by Perrin Briar
“You look at me and you think ‘moody’?”
Elian shrugged.
“It suits you,” he said.
“And what was all this?” Jera said, doing an imitation of his persona with Deirdre.
“I wasn’t like that.”
“You were!”
“Sometimes we have to exaggerate a certain part of ourselves to get what we want.”
Elian stopped at a row of cabinets along the wall. Each had the label, ‘RARE ITEMS’. Elian opened the top drawer of the first cabinet. It was packed with oblong containers, each crammed tight with pieces of square paper. Elian took out a container and handed it to Jera, and another to Grandfather Time.
“Remember,” Elian said, “we’re looking for a round golden object. We’ll start with the most recent entries and go backwards.”
“We’ll never get through all this!” Jera said, staring at the piles of containers.
“We might not have to. It could be the first item we check.”
Elian pulled the first card out and read it.
“Okay,” he said. “So, maybe not the first one.”
Deirdre appeared, carrying a tray with four cups of steaming tea. She sat it on a cabinet top. She looked pleased to see so many people in her shop.
“Is there anything I can help you with?” she said.
“Actually, there is,” Elian said. “We’re looking for a very specific type of item. It’s about the size of my hand, circular, and made of gold. Is there any way we might be able to speed up our search?”
“Yes. I recently reorganised all my items here not only by the date they were sold, but by characteristics and location.”
“Where would the item I mentioned be located?” Elian said.
Deirdre cast an eye over the small wooden cabinets.
“Let’s see…” she said. “Do you have any idea on the date of purchase?”
“No.”
“How about where it was bought and sold?”
“No.”
“Then our best bet would be to begin with the material of the piece, and then go onto its size. So, let’s begin with gold…”
She put her hand on the cabinet marked ‘GOLD’.
“And then objects approximately fifteen centimetres to thirty centimetres,” she said. “We can ignore the coins, and the larger objects, so let’s go with the medium-sized items. Here.”
Deirdre put her hand on a single cabinet.
“What we’re looking for should be in here,” she said.
“Just this one cabinet?” Elian said.
“Should be. There are some very old items in here. Do you need to search them all?”
“Yes. We need to search everything.”
“It’s a big job. I can help out, if you like.”
“That would be wonderful.”
They took a container each and flicked through the cards. Deirdre went through her containers twice as fast as everyone else. Occasionally someone got excited, and then saddened when they read the description in more detail and discovered it wasn’t the cog after all. It was an hour before Elian got to the final stub. His face fell. It wasn’t the cog.
“It’s not here,” Elian said, not even trying to hide his disappointment.
“It’s possible it was registered but hasn’t gone through the system yet,” Deirdre said. “Let me go check.”
Deirdre left. A palpable disappointment hung over the group. They sat on the floor, the containers around them piled up to one side.
“What will we do if it’s not here?” Grandfather Time said.
“Then it’s over,” Jera said.
“What will you do if it is over?” Elian said.
“I’d go back home,” Jera said. “Find my sister. Hang out with her till my watch drops to zero.”
“Grandfather Time?”
“Ganol Nos,” Grandfather Time said.
“Sorry?”
“My name. It’s Ganol Nos.”
“What does it mean?”
“Midnight,” Jera said. “In the Old Tongue.”
“Okay, Ganol Nos,” Elian said. “What would you do if the world ended in two days?”
“I’d go back to the clocktower in Time,” Grandfather Time said. “It’s the only part of this world that remotely resembles my home world. I can at least pretend to be home.”
“How about you, Elian?” Jera said.
Elian was silent a moment.
“I’d want to go home too,” he said. “Make amends with my brother and father. Get to know them a bit.”
Jera smiled. She took Elian and Grandfather Time’s hands and squeezed tight. Deirdre returned, shaking her head.
“None of the newly registered items describe your item,” she said. “Are you sure it’s made of gold?”
“Definitely,” Elian said.
“I’m sorry,” Deirdre said, genuinely saddened.
“It’s not your fault,” Elian said, wrapping his arm around her. “If it’s not here, it’s not here.”
“It was a long shot anyway,” Grandfather Time said, getting to his feet. “What’re the chances of finding a cog amongst all this?”
“A cog?” Deirdre said, her ears pricking up. “Did you say it was a cog?”
“Yes,” Elian said. “Why?”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Deirdre said with a smile. “We have a separate section for useful objects. Most of the stuff we get here is jewellery no one ever wears, or old coins we no longer use. I made a separate section for useful objects.”
Elian’s breath caught in his throat, and a chill finger rode up his neck, making his hair stand on end.
“Where is this section?” he said.
Deirdre peered around, her eyes finally alighting on a cabinet stacked up against the roof.
“Up there,” she said. “We don’t get many of those items.”
Deirdre fetched her ladder. She climbed it and opened the drawer. Her fingers were a blur with practiced ease. She stopped and pulled out a piece of card.
“Ah yes,” she said. “Here we are. One golden cog. ‘Seventeen centimetres circumference. Unusual glow’.”
