The Nimble Man
( Menagerie - 1 )
Christopher Golden
Thomas E. Sniegoski
Christopher Golden, Thomas E. Sniegoski
The Nimble Man
CHAPTER ONE
Within the silent halls of the Boston Antiquities Museum the shadows were in motion. Red alarm sensors shone brightly but recorded nothing out of the ordinary. Only the nearly somnambulant passing of security guards disturbed the dust that eddied up on currents of air. Hidden cameras revealed only exhibits and artifacts in otherwise empty rooms.
Yet there was one room that was not empty.
The exhibit was Egyptian, devoted almost wholly to the Twelfth Dynasty. Though its collection of stone fragments, papyrus, masks, and sarcophagi might impress schoolchildren, to those educated in the area of antiquities the exhibit would have been wholly unremarkable. Or nearly so. Those who noticed anything at all out of place would likely have attributed it to simple human error, a curator who had made an honest mistake.
In one corner of the room Mr. Doyle thoughtfully stroked his thick mustache and admired a small sphinx. The piece had been unearthed at Katna millennia before and bore the name of a daughter of Ammenemes II, but the curators of the museum had badly mislabeled it. He shook his head and his heavy gray brows knitted with disapproval. If he had them there he would have given them a tongue-lashing for being so careless. Of course, on this night their carelessness had worked in his favor.
The moment he tore his attention away from the priceless sphinx, Doyle caught sight of the object that had drawn him here. With a grunt of satisfaction he crossed the room to a marble pedestal and peered through the thick glass enclosure atop it at the artifact inside. It was a crystal spider set inside a gold frame, perhaps five inches in length and four at the widest legspan. A small placard rested atop the enclosure.
Crystal Spider, circa 1995 B.C., discovered at Lisht, believed to have been a gift to the illegitimate pharaoh Nebtawyre Menthotope III during the "seven kingless years" preceding the Twelfth Dynasty.
"Well, well. Hello my little friend," Mr. Doyle rasped, standing a bit straighter and smoothing his greatcoat as though he was in the presence of respectable company. Which was not at all the case.
"So?" came a voice from a shadowy corner of the exhibit. "How did I do?"
He glanced in the direction of that voice. There was a large, ornate sarcophagus on display, and beside it several lighted glass enclosures that contained burial jars apparently associated with whomever had been put to rest within the sarcophagus. Eve stepped from amidst this tableau of death with grace and nonchalance, the same way she would walk into a bar or step onto a subway train. She wore crisply new blue jeans and a tight green turtleneck beneath a stylishly long brown suede coat. With her silken black hair and exotic features she was beautiful in a way only cruel things are. A tragedy, to be sure, for though Eve could be cruel she had so many other facets, so many better qualities.
They were old friends, these two, but it had been quite some time since they had seen one another. Doyle understood. He was just as guilty as Eve of letting their acquaintance grow fallow. With lives as busy — and as long — as they both led, the years could go by with the deceptive speed of clouds in the sky. When each one was so much like the last, it was easy to lose count.
As always, they were becoming reacquainted in a time of crisis. It was the nature of their friendship. He had contacted Eve for assistance and her efforts had produced results in less than a day. He had located her on the island of Mykonos. Fourteen hours later she had knocked on the door of his sprawling townhouse on Beacon Hill with the news that led them here.
Doyle smiled indulgently at her, as he would have at a daughter of whom he was particularly proud. "How did you do? Remarkably well, Eve. I've inquired all over the world in search of a Lemurian Spider." He turned his focus back upon his prize. "Bangladesh, Cyprus, Istanbul, Minsk. I confess to feeling more than a little foolish that you located one right here beneath my nose. And so quickly. How did you manage it?"
Eve strode across the room to join him, leather heels scuffing the floor. "We all have our specialties, Doyle. For instance, how did you get us in here without setting off any alarms? Without the guards noticing?"
