by Jenn Stark
Chichiro remained silent, and I tried to remember what she’d said last. Connected. Money. “Yeah,” I said, regaining my place in the conversation. “The highest bidders, the ones who really fought the hardest for the toys, before the Magician got me out of the mix and had me on retainer, were the rich people without psychic ability. They cared the most to have these artifacts, even when they couldn’t do anything with them. Especially when they couldn’t, it seemed.”
“What did they use them for?”
“Other people, sometimes. I got that a lot with fertility idols—they weren’t for the buyer, but for the buyer’s spouse, significant other, even kids sometimes. Power icons would be given away to children a lot, the old guard convinced that Junior couldn’t keep pace without some trinket or totem. Sometimes I got the feeling my clients gathered artifacts just to keep their enemies from having them.”
“Like the Magician.”
I smiled wearily, finally beginning to relax. I no longer felt like I was a simultaneous candidate for traction and a blood transfusion. Instead, I felt loose, easy. I watched Nigel seem to pick up on the suddenly more relaxed atmosphere of the afternoon, and he was flowing more as well, his arms moving with the elegance of a dancer, but his cuts and parries sure. His thrusts true. He was blocking Chichiro’s swords with ease.
“Like the Magician, yeah,” I finally said. “But he at least could wield the power of the artifacts he…” I blinked, then realized several things at once.
First, I was entirely pain-free for the first time since Armaeus had left me, the slab down to the brick down to the block down to the cube down to the square down to the line now so small that my wounds were a minor discomfort. The gashes had disappeared again too, though the faint impression of their passage hovered over my skin like a memory, and the sheets remained a deceptively soft pink.
But more importantly than that, I realized I was tapping the fingers of my left hand in a smooth, rhythmic dance as I watched Nigel thrust and parry, and he was moving in accordance to how I twitched those fingers. If I cut or spun or arced—he did. And he did so with a fluidity that was breathtaking, the orders between my mind and his so connected that he might not even have realized what he was doing. I don’t know that I would have, had I not seen Chichiro guide the swords this way.
“What’s happening?” I whispered.
“What’s the third thing you’ve now realized, separate of your private self, separate of Nigel, with the focus that pain has allowed you and the acceptance of your power as the responsibility it is?”
I didn’t look at her, instead keeping my eyes on Nigel. But knew what she was asking me. “That the Magician has been hoarding the artifacts I’ve found for him, so that only he and the Council can use them. Hoarding them is the best-case scenario. Destroying them is another, and not altogether unlikely, given his history.”
“Saving the best of magic for those who have been sanctified?” Chichiro prompted, and I grimaced.
“Yes.”
“And by bringing you on when he did…”
“He kept me from taking commissions from other mortals, Connected or non-Connected alike. So the artifacts no longer went to even the limited pool of the superrich, they went almost exclusively to the Council. Not all the artifacts,” I corrected, but Chichiro was right there, her words prodding me down this path I didn’t want to travel.
“Not all the artifacts, no,” she agreed. “But the biggest and the best ones. The most powerful ones.”
“The most powerful,” I conceded, then another thought struck me. “I don’t know that the people I gave the artifacts to kept them, of course. They could have ended up in the Magician’s hands as well. Or other Connecteds that I don’t know—not tied to the House system, not tied to the arcane black market. Most of them I never heard of again, not even as resales.”
“You may not have known how to track them then,” Chichiro said reasonably. “You do now, though. Your sight allows you to find anything you have found once before.”
“I…” I blew out a breath. I hadn’t realized that. Could she be right? “A lot of those deals were brokered through Father Jerome, and I’d asked him about the provenance of many of the pieces. He would know where they might have gone.” My mind skittered down another track. “SANCTUS had a lot of artifacts as well, hidden away. They destroyed their fair share too.”
“So much fear,” Chichiro murmured. “Yet a curiously similar reaction to that fear, by groups who should know better.”
“Destruction trumps preservation,” I said. I thought about the bag I’d hauled out of the Arcanum Library, the bag that was now locked in Chichiro’s safe. “You know what I brought here?”
