by A. L. Knorr
“You mean, he never went out?”
“No, no. I just mean he never took long trips. He went out for shopping and maybe to socialize, I don’t know, but he slept and worked down here alongside me in my cell. In the early days, I don’t think he knew exactly what he was looking for, he just wanted to understand the world’s ancient cultures and stories. But as he found artifacts and made connections he seemed happier, until one day he brought me a sheet of scribbles and asked me to decipher it.”
“A sheet of scribbles?” I blinked at her. Up until this point I had thought everything was about artifacts.
“Yes, something it looked like he wrote himself, on a regular sheet of note paper. I thought it was very strange too, but he’s done it twice more since then.”
“What did you decipher in the scribbles?”
“It was just a collection of words that had no meaning when strung together, but I eventually connected one of them to an endangered language of Brazil. Come on, I’ll show you.”
Janet led us back to the original room and went to a set of rickety looking wooden drawers. She opened one and rifled through it. “Nero made all this furniture himself, if you can believe it. He salvaged bits and pieces from the underground.”
“How did he build your cage?”
“That, I don’t know. It was here before me. Here we are.” Janet pulled a crinkled piece of paper from the drawer and handed it to me.
I took the lined A4 sheet feeling incredulity mount. “Nero did this?”
“I assume so. I’ve never seen him do it. Strange, isn’t it.”
“Very.” Tomio moved closer to look over my shoulder. “What does it mean?”
“It’s meaningless, just a garble of words and phrases that when put together are nonsensical. The first time he gave me one like this to analyze, I thought he’d lost his mind, or that maybe it was a psychological experiment. When I did the second one, I realized that he didn’t care about the content, he cared about the language.”
“The others he did were different?”
“Completely. As different as French is from Korean. The only thing they had in common was that I didn’t recognize them as anything I had come across in my studies before.”
“He produced an extinct language and had no clue what he was scribbling?”
“Precisely. Then he needed me to make a connection with a language that either exists today or is documented well enough in our history to pinpoint a place of origin. It took me a while, but Nero provided me with a computer program that helps. This one I was able to link most closely to Kaiwa, in Brazil.”
“That’s why he went to Brazil?”
“That’s right. Last November.”
“And he came back different.”
She nodded.
“How does he make these scribbles?”
“He never produces them in my presence,” Janet said, but her eyes narrowed. “But I believe they have something to do with the orbs.”
I felt my jaw go slack. “Orbs...”
Janet held out a cupped palm to indicate the size. “Yes, he has these strange old orbs, very ancient, I suspect, though he never allows me to handle them. I don’t know where he finds them, but they are precious to him and he is always excited when he gets one. They were clearly made by the same artist. They are the same but also unique from one another, like a collection of paintings in the same series.”
“How many of these orbs does he have?”
“After the one Wendig just gave him, he has three that I’m aware of.”
Seeing the look on my face, Janet’s own expression changed. “What do you know about these orbs?”
“Not enough. I wish now I’d grilled Basil for more details but there hasn’t been time between the fiasco with Ryan, and the games.”
Janet cocked her head. “Games?”
“Yes, never mind, they’re not important. Do you know what Nero is?”
Her lips twisted. “You’re not referring to his psychopathy, I presume. Yes. I know that he is a ‘mago del fuoco’. I also know that his partners are crazy to trust him.”
“What makes you say that?” Tomio asked.
Janet held up a finger. “First, he comes down here with Wendig, Ryan as you call him. Ryan has traded him an orb in exchange for mentorship and a piece of whatever wealth or power Nero is in pursuit of. He sends Ryan away and takes the orb in there, where I cannot see what he’s doing.” She leveled her finger at the closed door across from us. “He returned later with scribbles, which he gives to me to decipher. It takes me hours to learn that the scribbles are another unique language but is clearly the basis of two languages, an old form of Gilaki, and Tabari. Though I delayed sharing this information with him for a few days, which was as long as I could get away with before he grew angry with me.”
“Galaki and, I’ve already forgotten the other...” Tomio murmured.
“Tabari. Caspian languages spoken only by people in a region of Iran called Ramsar. Nero’s scribbles appear to be a root language that broke into at least two other languages, many centuries ago.”
“And Nero sent Ryan there because...”
She raised her palms and lifted her shoulders. “My guess is that they suspect another orb can be found there. Following Ryan’s departure, Nero brings the other boy here.”
“Dante,” I grumped.
“So it appears. Dante has a rubbing taken from a stele. Nero gives this to me for analysis. The language on the stele points vaguely to a language spoken in a province of China.”
“Yangjiang.”
“Correct. As soon as Nero had this information from me, he left for China.”
“And do you know what Dante is getting in return?” I asked, bracing myself for the answer.
Janet bobbed her head. “Nero will help him acquire fire.”
It was not news, it was exactly what I had suspected, but somehow hearing it from Janet’s lips made my heart skip a beat. I looked at Tomio and could see the same horror reflected back at me.
“Whose?” he asked hoarsely.
