Stonecast tsc-2

by Anton Strout

Aurora’s excitement died, replaced with confusion. “But he built all those churches,” she said.

  “He built a lot of things,” Alexandra said. “Building office buildings doesn’t make him a businessman any more than building churches made him religious.”

  Aurora smiled. “Then it’s even stranger he kept referencing the Holy Trinity, isn’t it?”

  Alexandra returned her smile, which I did not understand.

  “Why do you take pleasure in this knowledge?” I asked.

  “Because,” she said, “if my great-great-grandfather wasn’t a religious man, then the Holy Trinity and its secrets most likely refer to something else. And I think I know what it is.”

  Aurora stepped back from the notebook and looked up at her friend. “You do?”

  Alexandra nodded. “I do,” she said. “At least, I think I do. Many of the books Locke has gathered reference the secrets of the Holy Trinity, you say. Now, maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I find it quite interesting that the Libra Concordia just happened to acquire one of Alexander’s long-abandoned churches, and that it just happens to be located on Trinity Place across from Trinity Church.”

  Aurora’s eyes widened. “Alexander has some of his secrets there?”

  Alexandra turned to Caleb. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “It’s possible,” Caleb said. “It is one of Alexander Belarus’s buildings. And I agree with your theory about why they bought the church in the first place. A church would be a perfect hiding place. No one tears churches down these days.”

  “We need to search that building,” Alexandra said. “But we won’t get too far with Desmond Locke watching us like a hawk every time we step out of the research room. If we’re lucky, there will be more than just the secrets to Kimiya. I’m hoping we’ll find out the deeper secrets of the Spellmasons, so I can raise our own army of stone fighting men.”

  “Desmond Locke?” I said. “Your father’s spiritual adviser?”

  Alexandra laughed. “It’s been a long six months. We’ve a lot to catch up on.”

  Marshall came to us, a small glass container full of liquid in his hands. “I think I’m ready,” he said.

  Caleb looked down at it. “Ready?” he asked. “I don’t think so. That’s not nearly enough.”

  Marshall’s eyes went to the mixture and stayed there. “I—I think it is,” he stammered, a lack of confidence. “Besides, there was barely enough Kimiya to make this. It will have to do.”

  Caleb laughed, but there was derision it. “You can try,” he said, “but you’re not going to free him, I’m telling you. There’s no way you’re going to affect the stone of the roof deep enough to get Stanis loose.”

  The tone of his voice awoke something hostile in me, and I brought my clawed hand down on his shoulder. “Let Marshall try,” I said, squeezing.

  Caleb hissed. “Suit yourself,” he said, and pulled himself away from the rest of the group.

  Alexandra looked to Marshall. “You sure you’re up for this?” she asked.

  He nodded and looked up at me, but his eyes were uncertain.

  “You can do this, Marshall,” I said. “I have faith.”

  He did not respond but instead circled around me as he judged the amount in the container and began pouring it.

  “That’s not nearly wide enough,” Caleb said, crossing his arms. “You’re not going to free him that way.”

  “Shush,” Rory shouted out at him.

  Caleb shrugged. “Just trying to help,” he muttered under his breath.

  Marshall was on his knees by then, pouring in a tight circle around me.

  “I don’t need to go wide,” he said. “I need to go deep. I only need to free up the area around him.”

  The stone around my legs began to transform. It loosened around the lower part of my legs to the point where I could move them. Stretching, I pulled one foot free, stepping up and onto the solid part of the roof. The other foot, however, was still stuck in solid stone. Marshall’s concoction had not gone deep enough indeed.

  Still, I did not wish to give Caleb the satisfaction of being right, so with all my strength, I put all my weight on my freed foot and pulled. The stone immediately around my trapped foot did not give, but the rest of the roof did. My foot came up and out of the liquid stone with a chunk of jagged rooftop surrounding it. Marshall gave a victorious cry, and he and Aurora slapped their hands together. I stepped onto the roof, walking away from the hole and bringing my foot down hard enough over and over that the rest of the stone fell away piece by piece.

