I went in first, holding the door open behind me.
“There we go,” I said as he stepped in. “That’s not so—”
Carson yelped.
Dead ahead, perched at the end of an aisle, was a human face. At least, the skin of one. It had been pressed flat, and now sat framed, like a piece of fine art.
“—bad,” I finished limply.
“Who would buy something like that?” Carson whispered.
Good question. But a better one: whom did the face belong to in the first place? There were other humanoid races out there—elves, for a start—but still. Someone had died for this.
“Garish, isn’t it?” Heidi asked. Carson’s cry had alerted her to our presence, and she had wandered around to us. “Imagine putting that over your mantelpiece.”
Carson fixed me with a pale look. “Please don’t.”
“Don’t worry,” I said, maneuvering us down the aisle Heidi had appeared from. “I like the décor in the hideout without any skin masks sprucing things up, thanks.”
In spite of Carson’s fear, he still slipped into curious-child mode as we meandered through the tight aisle toward the counter, much the same as he did whenever we visited Lady Angelica. It was like when you watched a horror movie, I supposed. You knew that in just a minute, maybe just a second, something was going to spring out of the dark. You watched, not wanting to see it, desperate to turn away every moment. And still you saw it anyway. On one shelf were six arrows embedded in an orc heart, still wet with purple ooze. Elsewhere, ribs from some animal maybe the size of a six-week-old kitten half-filled a tub. Plastic bags and a scoop sat beside it, as well as an old-school scale I would expect to see in a sweet shop. And farther on was miniature humanoid, about as tall as my knee, male, grey-haired, and naked. He was penned into a glass cage with an open top, and a sign affixed to its window pledged something apparently quite terrible in alien script: a furry grey creature with a turban propped above sprouting ears and a small trunk was taking great delight in jabbing at the small man with a smoking metal bar. He let off high-pitched shrieks, like a yell through helium, and scuttled faster every time the bar connected.
“Is that thing …” started Carson faintly. “Is that thing a-al—”
“Alive? Yes,” said Heidi flatly. To the elephant-like creature jabbing at it: “You should be ashamed of yourself.”
It only looked back at her, shuffling aside so we could pass, before resuming its torture.
But to be fair to Benson, the truly macabre items were few and far between; there were many more here that could well be at home at Lady Angelica’s. We passed a tray full of dice that morphed into shapes with increasing numbers of sides; a ship in a bottle that floated atop an inch of water and tiny people could be seen manning its decks and unfurling one of the sails; a storybook open on a plinth, reciting a story to us with great gusto as the images on its pages animated.
Heidi paused momentarily at a box that looked like it was filled with pebbles.
“Stones?” I asked, eyebrow raised.
She traced the small sticker with her finger; a calligraphic flick of script. “Instant huts.”
“How does that work?” Carson asked.
“No instructions. But I would imagine you squeeze it, then put it down and stand well back.”
Carson’s fear was momentarily forgotten. “Can we try one?”
“Now? Only if you want us to get kicked out. Imagine the damage one of these springing open would cause in this junk shop.”
From behind us, the minuscule man gave a particularly pained shriek. We glanced back to see it pinned into a corner, metal bar pushed through its shoulder.
Carson caught sight of the thin dribble of claret, and instantly spun back around.
“I would love for us to get kicked out of here,” he forced through gritted teeth.
“Roll on the inter-dimensional RSPCA,” Heidi said. Shaking her head, she bypassed the instant huts and waved us forward.
A counter was erected against the back wall, reaching from one corner to halfway along the rear of the store. A bar hatch was open on one side. On the other, a dark doorway disappeared into the rear of the store. Strips of cloth hung down, obscuring anything that might be waiting there.
Our man of the hour—or minute, if Carson’s dreams were fulfilled and we beat a hasty retreat—was just in the process of adjusting a series of jars across one edge of the counter. They were filled with candy—and not remotely alluring. I’d made the mistake once of buying a bag of peppermint balls—just a handful, mind, because I had the spare cash (and also felt particularly blue, my research into the Chalice Gloria having stalled for a couple of weeks). Outside, I bit into one, and my mouth was flooded was something wet and bitter, spongy tissue squishing between my teeth. Turned out it was a peppermint eyeball. I have never vomited so eagerly or swiftly.