It took me a second to find my tongue. “I think we both know the answer to that.”
Twelve
Emerging
“Got everything you want to take?” I asked Janet as I bent to snap a photo of the locking mechanism on the front door. It was an antique combination lock, the kind you saw on old-fashioned safes in caper movies. Nero must have filched it from somewhere and installed it in a thick metal sheet to build a makeshift vault door. It was one detail of many that I’d photographed for Basil once Tomio and I had retrieved our gear from where we’d dropped it.
Tomio and I had left the hideaway through the front door, leaving Janet to go through her things, and then Nero’s things, putting whatever she wanted to take with her into a pack. It took us an hour, but when we were able to identify our location on the map, it was a matter of retracing our steps to the cistern we’d swum through to retrieve our backpacks. We double-checked that we’d marked the map correctly as we returned to Nero’s hideaway, where the door had been left propped open. The agency was going to want to know exactly where he’d been hiding all these years and if we couldn’t give them good directions, Basil and Mehmet wouldn’t be impressed.
We returned with an apology ready on our lips for taking so long to get back. I’d been worried Janet would get frightened we’d left her alone, but she was rummaging through Nero’s desk and barely looked up.
“Is it weird that I want to take everything,” she said, looking around like a woman who’d just stepped into a dream, “and nothing, at the same time?”
“I don’t think it’s weird at all,” Tomio replied as he slid Nero’s scribbled pages into a zippered freezer bag Janet had given him. He put them into his backpack along with a few smaller artefacts we’d found.
“You’re bound to have mixed feelings,” I said, standing by the door to signal I was ready to leave. “I would. You’re proud of the work you did here, even if it wa
s for a madman.”
“That’s part of it. I wish I knew what he’s doing with the information that surfaces.”
“Basil or someone at the Agency might be able to shed some light on it,” I suggested. He’s talked about ancient legends about the origins of the magi, but he’s never gone into them in detail. It’s high time he did.”
Janet walked through the front door more slowly than I would have guessed someone who’d spent three years here as a captive might have moved. I let the door close and lock behind us and she jumped but didn’t look back. Tomio lit his hand-torch and took up the lead as we headed into the narrow tunnel curving to the left.
“I’ll never get used to seeing someone produce fire like that,” Janet murmured.
“Does it freak you out?” Tomio asked over his shoulder.
“Not anymore, but I’m not sure my parents will believe me when I tell them that we share our world with fire magi.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that fire magi were only one species in a plethora of supernaturals, but maybe now wasn’t the best time for it. The mention of her parents had lifted an unsettling thought, one I hesitated to give voice to.
I noticed Tomio checking his watch. “What time is it?”
“Six forty-five,” he muttered as he sped up. “Not good. Sun is coming up. We’ll have to be extra careful when we leave.”
It took us far less time now that we knew where we were, but we still had several kilometers to go and Janet needed to stop and rest a lot. Her legs weren’t accustomed to so much walking. When she started asking for breaks every ten minutes, Tomio and I shared a look of dismay.
“Sorry, Janet,” I said with an apologetic smile as I fired along my limbs to strengthen them. I put an arm behind her back and one behind her legs so that she knew that I was going to pick her up. The tunnel was wide here so there was room enough for me to pass without bashing her head or feet against the walls. I thought she might protest but instead she just gave a breathy laugh as I swept her off her feet.
“You can’t,” she said, even as she put an arm around my neck to hang on. “You’ll tire too quickly.”
“You don’t have to worry about that,” said Tomio, already heading down the tunnel at a near jog.
“I’ve carried much heavier than you for much longer,” I told her, trying not to jostle her too much as I kept up with Tomio.
“You’re so warm.” I felt her give a shudder in my arms.
“Too warm?” With fire sliding up and down my limbs and giving soft pops of power in my joints, I should have considered that my body temperature might actually be too hot to carry a natural very far.
“No, but you might put me to sleep. I’m not used to so much activity.”
“If you can sleep, I’m all for it,” I said as I recognized that we’d entered a section in the guided tour. “I’ll wake you up when we get there.”
Again, that uncomfortable thought about Janet’s family niggled at the back of my mind, and again I squashed it down.
“What’s that?” she asked with a wondering tone as we passed a neatly organized collection of props.
“They give tours down here.” Tomio explained. I could hear the strain in his voice and caught him glancing at his watch for the umpteenth time. It was getting late. The city streets would be getting busy. Our window of opportunity to escape the underground unnoticed was shrinking.
“Seriously? People come down here for fun?” Janet sounded horrified.
“You didn’t know? You’re from Naples aren’t you? They’ve been giving these tours for decades now. Look!” Tomio let out a breath as the stairway we’d taken to get down here came into view.
“No, I was never interested in the tourist attractions, I always had my nose in some book or computer program.” Her grip around my neck tightened. “Are you sure you can carry me up these stairs?”
“No problem,” I told her, “just tell me if you get too hot.”