A rare tremor of amusement passed through him. There had been so little humor or camaraderie in his life of late. Too many times in the past he had been betrayed by colleagues and friends, so that he had come to count on his enemies as far more reliable. Eve was one exception. There were others, but he had not seen most of them for a very, very long time.
With a mischievous smile he touched the enclosure around the spider and whispered a minor incantation. The glass turned to damp mist that fogged the air around their heads and warped the thin beam of red light that should have triggered an alarm the moment the enclosure had been removed. It did not. When the mist had dissipated, Mr. Doyle picked up the crystal spider and examined it more closely.
"As you say," he mused, "we all have our specialties."
Eve allowed herself an appreciative nod and then began to stride impatiently around the exhibit hall. It was typical of her.
"Relax, Eve. We're not leaving just yet." He shot her an admonishing glance. "If the whispers Dr. Graves has been hearing are correct, we don't have time for certain niceties. I'm not going to be able to take my new toy home to play with it."
He began to pry the crystal spider out of its golden frame.
"Hold on," Eve protested, hurrying to his side with a rasp of suede and denim. "Do you have to do that? You know how much I love the sparkly things. The spider would look nice on my mantel next to that Buddha with the clock in his belly."
He ignored her. It had grown warm in the museum in spite of the cool air blowing out of the vents, but Mr. Doyle had been a magician long enough to know the heat had nothing to do with the actual temperature. His face felt flush and the gold softened in his fingers, peeling away like hot wax.
"Fine," Eve sighed. "This thing wasn't easy to find. Just doesn't seem right to ruin it. How many bits and pieces of flea market junk do you think survived from Lemuria?"
Doyle sniffed in contempt. "More than you realize. I doubt there's a major museum in the world that doesn't have at least one Lemurian piece misclassified as Egyptian or Greek or Etruscan, even Japanese. It's one of the great failings of the human mind. One of our primary irrationalities. We see the improbable and call it impossible, and would rather accept convenient untruths than seek out unpopular solutions."
"Do you have to be such an elitist asshole about everything?"
The man flinched and, crystal spider in his hands, turned to glare at her. They were allies and sometimes friends and he was fond of Eve, but there were times when her behavior puzzled him. Other times it reminded him that though he had put a great deal of distance between himself and the odd primness of the era of his birth, he had not entirely escaped it.
"No," he replied at last, "just about some things. And most certainly about history and archaeology. I would think you of all people would understand."
Her eyes narrowed and a hint of fury glimmered in them a moment, and then passed. She sighed. "You are the most aggravating man."
Mr. Doyle cleared his throat, back rigid, and nodded once. "Yes. I believe I am." Then he bent to his task once more. The job was nearly done and it took him only another minute or so before he had removed the gold entirely from the elegantly designed crystal spider. It was a marvel from an age far more distant than anyone would have guessed.
"So are you going to tell me how this is going to help us find your dead sorcerer friend?"
The edges of Doyle's mouth tugged upwar
d, his mustache twitching in the smallest of smiles. He stared at the Lemurian Spider in his hand, felt its edges sharp against the callused flesh of his palm.
"Our quarry is not precisely dead, lovely Eve. And this? With the proper incantations, it will weave us an answer."
Eve arched an eyebrow. "What the hell does that mean?"
He felt the words rising from deep within his chest, as though they had been born not of his mind but of his heart. When he spoke them his voice was higher and lilting, the way he had sung the melodies his mother had taught him as a boy in Edinburgh.
"Atti mannu kashshaptu sha tuyub ta enni."
Mr. Doyle turned from her, raised the spider, and hurled it with all his might at the wall. Eve shouted and lunged to stop him but for all her uncanny speed she was too late. Her eyes were wide and her gaze ticked toward the wall. It was clear she expected the spider to shatter.
Instead, it stuck to the wall.
For several long moments nothing happened. The only sounds in the room was the hum of electricity in the walls and the shush of the air filtration system, and Doyle's own breathing. The illumination cast by the display lighting in the otherwise darkened room only lent to the gathering and shifting of shadows in every corner and they seemed to darken, to cluster more closely, as Doyle and Eve stared at the crystal spider.
