The Book of Peril (The Last Oracle 2)

by Melissa McShane

  “It’s all in the brief,” she repeated, then glanced back over her shoulder at me. “Tell the truth, and you have nothing to worry about. It’s Pontarelli who’s in trouble.”

  I stared at her until she got into her little blue car and drove away down the street, then shut the door and locked it. Nobody I knew called Lucia by her surname except Rasmussen. If it was one of his people, a Nicollien, delivering this message, that might be bad for her case.

  I unfolded the paper and read it. The typed message only filled about two-thirds of the page. At the top were a few lines of legalese about the case that sounded like I’d expect a mundane court case to read: People v. Lucia Pontarelli, and the accusation of partiality in the ongoing investigation against Judy Rasmussen. That was sneaky of Rasmussen, styling it “People” instead of accusing her directly, but for all I knew that was standard operating procedure in magical court cases.

  The next lines told me I was a witness for the prosecution, which frightened me. Rasmussen wanted me to testify against Lucia? He couldn’t possibly expect me to do that. Then I calmed down and thought about it. I believed Lucia was impartial and was only doing her job. I’d say that, and it would benefit her rather than Rasmussen. The strange woman was right: I just had to tell the truth.

  There were a few more lines explaining my duties as a witness, and then the instruction to appear at court, which was an address downtown, at 1:45 that afternoon. They weren’t giving me a lot of time to prepare. Then the time registered. Mid-day. I’d have to close the store. Abernathy’s never closed mid-day. At a time like this, when the oracle was on the verge of destruction, that bordered on insanity.

  I called Judy, who answered so quickly I was sure she’d been hovering near her phone. “Did you find anything at the market?”

  “Not yet. Judy, I have to reach your father.”

  “Why haven’t you been to the market? Aren’t you taking this seriously?”

  Her voice was unusually shrill, but my own worries trumped hers. “The tribunal is this afternoon, and I’ve been called as a witness against Lucia. I can’t leave the store like that.”

  Judy made an impatient noise. “You don’t want to talk to Father right now. He’s deep in preparation for the tribunal.”

  “He’s the only one who can change the time—the only one I know, anyway. Please, Judy. We’re talking about Abernathy’s fate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  I tamped down my own shrillness. “I mean these illusions are going to destroy the oracle if we can’t stop them. I have to stay here and make sure the auguries go forward. He has to see reason.”

  “It’s not going to destroy the oracle to be closed for a couple of hours today.” But she didn’t sound sure. “Did you say you were called as a witness against Lucia?”

  “Yeah. I don’t know what to think about that. Mr. Rasmussen has to know I support her.”

  “Be careful, Helena. Father is good at getting people to say what they don’t mean.” She rattled off a phone number, which I jotted down. “Call me when it’s over. All Father will say is he’s going to get me released, one way or another. It’s making me nervous.” She hung up. I reflected that Judy was always the one to end our conversations, then called Rasmussen. The phone rang and rang, and no one picked up, and it didn’t go to voicemail. After twenty rings, I hung up. I’d have to try again later. For now, I had work to do.

  No one came in that morning but the mail carrier. At least the number of mail-in auguries hadn’t diminished, though word seemed to have gotten around the local magical community that Abernathy’s or its custodian was increasingly unreliable. The rumors weren’t something I could do anything about, so I focused on filling augury requests. More than half were flawed in some way, and I was exhausted by noon, exhausted and on the verge of embarrassing, stupid tears. I wasn’t sure who I wanted to cry for, myself or the store.

  At 12:30 I forced myself to eat lunch, though I was so nervous my stomach told me it wasn’t hungry, even for my mother’s chicken paprikash. I wasn’t going to face Rasmussen without a fortifying meal. I dressed in my most businesslike attire, a gray pencil skirt and white blouse with a gray button-down vest, pinned my hair up in a French twist, and drove to the address on the brief.

