by ‘Not just any silver,’ said Jay helpfully. ‘I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure it’s the same kind as the lyre.’
‘That is entirely—’ said Luan, and stopped. ‘What kind of a hound circumvents my defences and finds its way straight to the most valuable artefacts in the building?’
‘She’s a nose-for-gold,’ I said quickly, remembering too late that I had glossed over Pup’s presence before.
His face set into disapproving lines. ‘I think you said you were not treasure hunters?’
‘We aren’t. It’s just Pup that has a few bad habits…’
‘And what manner of scholar keeps a nose-for-gold?’
A fair question. ‘She’s an academic oddity where we come from,’ I said, trying my best smile.
‘We aren’t here to steal your silver,’ said Jay irritably. ‘We came looking for Torvaston’s project, that’s all.’
‘That,’ said Luan in a terrible voice, ‘is our silver.’
Jay blinked. ‘…Oh.’
So the “Heart” was a dismantled pile of Silver with a capital S, and it was lying in a storeroom somewhere in this largely-empty tower. I remembered myself telling Wyr he was welcome to plunder at will once we got inside, and winced. All right, I hadn’t thought the place would prove to be inhabited, but that was the best excuse I had for my reckless promise. A cache of something so frighteningly valuable and powerful must never be permitted to fall into the hands of someone like him.
Earl Evemer and his compatriots had successfully protected it for centuries. It was our unauthorised presence here that put it at risk.
Way to go, team.
‘We should go,’ I said.
Jay looked sharply at me. ‘Go?’
‘What we came for no longer exists,’ I said. ‘Mission over. We can go back to Mandridore and tell them it’s a no go.’
‘We?’
For a second, I’d forgotten my no-fly state. ‘Erm.’ I looked around. ‘Where is Pup? You left her with the Silver?’
‘If you’d like to try prising her off that stuff, be my guest.’
I sighed. ‘I am very sorry,’ I said to Luan. ‘If we can retrieve my disgraceful thief of a Pup—’ (and, come to think of it, my intellectual thief of a book) ‘—We will get off your lawn, and stop complicating your day.’
Luan held up a hand. ‘Not so fast.’
I stared. ‘What?’
‘I would like a look at that lyre, please.’
I dithered. I could hardly blame him for asking, but… I did not want to hand it over.
Then again, we stood here swearing blind we weren’t there to rob the place, and expected him to just trust our word, despite all apparent evidence to the contrary. It would be unbecoming to refuse to trust him for even five minutes with our articles of value.
I looked at Jay. He had hidden the thing; it was for him to decide whether or not to reveal it.
He looked quizzically back at me. I’m the new guy, his face (probably) said. Why are you making me decide, o mentor?
Because your guess is as good as mine, I signalled back.
He shrugged, and set the snuff box down. Which reminded me. ‘Hey, where in the tower did you get swept off to?’
‘Some kind of bedchamber,’ he said, counting downwards through the buttons on his shirt. ‘Or a museum. The place was practically preserved in aspic.’
A choked sound emerged from Luan.
‘You okay?’ I said.
‘A grand chamber?’ asked Luan.
‘Fit for a king,’ said Jay. ‘Probably literally.’
Luan groped for his chair, and sat back down. ‘His Majesty’s private quarters.’
I studied him. He’d turned white. ‘Why’s that so shocking?’
‘Because,’ he said faintly, ‘those rooms have been inaccessible since Torvaston died.’ He lunged suddenly, way fast for such an old man, and scooped up the snuff box that Jay had set down on the arm of my chair. ‘This must have belonged to His Majesty,’ he said, and his voice shook. Then he chuckled, though the almost maniacal glint in his eye took all the mirth out of the sound. ‘Not that we have nothing left of his personal possessions, but none of them have ever worked. Because he attuned the charm to… to a snuff box.’
‘And whata snuff box!’ said Jay, producing the damned lyre with a flourish.
All thoughts leaked out of my foolish brain, and time stopped. I stared like an idiot at the pretty thing, its curving frame gleaming like moon-touched silver, its strings rippling like sun-touched waters, and the cursed thing sang to me. The melody reverberated through my bones, and I knew I would remember those notes for the rest of my life.
Magick pulsed around me. I no longer saw Earl Evemer’s handsome, old-fashioned parlour, or not in such prosaic terms as walls and furniture and fireplaces. I saw the world as a flow of magick, colourless yet shimmering with all the colours in the world. Jay was a firework throwing off sparks — my doing, perhaps. Luan blended in, seamlessly, like a single thread in a complex, perfect tapestry.
