The Glass Gargoyle (The Lost Ancients Book 1)

by Marie Andreas

  My stomach rumbled again and I picked up my pace. Covey’s home wasn’t far from here, but if I didn’t get food soon I’d be snacking on the faeries.

  Covey wasn’t an early riser, this time of year her people didn’t become really active until mid-day. But she had food in her kitchen, and enough spells in the place to keep it all fresh.

  I could get breakfast off Covey, then she’d make sense of the faeries’ babbling. Perfect.

  Reality, as usual, let me down.

  “You want me to do what? And just where have you been? I’ve been trying to find you for days.” Covey’s normally sleek and impeccably neat black hair looked like she’d been stuck in the middle of a wizards’ brawl. A bad wizards’ brawl. I didn’t even know you could get hair to do that. She squinted at me through a crack in her inner eyelid. She hadn’t even bothered to draw both eyelids up. Didn’t know she could do that either.

  “I was hoping you could make us some breakfast while the faeries tell you about what we found.” I held up Crusty who chirped at Covey. Crusty was her favorite for reasons I’d never been able to understand. “It will be worth it, I promise. Another mystery.”

  Covey smiled at Crusty, actually letting both eyelids drift completely open. But she still leaned against the doorframe. “Come in, but you’re making breakfast. Do we need a spell canister?”

  I was just stepping past her when her question hit me. Spell canisters were extremely pricey items. And while Covey did live higher up the food chain than me, she wasn’t at that level. The canister could hold all of the information the faeries could feed it. No long taking of notes, well, until Covey broke down and opened the canister anyway. Eventually she’d need to transfer the information out of the canister and into written form. But it could be stored indefinitely.

  She quickly shut the door behind me, prodding us toward her small kitchen. “I borrowed it from the university, no you never mind why.”

  I almost laughed at her slipping into pidgin. Her native land spoke common, but with an odd dialect. She really wasn’t awake if she’d slipped into that. I decided best not to comment. Never a good idea to poke fun of friends you needed favors from.

  “If you have it, it’d be a good idea to use it. I’m not sure how long the girls can hold their information.” I left the faeries in the entrance to the kitchen and stumbled around for something to make. I rarely cooked, but I was so hungry at this point anything sounded good. And if Covey couldn’t eat it that was her fault for being foolish enough to suggest I cook.

  While I fussed with some giant grillion eggs, I briefly told Covey what had been happening the last two days and what I’d found in the jungle. I carefully avoided mentioning what happened with Alric and the whisky. In my mind that was far too messed up of an incident to discuss, even with my best friend. Besides, it had nothing to do with the current situation. I also avoided Marcos as a subject.

  She clearly wanted to ask me questions, but needed to supervise the faeries with the spell canister. They finished about the same time I came out with two plates of eggs and a bowl of goat’s milk for the faeries.

  Covey was still listening to the last words echo into the canister when I put the plate down. She had her fork halfway to her mouth when she froze. “These eggs are gray.”

  I had just shoveled a huge forkful into my mouth, I swallowed quickly. “Sometimes they just turn out that way.”

  “No, eggs shouldn’t be gray.” She peered at me as I blissfully crammed more into my mouth, then shook her head and slid her plate next to me. “I don’t even want to know what you did to make them gray. If you promise never to tell me, I’ll give you mine.”

  I nodded but kept eating.

  “We have to tell the guardsmen.” She leaned back with a cup of tea that I’d managed not to turn gray.

  I knew she’d say that. One problem with her over Harlan, she had more ethics.

  “Maybe they’ll find it on their own?” Having finished the last of my eggs, I switched to her untouched plate. “I don’t really want to be associated with another dead body, thank you.”

  She ran her fingers through her hair, but it barely moved. “I hadn’t thought of that. But surely you wouldn’t be held responsible. That giant was killed at least a year ago.”

  “Right, he was killed suspiciously while working for the patron who hired me, after the giant’s disappearance.” I let some tea slide down to compact the eggs, then returned to shoveling.