“The wands of life and darkness,” she said. “Nigel told me, when you were recovering.”
I shook my head. Of course they hadn’t gone digging into my bag. If it were me, I’d have gone through it first thing. “Not only that. There’s another scroll case too, a case that was laid out by the librarian of the Arcanum Library for me to remove.”
“The librarian.” Her brows lifted. “You saw her?”
“Most of her, yeah. She’s…kind of a lot to take in.”
“And what is this case that she left for you?”
“Another scroll case, like the amber and jade ones, but this one is worked in pure gold. It’s got latches I can’t open—probably because I can’t read the script that goes down it—three different types of writing, though Death was with me, and she couldn’t see the writing herself, or even feel the indentations of the script, which was weird. I’ve got no clue how old it is, and no clue what it’s saying.”
Chichiro pursed her lips. “You’re wrong, you know. You do have the ability to decipher languages, the same way you have the ability to wield a swordsman’s arm. It’s all in the movement of energy, the flow between the author and the reader, the speaker and the listener. All words are first formed by intent, and intent is an energy signature that can be interpreted.”
“Really.” My mood improved dramatically. “Then I can read the scroll inside that third case too, and the cylinders, presumably, though Death already gave me the lowdown on those.”
“I’m sure she did. And now you’ll know if her translation is accurate, and if not, perhaps why not,” Chichiro said, nodding. “You cannot afford to walk in darkness anymore, Sara, waiting for others to shine their light. You must rely upon your own illumination.”
“Right.” I eased forward, finally feeling more or less myself again. “We should look at that third case, then. There’s Kanji down one side, something like Sanskrit down another, and some stylized cuneiform down a third. The case itself is beautiful. It’s got three rings of emeralds at its center, and one end is capped by a phoenix, and—”
“Ow!”
There was a clatter of swords, and I jerked my attention back to the courtyard, where Nigel had leapt out of the circle. He’d yanked off his mask, and was staring in surprise. Around him, three dozen swords lay on the ground, inert.
I swung my gaze back to the sensei. “Uh…is that a bad thing?”
“You cannot possibly have the scroll of enlightenment,” Chichiro whispered, frozen in place. “It is to be read only at the end of the world, past the gates of Shambhala.”
Chapter Fourteen
A half hour later, Nigel, Chichiro, and I were seated at Chichiro’s dining table, the three of us squaring off in a triangle around a circle. The sheer geometry of our positions made my head hurt.
Nigel was freshly showered and only slightly the worse for wear after his swordplay lesson. He had no idea that I’d manipulated him for part of that lesson, and I had no intention of telling him. That kind of effort fell into the “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” category, and while I wasn’t going to apologize for my unwitting hand in his exercise, I also wasn’t going to do it again unless literally the end of the world was hanging in the balance.
I grimaced as I eyed the golden scroll c
ase, the inscriptions of which both he and Chichiro could physically see, at a minimum. Maybe I needed to be a little more specific about the whole end-of-the-world requirement.
Nigel also scowled down at the three scroll cases I’d pulled out of the bag from the Arcanum Library, his attention focused on the amber and jade artifacts.
“You better start at the beginning with these,” Nigel said, finally breaking the silence. “Because I still don’t know what we’re looking at here.”
I sighed, not sure how I was going to take up the tale when I knew so little. To my surprise, however, Chichiro spoke.
“It has been a long-held belief that humankind enjoyed several iterations of civilization, in times that predate history. The tales of locations such as Lemuria, off our own shores, and of course Atlantis, as well as historical renderings of flying machines and gods coming down from the sky.”
Nigel nodded. “You mean like Ancient Aliens. The guy with the hair.”
Chichiro ignored him. “In the pursuit of arcane artifacts that you both believed came from Greece as far back as 800 BCE, China as far back as 2000 BCE, Egypt as far as 3500 BCE, there have been times you’ve come across items that perhaps—did not fit precisely within the time period they should, even with today’s advanced methods of determining their age and provenance.”
