Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1)

by Aaron Buchanan

  The driver let us out in the half-circle driveway. In the dark, I could make out flowers that were likely colorful by day. It was surprising to see, since the weather in the London did not allow for such vibrant foliage this time of year. Shred held his mandolin and slung it by the strap over his shoulder and fastened it. It only occurred to me in that instant that he was probably excited to meet them—they were written to be outstanding musicians in their own stories. I think he had visions of an impromptu jam session with them. I hoped he would be able, but sincerely believed that it would not be possible. Before he could knock, I opened my messenger bag and put my hand squarely around the handle of the tranquilizer gun.

  Shred rapped upon the door, clutching the neck of his mandolin with his free hand.

  I held the dart gun pointed forward, covered by the flap of my bag.

  No answer. “You got this, or do I?”

  He turned the knob and found it secured. In answer, he started strumming. Mandolin wasn’t something my years were used to hearing. Though I was quite familiar with Vivaldi, what came out sounded more like a child’s toy version of an AC/DC song. He was done almost as soon as I found the rhythm to the tune. He opened the door, but did not step inside. While I could have begun my own investigation, I let Shred play more. If it were harmful, he would let me know. Furthermore, I believed that working his magic served as catharsis for him.

  Shred put his fingers in his ears as if to order me to do the same. I took my hand off the gun, out of the flap of my bag and did as ordered. I began humming Beatles tunes to myself to block as much extraneous sound as I could. After a few moments, Shred stepped inside the door, plucking away. His movements were vigorous and I was wildly curious about the notes hitting the air. I was already on We Talked Until Two-part of Norwegian Wood when I saw the silhouette of Shred’s playing hand fall to his side. I put a Post-It into my palm and lit it with my words. The manor was lit only by moonlight and the light radiating from my hand. The house was spacious and did not have the smell I would have thought from a dwelling currently inhabited. Though Solemn Ages had its own smell, when it came to deities at large, I wasn’t sure what I should expect.

  I checked the double glass doors that led to a vast garden at the back of the house. In the light of the full moon, I could make out that the garden was very well tended. The sisters, some of them at least, were able to care for the garden, though, it wasn’t out-of-the-question they hired someone to do it for them. Shed picked at his mandolin absentmindedly. His notes reverberated throughout the empty house and only served to make the overall ambience that much more eerie. I looked to a winding set of marble stairs that lay in front of the door we had entered and pointed my lighted palm up the stairs.

  “Shred,” I whispered. When he turned to me, I gestured up so he would follow me. If we could get a fix on some kind of activity, we could perform divination to extract information. As it was, the house was too big to randomly perform incantations and hope for a favorable outcome. “If someone here meant to harm us, that person would have revealed themselves by now. And I’m guessing your juju would have knocked them out.”

  Shred waved a hand in acknowledgement, opening one door, seeing nothing tell-tale, then closing the door.

  I did the same from the opposite end of the corridor-like hallway.

  And then I heard it.

  A cough? I could have sworn I just head a cough or a sneeze. I reopened the door I had just closed, making every effort to make the action as silent as possible. I waved vigorously at Shred, trying to get his attention. Finally, he noticed me and I beckoned him over as I stepped through the doorway. There were no more noises, no more indications of what I had just heard, but I had no doubts about it. In the center of the room was a four-poster bed. Along the walls were enough knick-knacks to make up a small reliquary. Near the bureau in the corner nearest the door was an enormous globe that sat on four legs, no less than four-feet in diameter. I’ve seen these things before, but only as liquor cabinets. Though, looking at it again, even they were not that large. Something told me there would be no trove of booze within that globe. Rather this was an instrument used for some purpose long-forgotten by most of the world. I stepped closer to examine, carefully rotating the world. It moved with little effort. My lit hand revealed landmasses as they would have looked sometime in the 17th century. The place names were in Latin and the seas were decorated meticulously with various kinds of non-existent sea monsters. Though, maybe they were denizens of The SUB.

