Born of Metal: Rings of the Inconquo

by A. L. Knorr

  My vision blacked out for a second. Thankfully, my fingers had already wrapped around the door handle, and muscular reflexes took over. I staggered drunkenly out the door, arms spinning to keep me upright. Righting myself as my vision returned, I threw a look over my shoulder before pelting down the street. None of the thugs pursued or shot at me. Dillon rushed to the front of the cafe, screaming curses.

  I had exaggerated about the fork. It would have taken skill I didn’t yet have, but Dillon didn’t know that. Once I’d left the shop, I could no longer hold the fork against his groin. He discovered my ruse. The realisation on his face was the last thing I saw before I ducked down an alley.

  I’d bought some time, but only enough to get to the university ahead of them. I hoped my knowledge of the place and Lowe’s guidance would make the difference. I needed to get to the other set of rings before they did.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The campus was walled and gated, but a little work with some drain pipes, and I was up and over without anyone the wiser.

  I didn’t know if the porters had instructions to stop me if I tried to come on campus, but being detained by police would be a poor use of my time. I’d gotten ahead of Dillon’s crew, but if they knew about Lowe and his connection to the rings, they’d have a good idea where I was heading. With my knowledge of the campus and my powers, I could navigate more easily, but they outnumbered me four to one.

  I knew how to find the rings, so I had to capitalise on that while the knowledge was still exclusively mine.

  I slid along the green before the lecture hall, shuffling past a few students with noses in their phones. Which reminded me I had Dillon’s phone. I drew it out of the jacket. Other than smelling of cologne, I was growing to like the coat. It fit fairly well even if the arms were a little long.

  The phone had a PIN, and after two careless attempts, the device informed me I had two more tries before it reset. The phone was a dead end for now, but I slid it back into the pocket. It might be useful down the road if I ever managed to get access.

  A soft drizzle misted down — hardly worth calling rain in London — as I followed a cobbled footpath to the courtyard before Brexlon Hall.

  The hall had served as Lowe’s home base, but since then had gone through several renovations. It had been converted to a residential hall, then to administration offices and now it was going through another repurposing. Scaffolding and plastic sheeting overlay the old stone building like peeling, flapping skin, glistening in the misty air. The venerable building — with its broad, squat frame and a vaguely pointed gable — resembled an old toad shedding its skin.

  I searched the gardens and the shadows between the scaffolds. No signs of a living soul. I crept around the edge of the courtyard.

  “Find the hidden attic access in the third floor men’s lavatory, then look for a brick chimney column near the front of the building,” I whispered. “Third brick, fifth row down from the top of the column, behind which is the key to free the lockbox hanging inside the flue.”

  “Actually, it’s the fifth brick on the third row,” a voice said at my shoulder.

  Whirling around, hands balled into fists, my jaw dropped as I saw Lowe standing there, eyes wide.

  “Terribly sorry for surprising you like that, my dear,” he said, hands raised. He stood just clear of the shadows on the hem of the courtyard and wasn’t even trying to talk quietly.

  “Get out of sight and keep quiet,” I said, hissing as I slid deeper into the shadows, my gaze darting around the courtyard and across the face of Brexlon Hall.

  “Ibby,” he began with a display of tried patience. “I’m a ghost. The only person in danger of being detected is you.”

  “I thought you said you couldn’t come with me,” I growled, resuming my advance towards the hall.

  “Failure of clarity on my part,” he said, clearing his throat. The loud way he was speaking grated on my nerves. “I couldn’t go with you on the train or on your various errands. I can only manifest at the museum, the university or the station. Anywhere else is impossible.”

  I tried to imagine a hundred years without real human contact, trapped in three locations you’d already spent most of your life around. That frightful thought cooled my irritation.

  Unable to hold my dread fascination at bay, I asked, “Is it like walking into an invisible wall or something?”

  Lowe shook his head as he strode along beside me, for all the world looking like any other professor chatting with a pupil as they moved between classes.