  The tribunal’s location was near the riverbank, in an undistinguished red brick building down the street from the Morrison Bridge. I’d expected it to be somewhere less public, though I had to admit I couldn’t think of anywhere in the city limits that would qualify. The building made me think of dull offices filled with dull people doing dull things, like actuarial work—though I didn’t know what an actuary was, it sounded dull. It didn’t look like a place people were happy to work in. Glass windows rising several stories above the entrance reflected the cloudy gray sky, and the nearby trees with their fresh spring buds whipped wildly in the wind of the oncoming storm. I parked in the adjoining parking structure and ran for the door, grateful my hair wasn’t loose to be tangled by the wind that blew the smell of the river toward me.

  The atrium of the entry was as tall as the building itself and equally undistinguished. The floor tiles were plain white granite flecked with pale gray, outlined in dull brass strips that hadn’t been polished in, probably, ever. A white reception desk, curved in an elongated S, stood opposite the doors. Beyond it was a bank of elevators of the same brass as the floor, though more spruce and shining. The whole thing made me think of those movies showing God’s reception area beyond the pearly gates, the ones where Heaven is supposed to be a soulless bureaucracy. Fortunately, the men and women crossing the atrium and entering the elevators were dressed in business attire, not white robes, or I would have turned around and left at once.

  Instead, I crossed to the reception desk. “Helena Davies. I’m expected,” I said, as the brief had instructed. I hoped I wasn’t supposed to say who I was expected by because that information had been left off my instructions.

  The woman at the desk, dressed in a dull tan business suit, took a name badge on a clip from somewhere beneath her and attached it to my collar, which made it sag in an uncomfortable way. “Go to the last elevator on the left,” she said. She had a lovely Spanish accent. “Wait until you are the only one who will get on it, board and press the button for the basement. You will receive further guidance when you reach your destination.” She turned her attention back to her work, dismissing me.

  I followed her instructions, feeling a bit silly at hovering near the elevators like I didn’t know where to go. A man smiled and made a gesture for me to board his elevator. I smiled back and shook my head, feeling even more ridiculous. Finally, there was a lull in traffic, and I boarded the elevator and leaned hard on the DOOR CLOSE button. What would I do if someone got on? Ride around until they got off, no doubt. But no one did. I pressed B and waited. Carpet covered the walls as well as the floor, but the ceiling was brass. I looked up at myself. My hair was starting to come down on one side. So much for looking professional. I gave it a little push, then gave up.

  The elevator dropped. I waited in the eerie silence—there was no piped-in music, no sound of fans, not even the sound of the motor running—and watched the display. G, it said at first, then the G disappeared, and I saw B1, B2, B3. As B3 disappeared, the elevator came to a stop. The door didn’t open. I waited, feeling increasingly nervous. Then, to my shock, the elevator moved sideways. Now the display read S1, S2, S3. At S5, the elevator stopped again, and the doors slid open on darkness illuminated only by the light from within the elevator. Feeling nervous, I peeked out.

  The hall leading away from the elevator was rough, black stone that soaked up the light and gave nothing back. Even the floor was uneven. The air was damp, and I smelled wet stone and loamy earth. It felt more like a tunnel than a hallway, a tunnel carved out by ancient diggers for a long-dead king. I stepped into the hallway and wobbled a little on the uneven floor. Behind me, the elevator door closed, and I was left in blackness.

  I stayed put.
The receptionist had said I would receive further guidance, and I was damn well going to stand here until I got it. Not to mention stumbling around in the darkness didn’t strike me as a smart move. I waited and listened for the sounds of someone approaching. Instead, I heard water dripping, though it echoed enough I couldn’t tell how far away it was. I wished I was the kind of woman who was always prepared with a pocket knife and flashlight and possibly a granola bar, though I wasn’t hungry. It seemed the sort of thing prepared women had. Women who had been Girl Scouts. I’d barely made it past Brownies, when Viv and I were both kicked out for some prank involving our leader’s underwear.

  In the distance, light shone, white light with a purplish tinge to it. It hurt my eyes even that far away, and I squinted and shielded my face. The light came closer, enough for me to see it was a lantern on a pole, held by someone in black or dark blue robes; it was hard to tell in the purple light. I’d seen robes of this style before, on the Ambrosite Archmagus, though hers had been crimson. The figure, a chubby man with a comb-over that made him look like stereotypical middle-management, walked right up to me and tapped the lantern. The light dimmed like a car’s headlights. “Ms. Davies,” the man said, peering at my badge. “Follow me.”

