The Devil's Chord

by Alex Archer

  “Likely.”

  “You think this is the original building?” Annja asked.

  “Many structures from the fourteenth and fifteenth century have survived the years, Annja,” Roux admonished. “They’ve been stripped to the original limestone walls and fixed up dozens of times surely, but the core remains the same.”

  “If this was Leonardo da Vinci’s studio,” Annja said as she strolled behind Evan, who searched high and low, “an inventory of his belongings was made after his death.”

  “Yes, but he died in France,” Roux corrected. “If he had left anything behind here, it would be...” He glanced across the floor.

  Garin had already begun pacing methodically, his tracks in the dust dragging a labyrinthine trail back and forth.

  “It’s not here,” Evan announced.

  Both Roux and Braden stopped abruptly and gave the thief their full attention. The tension was palpable. Annja had to remind herself to breathe. Why were they being so patient with Evan? Why not force him to produce the cross and be done with it? It wasn’t Garin’s style at all to play nice.

  “But it was worth a look, eh?” Evan’s expression said too much.

  Garin knew it and finally exhibited the quick strength Annja knew he was capable of. He lunged for Evan, pinning him against the closest wall. Evan croaked, but in his favor, he maintained silence and eye contact with his attacker.

  “You know where it is?” Garin asked.

  “I have my suspicions.”

  “How can you?” Roux asked.

  “He’s got the notebook,” Annja told them.

  Both Garin and Roux looked at her and said, “What?”

  “The notebook in which Leonardo da Vinci sketched the Lorraine cross and the music box,” she said. As well as Roux’s face, she thought. She wasn’t sure he should know about that. But there was no keeping it from him. He’d see it eventually. “I need to see the notebook again, Evan. Where is it?”

  “What are you talking about, Cree—” He blew out the last syllable in a huff as Garin’s fist met his gut. “Chill out, man. I’m on your side.”

  “You haven’t been on my side since you arrived in Milan,” Garin said. “You think you can find the thing on your own and sell it to the highest bidder?”

  Bent over to counteract the pain, Evan managed to squeak out, “That was the plan.”

  Garin gripped him by the hair and slammed his head back against the wall. Sheetrock dust billowed about them. Another slam.

  Roux crossed his arms, observing calmly.

  Annja frowned. Evan was the one with most of the pieces they needed to complete the puzzle. Did it make sense to abuse the guy this way?

  “Yes, yes, you’ve made your point,” she said as she stepped up beside Evan and put up an arm to block Garin’s next punch, aimed at Evan’s face. The impact of his fist into her palm was incredible, but she held firm and defied Garin with her most steadfast stare.

  “Annja, I’ll have the information we need in another few minutes. Step away.”

  She wedged herself between Garin and Evan. The thief hung his head on her shoulder, heavily. “He was staying at a hotel, but he’s packed up and left. Everything he has is in the car we arrived in.”

  Roux strode toward the door through which they’d entered.

  Garin growled—yes, actually growled—revealing the sneer she guessed he’d probably wielded in many a bloody medieval battle against the enemy. Right before he sliced off an opponent’s head.

  “Looks like you’re taking sides after all, Creed,” Garin muttered.

  “Really? Because if you ask me, your opponent has the drop on you right now.”

  With another angry growl, Garin shoved off from Evan and slipped away through the open doorway.

  Stumbling forward and resting his hands on his knees, Evan heaved in a few breaths. “Thanks, Annja. The next fist was going to end me for sure.” He moved his jaw, testing it. Standing upright, he turned and assumed a bit of the suave persona he seemed to like so much. “Does that mean you’re on my side?”

  She punched him in the gut, bringing him to his knees. “Never.”

  Chapter 25

  Milan, 1488

  Garin ordered two steins of beer. In appreciation, Leonardo slapped him across the back. The painter had seen him strolling through the street near his studio, looking over the sweet pastries offered from a baker next door, and had invited him into the tavern. So why was he paying for the drink?

  Didn’t matter. But the face in the notebook Leonardo da Vinci turned toward him right now did matter.

  “Do you know this man?” Leonardo asked.

  Garin made a show of looking over the simple sketch that captured Roux in exquisite detail yet with surprisingly few strokes. His pale hair, the few lines radiating out the corners of his eyes. Those eyes that were rarely kind, most often judging and usually set upon a task.

  “Why?” Garin asked. “You must know him if you sketched him?”

  “I sketch many people. Most, I never learn their names.”

  “You’ve written his name right here.”

  “Yes. Roux. A Frenchman. He is a scourge.”

  Garin smirked. Got it on the first try.

  “No,” Garin finally replied. “I’ve never seen this man. But he seems to have gotten you steamed.”

  “He is a thief!” The painter pounded the table, upsetting the beer. He grabbed his stein and drank for a long time.

  “And what did he steal? Something of yours?”

  “Something I valued immensely. I know it was him.” Another fist to the table. “I showed it to him but days ago. How dare he? It has no value. It was but a shard of steel.”