  Alexandra rushed over, throwing her arms around me. As the heat of her skin against me set in, the world and everything around us seemed to melt away. My stone arms wrapped around her, the jagged rise and fall of her chest beating against mine as I felt her tears hit the coolness of my carved skin.

  “You have been missed,” she said.

  “It has been far too long since I have been myself,” I said, pushing her back so I could look into her eyes.

  We stood, simply staring at each other, lost in the moment. It felt longer than the centuries my existence had, but suddenly felt all too short when the sound of the alchemist Caleb clearing his throat rang out.

  Alexandra turned her head to him, her head falling back for a moment to rest on my chest.

  “We need to find Alexander’s work,” Caleb said. “May I remind you we’re so out of Kimiya it’s not even funny?” He pointed to the statues all along the rest of the rooftop. “And we’ve got an army up here we need it for if we can also find the secrets you need to bring them to life. Let’s hope whatever Alexander’s hidden away there helps you unlock the Spellmason secret to your splitting your mind more easily for casting. Either way, we need to act fast.”

  “He’s right,” Alexandra said, pushing herself away from me with reluctance.

  “You and I should go,” Caleb said to her. “The church is full of special-access areas and secret alcoves . . . stuff that only I among the group of us has access to.”

  “I can tear that church apart looking for Alexander’s secrets,” I said.

  Caleb shook his head. “We can do this discreetly.”

  “I’m all for discretion,” Alexandra said, her eyes locked with mine, hesitation in them. When she spoke again, her voice sounded more like she was trying to convince herself into going. “Having a Belarus there might get more answers than not. My family’s legacy has been one big game of hide-and-seek. What’s one church more?”

  I said nothing. Alexandra needed to go, but I was not going to let it come from my lips. There was a selfishness in it, I knew, but I could not let my own words be the ones that sent her away again.

  Especially with him.

  Caleb looked out across the statue-covered roof of the Belarus Building, gesturing at them. “We’ve practically got an army up here, and if we can find a way to mass-produce enough Kimiya to bring them to life, we can oppose Kejetan.”

  “Aren’t you worried about him complaining to the freelancers’ union?” Aurora asked him.

  Caleb sighed. “Such a snarky, angry bunch,” he said. “You sure you’re the good guys?”

  “That is the trouble with playing both sides,” I said with a growl. “You run the risk of angering twice as many people.”

  “Don’t remind me,” he said, then gave me a smile. “But then again, the higher the risk, the greater my reward. I figure helping raise this army here should be worth something.”

  “Nuh-uh,” Aurora said, scolding him. “You’re doing this act out of the goodness of your little black heart.”

  Caleb spun around to her. “I am?”

  “Yes,” Alexandra said, walking to me and laying a hand on my chest as she looked at Caleb. “You are. You’ve got a lot of bad blood to work off here, remember? You’ve spent months wronging our good friend here, so consider this payback.”

  “Unless you’d rather I beat it out of you,” Aurora said, poking the nonbladed end of her pole arm at him.<
br />
  Marshall gestured to the hole in the roof. “Rory and I will work on patching this up,” he said.

  “Aurora’s beating would be the least of your concerns,” I said to Caleb. “There is still Kejetan for you to think of. My father will kill you for your betrayal.”

  What color was left in the man’s face went away, his amused look disappearing.

  “Yeah, I know,” Caleb said, turning away and heading for the doorway. “Don’t think that’s not on my mind twenty-four/seven now. That’s why we need to make more of your kind. That’s why we need to go back to the Libra Concordia.”

  “I’ll grab my library card,” Alexandra said, going for her backpack, patting her hand against the stone spell book sticking out of it. “Maybe it grants me special access to the off-limits areas.”

  Alexandra ran to me and threw her arms around me again, and I did the same back. She looked up at me, her eyes unwavering.