She was looking at both of us, but I shrugged. “You mean bowls and pottery that Armaeus thought hailed from Atlantis. Sure. But it wasn’t any big secret. Armaeus wanted anything that might have maybe possibly come from there, even if it was a fake. Which most of it was.”
“But there are other civilizations that have captured the interest of collectors too,” Chichiro said.
“Well, I guess,” I said. “Seriously, though, most people didn’t care that much about finding stuff that old. Those items weren’t nearly as pretty as the newer artifacts, for one. Egypt and Greece were usually the sweet spot.”
Beside me, Nigel shifted. “My…experience was somewhat different,” he said.
I looked at him in surprise, but he was watching Chichiro. “You’re talking about the Shambhala artifacts.”
There was that word again. Chichiro nodded, and I curled my lip. “I guess I can’t make fun of you for that, since I was sent to find trinkets from Atlantis, but really? Shambhala? It’s a metaphysical state, not a place.”
Nigel slid me a glance. “Oh, like Atlantis can be found on Google Maps.”
“No, I mean seriously,” I protested. “I am not up on my Buddhism, but didn’t the Dalai Lama come out and explain that Shambhala was considered a state of enlightenment, that all may try to seek it, but no one ever can, and no one…” My words petered out as Nigel and Chichiro watched me with something like amusement in their faces. I struggled not to pout. “No one ever sent me on a hunt for Shambhala artifacts, is all. And I’m way better at finding that kind of thing than you are.”
“My last commissioned search was before you hit the market, to be fair,” Nigel said, still looking far too smug. “My client was Russian, convinced that Shambhala was located in Southern Siberia, not the Himalayas. That got me to Lake Baikal—well before you,” he said as I stiffened, “and on a hunt that was nowhere near as successful. But he was searching for the gateway to the fabled land. Besides that, I had a string of other requests, from Siberia through Mongolia and China and finally Tibet. All looking for the same thing—gateways to the promised land, artifacts from Shangri-La, meditations for enlightenment inscribed on anything from scrolls to chalices to cooking tools.”
“And did you find anything?”
Again, he hesitated. Then surprised me.
“I did,” he said. Chichiro didn’t look surprised, but I could only stare.
“You found legit Shambhala artifacts. I don’t believe you.”
“You don’t have to believe me. All I know is I found silks that had been preserved for what had to be centuries, anyway, folded up in pouches in the mountains of Mongolia. They were old, they were powerful, they were completely pristine though they should have been little more than dust at that point, and they freaked out my entire search party. I left early before they could kill me, and delivered the pouch to the client.”
“Who was?”
“Not Mongolian,” Nigel said. “Tall, thin, dark hair, pale features. I’d never seen him before. He told me I’d never see him again. He was right. I honestly never thought of him after that until this conversation.” He rubbed his chin. “But he was happy for the tapestries or whatever they were. After a while, I stopped getting requests. You know how the market is.”
“Cyclical.” I nodded. “First Greece, then Egypt, then Sumer, then Maya, then back to Greece. But Shambhala… That’s always been kind of a joke.”
“It was a joke that paid three mil, so I was more than happy to go along.”
“Three million!” Okay, now I really was put out. “How is it I didn’t know of a score that big and you got it?” I didn’t even bother trying to hide my disgust. Nigel was no slouch as an artifact finder, but he wasn’t…
I froze.
“What?” Nigel demanded.
I turned to look at Chichiro, who was eyeing me with the long-suffering expression of a kindergarten teacher.
“This guy hired the best non-Connected artifact hunter in the world to track down these artifacts. In Mongolia. The client wasn’t an arcane black market player. And he wasn’t the head of a House of Magic. He was just a dude.”
“Well, a rich dude,” Nigel put in.
“That you’ve never seen before or since.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it. Shrugged. “I’ve been busy.”
“Yeah, me too.” I grimaced. “The Council never had a clue about this artifact, did they? Nigel wouldn’t have been on the Council’s radar before they linked him with me in Rio. They likely only heard of it after it was already delivered, out of commission.”
