kingdom. It was further tainted by being delivered on the day Persephone died, and it was well known that Rain intended the present for her, not Nyphron. As the Belgriclungreian Ambassador, I’m not at all pleased with the treatment of some of my people who live and conduct business in the empyre, but because Belgreig doesn’t have the power of seven legions backing it, I can rarely do much. On the other hand, should I have the support of the Director of the Imperial Council, perhaps I could achieve more.”
Sephryn frowned, hating herself for what she was about to say. “As much as I wish it weren’t true, I have to tell you that the Imperial Council doesn’t have a great deal of influence with the emperor.”
“I know that,” Augustine said. “But some is better than none. I suspect you agree, or you wouldn’t still be trying after so many centuries. Look, if anyone asks me about this, I’ll say, ‘Sephryn who?’ But you have no idea how long I’ve waited to be Rain. You’ll need an emerald and a ruby of exquisite quality to reach the level of frequency required. One of them will need to be placed in an amazing setting, something the emperor will value but not wear.” Augustine picked up a green stone the size of his palm. “Give me a week.”
“A week?” Sephryn began to panic. “I don’t know if I have that long.”
Augustine’s face showed more concern than she expected. “You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”
She nodded.
“But you can’t tell me what sort?”
She shook her head.
“I’ve always hated Gronbach and wished I had been there. It may be arrogance, but I always believed I would have saved Neith, playing the hero who stood up for what was right.” He looked down at himself and laughed. “Can you imagine that? Me, a hero?”
Sephryn smiled.
“Funny how life has a way of presenting opportunities, never what or when you expect, but the marrow is the same. At its core, the question being asked and the courage to answer correctly remain identical. I wasn’t in Neith when Persephone needed help. I couldn’t stand up to Gronbach, or willingly enter the underworld, but maybe I can do something now. Gronbach’s greed and deceit have cursed my people. Maybe my actions will be a first step toward removing his stain—perhaps this is a path to positive change. I’ll work as fast as I can.”
The possibility of saving Nurgya was too much to contain. Sephryn couldn’t help herself. She reached out and hugged the gem merchant.
Chapter Ten
Death Pays a Visit
The midnight bell was ringing.
Arvis Dyer knew the sound better than most. Nearly everyone in the city—those unhappy enough to still be awake at that dismal hour—heard it through the walls of a building. Such a muffled conversation lacked intimacy. Arvis heard the clarity of that toll whispering directly into her ear like a late-night lover as she huddled beneath the steps of Chuck’s Butcher Shop. Charles Jenkins, slaughterer of all things meat, lived above his bloody little business on the northeast side of Market Square. Arvis lived below it, although if asked, lived isn’t how she’d have put it.
Living suggested a certain degree of balance between happiness and misery, success and failure, warm and cold, friends and enemies, want and satisfaction. Most observers might describe her situation as mere existence. Arvis believed such an assessment would be strangely optimistic, but then observers only got to see her circumstance from the outside. They glimpsed a woman who was past youth, but short of old, who lived beneath a rickety set of wooden steps. Wild hair and a mishmash of filthy clothes harvested from trash piles pointed to her being either a troll or a witch. Her accusers failed to grasp the fact that she charged no toll for crossing her steps, and if she could perform magic, she certainly wouldn’t be living where she did. Yet the true depth of her misfortune wasn’t on display, not visible to the naked eye. Arvis’s torment wasn’t that she had no home, bed, decent clothes, money, or food, but that she had no mind—or rather very little of one. Arvis still had some wits left, but she suspected even that meager store of sensibilities was dwindling.
It’s all because of the bread.
She considered the thought as she hugged her knees beneath the steps. On her right side was the broken ceramic urn. The top was gone, as if someone had cleaved it at an angle, but the bottom was still intact enough to reveal the dancing deer painted in a ring around its base. Arvis kept her most prized possessions in that container: a string of wooden beads whose cord was now too short to wear after numerous breaks, a partially crushed tin cup with a missing handle, a stiff bloodstained drop cloth from the butchery that she used as a blanket, a well-worn sack with one busted shoulder strap, and a weevil she’d named Bray.
The bakery across the street was closed, as were all respectable businesses and homes at that hour. Only drunks, thieves, trolls, and witches breathed the late-night air and heard the naked tolling of the midnight bell.
They owe me bread.
She was certain of that truth, but why she was so sure, she hadn’t a clue, and Bray was of no help whatsoever. The little beetle rarely even moved.
“Bread. Bread. Bread. The secret is in my head, head, head,” she whispered to herself.
There was most assuredly a secret, a memory she’d lost, one of the many mental crumbs that had broken away. “Leaving me a few short of a loaf.” She giggled to herself as she huddled beneath the steps, struggling to keep her one bare foot under the bloody tarp. The night was growing cold.
