Metal Guardian: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Rings of the Inconquo Book 2)

by A. L. Knorr

  Sark scanned the hallway, eyes narrowed, and then put his hand to a panel on the wall. I felt his will reaching out, shifting something in the wall, then heard a series of groaning pops. An assemblage of gears and hinges that didn’t belong in typical construction began to grind to life within the wall.

  “Sark!” I snarled, drawing the bangles on my wrists across my arms in a second skin. Jackie’s baton extended with a click.

  Sark gave us a wry smile as the plywood swung open into an alleyway. The shadows outside were deepening, and the gleam in Sark’s eyes was uncomfortably like his old self.

  “If you want to stay here, go right ahead.” He swept his hand towards the alleyway. “But I thought we had work to do.”

  I took a steadying breath, but it was a few heartbeats before I let the copper recede from my arms to form around my wrists again. I looked at Jackie, who gave me a long-suffering glare before collapsing her baton. We walked out through the portal, and Sark put the false wall back into place.

  “See? Trust.” Sark dusted his hands off dramatically as he turned to face us. “I am trusting you ladies to do your jobs, so it follows you should trus-umph!”

  Jackie moved so quickly I hardly had time to register it. She quick-stepped to Sark and drove a knee into his groin. Sark’s eyes bulged behind his chic glasses, and he doubled over. Just as quickly as she’d advanced, Jackie retreated.

  “That’s for being an arse,” she stated simply.

  Her hands weren’t up in guard, but her feet were in a fighting stance, her left foot forward and light, her right anchored in the rear. The next move was Sark’s.

  Sark spent several seconds gasping for air as he clutched his knees, legs trembling, and knuckles white knots against the dark fabric of his trousers, but I didn’t feel a flicker of his will. He was going to let it pass, and I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. Patient, compliant Sark scared me.

  “Like you were saying, you trust us to get the job done,” I said, not to give myself or Sark any more time to dwell on what had just transpired. “And I need to go to the Museum to get my hands on the necklace.”

  I tapped my jacket pocket, where a scrap of paper bore Sark’s description. The plan was to use the necklace as bait for a freelancer with connections to Winterthür. Sark claimed that would lead to information that would open dozens of holes in the Group’s operations. Through one of those holes, we would dive nose deep for a shot at Ninurta.

  “Promise me you’ll get along while you shop for the rest?” I swung to Jackie, who shrugged innocently.

  “I don’t have a problem with that.”

  “Good,” I said levelly and then turned towards the man still wheezing over his bruised genitals. “How about you, Sark?’

  “I’m good,” he croaked and managed to straighten a little. “Just catching my breath.”

  “You going to make it there, big guy?” I couldn’t help myself from asking.

  Sark gave me a pained grin and a thumbs up.

  “Isn’t it grand when we all get along? See you back at Museum Station in two hours.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Evening, Marcus,” I called as I swiped in at the Museum’s front desk.

  The night porter looked up from the security terminal and gaped before spluttering a reply. “What are you doing here?”

  I fought the urge to go on the defensive. I needed to play it cool, or things were going to fall apart before they even got off the ground.

  “Nice to see you, too,” I chided with a light laugh as I walked past his desk. “I do work here, you know.”

  Marcus flushed. It might have been endearing if I wasn’t so desperate to get past him.

  “No, I know,” he stammered, rising out of his chair. “It’s just I thought that you’d taken some time off. Don’t you have family coming into the country?”

  I pressed the down button on the elevator, hoping I wasn’t moving suspiciously quickly.

  “Yes, my uncle.” I gripped my purse to stop myself from fidgeting. “He came in last night, and it’s been fantastic catching up. But Shelton sent me a message that an evaluation report of a piece Meredith had left behind didn’t go through.”

  The elevator dinged, the beautiful sound of salvation.

  “Shelton’s wrong to push you on that,” Marcus declared incensed. “Family should come first, and even a prat like him should know that.”