She climbed down the ladder and handed it to Elian. He looked at it with a shaky hand. He read it, and then turned pale.
“Is it what you were looking for?” Deirdre said.
“Yes,” Elian said automatically, handing the card back. “Thank you, Deirdre.”
He shuffled toward the door. Jera looked at the card. She frowned.
“Is something wrong?” Deirdre said.
“No,” Jera said, looking after Elian, who stepped outside. “Everything’s fine. Thank you for all your help.”
Grandfather Time downed the last of his green tea and handed Deirdre his cup.
“Thank you for the tea,” he said. “If we’re still around in a few days I’ll make you some of the best root tea you’re ever had.”
Deirdre watched the trio leave with a puzzled expression.
Jera found Elian sitting on the concrete steps leading up to the Artefact Registration Office. Jera sat down beside him. A boy on a bike overloaded with packages stood up out of the seat, struggling to peddle up the hill.
“What’s up, Elian?” Jera said.
“Nothing,” he said. “I just realised we’re never going to get the final piece.”
“Why not? It was sold by Eric Einhorn to Terence Roder for one thousand gold pieces. We can find Felix Roder.”
Elian shook his head.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I already know who Felix Roder is.”
“That’s great news! Isn’t it?”
“About six weeks ago, just before I went to Time, I was involved in a job, a heist I organised myself. It didn’t go to plan, and I ended up running away and leaving my crew behind. What we were after was a small disc with protrusions around the edge, like a blazing sun. It was made of a shimmering gold material.”
“What are you saying?” Jera said.
“Where is it now?” Grandfather Time said.
“Presumably in the same place,” Elian said. “In the Capital. Felix Roder is the curator at the Ascar National Museum. If we want the final piece we’re going to have to enter the lion’s den. The Ascars have the final piece.”
Chapter Six
A steady stream of people entered and exited the Ascar National Museum from all four entrances and exits. Inside the main hall of the beloved gothic heap people shuffled forward, packed shoulder to shoulder, under a banner proclaiming a new exhibition: COME AND MEET YOUR MUMMIES.
There were people from all over the kingdom. Some had white and yellow head scarfs wrapped around their heads, others wore traditional heavy boots made from the skin of a wild elk. Others still wore gold rings and studs in their ears and noses, their skin bronzed by the sun.
They each moved from one artefact to another, gazing in wonder at the objects on display. One case was empty. A plaque had a drawing of a fairy on it with some facts written underneath.
“Mama,” a little girl said, “where’s the fairy? Is she invisible? I can’t see her.”
The mother turned to an employee of the museum, identifiable by his blue shirt and white emblem on the breast pocket.
“Excuse me,” she said. “My child came to see the fairy, but it appears to be missing.”
“Yes,” the employee said, “we’re very sorry, but a few days ago the fairy disappeared without a trace.”
“Disappeared? Whatever do you mean? It was stolen?”
“Oh no, ma’am. Nothing’s ever been stolen from the Ascar Museum. As I said, the fairy just up disappeared one day. She was in her glass cage, and the next minute, POOF! She was gone.”
“So where can my daughter see a fairy?”
“We have a variety of stuffed fairies down the hall,” he said. “At the moment that’s the best we can manage, though we’ve sent hunters out to find a replacement.”
“Very well,” the woman said before turning to her daughter. “Come child, let’s go look at the stuffed fairies.”
The little girl pouted.
“But I don’t want to see a stuffed fairy!” she said. “I want to see a live one!”
The mother dragged the daughter down the corridor, weaving between a group of three: two men and one woman. They each wore clothing entirely too large for them. Jera had a large wide-brimmed hat and sunglasses. Elian kept his hat on but wore a raincoat over his clothes. He kept his eyes facing the floor at all times. Grandfather Time hobbled along in his usual ragged garb. A museum employee tapped on Grandfather Time’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry sir,” the employee said, “but we don’t allow homeless into the museum. Can you come with me, please?”
“How dare you!” Jera said. “He’s not homeless! He lives with us!”
“Oh,” the employee said, taken aback. “I apologise.”
The employee shuffled away.
“Didn’t I say we shouldn’t attract any attention to ourselves?” Elian said.
“Sorry,” Grandfather Time muttered.
They headed deeper into the museum, turning left and right too many times for Jera to keep track of. The number of visitors thinned and became sparser the further they went. They came to a room with ‘RARE ARTEFACTS’ written across the top of the door. A guard stood sentry outside it, in full armour, eyes facing forward. Elian pulled his hat further down over his eyes as he passed.
A plush red carpet ran down the centre of the room. The items were spread out. There was a traditional golden mask, a small jewel, and genuine blowpipes from the native tribes of the Rumble Jungle. Children stood gaping up at the skeleton of a centaur.
“If they haven’t moved it,” Elian said. “It should be right around here somewhere. Ah, here it is.”