Nigel’s brows went up, and Chichiro inclined her head. “Precisely. And presuming that there are others out there like this client…”
“It’s no wonder that Armaeus stepped up his own search for arcane artifacts, in a hurry. Which is why he hired me.” I returned my gaze to the artifacts on the table. “So, okay, where does that take us?”
Chichiro pointed to the golden scroll case. “These languages are not Japanese and Sanskrit, though the third is a form of cuneiform. They are Lemurian and Shambhali. And the third is Atlantean.”
“A Rosetta stone,” Nigel murmured, leaning forward. “And inside the jade and amber cases are stone rods with cuneiform script on them. Maybe also in Atlantean.”
I shifted. “Cuneiform, yes. But what flavor, I have no idea—though it kind of looks like that. I don’t know for sure, though. I could show—”
“No!” they both said in unison, and I dropped my hand. Their reaction to the cylinder cases was less than reassuring. I thought about the imagery I’d seen in the green fires of the Arcanum Library, and grimaced. Someone was going to have to wield those sticks of dynamite, and I really didn’t want it to be me.
Chichiro finally spoke. “Before you worked exclusively with the Magician of the Arcana Council, Madame Wilde, you found artifacts for other clients too.”
I blinked at the unexpected redirection. “We’ve covered that. Shouldn’t we start with the whole end-of-the-world, see-you-in-Shambhala portion of the conversation?”
She didn’t respond, merely waited, and I sighed. “Sure. I probably was one of the best in the business by the time the Magician found me.”
Nigel snorted at that. “I wouldn’t twist your shoulder patting yourself on the back. There were plenty of other finders out there. You just didn’t pay any attention to them.”
Chichiro turned to him. “You also found artifacts and sold them to the highest bidder.”
“Sometimes,” he agreed. “Other times, there was no bidding war.”
“That’s only because you weren’t doing it right,” I put in.
Nigel
ignored me, responding instead to Chichiro. “And to your point, many—most of my clients weren’t Connected. And they were every bit as eager as the ones who were. They might not have been able to use the artifacts I got for them, but they wanted to catalogue and store them, and know that they had them when no one else did.” He shot me a look. “Not unlike the Magician, now that I think about it.”
“Not at all,” I agreed.
“What would Armaeus do with these artifacts?” Chichiro asked quietly. She pointed to the two smaller scroll cases, the amber and jade, ignoring the gold case for the moment.
I glanced at them, imagined Armaeus getting his bronzed Egyptian hands on them. “He’d study them, no question. If that is Atlantean cuneiform on the sticks inside, he’d translate what was said, test the stones, try out the spells if there were spells to be tried out. And then, yeah, he’d store them away, if not…” I frowned.
“If not, what?”
“If not outright destroy them. If he thought they were too dangerous for anyone outside the Council, information mortals couldn’t manage, power they couldn’t assimilate easily, he’d get rid of them.” I gave Nigel a grim smile. “Maybe your non-Connected clients were the better way to go.”
He was staring at the cases as well. “Maybe. But I also had my share of nut jobs. If these things are being billed as the Wands of Life and Darkness, or the Right and Left Hands of Doom, whatever, I can give you a list of men and women as long as my arm who don’t have a Connected cell in their body, but they’d be lining up to take a look, then moving heaven and earth to buy them.”
“For what purpose?” Chichiro’s line of questioning was beginning to grate, but Nigel didn’t seem to mind it.
“To block anyone else from having it, primarily. To accrue whatever power they presented to themselves. To catalogue and store, much like the Magician.” He reached out for the cases, stopping well short of them, his hand hovering over the table. “They wouldn’t destroy them, though. Not the people who hired me. SANCTUS and some of the other governments out there, especially the fringe guys? Maybe. For religious purposes, definitely. They’d believe less that these items held innate power on their own and more that their enemies might be falsely inspired to greater frenzy. They wouldn’t take that risk. But like I say, those weren’t the people hiring us—hiring either one of us.”