Benson looked up as we approached. “Well, hello! Mira Brand, lovely to see you.” He reached over, squeezed my hand and pumped it, then was moving past. “Heidi—radiant, my dear, radiant. And Carson Yates—nice to see you, my boy, it really is.”
Carson looked like he might have something else to say about that. But Benson was so nice, infectiously so. Just as human as the three of us, he was getting on for his fifties, I guessed. Very short—naturally about Heidi’s height, but even shorter because he spent so much time bowed over—he was stout and balding. Only a fuzz remained on his head, stretching from ear to ear around the back of his skull and not daring to cross the top. He always wore a wide smile, was forever polite—and so even if he did choose to stock actual faces in frames, and pygmies it was apparently perfectly okay to torture, it was impossible not to like him.
“Good afternoon, Benson,” I said. “Life treating you well?”
“Wonderfully. Just wonderfully. And yourselves?”
“We’re doing all right,” I said.
“Fantastic. And you’re looking well. More grown-up every time I see you.”
And there was his grandfatherly side. Probably another reason I gravitated toward him. I didn’t think much of my parents and their boundless we-know-best attitude. It was nice to have found someone who exuded familial affection without feeling obliged to instruct me as to how I should live my life.
“That’s what happens when you get older, Benson. Though I’m fairly sure I’m done growing now.”
“No, I don’t think so. You’re only seventeen. Still got a bit more in you. Just a shame that’s not true of us, hm?” he said to Heidi, adding a wink.
Her lips twitched with a subtle smile, but she made no reply.
“So,” Benson said, clapping weathered hands together. “How can I help you today? Have you come to buy?”
“‘Fraid not,” I said.
“Ah. Come to take some of an old man’s coup, then.” His eyes twinkled. “It will be coup, won’t it? Or are you after pounds today?”
“Coup, please,” I said, confirming the currency of Seekers. Lady Angelica favored it, I’d been told, though we had been lucky enough so far not to have to pay her. The spell I’d used to “switch off” the gravity in the temple holding the Chalice Gloria had been given as a gift. Which concerned me a bit, honestly. I doubted there was such a thing as a free lunch. Or at least, if there was, my growling stomach hadn’t met it yet.
“Coup it is,” said Benson. “Though don’t forget that I can convert.”
He pointed to a board fixed to the wall behind him. The symbol for coup, a C with an upside-down triangle crossing its curve, was printed across the top, with conversion rates beneath. The pound sign was midway down, joined by dollars and rubles before giving way to symbols matching some of those on the windows. One of them moved as we stood there, making a shift to ease the coup rate higher. I reckoned some currency trader somewhere was having a good day.
“What have you got for me, then?”
I waved Carson forward. He pushed back the flap of his manbag, looking to me for confirmation. I nodde
d; figuring I’d give him the honors of handing it over.
He brought it out with utmost care. Benson’s hands were already extended and ready for it.
“Obduridium,” he said as he took it, “unless my eyes deceive me.”
“That’s right,” said Carson. To me: “Right?”
I nodded.
Benson bent low over it, eyes raking over the pale spots flecked over the onyx surface, like someone had run a finger across the wet bristles of a paintbrush.
“Beautiful edges on these,” he said, running a fingernail very lightly across one. Then he rummaged below the counter, and came up with an eyeglass. Pressing it into position and screwing up one side of his face to hold it there, he leaned even closer.
“Surface fairly pristine. Little bit of marking just here …”
I leaned forward now, to see it; but Benson had flipped the plate, and in any case I didn’t think I’d get a good look at what he was talking about unless I borrowed that eyeglass myself. Even then, Benson would probably need to walk me through what I was looking at.