  Again, I was struck by how fetching he looked, wide shoulders thrown back in righteous indignation. If circumstances had been different, I could have spared a bit more time to hear how I was being wronged.

  “Cogs in the machine, I’m afraid.” I sighed as I shuffled into the elevator. “But it’ll be quick, I promise.”

  “Okay,” Marcus said reluctantly. “Wait!” he called through the closing doors. “Can we talk before you leave?”

  “Sure.”

  The doors shut, and the elevator descended into the bowels of the Museum.

  I wondered what Marcus could want to talk about but dismissed the thought as the display ticked down the levels. I’d only passed the first hurdle, and I needed a good story if I was going to pull this off.

  ---

  I stopped by Cataloguing before going to Archives to make sure that the ingots we used for sampling and comparison were available. Technically, the samples needed storing under lock and key – several were precious or rare metals – but the ingot locker was usually left unlocked for ease of access. The locker had an electronic alarm, and I wasn’t sure if using my powers to open it would set it off. Thankfully I didn’t need to find out and the ingots were available for my little adjustment to the plan.

  Now to get the necklace. I pulled the note from my pocket where Sark’s tight but flowery script had recorded the relevant details.

  Gold necklace, Moughal Empire Exhibit, Shah Zafar, 1862

  Sark assured me it would be in Archives, and I had to liberate it. Having access to Archives was only the first step; there was more than one way this whole thing could go sideways. Archives kept exact records of everything pulled, including the weight. Even a slight change in the weight of a returned box would flag the item and send a report to the supervisors and security. With no supervisor around to override the system, Marcus or Charlie, the other night porter, would be obliged to keep me on the premises until they could rouse one.

  Just taking off with the artifact wouldn’t work either. The box would trigger the scanners built into the elevator doorway, and even if I left an empty box in a corner, I would only have thirty minutes before my failure to rescan the box would trigger an alert to security. Thirty minutes would be enough time to leave the building, but within an hour, I would be a fugitive and known artifact thief. I understood things were desperate, but I still hoped to have some semblance of a life to come back to when this was all over.

  When I’d presented my conundrum to Sark, he’d been unconcerned.

  “Work around it, or become a criminal,” he’d said with a shrug, the nonchalance in his tone chilling. “Either way, we need that necklace.”

  So, I’d come up with a workaround.

  The elevator doors slid open, and I was off down the corridor to the vault-like doors to Archives. I practiced my next lie for the sallow-faced young man––was his name Davenport?––who was clerk and gatekeeper for Archives during the night shift. During the day, several clerks dispensed items for examination or exhibits and catalogued the return of items. They were a quiet and quirky lot, which was saying something for a building full of archeology enthusiasts, and Davenport was the quietest and quirkiest. Some of the less kind workers called him “the mole-man”, but no one could deny that he had a moleish look. I steeled myself to deliver my practiced fib to a pair of dark eyes, slowly blinking behind overly large spectacles, set above a long, perpetually sniffling nose.

  I rounded the corner and nearly froze when I saw Adrian Shelton, my supervisor, standing in front of the Archives desk holding a clipboard.


  I was about to retreat when Shelton raised his head.

  “Evening, Dr Shelton.” I mustered some cheer. “I’m surprised to see you here.”

  Shelton’s pale complexion drained to grey. He swallowed, put down the clipboard, and nodded in greeting.

  “Good evening, Ms Bashir,” he managed. “It’s a surprise to see you too. I thought you were on holiday.”

  After Kezsarak’s defeat, Daria had “whispered in a few ears” which not only kept me working at the Museum but actually saw me promoted to my current position in cataloguing. Without explanation, Shelton’s attitude had also changed, going from a workplace tyrant to a benign, occasionally permissive, boss. Even after a year, I didn’t trust the change. If Shelton was biding his time, this would be the perfect opportunity to destroy me professionally.

  I forced my voice to be steady, though my tongue felt dry as sandpaper. “Yes, but it seems my lecturers aren’t quite so lenient as you, sir.”