  “But…maybe you’re right.” She leaned back and sipped her tea in thought until I prompted her. I’d sort of hoped she’d argue a bit more. Her giving in meant I was probably right.

  I shoved the near empty second plate away. “So what do we know?”

  Covey got up and poured more tea for both of us, but I wasn’t sure if she was doing it to avoid looking at me, or because she needed more tea.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I was looking for you because I’d heard about the murder. And I hadn’t been able to tell anything about the guy who stole the scroll.”

  I smacked my head. I’d forgotten about the scroll. Alric may have even had it in that cave room he was hiding in.

  “What? Did you find it?”

  I winced. “No, I forgot about it. But I had reason with all that went on. I just realized that it could have been in the room Alric locked me in last night.”

  The minute the words were out of my mouth I realized I’d screwed up. My brain seemed to be fading fast, probably a combination of the last few days and the whisky.

  “Locked you up? You never said anything about locking you up.”

  I dropped my face into my hands. No one to blame but myself. The only way to lie to Covey was by omission. If she knew something was up, all bets were off.

  “No I didn’t,” I said. I tried to think of a cover story, but focusing wasn’t easy right now. “Fine. When he sort of rescued me, I was drowning and freezing, so against my request, he forced some whisky down me.”

  “You can’t drink whisky—”

  “I know. You know. And now, Alric knows. The hard way.”

  “What did you do to him?” The look on her face spoke volumes of her opinion of me when I was drinking whisky. And they weren’t nice books.

  “I don’t remember it well, but I got a bit aggressive. Sexually aggressive. I’m stronger than I thought, and he freaked out. Locked me up in the room and spent the night outside of it.”

  Covey looked at me for a few moments, then burst out laughing. Not a sympathetic laugh, but a big, raucous, in-your-face laugh.

  She finally stopped when someone pounded on her door.

  “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”

  I stewed and finished my tea. Nice friends I had: one sends a gigolo to rescue me, the other laughs at my non-self-inflicted drunken exploits.

  Covey came back a moment later, her laughter replaced by a curious scowl.

  “Didn’t you say the ruins were closed, and looked like they would be for a while?”

  “Yes, they had a fence, and the main dig site was covered in non-regulation equipment, why?”

  Covey jerked her thumb back at the door. “Harlan sent a runner looking for you. The ruins are open, and they’re allowing diggers back in starting tomorrow.”

  Chapter 11

  For a moment I sat there and took up space. They’d had some heavy-duty equipment back behind that fence. Things that would never be on a legitimate dig because of the damage they would do to artifacts.

  And yet they’d moved it all out. Maybe I’d been more of a threat to them than I thought.

  Or Marcos was back in town screaming about dead bodies in the ruins and made them run to get everything out. Which meant I was pretty sure the body would be gone as well.

  “Damn.”

  Covey cocked her head. “I thought you’d be happy?”

  “Part of me is, the part that forgets I don’t have a patron,” I said as fatigue and the whisky of the night before caught up and slammed into
me. “The smarter half just realized the evidence is gone.”

  “The evidence that pointed to you, that is.”

  “There is that. But it also might have pointed to whoever is behind this.” It was more than just my usual need to know, I cared about my fellow diggers and my patrons. That some of both groups may have been murdered made me want to find out by who. I started to get up, but my legs had gone on strike and dropped me back into my chair. “I don’t think I can make it back home. Do you think I could crash here?”

  Covey looked at me carefully, judging my ability to stand against her desire to have a day off to herself. Compassion won. That, or I looked even worse than I felt. I had to admit the aftereffects of that whisky were hitting me hard.

  “Go use the spare room. It’s small, but you’ll fit. You won’t mind if I shut you in there and ignore you though, right?” Her eyes were watching me, but I could tell her mind was on the jar the faeries had just dumped all of their information into. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that they probably also gave her more information than she could possibly want about the mating habits of any animal, person, or plant they’d come across lately. Let her find that surprise for herself.