  “I’ll be back,” she said. “I promise. Look after Marshall and Rory, okay?”

  “As you wish,” I said, causing her to smile.

  She lingered a moment longer before turning and walking slowly away.

  “Don’t hold your breath about gaining special access at the Libra Concordia,” Caleb said as he hit the stairs heading down into the building. “There’s off-limits, then there’s really off-limits.”

  As I watched Alexandra run off to catch up with him, something deep within me twinged with pain.

  “You okay there, Stanis?” Aurora asked.

  “I do not like this ease and familiarity between the two of them,” I said, fighting my sudden urge to tear apart the man who had tortured me for months. Caleb had told me that he had not known I was a living creature, but even with that knowledge, I found it hard to just let it go.

  “It takes some getting used to,” Marshall admitted as he held up a clear tube full of a dark green bubbling liquid.

  “I think I understand what you’re getting at,” Aurora said with a smile. She leaned in closer. “I don’t trust him either. But I’d hold out on any desires to crush his head in just yet.”

  “That is unfortunate to hear,” I said, leaping into the air and taking to the night sky. “I would like nothing more.”

  The confusion of fighting the dominant other voice in my head was gone, but I still felt the need to take to the sky to clear my thoughts. There was still the problem of my father and the Servants of Ruthenia to contend with, and Alexandra and the alchemist, but for now the only peace I could find was flying as a free creature after so many months of servitude. Head crushing could wait.

  For the moment, at least.

  Nineteen

  Alexandra

  When Caleb had said there were a multitude of secret alcoves and such throughout the Libra Concordia, he wasn’t kidding. My head still spun from earlier. I went through the boarded-up hidden doors of the church, planning to systematically work my way down the main aisle, but Caleb grabbed me before I could and instead dragged me off through the maze of the space in search of my great-great-grandfather’s secrets.

  The sounds of people working echoed throughout the area, but thanks to Caleb’s sneaky ways, we didn’t cross paths with a single one of them in our initial pass of the main floor. Despite our clandestine lurking about the church looking for Alexander’s secrets, we still had nothing to show for it except frustration, and Caleb dragged me into our usual research room before I could scream.

  “Fruitless,” I said, once he had shut the door behind him.

  “Don’t sound so disappointed,” Caleb said. “I didn’t really expect to find anything on the first pass, did you?”

  “Truthfully?” I said. “No. But it would have been nice.”

  Caleb laughed and shook his head. “Nice doesn’t enter into the dark, magical secrets business. Sorry.”

  “Maybe it’s carved in runes on the outside of the building or something,” I said. “We should come back during daylight to check it out.”

  “And miss checking out what the basement here has to offer us?” Caleb clicked his tongue at me. “You know that caged area up here?”

  I nodded. “That’s where they keep all the stuff they’ve recovered.”

  “Partially,” he said. “It’s the area where they keep the cataloged stuff. Most of it is written up in their ledgers, and if you had the time to sit back and read them, they’re endlessly fascinating. Luckily, they let me bill by the hour for that. I make lawyers look like they’re undercharging.”

  “And yet you were squatting in my old family’s building on Saint Mark’s before it collapsed,” I said.

  “My costs for supplies are high,” he reminded me, then pointed down at the floor. “Let’s stay focused, all right? There’s an area or two here in the church that I’m not allowed into. Probably because I’m a freelancer . . . or a heathen. None of what’s kept down there is on the record up here.”

  “Then how do you know about it?” I asked.

  “I’m the curious sort,” he said.

  I smiled. “I bet you are,” I said. “Didn’t turn out well for the cat.”

  “Nor did it for me,” he said, frowning. “The stairs leading down to it are protected. I was back in the apse, and next thing I knew, the railings flew off the side of the stairs and wrapped around my arms. Desmond didn’t seem particularly thrilled to find me trying to venture downstairs, but I talked my way out of it, making it seem like nothing more than an honest accident.”