Nothing worse than cold feet—or foot.
She struggled to remember what she had been thinking about and lifted a hand to the side of her head that had the scar. She felt it, long and thick, running up her scalp under her hair like an awful seam.
That’s where my mind went. Leaked out through there and dribbled away. Still dribbling, and the secret went with it.
She could no more remember where she got the scar than she could recall the Secret of the Bread. These were the two grand mysteries of her life—the two pillars she was certain supported the rest of her euphemistically styled existence. Arvis also believed the two were linked: the bread and the scar, the lost memory and the secret. All of it devastatingl
y important, but also horrible. Why else had her mind ejected them? And why should that part of her life be any different from the rest?
“What do you think, Bray?” she asked the beetle, who remained quiet. She nudged the urn. The weevil slid an inch across the smooth bottom. Not a sound.
There was a chance Bray was dead. There was also the possibility that he simply didn’t like rye crumbs. All weevils preferred wheat.
Footsteps.
Arvis heard them growing louder, coming out of the echoes of the bell. Footsteps at night wasn’t a sound she liked. The slow, lonely, rhythmic clap of leather on stone chilled her more than the cold.
No businesses open. No business being here.
Arvis knew the habits of the people living nearby. No one wandered the square on a raw spring night. Chuck and his wife worked hard all day, murdering animals, and they enjoyed the sound sleep of the virtuous. Rodney the Crooked Baker and his wife Gerty the Turdy, the one with the cold accusing stare, locked themselves in after dark with their daughter, as if afraid Death would come knocking.
Is that who’s coming?
Arvis found the thought strangely comforting. Death, she imagined, would be a gentleman compared with others she’d met after the tolling of the late bell.
He’s coming back to finish the job another started.
Arvis didn’t move, merely hugged her legs tighter. The still-functioning residue of her remaining brain was trying to make her smaller. Smaller was better. Smaller was harder to find, more difficult to see. She bowed her head to her knees, and closed her eyes tight, trying to disappear.
The sound came closer. No hesitation, pause, or meandering. The steps were deliberate.
Someone is visiting Chuck—the-butcher—Jenkins.
The reasoning was perfectly sensible, abundantly logical, and quite unlike her normal starburst of thoughts. Arvis also knew she was wrong. She desperately wanted the owner of those noisy feet to climb the stairs above her and rap on the butcher’s door. That was the primary reason she knew it wouldn’t happen. Evil had a habit of finding her.
The footsteps didn’t go up the wooden stairs. They came around the side and stopped, sliding to a noisy halt just inches from her.
“Arvis?” An unfamiliar voice spoke.
She kept her eyes closed. If I can’t see Death, Death can’t see me.
“Arvis, come with me.”
She shook her head.
“Please.”
Arvis had heard the word before, but never had it been spoken to her, and certainly not in that way, with such a tone of sincerity, with such politeness.
She inched out and looked up. A figure stood before her, draped in a long cloak that started with a billowy hood and ended where excess material gathered on the cobblestones. In the darkness, she saw no face.
Death. It has to be Death. He is a gentleman.
Death held out a hand to her. All she saw were the tips of fingers that extended beyond the length of loose sleeves.
Not claws, at least.
Feeling she had little choice, as no one does when Death comes calling, she took the hand, and Death pulled her up. Still holding on gently, Death walked with her across the square as if they were a young couple on their first date. She glanced back, concerned about Bray. He hadn’t been looking good. Bray might be a she; Arvis wasn’t at all certain what Bray was.
Death led Arvis down Carvo Street, the smallest of the six roads that spoked out from the square, the area known as the garment district. Most of the homes were owned by tailors or fabric merchants. Nice places, but not too nice. Some at the end of the street were so old and neglected as to be called run-down.
Arvis saw no reason to speak to Death. What was there to say?
No, wait, you made a mistake? I’m Arvis Dyer. You want another Arvis.
And small talk would be even more absurd.
How are you doing? Looking forward to Founder’s Day? Nice robe. I bet that really scares the pifflepuff out of most people.
Arvis resolved herself to a quiet march to her demise. No whimpering, no begging; she would face her end bravely. She wasn’t leaving much behind anyway, just Bray, and now she was certain he had already left her. Almost everyone she knew had.
As they turned into the little alley south of the charred remains of the milliner’s shop that had burned down two years before, Arvis became curious where Death was taking her. With anyone else, she’d be terrified. They were now entering a decidedly unsavory part of town. Given that she had already accepted she was traveling to her final resting place, she wasn’t terribly worried, merely curious about where the ultimate act would take place. And of course, there was the one remaining concern . . .