Janet felt like a loose collection of bones in my arms. I wondered what it had done to her health to be living on vitamin smoothies and getting vitamin D from a lamp. I felt torn between despising Nero for what he’d done to her, and grateful that he’d afforded her some way of maintaining her health, even if it had been purely selfish.
Directing the fire into my legs and back, I took the steps two at a time to keep up with Tomio. When we reached the top, Tomio put up a hand for silence as he peered out the front gate. After judging it safe, he melted apart the chain, pushed the gate open and slid through. Stepping into a shadow along the nearby wall, he beckoned for me to come out. A sign proclaimed that the first tour of the day started at eight-thirty, it seemed we’d squeak by before the tour employees arrived.
I slipped through with Janet, then put her on her feet so I could reconstitute the chain back to its original state. Tomio used his bulk to hide what I was doing from the rest of the alley, just in case someone happened to pass by and glance over.
“Can you make it another couple of kilometers?” I asked Janet once I’d finished with the chain. “I can carry you, but it’ll attract attention.”
She gave a wobbly smile and nodded. “You’ve given me a chance to catch my breath, thank you.”
The characters moving about the morning streets of Naples didn’t have much in common with the drinking, smoking, Vespa-riding teens and twenty-somethings we’d observed the night before. A street dog scampered by our legs, his toe-nails scraping along the sidewalk. Three merchants chattered loudly as they set up their kiosk to sell SSC Napoli football club memorabilia. One of them appeared to be exuberantly re-enacting a heroic goal from some past game. The smell of fresh-baked croissants, pastries, and fresh-ground espresso made me suppress a groan. The small, quaint tables in front of the cafés were already half full of patrons sipping cappuccino and reading the local rag. Someone laid on their car horn as pedestrians weaved into the road and didn’t get out of the way fast enough. Two beefy men trundled in and out of a delivery van carrying boxes of sausages into a sandwich shop, passing beneath a woman perched on a ladder using colored chalk to write out the specials of the day in pretty script.
We received a few curious looks as we joined the flow of traffic on the street, but no one said anything to us. I was starving and tired, but I couldn’t wait to get home and let Basil know what had transpired. I reached for my phone, intending to send him a text.
Janet made a little noise beside me and I looked at her at the same as Tomio did, from her other side. Her eyes were huge and round, her face deathly pale. Even as her legs and feet attempted to propel her forward, her eyes rolled up in her head.
“Tomio!” I gasped.
Together we caught Janet before she hit the pavement, though the back of her hand scraped along the sidewalk and I almost stepped on her braid. There were a few shouts from around us, and three strangers came over to help.
“Chiamare un’ambulanza?” someone shouted at me.
“Aspettare, per favore,” I panted, asking him to wait as I lifted Janet into my arms.
A kind looking man retrieved the kerchief that had fallen from Janet’s head. He tried to put it back on for her but put it on backward so the tie was at her forehead.
“Cosa c’è che non va in lei?” he asked, wondering what was wrong.
“She’s ok,” I said, feeling Janet’s breathing against my chest. “She’s very tired.”
“Too much drink.” Tomio mimed drinking from a bottle.
I shot him a half-amused half-exasperated glare, but the three people closest to us made sympathetic sounds of understanding, as if they themselves had frequently fainted from too much drinking the night before.
As they moved away, Tomio put his fingers under her jaw. “Her pulse is strong. I think she’s just overwhelmed. We need to get her home and into bed.”
He fell in step beside me as the sun began to light up the tops of the buildings and rectangular slashes of pavement on one side of the road.
&nbs
p; “Of course she fainted,” he murmured after a few moments. “She’s been underground for years and we just brought her out into daylight and streets full of people and smells without any thought to how it would hit her.”
I felt stupid for not having thought of it myself. How would it feel to live in a silent, isolated cell with only one other person for occasional company, to then be suddenly exposed to thousands of people, the sounds of traffic, street animals, food smells in the air, raw morning sunlight slicing into her retinas, and fresh oxygen pouring into her bloodstream?
We hurried toward our villa, more in a rush than ever to reach home. No wonder she’d fainted. I would have too, and probably thrown up in a gutter to boot.
Thirteen
Desperate Measures
Thankfully, as Tomio unlocked the villa’s front door Janet’s consciousness returned, in the form of a croaky stream of Italian that neither of us understood.
“Almost there,” I murmured, turning her sideways so I didn’t bash her head on the door’s frame. “You can sleep for as long as you want.”
“Does that go for us too?” Tomio replied as he lowered his backpack to the floor and moved to open his bedroom door for me.
I found a wan smile for him as I carried Janet to the bed and waited as Tomio pulled back the light blanket. As I relinquished her weight to the mattress, she murmured something in Italian about the room being too loud and bright. Without opening her eyes, she rolled over and buried her head under the pillow.
To us, the room was neither loud nor bright.
Tomio went to his luggage and rummaged through what looked like a toiletries bag. He pulled out a small plastic packet with something orange inside, then returned to where Janet lay on the bed. She peered out from under the pillow to look at him when he nudged her hand and he held up the packet so she could see the fresh set of earplugs inside.