  Lifting my eyes from the globe, I saw that in the opposite corner of the room, a large telescope of brass or copper was pointed out the window and toward the skies.

  And then I heard it again: a hoarse, constricted cough from somewhere in the room. I stepped out of my corner and toward the bed. Under the bed? Surely not…

  I shined my hand and saw from my vantage that there was another doorway within the bedroom. There, crouching in the moonlight, an aged woman wearing only a nightgown stared out the window. Unsure what to do, I spoke.

  “Urania?” I asked softly; as gently as I was able. The telescope and the intricacy of the globe offered the hints that the figure in front of me was the ancient Greek Muse associated with astronomy. I did not want to startle her, so I took only a couple of slow, deliberate steps toward her. Her eyes were opened wide, black as the night sky, despite the light emanating from my hand. Her hair was braided behind her head, but those braids were coming loose in a tangled mess.

  Shred came in, but I gestured for him to stop where he was. Seeing I was in no danger, he stepped back and leaned against the wall. He began to play a song. I found myself instantly mollified. We had no way to tell how his musimancy would work on the divine, but Urania seemed to fall into the same ghostly trance I found myself trying not to embrace. Thankfully, Shred stopped and I found my wits snapping back into place.

  “Urania, where are your sisters? Where is Calliope?” I reached out a hand, much in the same way you would offer a hand to comfort a small, lost child.

  “Have you seen them?” her voice croaked. “I have been looking for them, but night ell and I cannot seem to find them through the sea of stars.” He dark eyes fell upon my hand, still outstretched and dismissed it, looking back through the nearest windowpane to the starlit night.

  “Urania, Victoria—Nike—sent us here to check on you. You are in grave danger.” I could see that while Urania was beyond typical human reaction, I could see her shivering in the shadows. I looked around and saw a housecoat hanging on a hook covering a closed closet door. After grabbing it, Urania allowed me to help her into it, though she still gave know acknowledgement that she had heard my warning.

  “I look into the sky. I see the seven sisters, but I do not see my own. Do you know where they have gone?” she rasped.

  I felt a lump in throat where fear and sadness welled. “No, but I fear they are in terrible danger. Can you help me find them?” I pleaded with her. The pieces started to fall into place, divination unnecessary. Urania spent her evenings stargazing. If I were to look, I might even find that she had some place in the garden where she did so regularly. When von Ranke and his zealots came for them, they would not have known to look for her on the grounds. And there were likely no signs of struggle, because, when it came to it, these goddesses were elderly. If the rest o the Muses were more like Urania than Calliope or Clio, then the rEvolvers could have done just about anything to them. At one point in time, we looked to the gods to take care of us. Now, they could not even take care of themselves. The heartbreak I felt in my through finally manifested as tears.

  “Urania—my friend, Shred, the one who played the music you just heard—Victoria sent us here to help you. We need to get you away from here. Is that okay? We need to try and find your sisters, but we can’t do it without your help.”

  Urania took my arm and allowed me to walk her back to her bed. She sat upon it, keeping her black eyes upon me as I looked for some clothes for her to wear. Shred gr
aciously played something soothing that may or may not have been magical. Though I had grown up hearing Shred play, I was forming an opinion that nearly all music had some base-level magic.

  Before Shred could begin another song, I helped Urania into a dress and house shoes. A brief search of her bureau and I found another gown and some underwear. I removed one of her pillows from her pillowcase and placed her clothes inside of it. I had profound respect or Calliope if this is what she did day-to-day. The sisters were probably in varying degrees of mental and physical health, but I had to imagine Urania was somewhere in the middle of dementia and lucidity. It made me wonder why Clio stayed to work at the museum but it was likely because it was her only chance at sanity. I doubt her sisters begrudged her that. If they were capable of grudging or begrudging her anything, for that matter.

  “Before we go, would you show me Calliope’s room?” I pleaded with her.