  I followed him down the hall, which went on for at least a hundred feet, to a dead end—or so I thought. The man put his hand flat against the wall and pushed, and a man-sized rectangle of black stone sank inward, then slid to one side. Dry air puffed out around me, warming me where the dampness had chilled my face and hands. The man gestured for me to enter, and the door slid shut behind me, leaving me once again alone.

  This place looked like a cathedral, with pillars rising to curved arches high above. Lanterns of lacy white metal hung around the walls, illuminating the room with a soft yellow light, just the way a cathedral should be lit. Yet it looked subtly wrong. I’d never been in many cathedrals, but all of them had windows, and of course this was too far underground for that. It smelled strange, too, smoky, but not incense-smoky. This was more like the smoke of a dying campfire. I pinched my nose to keep from sneezing and walked forward across the pale gray flagstones, not as uneven as the black stone, but rough still, unpolished.

  Across the pillared room was a doorway, its top a pointed arch, and more of the white-purple light emerged from it. The glow wasn’t as painful as the lantern had been, but I preferred the soft light of the pillared cathedral. Even so, the arch was the only door I could see, so I made for it. My heels clicked across the flagstones like beetles making noise in the night, and the clicks echoed, filling me with urgency to reach the door and stop disturbing the silence with my intrusion.

  The room beyond the door was, thankfully, carpeted in what was again either black or dark blue. The light made it difficult to tell. I stopped inside and surveyed my surroundings. Ten or twelve backless chairs stood near the wall of this round chamber, none of them occupied. More men and women in the dark robes stood near them as if guarding the people who weren’t there. Across the room stood what I had to call a judge’s bench. It looked like the one in My Favorite Wife, long enough to accommodate several judges. Only three people sat there now.

  But what drew my attention was the source of the purplish light. It was a bonfire burning in a circle of black stone. The smell of smoke was stronger near it, though I couldn’t see that it was consuming anything. There was no wood or coal beneath it, just more of the same black stone surrounding it. A man dressed in an ordinary business suit stood in the middle of the fire. He wasn’t screaming, or thrashing; he looked as if he wasn’t even aware it was there.

  “What did Ms. Pontarelli direct you to do, Mr. Scolopini?” William Rasmussen said. He’d been obscured from my view by the man in the fire, and it startled me when he spoke.

  “She instructed me and my team to investigate Judy Rasmussen,” Scolopini said.

  “Not some other suspect?”

  “No.”

  “Thank you, that will be all.”

  Scolopini stepped over the ring of stone and went to sit by the wall. “Ms. Pontarelli, you may answer the charge,” said one of the men on the bench. He looked vaguely familiar, and I searched my memory until I dredged it up: Ragsdale, a member of the Board of Neutralities, who’d once required me to perform a criminal augury Abernathy’s rejected. Despite that, I’d thought him a reasonable man, and I hoped I was right.

  Lucia stepped into the fire. She’d been seated in a chair near the judges’ bench, and I caught only a glimpse of her face before she turned her back on me to face the judges. “Ms. Rasmussen is our primary suspect,” she said, sounding as if she’d said the same thing repeatedly to no effect, “and proving or disproving her guilt is key to this investigation. If Ms. Rasmussen is innocent, she doesn’t have to fear anything.”

  “Or this could be evidence of persecution,” said the woman at the judges’ bench.

  “I’m not interested in persecuting anyone. I’m following the evidence.”

  The woman leaned forward, her fingers gripping the edge of the bench. “Then why focus on a single suspect instead of following several leads? If it turns out Ms. Rasmussen is innocent, you’ll be back at the start.”

  “I’m not obliged to explain my decisions, as per the Accords,” Lucia said, “and if this tribunal had any faith in me—”

  “I withdraw the question.”

  “Have you anything else to say in your defense?” Ragsdale said. Lucia shook her head. “Call the next witness.”