“No hallmark … although I wouldn’t expect one on a piece of this age; it’s the older ones where they used to imprint those, before it fell out of fashion—folk thought it ruined the surface, you see.”
“How old is it?” I asked.
Benson swayed from side to side. “Fourteen hundred years at the most, I’d expect. Maybe a little longer depending on where you got it.” Removing his eyeglass and peering at me, he said, “Where did you dig this up?”
Just at that moment, the elephant-like humanoid appeared behind us. We were alerted by a shriek of the minuscule man he’d been stabbing, and we turned to see the turbaned thing holding the man in his free hand. Thin trickles of crimson oozed between his fingers as the grey-haired pygmy bucked and thrashed.
“I’ll be with you in a few minutes, Dramper,” Benson called. “You’re not in a hurry, are you?”
Dramper trumpeted what must’ve been a “no” because Benson lifted a hand, thumb and forefinger touching: A-OK.
Dramper moved off, disappearing back the way he’d come.
When he was clear, Benson asked me again, “Where’d you get this, then?”
I glanced behind. Not that it really mattered now, but I didn’t want my business broadcast all over the place. Especially not to strange elephant things who got their kicks out of torturing tiny men.
I settled on answering, “Not far from home.”
Benson winked, tapped his nose. “Gotcha.” Assessing the plate one last time, holding it up to the light, he said, “Unfortunately, fourteen hundred years is optimistic, quite optimistic indeed. Based on the working on it, and the imperfection on the base, I’d say you’re looking at … maybe four hundred years. Five hundred at a push.”
I wasn’t exactly sure what that meant. Certain eras were much more valuable than others, and it didn’t always follow that older meant more expensive. But the way Benson said it, led in with “unfortunately,” it didn’t sound great.
“How does that impact what it’s worth?” I asked.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Truly I am. To think of what you likely went through to get it …”
I waited, breath held.
“I could give you one hundred coup for it.”
Carson glanced to me. As did Heidi.
I was apparently the expert here in whether that was good or bad.
I hesitated, mouth open but not sure of what words might come out.
Benson cut in, “Tell you what. Tell you what.” He shuffled down the counter for the register, brass and oversized; the sort of thing that would be right at home in Victorian England. “I’m particularly fond of you, Mira, and I wouldn’t want you to leave here feeling totally dejected over the value of this find. So I’ll double it. Two hundred coup.” He removed a stack of notes from the register, holding them up. Streaked with silver lines, they glinted in the light. “What say you to that? I’ll barely make a penny on it myself. But I’m very willing to do so for you.”
Still, Carson and Heidi were looking to me for a decision.
“Uh … how much will we have left out of that if we buy a coil elvish rope?”
“One hundred and thirty-six.” And already he was putting the notes away, fishing out coins to make up the correct total, quick as a flash.
He placed it on the counter and slid it along to me.
Smiling, he said, “I’ll just get your rope, shall I?”
“Uh. Yes. Okay. Thanks.”
He stuck up a thumb and disappeared through the fabric obscuring the back room, leaving us with the obduridium plate and his offerings sans fee for the rope.
“We could just leave with this right now,” Carson whispered.
Heidi shot him a dark look from my right. If she were beside him, there was no question in my mind: Carson would have been delivered a sharp elbow to the midriff.
Benson reappeared a few moments later. He had a coil of silvery rope tossed around his shoulder. He unhooked it, and placed it down on the counter.
“There we are. All good?”
I nodded, because apparently we were. “Yeah, that’s, uh, that’s great. Thanks.”
Benson beamed. He pushed the rope toward us—Heidi took that—as well as the notes and coins, which I slid off and pocketed. Then he lifted the obduridium plate in both hands, and, already moving for the back room, he said, “Wonderful to see you today, Mira, and the both of your friends there. Safe travels, hm? Oh, and … speak favorably of me to Lady Hauk, eh?” And then, barely before I could say goodbye or lift a hand or confirm that I would do so, he was gone.
I hesitated. I guess that was us sorted, then.