I do not know how I might have appeared, for I could not see myself. But I felt right. Slotted in like the final piece in a jigsaw puzzle. Powerful.
I do not know what happened between the moment of Jay’s waving the lyre around, and the moment when he hid it behind its glamour once more. I came awake with a start, to find Jay looking unperturbed (good, Earl Evemer had not tried to make off with the lyre), and his lordship seated once again in his deep armchair, looking six ways shaken.
‘I would like very much to see His Majesty’s chambers,’ said Luan.
‘You do have the snuff box,’ I pointed out. He still held it clutched in his left hand.
His fingers opened as I spoke, and he offered it back to us. ‘And I have taken it without your permission.’
‘Do you need our permission?’ I said, uncertain. ‘It more rightly belongs to you than to us.’
But Luan shook his head. ‘I may not know why, but Torvaston had his reasons for leaving these things in your Britain. And he was of your world, not ours. If you are here at the behest of his natural heirs, then I will not lay claim to this box.’
I exchanged a look with Jay. ‘I can’t think of a single reason to object to your using it,’ I said.
‘Neither can I,’ agreed Jay.
Not that I didn’t suffer a moment’s disquiet. Why had Torvaston locked everyone out of his rooms, and left the key in our Britain instead?
But I couldn’t afford to start doubting Luan’s motives now. Apart from anything, I badly wanted to see those rooms, too.
‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Oh,’ I added casually, ‘And I’d like to stop by that workshop on the way there. I may have, um, left something behind.’
Ten minutes later, I stood with Luan and Jay at a crossroads in the network of passages that ran throughout the tower. These four-way junctions functioned as transport points, Luan informed us, provided you either knew how to manipulate them, or you were carrying something that served as a token.
That didn’t explain how one of them had swept Pup away, but since no one was likely to have any explanation to offer for Goodie’s peculiar brand of larking about, I chose not to raise the issue.
Mauf lay snug in my shoulder bag. Snug and smug. ‘Miss Vesper!’ he had greeted me as I stole into the workshop. ‘I lay my intellectual riches at your exquisite feet.’
I’d stopped, surprised into immobility. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I,’ he said proudly, ‘have been very busy.’
If I didn’t know it to be impossible, I would have said he sounded drunk. Drunk on knowledge? Intoxicated by academia? Mauf had drunk deeply from the Well of Wisdom, and was now high as a kite.
I gave his front cover a soothing pat as I picked him up. ‘Just out of interest, could you actually read any of those texts?’
‘Not a word.’ He giggled.
I gave up.
He now lay asleep (supposedly) in the bottom of the bag. Once in a while I heard something like a stray chortle from somewhere in the vicinity of my right elbow.
Best to ignore it.
‘Forgive me,’ said Luan, paused on the brink of taking the plunge into Torvaston’s Royal Apartments. ‘Is your bag… laughing?’
‘Long story,’ I said.
He just looked at me, and I felt a bit guilty. I had just used Mauf to thieve Hyndorin secrets, even if I hadn’t taken anything of material value. I had no business standing there like butter wouldn’t melt.
Then again, if the snuff box was more rightly our property than his, because our Britain and natural successors and representatives of the Troll Court, yada yada, then surely works related to Torvaston’s projects qualified under the same rule. Right?
Sometimes I envied Jay his utter moral certainty. It did make him a bit of a stick in the mud sometimes, but at least he was spared these exhausting bouts of wrestling with his conscience.
It being rather too late in the day to set about being a goody two-shoes, I abandoned that line of thought.
Luan was hesitating.
‘Everything all right?’ I said, when time passed and he did not move.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is only that… no one here has seen these rooms in hundreds of years. Their very existence has become the province of more myth than fact.’
‘That makes it exciting,’ I offered, bouncing a bit on my toes.
He nodded, and straightened purposefully. I wasn’t fooled. His hands were shaking.
People really revered Torvaston, didn’t they? I hoped he was the kind of person who deserved all this adulation. As far as I could determine, his track record was a bit too varied to merit it.
‘He must have had a really magnetic personality,’ I muttered.
‘Torvaston?’ said Luan. ‘He was like a god.’
With which bombshell, he stepped into the crossroads vortex and vanished, sweeping Jay and I away with him.