  A shard of steel? Hmm, that sounded too familiar for Garin to merely brush it off. Roux had taken a bit of steel from the safe in the cemetery? So whatever else had been inside likely hadn’t the same value to Leonardo. He shouldn’t have allowed Roux to get away so easily. The more pieces he gathered...

  “One man’s treasure can be another man’s curiosity,” he said hastily. “I’m sorry about your loss. You had not locked it away?”

  “In a safe! In a very unusual place, even. A graveyard.”

  “Odd place to keep one’s treasures.”

  “But who would think to look among the bones and vultures, eh? He must have followed me. But oh, that he did not take the real treasure.”

  “The real treasure?” Maybe he had missed more than just the piece of sword.

  “Indeed.” Leonardo tilted back his beer and slammed the tankard on the table with grandiose flair. “There was another item in the safe that the wily old thief did not touch. It’s a project I’ve been working on. Something of great scientific importance.”

  “I’m not much for science,” Garin said, baiting the man. “Some sort of contraption for determining the position of the stars, I suppose?”

  “An astrolabe? No, that’s already been invented. I don’t design the common, Signore Braden. I create the future.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Or rather, in this instance, I may have created a portal to the future. Or the past. Whichever a man prefers. What would you do if you could switch places in time with another man? In what time would you choose to visit?”

  “Uh, er...”

  What an entirely unexpected conversation. And it wasn’t at all interesting to Garin, until he started wondering if Roux might be interested. And he suspected he may be. Why hadn’t he taken the thing from the safe? He knew they should have taken the entire contents.

  But that only proved Roux hadn’t a clue what the thing was they’d left behind. Nor did he, actually. There was something to move a man back and forth through time? It sounded dangerous and impossible.

  “I don’t
know,” Garin said. “What that has come before us in time would prove of interest to you, maestro?”

  “Oh, I’ve no desire to move into the past.” Leonardo settled on the tavern bench now, lifting a leg and propping an elbow on it, as if in thought, but his focus remained on Garin. “I’ve been trying to convince a friend to give it a test, but he refuses.”

  “Your young friend I’ve seen accompanying you?”

  “Yes, he’s quite a marvelous painter. Daring and adventurous, as well. He was right there to help me test my flying apparatus. But this new device? It frightens the boy.”

  “It is the unknown. What man would not be frightened by that?”

  “Really?” Leonardo tapped the table and leaned forward. “Signore Braden, you strike me as a man who would take a risk into the unknown.”

  “The future may offer great wonders. But stepping back in time? No. How does one traverse through time?”

  “Oh, it’s all about resonance. And—” da Vinci cast a glance around the tavern, then pressed in close so only Garin could hear “—the devil’s chord.” He sat back, a grin of satisfaction curling his mouth.

  Garin had heard of the musical chord that had been banned by the church. Although he hadn’t heard it.

  The devil and music?

  It could be possible. He wasn’t much for lutes and harpsichords. At one time he’d found himself in a woman’s boudoir and she’d insisted on bringing in musicians to accompany their amorous liaisons. The devil indeed.

  Yet the only devil he believed in was the one who might end his fun. And that man wore long white hair, an arrogant demeanor and could match Garin in a sword fight, stroke for stroke, and never tire.

  “One doesn’t so much physically move through time as rather—” Leonardo spread his hands before him as if to part a fabric curtain “—peer through the veil into another time that is occurring simultaneously as the present.”

  “So you’re saying all time is cyclical?”

  “I think more that it is all occurring at once.”

  The man had lost him, and he wasn’t drunk enough to start to figure out any of this nonsense.

  “I’ve used the tritone banned by the church, you see,” Leonardo continued. “It exudes magnificent resonance.” He closed his eyes and smiled as if savoring a sweet wine. When he opened them and looked about again to see that no one was too close to overhear their conversation, he again pressed across the table. “You seem a man open to the possibility of what’s out there, Signore Braden.”

  Of course he was. He was a soldier, a man of the world, after all. But that didn’t imply he could buy into a man traversing into another time. Yet. “You could say that.”

  “There was once a great man, René d’Anjou, who devoted his life to spreading knowledge. To providing the common man with the ability to learn.”

  “I knew him,” Garin supplied. He’d kept tabs on the man over the decades. Exhausting to consider all he had done in his lifetime.

  “Ah! Then we are connected in so many ways. Tell me, did Good King René ever discuss with you the possibility to peer backward through time, to perhaps alter events?”

  “Never. I had always thought him a forward-thinking man, actually. What man needs to go back in time? To change history? That doesn’t feel right to me. Would not stepping back through time alter your existence now? What if I were to kill the man who was to one day be my very father?”

  Leonardo dismissed the comment. “You think on this too much. It’s not so complicated as that. I’ve said you’ve only the ability to peer into the past. I’m not sure you could actually function within a time frame that is not your own.”

  And if Garin had the chance to change the one event that had altered his world remarkably, he’d turn it down. It had taken the life of a brave woman, but it had given him an exquisite gift to go on living, somehow.

  “Have you heard of the Ordine della Luna Crescente, Signore Braden?”

