Born of Metal: Rings of the Inconquo

by A. L. Knorr

  I’d been walking with a purpose, my head swivelling to survey my surroundings for the better part of fifteen minutes when my phone vibrated.

  Message: Prof. Schottelkirk

  Ibby, you need to come in. Now.

  The fact I was getting a text message from my adviser was reason enough to be concerned as she despised cellular phones in general. This must be urgent, and though I knew it had to do with the encounter earlier, I was surprised she’d heard already. It wasn’t even lunch time, and the academic machine was gearing up to grind and chew me properly.

  I replied: On my way.

  I was rewarded with another text.

  Call me when you’re close. Don’t come to my office.

  My pace quickened.

  Chapter Eleven

  I followed Schottelkirk’s instructions to meet her at the records building, an austere collection of bricks that was older than many countries. I went in the side entrance where a foyer opened into a long hall. Photographs and paintings ran the length, each with a bronze plaque set beneath. Between each were glass-topped display cases inside which relics of the university’s younger days sat mouldering. Lights hung from the vaulted ceiling, but only every other light was on. Swaddled in an artificial twilight left me feeling uneasy.

  I sent a message to let Schottelkirk know I was waiting, omitting the fact I was anxious.

  Unable to stand lurking in the shadows, I busied myself with the art hanging on the walls. Most of it depicted university faculty who — by dint of impressive title or actual effort — had brought esteem to the institution. A painting of one weak-chinned Professor Emeritus with a family name that sounded vaguely royal neighboured a black and white photo of a bushy-browed man, which in turn hung next to an assembled skeleton of … something. Nepotism and achievement strolled hand in hand down the hall. Once I’d accepted this was the case, it was almost fun to guess who were the real scholars and who were vapid figureheads.

  I began to forget about my devastated career and the threat of violent criminals as I wondered whether Sir Ashley Igglesworth had contributed anything as head of the Sociology department, besides his fantastic surname and a head of hair that put both Einstein and Marx to shame. I stifled a giggle at a pudgy scholar named Weston, doing his best to look sagely as he stood next to a sarcophagus easily twice his height.

  As I read the name of the tall man who stood on the right-hand side of the sarcophagus, opposite Weston, my mirth evaporated.

  JAMES LOWE, NEAR EASTERN STUDIES (Right)

  I read the name twice, before looking back to the photo to scrutinise the face there. The poor lighting concealed the familiar features, but the longer I looked the more I saw the peculiar man I’d encountered.

  This was the man who had dodged Marcus’s search as well as the security cameras. The man who had been with me as I’d stepped off the elevator alone.

  The lack of colour in the photo made it hard to tell, but his hair had more than the shock of pure silver I’d seen, and perhaps the lines were not so deep. The differences were there, but they were matters of age, not identity.

  I looked back at the plaque under the photograph, and my heart rocketed into my throat.

  PROFESSORS HAROLD WESTON, EGYPTOLOGIST (Left)

  and

  JAMES LOWE, NEAR EASTERN STUDIES (Right)

  1918

  This photograph was nearly a hundred years old, and Lowe could not be a day younger than forty. There was no way he could be the same man!

  Lowe must have had a son he shared a name with, but that didn’t explain why he hadn’t shown up on the CCTV. The longer I stared, the more impossible the son theory seemed. The uncanny similarity was beyond genetics. The lines in the face, the styling of his hair and even the uncomfortable way he stood rigidly for the photograph was an exact replication.

  It had to be him, but what did that mean?

  I was grappling with the implications when the door at the end of the hall opened. Professor Schottelkirk came flying towards me, hard heels snapping on the polished floor.

  “Professor, what’s going …” I stopped when I saw her.

  Across one side of her face was a large bruise in shades of deep blue, purple and red. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy.