  “Thanks.” I forced my legs into a locked position and took a deep breath. Must not have improved my appearance any.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Covey came to my side and took my arm. Real concern filled her eyes, nudging out her overwhelming search for knowledge.

  “Sure.” I dipped a little bit, but I made it to her spare room moments before passing out.

  ***

  What felt like moments later a horrific rattling filled my head. Once I’d fought my eyes open, I realized it was only the door, and some wretched person knocking on it.

  “I’m alive.” That was as close as I was going to get to inviting someone in. It took a few minutes to figure out where in the hell I was, and inviting folks in when I wasn’t sure didn’t seem like a good idea.

  “I’ll take that as a good sign.” Harlan’s voice on the other side of the door was a surprise. He’d just sent that runner a few minutes ago.

  “Come in I’m not getting up yet.”

  Two heads peeked in at me, well, two full-sized ones and three bright, tiny, and maniacal ones. Crap, last thing I needed right now was a group visit. Especially if the faeries were part of the group.

  “What now?” I glared equally at Covey and Harlan, I didn’t have the energy to be wasting a good glare on the faeries.

  “They’re reopening the dig.” Harlan rumbled forward, practically filling the room.

  “I know you just sent that information. That’s great, but I don’t have a patron, remember?”

  My two dearest friends in the world shared a look of concern. That alone made me sit up quickly. I ignored the painful sloshing of my brain smashing against the far side of my skull.

  “What? What’s going on?”

  “That’s one of the reasons I’m here, but I sent the runner hours ago. You’ve been dead to the world.” Harlan’s furred face closed in on itself. He wasn’t going to tell me happy news. Not by a long shot.

  “Crap.” I didn’t feel like I had been asleep at all let alone for hours. But judging by his face that was the least of my worries.

  “Now, it’s not like that,” he said in a vain attempt to cover up his body and facial cues that were screaming, ‘yes it is that and it’s going to make your life hell’.

  “Yes it is. Just tell me. Can’t be worse than the way things have been going lately.”

  Harlan mindlessly started purring, a last ditch attempt by him to instinctively keep things calm during a bad situation.

  “You have an offer of patronage. Cirocco has signed to be your patron.”

  The world started spinning as my entire career swan dived before my eyes.

  “But he’s never been a patron. He just steals what he wants.” I slammed my hands over my mouth as my eyes went wide. I shouldn’t say that out loud. Especially now. Who knew where Cirocco had magical spies. “But why me?” I removed my hands long enough to whine.

  “I am not sure of that. He sent a runner to the Shimmering Dewdrop looking for you. Karys took the message, then came to find me.” He waved a slightly tattered scroll at me. Through the red haze of my vision was Cirocco’s seal. Most likely the document had gotten damaged by Harlan on the way over. He looked even more upset than I felt.

  I took the scroll and slowly broke the seal and opened it. Yup, an official declaration that I now had the full patronage of Cirocco. Even on this official document the man didn’t list his first name. Maybe he didn’t have one, or maybe he did but had sold it. Wouldn’t surprise me.

  Of course, any digger could decline an offer of patronage. A cold laugh—not unlike a death rattle, I would imagine—worked its way up my gut at the idea of rejecting Cirocco. Not unless I wanted out of this life the fast and messy way.

  A note was pinned to the official paper, scribbled not by Cirocco, but one of his higher hench people. Cirocco understood this would be a shock and wanted to give me twenty-four hours to adjust myself to the honor bestowed upon me. Then he would like to have an audience to explain what he was looking for and where I would be digging.

  I quickly thought of the fastest routes out of town. How far could I get before they got me? I shook my head. Not far enough.

  “She’s thinking of running.” Covey’s thoughts brought me back to the paper crinkled in my hands. I quickly unclenched my fist. With my luck, Cirocco would want to see the decree he issued.

  “Was not.”

  “Was so.” Covey’s look reminded me that at times she knew me better than I did. Most of the time she was right. Like now.