  “I have. The Order of the Crescent is a chivalrous order. Isn’t that one of René d’Anjou’s projects? They revere the Virgin Mother, yes? Are you recruiting, then?”

  “It lapsed after René’s death. There is still so much to talk about. Shall we?”

  Garin toasted his compatriot with his tankard. “To you, sir! And to the future! And to tending the past with great care, yes?”

  “Indeed.”

  Chapter 26

  Roux leaned on the trunk of Evan Merrick’s rental, paging through the notebook as if it were a car-repair manual, and did it really matter if he smudged the ancient pages or even tore them?

  Annja’s backpack was in the car. Evan had tossed it in there. She drew out the latex gloves and tossed them to Roux. “Please?”

  He put them on.

  As well, she grabbed the jacket she’d seen in the backseat and laid it across the trunk.

  “Have some consideration,” she said, directing Roux to lay the precious object on the jacket. It was probably too late to care, but— No, she never stopped caring about the proper handling of artifacts. “I suppose you saw the portrait?”

  “What portrait?” Roux asked. He was approximately halfway through the notebook.

  Annja decided to wait and see what his reaction would be. He continued to slowly leaf through the pages.

  Garin had joined them, peering over Roux’s shoulder, ignoring the old man’s protests to step back and give him some room.

  “Where was this found?” Garin asked Annja.

  Evan, who lingered near the driver-side door, popped up to answer, “Picked it up a year ago while visiting some friends at their castle.”

  Garin’s head tilted, as if reassessing the man, and ended with a proud smile. He actually nodded, confirming his approval of Evan’s theft.

  “Ah,” Roux muttered. He must have found the page with his image. Annja noted he was studying it carefully. To have had Leonardo da Vinci capture your likeness must have been an honor. Although, she suspected the vicious label must mar said honor.

  “First time you’ve seen that?” she whispered, aware Evan stood but six or seven feet away from them.

  “No. The man gave me a glimpse as he was sketching it,” Roux said.

  “Apparently he didn’t have a very high opinion of you. Care to explain?”

  He tapped the word ladro. His eyebrows furrowed. “It’s ancient history, Annja.”

  “Right,” Garin said. “You’ve already claimed the sword. Doesn’t matter what some slapdash painter once thought of you.”

  “I’m not following,” Annja interjected.

  “Sword?” Evan stared at the three of them standing at the car. Annja could almost see the dollar signs flash in his eyes like some children’s cartoon. “What kind of sword are we talking about?”

  “None of your business,” both Garin and Roux said.

  “Have you seen the sketch of the thief?” Evan asked. “Explain that one, Roux.”

  “Me, explain something I’ve just now seen? How do I know you haven’t altered this notebook in some way?” Roux spat.

  Good one, Annja thought.

  “Please.” Evan wagged a finger in their direction. “I may be a thief, but I do know how to respect the artifact.”

  “Pretty funny, if you ask me, isn’t it, Roux?” Garin said, tapping the sketch where it said thief. “You were so insistent we were not thieves.”

  “I don’t remember the things I did so long ago,” Roux muttered and turned the page.

  But he had remembered his conversation with Leonardo, and he seemed to have known the neighborhood where the painter’s studio had once been. Selective memory, Annja decided. Whatever it was he’d stolen from Leonardo must have been valuable for the painter to so angrily have placed the accusation on paper for the entire world to see.
/>   At least, the world would see it now once she presented the notebook to the proper authorities. They should have some idea from where it had originally been stolen. Possibly. Though if no one had been aware of this notebook, then it wasn’t likely to be claimed.

  “And what were those things you did so long ago?” Evan moved closer to them.

  Ignoring the man’s question, Roux tapped his finger on another page. The one that had the diagram of the music box. Garin whistled and leaned in. “I’ve seen that before.”

  “You have?” Now Evan was intensely interested and rushed forward. “Where? Why are we searching here for it if you’ve already seen it elsewhere?”

  “Why are you still here, Merrick?” Garin barked. “You’re off the job.”

  “I was done working for you the moment you sent your thugs after me at the bistro. You know, they went after Annja instead.”

  Garin cast Annja a discerning glance. “She looks no worse for the trouble.”

  “You going to take that from him, Annja?” Evan asked. “Why don’t you team up with me? I’ve got the cross—”

  Annja faced Evan and grabbed him roughly by the collar. Both Roux and Garin gave her their attention.

  “How about you hand over the cross and I won’t let Garin finish the job he started earlier?” she said to him.

  Garin whistled and shook his head. “You should heed that warning, Merrick.”

  Evan pushed Annja away, but she wasn’t done with him. She’d had enough of his underhanded pranks. And while she didn’t believe either Roux or Garin knew where the music box was, she’d trusted either of them before she’d trust this opportunistic jerk any day.

  “How much are you selling the cross for?” she asked.

  “You haven’t got the purse for it,” he challenged.

  “Probably not. But they do.”

  “I’m not paying that man a dime,” Roux said, his attention back on the notebook.

  “What? Are you going to steal it and travel through time to hide it away from me?” Evan taunted.