  “Nothing so dramatic. If it had been, it might have saved me a good deal of confusion and frustrated experimentation over the first few years. Ah, I’d recommend you take the window there, behind that scaffold.”

  The window was on the north end of the hall where a section of the plastic sheeting had been cut back and the waist-height section of scaffold sat a metre out from the brick. It looked as though they were in the process of removing the old window, frame and all.

  Slinking to the edge of the courtyard shadow, I then dashed behind the scaffolding. I hunkered down between the metal rods and the window frame, assessing my entrance. Lowe unceremoniously reached over and pushed on the panes. The window swung open.

  “This is the only one with hinges that don’t squeal terribly,” he explained.

  “Thanks,” I said, breathily and began the delicate process of hauling myself through the window quietly. It wasn’t easy. The bottom of the sill was level with my eye.

  I liked to think of myself as being in moderately good shape. In secondary school, I ran regularly and took kickboxing classes at a local community centre. While working an internship, I didn’t have the time and energy for such things. I managed to get up there, carrying my bag along, but I sank down to the floor inside the building, a fresh sheen of sweat on my brow and my breath coming in gasps.

  Lowe materialised next to me and walked down the hallway towards a pair of peaked doubled doors. He stepped on the threshold and was gone, as though he’d been edited out of existence. I shivered, the sweat on my body turning clammy.

  Partnering with a ghost took some getting used to.

  I climbed to my feet, looking up and down the corridor, when Lowe reappeared with a grave expression.

  “The main foyer and the stairs are clear, but there may be someone upstairs already. I’m certain I heard footsteps.”

  My skin prickled up in goose flesh. I’d counted on being the first one on scene, and now that I wasn’t, doubt hooked at my thoughts. What if this was an ambush? What if they were just waiting for me to get the rings for them?

  “I’m not sure I can do this,” I whispered, the utter confidence I’d had in the coffee shop feeling far away.

  Lowe nodded but gave me an encouraging smile. “You’ve handled everything they’ve thrown at you so far, and quite handily, I might add.”

  “This is different.” I didn’t hide the panicked rush in my voice. “Every other time, it was them coming at me, not the other way around. I was just doing what I could to get away. I’m not a soldier or guardian or whatever these rings are supposed to make me.”

  In a fit of terror, I tugged at the rings, my fear momentarily overwhelming whatever grip they had on me. I nearly had them off when Lowe’s hands closed around mine. His hands were cold, firm, but not unkind.

  “Ibby, look at me,” he commanded. His gaze met mine, and I couldn’t look away. Will, pride, care, anger and sadness flickered in his eyes, now as pale as his hair in the reflected evening lights. Everything a professor, a teacher could feel at seeing a student giving up were in those eyes. As he looked at me and I at him, the geometries of emotion crystallised into one final shape: determination.

  “Lowe, please.” What I saw in his eyes woke a different fear. I didn’t want to hear what he would say. What if I couldn’t live up to it?

  “Ibby, these rings.” He opened his hands so I could see them. “They did not make you into anything. Everything was already t
here. The first time I saw you, I knew who you were. You are strength and will, bending but never breaking, and you are what this world desperately needs.”

  He released me, and I looked down at my hands, the rings glinting in the darkness.

  “You’ve known you were capable of more, Ibby. It just scares you how much more.”

  I was scared, deathly so, but I chose to believe what he was saying. Dillon’s threats echoed in my mind, his sneer materialising in my mind’s eye. Now was the time to be strong. Strong like when I fought for my spot in my programme. Strong like when my parents died. Strong like when I chose to forge ahead for Uncle Iry’s sake. I was strong then, and I could be strong now. Hopefully, I wouldn’t break.

  My ringed fingers tightened into a fist. My senses stretched out, feeling every scrap of metal down to the thumbtacks on a hallway bulletin board. Thinking they might come in handy, I put a hand out. The tacks came zipping over to my cupped palm.

  “I might need you to provide a distraction,” I remarked, my tone grim.

  I met Lowe’s eyes again, and he gave me a small, admiring nod. “At your service.”