  “Her room is next to the library,” she replied, sounding oddly coherent.

  Shred grabbed my shoulder then pointed toward a room in the center of the hallway, the first room Shred opened. When I came to it, the door was slightly ajar from Shred’s investigation. The next door I came to was also slightly ajar, but when I entered, I saw that it was easily the messiest of all the rooms I had seen. Though thinking it made me feel presumptuous, I thought that Calliope would have made everyone else her priority, and neglected her own needs. Her devotion touched me deeply.

  “Urania, will you stay here with Shred? Victoria wants me to find your sisters,” I told her.

  I took Bill’s Quill from my bag along with my new inkwell and ink I had purchased earlier in the day. I turned on the light and set to work. I set my papers on the floor and wrote as quickly as I could, growing into a sublimely furious pace. With the spellcraft performed, I waited for my words to move upon the pages. This was one of the last few spells my dad had taught me: I used hair from Calliope’s hair brush and used it along with a crude map of Britain I had drawn out on several of my pages—all while being infused with my magic. Calliope’s hairs coiled and moved across the south part of England, across the blank area where the English Channel and into the blank area that would be either Paris or somewhere nearby. I folded the papers and placed them in my bag along with Calliope’s hairbrush. I did not know if Calliope and her sisters were alive, but I knew where they and Dalton were headed. I would have to move quickly.

  “Change of plans, Shred—they’re almost to Paris. I’m taking Calliope’s brush with me. I’m going to use it to track her. Will you stay with her, Shred? I don’t think we can leave her alone.”

  At first, Shred shook his head no and he even mumbled, though it apparently caused him some discomfort to do so.

  “I don’t know what else to do! I’ll call Joy and Gavin and have them get their asses back to London stat! Don’t worry about me,” I demanded.

  Shred made a puttering sound through his pursed lips. He pushed his lips together and nodded reluctantly.

  Chapter 17

  “We have no idea what we’re looking at, really.” Joy’s voice came through with intermittent static.

  “Hopefully what he wrote down will make some sense to you. We have long since left my wheelhouse.” Gavin’s voice was heard in the background, close enough that he must have been leaning into Joy’s phone.

  I told them of finding Urania and leaving her with Shred. Joy was especially grieved to not be including Shred in the next phase of…whatever it was we were doing.

  Gavin did not manage much more than humph. I was exceedingly thankful for Gavin, and believed that he was truly an exceptional and good individual. Though, I doubted we would be friends in any normal context. I was constantly waging war against my own indifference and felt weighed down by his. Even my father struggled with his indifference and aloofness. He did not demonstrate it with me often, but when I spoke of my mother, anything to do with my family, it was like casting an aloofness spell that would last for weeks. He never said that was the reason why my mother left, but I had no answers otherwise. It was what I chose to believe, whether true or not.

  “Okay. I’m about to check in with Victoria. Stand by for instructions.” I pushed the end button before I heard a response from either of them.

  I called Victoria at some point in the middle of last night. Graciously, she answered. I filled her in on what we found and found myself relieved that Shred would be staying with her along with Urania. She also told me she would book three tickets for us on the Eurostar train to Paris. She texted in the early hours of the morning to also tell me she booked us a driver named Henri for once we arrived in Paris.

  A few hours after departing Troru, I was roused from a fitful slumber by one of the train’s conductors. King’s Cross was the end of the line. It was now nearly noon, and the Eurostar was set to leave in a few hours from St. Pancras across the street. I texted instructions to Joy and Gavin and was set to meet up with them soon, but with a few hours to kill, I decided to take a cab to the British Museum. It was a place I had, since I was a small child learning about the Elgin Marbles, wanted to visit. Though I wasn’t sure if I would be able to find anything, I figured I might sneak around and try to find something out about Clio. After exchanging texts with Victoria, I found out that Clio did not have an alias, only a last name: Piridis. I was also informed she worked in Greco-Roman artifacts.