  Shelton nodded gravely and put on a sympathetic face.

  “The academic grindstone is relentless,” he replied sagely. “What do they have you working on?”

  Damn, the new, cowed Shelton was nearly as meddlesome as the old, spiteful one, it was just harder to hate him for it.

  “The eh … Mughul Empire,” I faltered. “An artifact from the mid-nineteenth century.”

  A flash, something suspicious and cunning, like the old Shelton, played across his features, then vanished. He smelled a lie, and that intuition burned in his cheeks, but his eyes told me he was not going to say anything.

  What had Daria done? Her recent displays of ruthless exploitation made me suddenly feel something like real sympathy for the man.

  “Is there a particular item you were looking for?” he asked archly. “Or were you just going to browse?”

  I felt the familiar tension of our former contention. I wanted to adopt that crisp, icy politeness that had become second nature, but it seemed like a petty response. He was beaten, and we both knew it. He may have been a bully, but I wasn’t going to take up arms against an enemy that couldn’t fight back.

  “A specific artifact,” I said, drawing the note out of my pocket. “I have some details pulled from an incomplete cataloguing entry.”

  I offered the note, and Shelton looked at it as though it was a venomous arachnid. He met my eyes and then forced his face to assume a neutral expression as he took the note.

  “1862,” he mused, “was this piece personally owned by the Shah or just occurring during his rule?”

  I searched my memory for anything that Sark might have mentioned but came up a total blank. “Eh … I … that is the entry …”

  Shelton nodded, doing his best to look sympathetic, but with that same suspicious gleam. “The entry was incomplete. I understand.”

  He handed back the note, a sigh of resignation passing his lips.

  “Well, I’m sure Mr Davenport can help you find it. I can’t imagine we have too many necklaces from that period floating around.”

  Like a devil summoned by the mention of his name, the doors to the Archive chirped, and Davenport emerged carrying several artifact boxes. He dumped them unceremoniously on a cart by the desk.

  “Have a care, Mr Davenport,” Shelton snarled, placing one hand possessively on the cart handle. “Several of those are irreplaceable. The same cannot be said of you.”

  Davenport sniffed once, then shuffled over toward the clipboard Shelton had been holding when I arrived. Davenport’s eyelids slid down and up with speed like molasses and gave another sniff that made his whole face twist.

  “Did you sign for everything?” he asked in a monotonous, instantly unlikable voice.

  “Obviously,” Shelton snapped. “You do realize this isn’t my first time, don’t you?”

  “Never hurts to check,” Davenport droned, taking his time to check the sheets of paper as Shelton seethed. “One minute, and you can swipe them out.”

  Shelton looked like he was about to rail further, but his eyes darted over to me, and he physically drew back. He crossed his arms with very slow deliberate motions.

  “By all means.” His words were a bad imitation of genteel. “Do your due diligence.”

  “Uhuh,” Davenport grunted as he finished perusing the sheets. He reached over the desk to strike a few keys on the workstation keyboard. The id card scanner chirped, and Davenport gave a nod before redundantly pointing to the device.

  “Please, scan your card here.”

  It was clear that not telling the lowly Archivist off for his superfluous instructions was an effort of herculean patience for Shelton.

  “Thank you, sir.” Davenport’s smile showed all of his small, brown-tinted teeth.

  “Very good, Mr Davenport,” Shelton mumbled, taking hold of the cart and giving me a parting nod. “Good luck, Ms Bashir.”

  With that, he drew the cart out in front of him and trudged back towards the elevator.

  I waited until I heard the elevator doors close. Something struck me as odd about the entire situation.

  “Davenport,” I began, assuming his attention and cooperation. “Does Shelton usually come down here to transport artifacts.”

  Davenport looked up from his keyboard and shook his head.

  “Not during the day,” he replied and went back to his mysterious key tapping.

  That was an odd way to answer the question.

  “Can you tell me what he was doing with all those boxes?” I asked, putting a hint of pleading into my tone.