  With Lowe acting as spectral reconnaissance, it was relatively easy to reach the third floor without alerting the intruders.

  They were on the second floor, Lowe reported, and they were busy tearing apart the common, which had served as a conference room in Lowe’s day. They’d already ripped into nearly all the offices on that floor, including — Lowe reported with irritation — his old office.

  “Though, given the current decor,” he mused, “I must say it’s an improvement.”

  Creeping up the stairs and wincing every time one of the ransackers smashed something, I gave up talking to Lowe. When something gave a loud crash, I clenched my hand and then bit back a hiss of pain as the thumbtacks poked me. They’d seemed like a handy thing to have, all these tiny slivers of metal, given that I had no other weapons, but transporting a handful of pinpoints was tricky.

  “I wonder if those ruffians have any idea how expensive that buffet was?” Lowe complained. “Not to mention the history it bore witness to!”

  Lowe’s commentary actually calmed my nerves, as I climbed onto the landing of the third floor.

  “Not the Duchess’s mirror!” Lowe groaned a second before the thud and the sound of splintering glass rose from beneath. “If only they’d drop dead, I could pummel them here and now,” he grumbled, smashing a slender fist into his other palm. “Slack-jawed, inbred, tosspots …”

  The ghost’s tirade continued as I stole down the hall towards the sign for the men’s loo. It was dark in the lavatory. A few small frosted windows let in smudges of bleary illumination.

  With my phone’s light, I found the third stall and stepped inside. Pointing the phone’s glow upwards, I could just see the faint outline of a square, which was set into the ceiling, the size of a trapdoor. I felt each screw anchoring the paint-lacquered panel in place.

  Sliding the phone into the front of my new jacket, I adjusted it so the light just cleared the top of the pocket. Reaching a hand towards the screws, I mentally worked them loose, grinding my teeth as I spun them millimetre by bloody millimetre.

  I wondered how much longer before the men downstairs moved to the third level or were joined by Dillon and his cronies. Every second could make the difference between a clean escape and having to fight. This thought gave impetus to my work. I could sense a metal ladder, folded and laying on top of the trapdoor.

  I gave both the screws and the ladder a mental tug together, and the panel popped free. With a shriek from the rusted hinges, the ladder succumbed. I ducked as the panel dropped, but I was clipped by the descending ladder anyway, which felt as though someone had been keeping it greased all this time. Knocking the stall door open with a bang, I landed hard on my back. Breath whooshed from my lungs, and the thumbtacks sprayed across the floor.

  I lay on the tiles, barely breathing and listening for a sign I’d been heard.

  Lowe appeared, standing over me. “You really must be more careful.”

  I scowled but took his outstretched hand.

  “You should hurry,” he added as I mounted the ladder. “One of them received a call on his cellular device, and when he was done, the men redoubled their efforts. Someone may be coming this way very soon.”

  I didn’t need further prompting. Without a backwards glance, I clambered up and drew out the phone light. The attic smelled of mould and dust and years of stillness. It was mostly bare except for a small pile of construction materials, shortboards and sections of rolled insulation. It took me a second to make out the stack of mortared bricks at the edge of the light’s reach.

  Bent almost double, I crept across the shallow space when I heard a rumble of voices beneath my feet.

  They’d moved to the third floor.

  Every step was a gamble. A squeaky board or groaning timber would betray me. Arriving at the chimney, I counted the bricks. The fifth brick on the third row came loose with a spatter of mortar crumbs, and then I had the key. A thin patina of orange corrosion covered its face, but I could feel the strength of the doughty metal.

  Shuffling around the chimney, I found the blackened iron flue. The old metal here was more corroded, and I had to use my power to draw back the slide-bolt. It moved back with a scrape, and the door opened with a sharp squeak. I gave an involuntary gasp, my heart thrumming in my ears.

  Lowe was squatting next to me. “They’ve started at the other end of the hall. Let's be quick, shall we?”

  I nodded, pulling my heart out of my throat, and reached inside the flue, feeling along the upper lip of the access panel. A chain dangled there, and with some groping, the padlock and then the rectangular box came into my hands.