"All right," Eve said, "what the hell is — "
She never finished the sentence.
With a grating, clicking sound, the spider began to move. Its legs scratched at the wall as it crept upward and Mr. Doyle narrowed his gaze, peering more closely until he could make out the thin strand of crystalline webbing it was leaving behind.
Eve slid her hands into her pockets and gave her hair an insouciant toss. "You know, with all I've seen — which is pretty much everything — you'd think I couldn't be surprised any more. What is it doing?"
"Watch," he chided her.
And so they stood in silence in the midst of the Egyptian exhibit and watched as the spider spun its crystal web, clicking up the wall and then to the left, moving back down to diagonally cross its original line. Soon enough a pattern began to take form.
"It's a map," Eve said. She stepped closer and looked up, head tilted back as she studied the circumference of the web pattern and the shape it had taken, the grid that was forming along the length of it and the large open rectangle in the center.
Brows knitted, Eve turned to stare at Doyle. "It's a map of Manhattan."
The spider paused for several long seconds at a spot upon its web that corresponded to where Greenwich Village would have been on the map. When it at last moved on, it had left something behind. Amidst that crystalline web, at one particular junction of gleaming thread, a tiny crystal stood out from the pattern of the map.
A chill passed through Mr. Doyle like ice sliding down his back and he stared at the map. Slowly he nodded. He had wondered for so long what had happened to the Mage, what had become of Lorenzo Sanguedolce, that it seemed unreal to him, looking at that crystal and knowing that it symbolized an end to his search.
He nodded gruffly and glanced at Eve. "All right, then. To New York."
Shortly before dawn, with heavy storm clouds aiding the night in its quest to keep morning at bay, the limousine swept through midtown Manhattan. Its tires shushed through pools of rainwater and the windshield wipers hissed as they beat their hypnotic rhythm upon the glass. New York had its reputation as the city that never slept, but on that Sunday morning it seemed, at least, to be dozing. The limousine was not the only vehicle about — they passed several taxis and police cars and a handful of automobiles whose drivers were likely about on business of questionable intent — but the streets were lonely nevertheless. With the storm hanging so low over the city and the rain driving down upon the limousine, the city seemed very inhospitable indeed.
In the back of the limo, Eve rested her head against the tinted window and gazed up at the cityscape that unfolded with each block. Twenty-four hour neon storefronts, digital billboards, and the glass and steel faces of thousands of corporations. In her life she had seen the rise and fall of cities more glorious than this one, and yet there was something about New York — with its old-fashioned personality and its vast ambition for the future — that she admired.
Her long legs were stretched out and she had slid down in the seat. From time to time her mind drifted so that she was in a sort of trance state in which ghosts of the past haunted her memory, but she did not sleep. Eve never slept during the night.
In the driver's seat, Squire yawned, revealing teeth as jagged and numerous as a shark's. The gnarled, ugly little man glanced into the rearview mirror and saw her watching him. His grin was hideous.
"Hey, babe. Good morning. You were zoning out back there so I didn't want to interrupt."
Eve stretched languidly against the leather upholstery, aware of the goblin's hungry eyes but unconcerned. She twisted her neck, muscles popping. Across from her, behind the driver's seat, Doyle slept in a sitting position with his hands clasped, corpselike, over his chest. He snored lightly, head bobbing from time to time.
She glanced at the driver again. "Usually you can't keep your mouth shut, Squire. I appreciate it."
"My pleasure," he said.
The goblin returned his attention to the road. They had passed through Times Square and were now rolling south on Seventh Avenue. Squire was a cautious driver. Doyle had paid to have the limo customized so that Squire could see through the windshield and still reach the accelerator and brake, mainly because the goblin liked to drive. Of all the services the creature performed for his employer, chauffeuring was the one at which he had the least amount of skill. Eve would not deny that Squire had his uses, but there were times when they were outweighed by his more annoying attributes.