“Off we go,” Heidi said for me, and prompted us into action.
We made our way toward the door again, down the central aisle this time. Dramper had taken up position there, and seeing us moving, he breezed past for the counter.
I bit my lip.
“What’s up?” Carson asked.
“I just … I don’t know if we just got ripped off or not.”
“Why would Benson rip us off?” Heidi asked. “He’s not like Mr. Yates here, who doesn’t think twice about making off with someone’s money and the item they’re supposed to be buying from you.”
He shot her an indignant look.
“I guess I don’t know what any of this is worth.” I paused close by the door, looking back. No sign of Benson’s return; Dramper continued to wait alone. “Did we get a good price for the plate? Were we overcharged for the rope? It was all pretty quick. I didn’t get time to think.”
“Seemed fair to me,” Heidi said, shrugging. “Anyway, even if we did over-pay slightly, elvish rope is really hard to come by.”
“Elvish rope,” Carson parroted. The bizarre and unhinged wares of Benson’s forgotten, his eyes glinted with the pale reflection coming off the coil. “Is that like Lord of the Rings?”
“Wait and see,” I said.
He dared to reach out and run a finger across it. Heidi looked ready to snap it off should it stray to her shoulder.
“Will this help us get the Tide of Ages?” he asked.
Heidi swatted him. Fixing him for half a second with a fiery glare, she glanced around, scoping out the shop for listeners. Fortunately, Benson still had not returned from the back room, and Dramper remained hovering by the counter with his pygmy and poking stick, shaking the tiny humanoid around.
“Don’t just go saying things like that!” Heidi hissed at him.
“But why—?”
“Because it’s secret.” Eyes flashing, Heidi shook her head and looked to me. “Let’s just get back home, shall we?” And she marched past, disappearing through the door onto the street.
Carson gaped, befuddled.
“It’s fine,” I told him. “She’ll cool off.”
“Will she?” His voice was rich with disbelief.
“Yeah,” I said, gripping the door handle. “Maybe. And if not … well,
just keep giving her all you’ve got back, eh?” I patted his shoulder, lifted my best smile, and guided us out onto the street again.
A pair of those monstrous bug people were ambling toward us. They chattered away, mouth parts vibrating in quick, staccato movements. Carson dodged back to let them pass. Unlike Benson’s wares, he didn’t dare look at them.
“Shame it wasn’t one of the fourteen-hundred-year-old plates,” Heidi said when we rejoined her a few doors down. “That hundred and … how much did Benson pay you?”
“One hundred and thirty-six.”
“It’s enough to pay Lady Hauk,” said Heidi, “and we’ll have some left over, too. But more would be better.”
“More would always be better,” I said. “Like food.”
“I can help us, you know,” Carson put in.
I flashed him an appreciative smile. He’d dug into his inheritance since joining forces with me and Heidi. Not much, but then it was only a modest inheritance in the first place, so that small amount felt much larger. I didn’t want to make a habit out of it—especially considering he had paid several times now to keep us fed when treasures exchanged with Benson hadn’t quite done the job by themselves. I vowed each and every time that I would pay him back, tenfold or more—it was just a case of finding the right thing to sell to do so.
It made me feel Heidi was doubly right. If only the obduridium plate had been one of the really ancient ones—if, that was, Benson hadn’t ripped us off.
Still. Maybe the next thing, this Tide of Ages, would do it.
And now we had this elvish rope and some coup in our pockets, we were close to being able to pursue it.
First, though, we needed to take a trip to Kensington—and Lady Angelica Hauk.
5
I knocked on the door of Lady Angelica’s grandiose building, and stepped back.
Arrayed on the doorstep, we were a mismatched bunch under any circumstances. Midget Asian girl who might not have been born with the muscles necessary to smile; scraggly mixed-race girl with an Essex accent so thick that it bordered on a disability; and a gangly, bookish American with a penchant for unfashionable sweaters.
The Tide of Ages (The Mira Brand Adventures Book 2) Page 4