  “Oh, Ibby!” Schottelkirk sobbed, in a voice so small and scared that it shook me. I’d never heard her sound like that. She was a force, a champion of archaeology, a larger-than-life mentor. Now she seemed a thin, middle-aged woman at the edge of falling apart.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, Ibby!” she repeated and pressed a hand to her mouth while hugging herself with her other arm. She was shaking like a leaf in a windstorm, her ragged breath whistling between curled fingers. The longer she looked at me, the more scared I became.

  Shoving aside self-conscious thoughts about propriety, I wrapped my arms around her. She didn’t resist, but pressed her face into my shoulder and let loose a flow of tears.

  As I stood there holding her, making soft reassuring sounds, I mused over the abrupt role reversal. By rights, I — who’d been violently attacked twice within a few days, had been suffering under a vindictive weasel of a man and was an orphan in a vast city — should be the one being comforted. But the recognition came without bitterness or remorse. I was here, she needed comfort and that was something I could give. My own anxiety lessened in the face of her distress, as now I had a reason to be strong, to pull myself together.

  Make it better by being better.

  Schottelkirk’s sobs subsided into soft sniffs, and she’d stopped shaking by the time I released her. She looked an utter mess, but the fragility in her gaze had lessened.

  “Professor Schottelkirk,” I said gently but with urgency, “tell me what’s going on.”

  She looked about to fall apart again, but my gaze remained locked with hers, and she rallied.

  “They took everything, Ibby,” she blurted, and drew another shaky breath. “I didn’t know … I mean, I didn’t think. I’m so sorry. I interrupted them this morning as they ransacked my office. I didn’t even have time to scream before one of them brained me.”

  She touched her head, and I noticed the bandage on her scalp. Her fingers trailed down to her swollen, discoloured face. “I must have struck my head when I fell. There was more than one of them. They knew what they were looking for, because they found everything.”

  Everything? What everything? My mind flailed to understand, but suddenly it came to me. I straightened, growing cold as I registered what she was saying.

  Our work.

  “I’ve also since learned they took everything from the labs and wiped all the records.”

  All the tests, all the typological notes, every bit of work we’d done on the rings was gone.

  “They’re going to come for the rings themselves. I’m sure of it. Do you understand, Ibby? It’s only a matter of time before —”

  “They’ve already tried,” I said flatly.

  Schottelkirk paled and gripped my forearm tightly, her fingers trembling.

  “I got away, obviously. I don’t think they have any idea where I am right now.”

  My adviser nodded mutely, but her eyes roved about like that of a spooked mule.

  I had an idea what the answer might be, because of her apology, but I had to ask. “How did they know about them, Professor?”

  Her lower lip quivered, and she shook her head, the gesture pitiful and childish.

  I nearly lost my footing as she threw herself on me again, grinding her eyes into my shoulder as she sobbed. “It was me! Ibby, I’m so sorry, but it was me!”

  She’d told someone, likely multiple someones, even after her insistence that I keep mum. I fought the urge to shake her. “We weren’t supposed to tell anyone. Not friends, not colleagues, no one.”

  The edge in my tone caught Schottelkirk, and she drew back. I let go of her, watching with what I was sure were less than friendly eyes.

  “It was for you to keep quiet,”
she sniffed, taking on a more strident tone. “You don’t have the contacts, the clout, the skillset that I do. I’ve hobnobbed with politicians, deans and bloody royalty. This shouldn’t have been any different!”

  I reminded myself she was rattled and nothing good would come from scolding her, even if she was acting childish. “Who did you tell?”

  She stiffened and brought a hand to her mouth again. “People I thought I could trust. Scholars and contemporaries who specialise in Near Eastern and Bronze Age studies. People we needed and whose expertise and reputation would keep us from being laughed out of every respectable institution! People we would have had to contact eventually anyway.”

  Something in her tone nagged at me. “Are they the only people you told?”

  Her defensive façade began to crack. “There are a few, not even a handful of others, I may have hinted to.” Her eyes tracked all over my face anxiously. “They are peers … I suppose, rivals of a sort. I thought a few words and a picture or two might remind them I was still a force to be reckoned with.”