  “Helena Davies, custodian of the Neutrality called Abernathy’s,” said one of the dark-robed figures. I jumped. Scolopini came around the wall to pass me on his way out. “Good luck,” he said in a low voice. I nodded. Then I walked forward and, lifting my feet high, stepped into the circle of black stone.

  The fire didn’t feel like anything. Or, rather, it didn’t feel like fire, or warmth, or anything but a gentle draft. It did leave me nearly blind, and I squinted at the judges’ bench. Ragsdale sat in the center, flanked by a man and a woman. All three of them wore the same dark robes as the others. Beside them, at intervals along the bench, were prisms of cloudy glass about two feet high and half that wide that glowed with a dim golden light. There were six of these, and I couldn’t tell what they were for—certainly not for light, because the purplish light of the fire outshone them. They were pretty, whatever they were.

  “Ms. Davies,” Rasmussen said, “where was the first offensive origami found?”

  For a moment I thought he meant the origami was insulting, and I stammered, “Uh, oh, you mean… it was in my apartment. My kitchen.”

  “There were several people who might have placed it there, yes?” He paced a few steps to my left, turning his back on me.

  “Yes. No, actually—”

  “But Ms. Pontarelli went immediately to Ms. Rasmussen as her primary target?”

  “Um, yeah, she did, but—”

  Rasmussen turned on his heel to face me. He was a blurry shape beyond the fire. “Did you think that was reasonable?”

  He’d started to piss me off. “She said she had good reasons for suspecting Judy.”

  “But you didn’t agree.”

  “Are you supposed to put words in my mouth?” I said, not bothering to conceal my irritation.

  “Just answer the question. Did you agree with her?”

  I was virtually blind. I could tell where Rasmussen was only by the sound of his voice. “I’m not the investigator.”

  White heat lashed up my legs, and I cried out and tried to step away, but I couldn’t see anywhere to go that wasn’t on fire. “Answer truthfully, or have truth burned out of you by the Blaze,” Rasmussen said.

  “I didn’t agree with her,” I insisted.

  The fire subsided. “Did you tell her that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And she ignored you.”

  “She did, but she—”

  “Has Ms. Pontarelli pursued any other leads?” Once again, he’d turned his back on me.
>
  “She has a team investigating the origamis. I don’t know anything else about the investigation.” I was nearly blind, and dizzy with the rapid-fire questions, and terrified that I might inadvertently say something that would hurt Lucia’s case.

  “A team of Ambrosites?”

  “Yes.” That felt like a trap, though I couldn’t see how.

  “Ambrosites who would be expected to share her dislike of Nicolliens?”

  That angered me. “Judy’s not a Nicollien. She’s neutral. And I don’t think Ambrosites have to hate Nicolliens.”

  I heard a laugh from the bench. A metallic voice said, “Naïveté is not becoming a custodian.”

  “Answer the question,” Rasmussen said.

  “I see Ambrosites and Nicolliens getting along in Abernathy’s every day. I don’t think I’m naïve.” I waited for the fire to burn me again but felt only the cool draft of faintly smoky air.

  “Do you believe Judy Rasmussen is innocent?”

  “Yes. I do,” I stated. “I—”

  “Thank you, that will be all,” Rasmussen said. I bit back an angry retort at being dismissed so casually. I still couldn’t see anything. I felt around with my foot for the stone ring surrounding the fire.

  “You can leave the circle, Ms. Davies,” Ragsdale said. He sounded snotty and superior.

  “I would if your stupid fire hadn’t blinded me,” I snapped back.

  A murmur went up. Then a hand grasped mine. “Take a step forward,” Malcolm said, “and lift your foot high to avoid the ledge. My lords and ladies of the Board,” and his voice shifted, as if he were looking away from me, “you should have taken into account the custodian’s ability to see through illusions.”

  “I beg your pardon, Ms. Davies,” Ragsdale said. He did sound penitent. “We were inexcusably negligent not to have known this. Please have a seat.”

  If it’s inexcusable, you can hardly beg my pardon, I thought, feeling a little snotty myself. But I said, “Thank you,” and let Malcolm lead me to a backless chair.

  “You’ll have to tell me what it looks like, later,” Malcolm murmured. I tried not to feel abandoned when he released my hand and sat next to me.