"So, what's this about, babe?" the goblin asked, casting a quick glance over his shoulder, his gnarled features silhouetted by the greenish light from the limo's dashboard. "I mean, I need my beauty sleep and the boss rousted me without telling me much. What's the hurry?"
Eve closed her eyes and sighed. "If I explain it to you, will you stop calling me 'babe?'"
"I can try."
She nodded, opening her eyes and sitting up straighter in her seat. Her black hair fell in a tumble across her face and she swept it back again. "That's good. Doyle would be unhappy if I ripped your throat out."
The rain pelted the limousine's roof and sluiced down the windows. The engine purred and Squire kept both hands on the wheel as they slid through another intersection. Once again he caught her eye in the rearview mirror.
"Don't be that way, darlin'. I don't mean anything by it. And I'd have to be blind not to notice what a looker you are."
Eve's upper lip curled back in a hiss that revealed her fangs. "That could be arranged."
"Okay, okay," Squire protested, shrugging. "Just making conversation. You don't wanna talk, we won't talk."
Eve turned her gaze out the window again as they passed closed shops and newsstands with their metal rolling doors locked down tight. A tall, thin man in a hooded rain slicker hunched over as he walked his dog, the little beast leading him along by its leash, creating confusion as to which of them was the pet. Given the hour, Eve was tempted to believe the dog was in charge.
"I know very little," she began, still peering out into the rain.
"That's more than I know," Squire noted. He fished around the front seat and then held up a pack of cigarettes in triumph. The limo slowed as he tapped one out and used his lips to draw it from the pack.
"I've forgotten more than you'll ever know," Eve said, and her voice sounded hollow even to her, tinged with a melancholy she rarely allowed in herself. It was the rain. The damned rain. For some reason it always put her in mind of a simpler time, long ago.
Squire either missed her tone or ignored it entirely. "All right, you know so much, then spill it." The goblin pushed in the dashboard lighter, the unlit cigarette rolling like a toothpick be
tween his lips.
"You're not going to smoke in here," she said.
His wiry eyebrows went up and he glanced at her in the mirror. "I'm not? No, I guess I'm not."
Eve glanced over at Doyle. He grumbled in his sleep now, brow knitted in consternation. She was not surprised. He was not the sort of man she would ever expect to have sweet dreams.
"It's pretty simple, actually. You know the story of Lorenzo Sanguedolce?"
"Sure. Sweetblood. That's what all the arcane books call him. Sweetblood the Mage."
Eve nodded once. She had expected Squire to know the story. Anyone even tangentially involved with the magical community would have. Tales of Sanguedolce could be traced back as early as the eleventh century and though he seemed to have changed his name several times the stories about him cropped up in journals from a dozen countries over the course of hundreds of years. He was called Sweetblood, but it was unclear whether this was a literal translation of his Italian surname, or if the surname was simply another variation on that descriptive appellation.
By all accounts Sanguedolce had been the most powerful sorcerer who had ever lived. Yet early in the twentieth century, he had simply disappeared. None of the dark powers in the world had laid claim to having destroyed him and though there were rumors and whispers, no mage was ever proven to have knowledge of his whereabouts, or his possible demise.
"You know your boss has been looking for the mage for a very long time?" Eve asked.
Squire chuckled without humor. "That's an understatement. Never thought it was a great idea, myself. You know what they say about searching for Sweetblood."
"We may have found him."
The goblin jerked the steering wheel so hard to the right as he spun to stare at Eve that he nearly plowed the limousine into a squat blue mailbox on the sidewalk. In a panic, Squire hit the brakes and got the limo's nose headed in the right direction again.
Eve watched him in the mirror. Several times the annoying little creature opened his mouth and closed it again, as though for the first time in his life he had no clever or boorish remark to make. She knew it would pass, though. With Squire, it always did.
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