  I took a step back, my hands coming up to cradle my head. I suddenly felt very tired, and my head was pounding. I moaned in disgusted disbelief and massaged my temples. I couldn’t see Schottelkirk, but her shrill voice stabbed my ears.

  “You don’t understand what it’s like, Ibby, you just don’t! Like all bright and eager students, you think this field is about excavations, research and discovering the bloody truth. That’s because you don’t have the first idea of how things are really done. You don’t … you …” Her voice trailed off.

  I lowered my hands to see her gaping and pointing a trembling finger at the rings I still wore.

  “Y-you brought them … ‘here’?” She looked near panic, eyes wide and rolling.

  “What the hell was I supposed to do with them?” My hands curled into fists. “I was also attacked this morning! It’s not as though I’ve had time to develop a plan.”

  A loud gaggle of students passing outside the hall made us both jump and eye the exits.

  “The plan,” Schottelkirk said, hissing, “is to put those things back where you found them, and to play this off as a botched robbery. No discovery is worth this.”

  I wanted to argue with her, insist some things were indeed worth this kind of trouble, but one look in her eyes told me to save my breath. She was terrified, and I probably should have been the same. But something had changed in the alley, and I wasn’t going to back down.

  The answers I needed weren’t going to be found here.

  I looked at the photograph of Weston and Lowe, and a chill ran down my spine. I reconsidered. I was in the records building. Wasn’t I?

  I went to take Professor Schottelkirk’s hands the way she had mine only last night, but she flinched away. Her eyes darted to the rings and then looked at me plaintively.

  I squared my shoulders. “Take care of yourself, Professor,” I said as gently as I could and then turned on my heel.

  Schottelkirk didn’t follow, only called after me as I moved towards the end of the hall that led into the records offices. “Where are you going? Damn it all, Ibby. What are you going to do?”

  I didn’t even look over my shoulder.

  “Lowe? No, I’m sorry. There’s no one on faculty under that name. I can tell you that right now.”

  Since finding the correction office in regards to faculty records, I’d been through two student volunteers and one junior administrative assistant, all as useful as a brolly in a hurricane. Now I stood before Yasmine, the undisputed matriarch of records — if the other staff’s deference was any indication. A slight woman with dark, almond eyes and skin like beaten gold, probably nearing fifty by the streaks of grey in her otherwise immaculate hair, she surveyed her domain with absolute sovereignty.

  And I, a vagabond in her little fiefdom, was quickly wearing out my welcome.

  “I understand, ma’am.” I put on bashful smile. “I was looking into a Professor Lowe that would have been in the faculty around the 1910s and into the 1920s, possibly. He was an expert in Near Eastern studies.”

  Yasmine narrowed her eyes, though whether in interest or suspicion I couldn’t guess. She leaned forwards in her office chair, which squeaked, and she tapped her pen twice on the desk.

  “Records that old would not be on our current system,” she replied, eyes still narrowed. “We would have to search hard copies, which are in the basement … the sub-basement.”

  I felt the weight of her scrutiny, challenging me to make myself that much of a nuisance. As fierce a woman as Yasmine was, the rearrangement of my priorities since the attack left me more than a match for such obstacles. Still, there was no reason to be boorish about it. I cast my gaze lower and kept the sheepish smile.

  “I’m sorry it’s such a bother, but I would really appreciate it if we could look. I’m gathering sources on archaeology lecturers. It’s for an essay on developing areas of focus, and Professor Lowe was referenced, but I really need some primary sources.”

  I looked up through my eyebrows and saw Yasmine watching me, unmoved.

  “Please, ma’am? I’d be so grateful.”

  Yasmine raised one unnaturally defined eyebrow and seemed to make up her mind. Her desk drawer snapped open, she fished out an extensive collection of keys on a ring, and she popped up from her desk. “Let’s make this quick, shall we?”