  “Doesn’t matter. I couldn’t get far enough away before he caught me.” I turned to Harlan. “Promise me you’ll take care of the girls when I’m gone?”

  The faeries had been marching around the guest room— looking for things to steal most likely— but my words brought two of them to a halt. Crusty often forgot she understood our language and continued her hunting.

  “You go somewhere without us?” Garbage flitted up to the bed, a scowl on her tiny orange face. Leaf joined her a moment later.

  “No, girls. I’m not.” I said as I looked to Harlan for help.

  “She’s just being melodramatic, a failing she has sometimes.” Harlan held out his hand which had magically filled with sweets. All three faeries slammed into each other as they raced to grab the treats.

  Nice to know I could be so easily replaced.

  “I am not. Why would he want to be a patron now?” I ran my fingers through my hair trying to remove the knots. Unfortunately, the twigs and leaves from my run through the woods with Marcos seemed to want to take up permanent residence. My distant dryad ancestors would be proud.

  Marcos. That was a nice situation to take my mind off my recent disasters.

  “And just what the hell were you thinking sending a gigolo to come rescue me anyway?”

  I cringed as Covey’s face darkened. I forgot I hadn’t told her about that part. Ah well, the weasel was out of its cage so to speak.

  “He isn’t a gigolo, he’s a well-respected archeologist.” Harlan puffed himself up, but he wouldn’t meet my eye. “I sent him to rescue you, nothing more. Although I did ask that he come back once he was done, rescuing you that is. I was most distressed to find that he had vanished.”

  Had Marcos not made it out of the woods? Considering how fast he’d been running I doubted that. Besides, neither I nor the girls had seen any bodies or blood. That man could obviously take excellent care of himself.

  “I had already been rescued, sadly, by Alric. He saved me from a watery tomb.” I didn’t add anything about the drink, my reaction, nor that it was a good idea that Marcos saved me from my own issues with my mystery man. Harlan had too damn much information already.

  “A watery tomb?” Harlan asked as he settled precariously into one of Covey’s thin el
ven replica chairs. It was a contest as to who would pop first, Covey or the chair.

  In the spirit of saving my friend’s furniture, I forced myself out of the bed. Things weren’t too bad, just sort of felt like I’d been run through a grinding mill a few times.

  “I really should get back home. I need to rest before meeting with my new patron.” I held out my arm and wavered a little for sympathy. “I could use an escort?”

  The groan the poor chair let out as Harlan jumped to his feet was terrifying, but the chair was still intact.

  “Of course, my lady!”

  “Thanks for your room, Covey.”

  Covey didn’t say anything as she carefully checked the chair for damage. “You don’t have to go.” An automatic response, and one not meant at all. I’d have to wait until another day to find out what all she’d gathered from the faeries’ information about the giant’s body.

  “I’ll come by tomorrow sometime and we can finish our talk.” I didn’t want her to mention the body, nor the faeries’ information, in front of Harlan.

  The walk back to my house was uneventful up until the point that I mentioned the bronze box I’d been trapped in. His excitement would be more soothing if it had been out of concern for my potential demise and not for the artifact.

  “It had carvings? And life sized?” He was purring again. And drooling.

  “Much bigger than life-sized and I almost died in it.”

  The patting motion he made didn’t even touch me, just waved a few inches over my skin. “Yes, yes, so sorry, dear. Now were the designs smooth or hammered like done with small point tools?”

  Giving up on any sympathy from him, I told him what I could remember about the artifact. I still had to kick him out of my apartment, since he wanted to go over it one more time.

  “It’s getting late, Harlan,” I repeated for the fourth time interrupting yet another grilling session. “Won’t your wives be looking for you?”

  His whiskers pulled forward in a pursed manner. That stopped him.

  “Agreed, you should get some rest, you’ve had a trying day.” His eyes lit on Leaf. He knew she’d been with me. “Perhaps I should take the girls with me.”