“Will it hurt? I mean, sure, I know it’ll hurt, but will it hurt a lot? Will it take a long time?”
Death turned, and she saw the tip of a nose poking out of the hood. Death, it seemed, had a face after all. “I’m not going to kill you, Arvis.”
“Really?” She was both shocked and oddly let down. The degree of disappointment was surprising. Only then did she realize that while she was frightened, she was also clearly looking forward to it. “But—”
“I need your help.”
Death needs my help?
A sudden panic welled up. “You don’t want me to . . . I can’t kill anyone. Please don’t make me kill—”
“No, it’s nothing like that.”
“Then what?”
“It’s about the bread, Arvis.”
The fact that Death knew she lived under the steps of the butcher shop and knew her name hadn’t affected her nearly so much as his knowing about the bread. She stopped and stared at the shadow beneath the hood. They were in a lonely alley formed from the backs of mud-brick hovels. The only light came from moonlight that glanced across one side of the narrow passage, spilling like pale paint on dirty clay blocks and poorly set mortar.
“The bread?” she asked, both terrified and hopeful.
The bread had confused her for so long. Just thinking of it produced a mixture of feelings and ideas that were so deeply tangled that the idea of unraveling the snarled web of mystery had been hopeless—until now.
Death raised a pale finger. “Can you hear it?”
“What?” she asked.
“Listen carefully.”
Arvis pulled back her hair and paused, taking inventory of the nightly noises: somewhere something creaked faintly, a dog barked, wind whispered as it raced through the alley, a shutter clapped, and far away she heard the peeps of spring frogs. She heard nothing that—
A cry.
Desperately faint, high-pitched, and weak, Arvis heard the unmistakable wail of a child—an infant. The sound almost killed her. The cry stabbed into her heart with a multitude of claws ripping it open and laying it bare. She gasped.
“Over there.” Death pointed deeper into the alley. “Be courageous, Arvis. It’s time to face your fear.”
Shaking, Arvis stepped ahead of Death and moved deeper into the alley. With each step, the sound of the cries, while still muffled, grew louder. She searched frantically for the source but saw nothing but bricks and cobblestone, old leaves swept into mounds, broken clay shards, rags, and horse manure that had been heaped against the wall so that she had to step carefully around it.
Is something in the piles?
She moved past the rubbish, and the wailing compelled her deeper still.
Her ears and nose were cold, her bare foot threatened to go numb, but Arvis felt hot, sweaty, and horrified. Then she passed it. The sound was behind her. She turned. The cries came from below her feet.
Kneeling down, Arvis swept away a crate, a sack of rotted vegetables, and the cluster of brittle leaves that had gathered. The moment she did, the instant she exposed the sewer grate, the wails grew louder.
“It’s coming from down there. What am I supposed to do?” Arvis looked up but was alone in the alley. Death had abandoned her.
She wasn’t entirely certain Deat
h had left. Just because she couldn’t see life’s little reaper didn’t mean he wasn’t still there. If he was, however, he wasn’t talking. Arvis concluded he was watching, but from that point forth, she would be on her own.
The cries continued to ring, to beckon from the far side of the grate. The sewer cover was a two-foot square of limestone with four petal-shaped holes cut through it, creating a simple flower pattern. Nothing but its weight held it in place. She placed her hands on the rough surface of the cold stone.
Is a baby down there? How can that be?
“Do you want me to climb in?” she asked, but Death was still nowhere to be seen.
Arvis shuddered at the idea of squeezing through the tight hole and dropping into darkness. She would be forced to fall into that unknown world of who knew what. Everyone knew the sewers were the very bottom, the realm of vileness so wretched that only the most desperate entered.
How could a baby be down in a sewer?
Even as she recoiled in disgust at the idea, her fingers slipped into the petal-shaped holes. The stone was heavy, a good fifty pounds at least.
I’ll never get this off.
The wailing from the sewer had a different opinion, and Arvis found enough strength to lift and drag, grinding the stone aside. Thrusting her head in, she saw nothing; still, the sound of the cries was magnified as they echoed eerily, hauntingly in that netherworld of sunless gloom.
Is this an actual child I’m searching for or something else?
Having mostly leaked out of that cracked skull of hers, Arvis’s mind was of little use. In its truancy, her heart had taken over, and answered her with a confident, yet confusing Yes!
Wait! her mind shouted as her heart put forth the bare foot toward the inky brink. Light! Can’t see in the dark, you idiot.
Arvis’s heart reluctantly granted that concession. Running out of the alley, she frantically searched for a lamp. Now that her heart had assumed control, panic gripped her. A frenzy of fear took hold and cried with the voice of a terrified child that doom was seconds away.
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