  With only a little sticking in the padlock mechanism, the lock came free from one end of the chain. The other portion of the chain, still looped around the lock, was pulled down the flue, and the whole thing began to slither free. If I’d had more sense, I might’ve drawn the chain back up telepathically, but I was fixed on keeping the box in my other hand from falling. As such the chain, lock and key tumbled down into the dark. A distant clunk and rattle echoed from far below. I froze, holding my breath.

  The ring’s container was a little smaller than a shoe box, only thinner and made of polished wood. Once I blew the dust off, it shone a russet red, glossy in the light of the phone’s torch. Its face was a series of laminated tiles making a vaguely floral design. They were arranged in a haphazard way with a few open spaces between: a puzzle box made in an old East Asian style.

  “A gift from a friend in the Japanese antiquities department,” Lowe explained at my shoulder.

  I didn’t jump this time. I was getting used to having the old wraith around.

  I shook the box and heard a rattle.

  “How do we open it?” I whispered, my eyes already crossing at the complexity of the pattern.

  “Oh, bother,” Lowe grumbled, his face knotting up in a grimace of frustration.

  “You do remember, right?”

  Lowe’s face remained locked in that expression until — similar to an image catching during a buffering stream — his whole body froze, flickered and flashed through snapshots of expression. I inched away from the shuddering ghost, clutching the box to my chest.

  “Lowe?”

  “I-I’m s-sorry,” Lowe stammered, his speech catching like the first conversation we had. “I c-c-can’t.”

  Then he was gone. No fading image. No puff of smoke, not even a last lingering word. He was just gone.

  “Lowe,” I whispered tentatively, but I knew he wouldn’t respond. Something about his sudden departure seemed serious, if not absolute. For the time being, I was on my own.

  I strained to hear the men downstairs. I could have laughed at the absurdity of my situation. Hiding in an attic and wishing a ghost would come back to help me escape the living, rather than the other way around.

  The sound of the ransackers was a di
stant commotion, barely audible. That gave me the confidence to move towards the hatch that opened to the lavatory. Once I’d escaped, I could figure out how to open the puzzle box. If all else failed, I’d just smash the thing open, though it would be a shame to destroy something so pretty.

  I lifted the box and rattled the rings, sensing every contour and the potent hum of their unique composition.

  I made to put the box in my bag and discovered it wouldn’t fit. I looked at my school books. They were expensive and weighted with knowledge I needed to pass classes and grow as an archaeologist. I’d been carrying them everywhere with me.

  With some sorrow, I traded the books for the ring box. Returning to the ladder, I began my descent. Halfway down came the sounds of sighing and the trickle of liquid into a basin. I froze, realising what I was hearing, and hung there suspended halfway between the ceiling and the stall, my heart galloping in my chest.

  My pulse doubled as I realised I hadn’t turned off my phone light. It was a miracle he hadn’t noticed it reflecting off the back walls. One handed, I tried to draw the phone out of the jacket pocket. The ladder gave a little squeak.

  The trickling sound stopped.

  I didn’t dare turn around and bathe the lavatory in the white light of my phone. Every muscle tense, I hardly breathed. Every sound seemed amplified including my hammering heart.

  There was a grunt followed by a zip, the shuffling of clothing and I found a thin slice of hope. Maybe I hadn’t cut him off midstream. Maybe his business was finished.

  Heavy steps moved behind me, heading towards the door. He passed the sinks without stopping. I was so close to a clean escape. Then came a curious mutter and the scuff of shuffling feet. An eternal second of surprised silence, and then an angry shout.

  “What the bloody hell!”

  I flew down the last rungs of the ladder and shot out of the stall, just as he came around. He gave a snarl as the light from my jacket pocket caught his unprepared eyes.

  He was dressed in a construction worker’s neon yellow vest, complete with a white hard hat and sleeves rolled up to the elbows. His pants were coated with powdered drywall, and slivers of wood clung to his sleeves. One gloved hand held a crowbar, while the other shielded his face from my light.