  I tried to express my gratitude, but I was too busy trying to keep up with her.

  The sub-basement of the records building was behind two locked doors and a flight of narrow stairs. On a small landing with a single sodium bulb shining over a steel security door, our little expedition nearly ended.

  The door wasn’t locked, but it was stuck. Yasmine threw her petite frame against it, pantsuit be damned, but it hardly budged. Trying not to show she was breathing hard, she replaced strands of hair that had escaped from her bun in the struggle. She looked at me tiredly. Her skin had turned a jaundiced shade in the overhead light.

  “Could I have a go at it?” I asked, afraid she’d call the search off. I would have, if I were her.

  “Be my guest,” she shrugged and stepped back.

  I was not as dainty as Yasmine, but no one had ever accused me of being particularly stout either. I stepped forwards. The steel of the door called out to me, a grinding, crotchety song. I laid my hands flat against the door, feeling my awareness expanding until I knew every warp and quirk. It was a strange, intimate sensation, almost frightening, but I recalled the construct of needle and thread. Steel was right where I could easily pluck its string. I gathered my will.

  Open sesame.

  A little bit went a long way, and the door flew open with ferocity. It hit the concrete wall inside with enough force to kick up dust. From within the dark corridor, the battered door gave a final protest on squealing hinges.

  I looked back at Yasmine without having to fake another sheepish smile. “You must have loosened it for me.”

  “Quite,” Yasmine squeaked, the tiny sound echoing up the stairs.

  The blackness beyond was absolute, but my guide recovered and drew another key from her ring.

  “Excuse me,” she said softly, stepping lighter around me after my show of force. She reached just inside the door, and after a moment of fussing about, drove the key home and gave it a twist.

  Hanging fluorescent lights came on one after another in a seemingly endless row. An annoying electric buzz filled the air. The sterile light revealed wire shelves flanking the narrow room where clear plastic bins sat stuffed with files.

  “1910s to 1920s, you said?”

  Yasmine led me in and pointed to laminated placards affixed to the shelves. Each placard was the size of a postcard and bore dates in bold black type.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I stepped into the room, noticing the subtle change in temperature. “Are these rooms climate controlled?”

  Yasmine walked a few steps ahead of me, checking placards as she went. She didn’t bother to look back
or pause as she answered. “These records date back to the mid-19th century. They are as vital to our history as anything found in a museum and so require some extra care.”

  I let my new sense play over the documents in the bins. With a little concentration, I could feel the staples and paperclips, each giving a little chime as I walked past.

  “Here they are,” Yasmine called, already in the process of dragging a bin off its shelf. She set the bin down and produced a pair of gloves. She drew out the first sheaf of documents from a thin plastic sleeve, and carefully parted a few leaves of the yellowed stationery.

  “1920s,” Yasmine murmured as though not wanting to disturb sleeping paper.

  I found myself whispering, probably because she was doing it too, which I know sounds stupid. But it was contagious, especially as we were getting closer to discovering the truth.

  “I assume 1920s, but the only date I’m sure about is 1918. He and Professor Weston, an Egyptologist, did some work together.”

  Yasmine gave me a wilting look. “That would have been helpful at the outset.”

  She replaced the documents and picked her way through the bin before coming up with a thin collection of papers. She flicked through several sheets — a collection of blunt typed text festooned with curls of handwritten script.

  I hoped her intense glare indicated interest rather than frustration, but had to wait for a small eternity before she finally came up for air. She shook her head, and my heart dropped.

  “Poor man,” she intoned, her eyes bouncing back and forth over the documents. “I’m not sure you picked the right subject for your paper.”

  Her sad exclamation put my stomach in a knot and sparked an urge to shake the answers out of her. “Please,” I said with forced calm. “Tell me everything.”

  “That’s just it.” A flutter of irritation plumed as she ran a finger across an entry. “There is not that much here. Other than his association with Professor Weston, there isn’t much to distinguish Professor Lowe.”