They approached a glass cabinet, identical to all the others. The glass box was three feet cubed and sat on a stone plinth that was cemented to the floor. Inside it was a small object, no bigger than the width of Elian’s hand. It sat on a satin pillow, shimmering with the same light as its brother items.
Elian peered at the glass and judged its thickness. It must have been at least an inch and a half thick. Then he turned and looked up at the pitched glass ceiling. He could tell by the way the clouds bent that the ceiling was the same thickness as the glass boxes.
“It’s so close,” Elian said. “I can practically taste it.”
“And yet so far,” Jera said. “How did it even end up here?”
“According to this information,” Elian said, pointing to a plaque, “Eric Einhorn discovered it after following directions from a dying man. No one knows its purpose, but it is made of a material unknown to man.”
“How should we go about getting it out?” Jera said.
“Not here,” Elian said, eyeing the other visitors.
They moved along the row of artefacts, through an archway and into the next room. Elian took them down a few corridors, leading them as if he were a tour guide. They came to another room that had ‘HATS FROM ALL OVER THE KINGDOM’ written over the door.
“No one ever comes in here,” Elian said, “mainly because a lot of the visitors come in wearing these exact same hats, so why would you ever waste your time looking at them in here? There aren’t even any guards on the door.”
“So how do we go about getting the artefact?” Jera said.
“With just us three? We don’t.”
“We have to get it somehow,” Grandfather Time said, “otherwise all time will end.”
“Thanks for reminding us,” Elian said.
“You planned a heist before,” Jera said. “Can’t you do it again?”
“Not without a crew.”
“We’re your crew.”
Elian shook his head.
“We’re not enough,” he said. “We need a professional crew, well trained and experienced.”
“So get one.”
“How? No one will work with me again. Not after last time.”
“So that’s it?” Jera said, cheeks turning red. “We’ve gone through everything for nothing?”
Elian turned and faced a ridiculous-looking hat made of peacock feathers.
“If there was a way we could do it, I’d do it, you know that,” he said. “But there isn’t.”
Jera and Grandfather Time took a seat on the wooden benches that ran at intervals along the walls.
“The good news is they can’t know they’ve got the final piece, right?” Jera said. “Otherwise they wouldn’t keep it on display like this.”
“Unless they know we’d come for it, and this is a trap.”
They peered around, but saw nothing suspicious.
“Then why haven’t they jumped us already?”
“Or they still don’t know what we’re looking for.”
“But that can’t last for much longer, surely?” Jera said. “They know we went to the Rumble Jungle, the Gap fields and the Tangent tree. They must be on their way to figuring it out now?”
“The moment they do, we’ll be finished.”
There was a pause.
“How would you normally get a crew?” Jera said.
“Normally I’d advertise and they come to me.”
“Then why don’t we do that?”
“Because my reputation is shot,” Elian said. “No one will come work with me again. Not after what I did. I broke the first rule of the job.”
“Stick to the plan.”
Elian frowned.
“How do you know that?” he said.
Jera blushed, embarrassed she’d said anything.
“Know what?” she said.
“The first rule.”
“I don’t. It was a lucky guess.”
“A bloody lucky guess.”
“All right, so I met a
few people before.”
“What people?”
“Former criminals.”
“Where were they?”
“They’ll never join. One of them was a part of your crew before.”
“Who?”
Jera shifted on the bench.
“Blake,” she said.
“Ah,” Elian said. “I’m sure he told you everything about me, huh? Everything that happened.”
Jera nodded.
“He did,” she said.
“I’m surprised you’re still here with me.”
“I had no choice.”
“Thanks.”
A middle aged woman with shoulder-length blonde hair poked her head into the hat room, peered around and said, “Oh,” and left.
Jera stood up and approached Elian.
“And I know there are always two sides to every story,” she said. “I know you wouldn’t have done what you did without a good reason. We’ll just have to find a crew that don’t know you.”
“It won’t work.”
“Why not?”
“There’s only one crew who’ll be able to do it in the time we have left.”
“Who?”
“My old crew. I’ve got an idea of how to get the piece, but we’ll need them.”
Jera shook her head.
“I don’t know,” she said. “Blake seemed pretty angry with you when I met him. I’m not sure if he’ll listen.”
“We’ll have to figure out a way to make him listen.”
“The only thing bigger than a poor man’s anger is his hunger,” Grandfather Time said. “They’ll listen to us if we can offer them a good opportunity.”
“All right,” Jera said. “But first we need to get them in the same room. Where do we even start to look for them?”
“That’s easy,” Elian said. “The cream of society in the Capital hangs out in The Troll Under The Bridge.”
Chapter Seven
The Troll Under The Bridge was dark and dingy by design. Heavy curtains hung over the windows, dim oil lamps the only illumination. The barman spat into a glass and began to polish it with a dirty rag. Men sat hunched over their drinks, some by themselves, others in groups, but all of them alone.
The door opened, spilling daylight across the sawdust-covered floor. Drinkers shied away from the light, grumbling under their breath. The door shut, and they were once again bathed in cozy darkness.