  “You can be very convincing even if you’re lying,” I said, filling the words with a darker bite than I meant to, surprising myself.

  Caleb stepped back from me as if I had slapped him. “What’s that about?” he asked.

  “Sorry,” I said. “It’s nothing.”

  I hadn’t meant to lash out, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to explain it to Caleb even if I could. With Caleb’s having returned Stanis to his former self, I knew I could trust him, but at the same time I was discovering that having the gargoyle back conflicted with my growing fondness for Caleb. Now was not the time to get into it. “You were saying about this restricted area . . . ?”

  “‘It’s nothing’ . . . ?” he repeated, narrowing his eyes at me. “All right, well, you just tell me when you want to talk about this nothing, then.”

  “Caleb . . .”

  He held his hands out in front of him and pretended to let go of something heavy.

  “This is me dropping it,” he said.

  He wiped his hands together as if cleaning them off.

  “As I was about to say, my money is on the restricted area.”

  “We just need a different way in, then,” I said. “Unless you think we could take on a set of enchanted stairs?”

  “I think that might draw a little attention,” he said, moving to the table at the center of the room. He reached into his pocket, pulled out his notebook, and laid it down, taking a seat. He gestured to the chair across from him. “Maybe we should compare notes on your spells and my concoctions, see what we can come up with that might help us get down into the lower parts of this church.”

  With no better plan, I sat down opposite Caleb and set to work looking through my own notes, also pulling out Alexander’s stone spell book and transforming it into readable pages. After twenty minutes, I slammed both books shut.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, standing up and stepping away from the table. “I don’t have half of the things I want here to do most of this.”

  “Me either,” Caleb said, in the middle of inventorying the left-side contents of his coat’s hidden bandoliers.

  “And even if I did, we can’t just walk out into the main room and hope not to cause a commotion.”

  “There’s got to be another way down there,” he said.

  “There is,” I said, stepping farther back from the table. “We’re just overthinking it.”

  Caleb stood, looking where I was at the spot in the center of the room.

  The church, despite its
current life as a secret society’s storehouse, was still an old-world piece of architecture, which meant the touches my great-great-grandfather had applied in building it were a luxurious mirror of the time period. And being the man that he was, his attention to the stonework was impeccable, including the large slabs of stone floor where we stood.

  Caleb was already fumbling through the insides of his coat, but I shook my head.

  “No,” I said. “We don’t want to damage anything if we don’t have to. No one knows we’re here, and if we do it my way, hopefully no one will know.”

  “Good point,” he said, and let his hands drop to pick up his notebook instead.

  I slid my master tome into my backpack and snatched up my notes, breathing out the words of power into the large stone square at the center of the room. No doubt it was cosmetic, with others beneath it, but it was a start.

  My will connected with it, and I guided it with my right arm as I forced it up and out of its slot, the dust of ages falling from the cracks around it. It wavered unsteadily at my command, but I managed to set it down without a sound before realizing I was clenching my teeth from the effort. I rubbed my jaw.

  “You’re going to hurt yourself doing it like that,” he said. “Stop looking at the stone like the heft of it truly matters. Your mind is tricking you into compensating for the weight it thinks you should be lifting.”

  “Yes, Professor,” I said, turning back to the hole I had just created. The stones beneath were rougher but only half the size of the one above. I reached out to the one on the left, and grabbed it with only my will. Maybe Caleb was onto something because although it was more firmly wedged into the foundation, when it came free I did notice a sizable difference in handling it if I tried to ignore the stone’s actual size.

  The two of us moved to the edge of the hole I had made. A dim light filled the area below, but I had the Maglite that Boy Scout Marshall had given me and shined its light down below. The lower levels of the church weren’t quite as finely finished as the main floor, but they still looked in good shape.

  “About fifteen feet or so,” I said. “Damned old-world luxury and high, religious ceilings.”