  Armed with nothing more than a map of the museum, satisfaction after finally taking in the Marbles (and the Rosetta Stone), my satchel, and a whole lot of sass, I was able to lift a security badge from a guard. I used a Post-It in the palm, with the words to camouflage myself, to work my way past several work areas and storage rooms. I found a room full of Greek amphorae and hoped I was coming to the right neck of the woods. None of the offices were labeled with name plates, and either thankfully or unfortunately, no one was around to ask. I folded my first Post-It and lit my hand with a new one, shining the light into empty offices. The fact that it was the middle of the day and these offices were empty was a clue. There were three small offices, and while all three appeared to be used, only one of them showed sign of recent use: a coffee cup here, Post-Its around the monitor of the computer. I spell-opened the door and began searching in earnest for anything that would confirm it belonged to Dr. Clio Piridis. I heard movement outside of the office and folded my lit Post-It. Someone was coming.

  Someone with a set of keys was trying to open the door. I unfolded my camouflaging Post-It and crawled under the desk, just in case.

  “No, Inspector, I have not seen Dr. Piridis in nearly three days. I just came in from Italy the morning they’re saying she vanished.” There were two men, apparently. I needed to chance a look, but thought it better to wait.

  “According to the statement you made to police yesterday, you did, in fact, see Dr. Piridis leaving the coin shop across the street, and that you saw a...” the man, whose voice was much deeper, audibly flipped through notes, “muscular bald man dressed in black trousers and a brown plaid waistcoat intent on following after her. Why would you not have told the police before we came asking about her?”

  “I didn’t really think much anything of it, honestly.” The museum employee was tense, nervous by the sound of him.

  “But this is her office?” the deep voice probed.

  “It is indeed, sir. I don’t feel comfortable rooting around in here. It is an invasion of privacy,” the museum employee protested feebly.

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” the bass boomed in what decidedly was not a local accent. Unfortunately, I was not familiar with the intricacies of the Anglo-tongue as it stretched north, south, east, and west across this island. Something about it told me he was not native to London. It suddenly occurred to me: his voice was a bass version of John Lennon’s. That put him at Liverpool and its environs. There was something else in his voice, though, that struck me as…off. I quietly took out my dart-gun and held it tightly at my breast.

  The Liverpudlian, I believed, beg
an shifting things on the desk, “Anything here that might indicate what she working on? I’ve been to her flat, it doesn’t have what I’m looking for.” That was all I needed. I shot from under the desk, swiveling my body to take the shot at the inspector. I felt the Post-It note’s adhesive give and fall out of my hand. I also could not make a clear shot, as the museum employee was standing between me and the inspector.

  Thankfully, the surprise of a young woman flying from under a desk gave me the extra two seconds I needed. I landed hard against a filing cabinet, but luckily did not fall. I lowered myself to my knees just as the inspector reached inside his jacket. I took my shot and he slumped to the ground asleep.

  “Dr..?” I looked at him, eyebrow raised, prompting him for his name.

  “Jim. Valentine,” he returned, putting his hands up in the air. Valentine was nearly as small as I, though he could not have been more than five or ten years older. His glasses looked more esthetic than practical; his close-cropped hair seemed to accentuate a receding hairline giving him the appearance of someone several years older.

  “Don’t worry, it’s just a tranquilizer gun,” I assured him. “I’m a friend of Dr. Piridis. Well, more like a friend of a friend of Dr. Piridis.” I checked that the dart was firmly lodged into the thigh of the inspector and that his fall hadn’t knocked it loose. It had just a little, so I jammed it in as hard as I could. The inspector grunted. So did Valentine. Lithely, I stepped over the bulk of the man on the ground and walked as casually as I could to Clio’s desk and sat down. I took a piece of stationery from the desk, and began divining. “Please, check his credentials. He’ll stay asleep as long as the dart is in his skin.”