  “Taking them to Collections,” Davenport answered without looking up.

  Collections was lower than Archives in the Museum hierarchy; there was no way Shelton would be playing delivery boy. Thinking I’d misunderstood, I asked: “He’s delivering them for someone?”

  “No,” Davenport sighed and looked up at me with a contemptuous sniff. “He’s been working in Collections at night since your promotion.”

  “What?” I blurted. It was so bizarre I was certain he was joking. Davenport shook his head, the pitying look making him even more irritating.

  “You moved up as Shelton received probation,” he said as if it was all so matter of fact. “He didn’t dare ask for another student to replace you, and he doesn’t dare let things slack off for fear of being made redundant. So, he makes up the difference by putting in late hours Cataloguing.”

  “Oh,” I felt stupid and more than a little uneasy. I’d been overjoyed at being promoted to the department I’d always wanted to work in. If I were honest, I’d felt vindicated, that it was my reward for putting up with Shelton. Now, seeing what that had cost, even to someone like Shelton, it was more difficult to accept.

  “I can’t imagine that is very popular with Mrs Shelton,” I observed, then cringed as a wet, burbling sound came out of Davenport. It took a second to realize he was laughing, his brown teeth spread out in an unpleasant smile.

  “Don’t think she much cares now,” he chortled thickly. “They separated recently.”

  My stomach knotted, and not just at the sight of Davenport’s petty glee. What had Daria done? The demoness’s corruptive influence seemed to be bubbling to the surface with each new revelation.

  “Davenport, how do you know all this?” I asked, suddenly understanding others’ dislike of him.

  The Archive clerk sniffed, still smiling. “People talk. Some think because I don’t talk, I’m not listening.”

  It made a kind of sense, and I suddenly had to stop a train of thought that wanted to chase down everything I’d ever said while down here in Archives. I had bigger things to worry about.

  “Why are you talking to me then?”

  Davenport’s smile widened, and a chilling glint shone in his eyes.

  “Anyone who can knock Shelton down as many pegs as you did is someone I very much admire.”

  His grin suddenly seemed unctuous, and I didn’t like that he was looking at me so … reverently.

  “I need a necklace fo
r Collections,” I said briskly, trying to shake off the oiliness I felt leaking over me. “The details are on here, but I don’t have a box number.”

  I laid the note on the desk, and Davenport scooped it up. He shuffled towards the doors, not even bothering to look at the note.

  “For you, Ms Bashir, anything.”

  ---

  I returned to Cataloguing, relieved to have the place to myself, and set up on a light-table. I arranged the sample ingots artifact box before slipping on a pair of latex gloves. Opening the artifact box, I drew out the necklace.

  It was a beautiful and delicately woven scapular necklace, the filament branches of rose gold interlaced with silver. The textured expanse shimmered softly, but I spied a few darker patches that had probably been for jewels. Missing jewels was not uncommon for a piece like this, probably having been plundered and then traded multiple times before reaching the Museum, but I muttered a thankful prayer that they were gone.

  My heart gave a little thrill as I peeled one glove off. Skin contact with artifacts was forbidden––to protect the artifacts from the oils on human skin as well as protect said skin from whatever might still be on the necklace––but if I was going to do this, I needed to do it right.

  I took the scapular in my hand and let my metallic sense plunge completely into its makeup, exploring every facet. Not simply the composition of its alloys or the tensions present in its curves and curls, but the way age had tarnished the “tune” of the metal. I felt the accumulated minor adjustments and traced every fractional impression made during its life. It took several minutes, but eventually, I’d traced over every square nanometre of the necklace several times. I felt its song vibrate through my touch and knew each trilling turn in the melody.

  I now knew this work of art, at least its material and spiritual makeup, better than any archeologist before me. I didn’t know the human who had fashioned it, but I knew their artistry intimately.

  I sensed something else: a resentful pressure in the back of my mind. I’d heard the veteran cataloguers talking about how some pieces felt off, but I’d only understood when I experienced it myself.