The Devil's Chord

by Alex Archer

  “Where you belong,” she muttered, tightening her hold on the hilt.

  “I wasn’t done yet!” Evan yelled.

  Keeping an eye on Evan, Annja approached Garin and Roux.

  “Nothing, eh? Well, I’m sorry to be the one to say I told you so, but...”

  “I think the key is stuck,” Roux said. “There must be a specific pattern to turn it. Give it a go, Garin.”

  “I don’t think so, old man. If it works, I don’t want to be cast off into some past land never to return.”

  Annja switched the sword to her left hand and used her right to trace the carvings on the surface of the cross. “You placed it directly in the box?”

  Roux nodded.

  “Then pull it straight out.”

  “That’s not how it works, Annja.”

  “And you know how it does? Because it looks like you’re having trouble.”

  Garin chuckled and walked off to stand beside the statue. He’d resolved that Roux was crazy, and had given up on his quest to wrest the items from him.

  At least one of them was thinking smart.

  Drawing out his gun, Garin aimed where Evan stood. “Not a single muscle,” he warned, “or you’ll miss breathing.”

  Chapter 32

  Annja released the sword to the otherwhere. Roux’s hands shook so much she decided he’d bought into the time-travel myth hook, line and sinker. And she found herself agreeing with Garin.

  Enough was enough.

  “Let me see that.”

  Frustrated, Roux allowed her to take the music box. It had a good weight, and with the cross inserted in its side, it really did look more like a strange contraption than anything that may have been invented over four hundred years ago to play music.

  She pulled on the cross and found it wasn’t willing to come free from the slots into which it fitted perfectly. So there must be a means to turn it, or perhaps slide it in order to release the mechanism.

  She shifted the key along the side of the box, upward. The topmost portion of the cross slid smoothly about half an inch.

  “It moved?” Roux asked over her shoulder.

  “Yes. Now. Let’s try this.”

  On a whim, she tried to slide it downward. The right arm of the cross guided the key gently until it caught. Recalling the sign of the cross the nuns had drilled into her head as she’d grown up in the orphanage, Annja then shifted the cross upward, as if she was making the sign of the cross over her chest. And the final movement was to glide the cross downward, completing the motion.

  Something inside the music box clicked. The gears turned. Annja chuckled. From within the box, plinked musical notes could be heard. Annja recognized them as the discordant ones she and Roux had discussed days ago.

  “The devil’s chord,” Roux said in wonder.

  Now Garin came forward to watch, intensely interested in what was happening.

  So the box could produce music. Shouldn’t a music box be required to do as much? That didn’t mean it was anything special.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Annja saw Evan leave where he’d been standing. She quickly sought to yank the key free of the box to keep the two pieces separate should another fight ensue over the artifacts. But her fingers slid against the Lorraine cross instead and the vibrations emanating from within shuddered through her. The resonance was so strong her teeth chattered. She clamped down her jaw to make it stop, and in doing so, a burst of brilliant light flashed before her.

  The air thickened. Smoke curled up around her. Her lungs grew heavy and began to burn. She choked, coughing. Her skin prickled painfully. Finding the ground agonizingly hot, she stepped from foot to foot.

  And she realized she stood on flames. Surrounded by a crowd. The eyes of many condemned her. She could not hear the people standing around her, yet she saw their mouths open as if to shout or—could it possibly be—to cheer?

  Annja looked about, though her twisting only intensified the searing pain in her lungs. Despite her feet being free, she couldn’t move from the center of the flames. She screamed, but she only heard that agonizing sound in her head.

  Why wouldn’t anyone help her?

  Her gaze met a man’s eyes through the crowd. It was as if the crush of people parted and an aisle opened directly to the tall soldier who wielded a broadsword. She knew that man. A soldier who had ridden into battle alongside her.

  No, that wasn’t right. She’d never ridden into battle. Not unless it was on a motorcycle or speedboat. The man she recognized through the smoke and fire was Roux. But he no longer stood beside her holding a music box. Instead he wore a uniform and brandished his weapon. He was fighting to keep the crowd back as they pressed toward the flames, eager to gain a position closer to the horrific spectacle.

  Annja sensed she was the spectacle. Where was she? How had she...?

  Annja knew she must not let go of what she knew was real for fear of losing it all. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the sword that had been her companion for so long, and tried to reach out her hand for the hilt. It was there. It tingled just out of reach in the otherwhere.

  Until that tingling faded and finally receded. Moaning in frustration, she couldn’t grasp her most trusted means of defending herself.

  Stranded among the whipping flames, they burned and singed her skin. The agony of the heat was crushing her and she dipped her head, breathing in the vicious smoke and feeling tears sizzle at the corners of her eyes.

  She heard a shouted epithet. “Heretic!” It was echoed throughout the crowd.

  No.

  And her thoughts shifted to pray to the one God who had spoken to her all along....

  A confident, steady male voice shivered into her consciousness. It had the trace of a French accent. He called her name. Had Roux managed to push through the crowd to her? Someone seized her hand. Strong and sure, a male hand gripped her by the wrist and tugged her away.

  Annja’s fingers slid from the Lorraine cross where it had fit neatly into the music box. The attacking crowd shimmered away from the edges of her waking vision.

  Her body hit the ground. No flames licking at her now, there was only paved sidewalk beneath her. She rolled over, seeing the sword skitter across the cobblestones, before it disappeared into the safety of the otherwhere.

  Feet danced around her. Annja clasped her throat, gasping for clean air.

  “What was that?” said a voice she recognized, but it wasn’t Roux or Garin. It was that thief, that smirking pest who had attempted to thwart her at every turn. What an adventure.

  “Stand back!” Roux instructed. “Give her some room.”

  “There’s smoke coming off her. I think it worked. She traveled through time!” Evan announced.

  Annja closed her eyes and passed out.

  Chapter 33

  Annja was aware of a scuffle nearby not twenty feet from where the Joan of Arc statue stood in a recess outside the church. Two men. One of them was losing the fight while Garin pummeled him with his fists.

  Evan Merrick. She’d recalled his name and now breathed in deeply, allowing the oxygen to clear her thoughts.

  Where she had been and when seemed irrefutable. Yet how? She may never learn the truth.

  Though wobbling, she managed to stand and then stagger to a bench next to the fountain. Sliding a palm down her leg and pulling up the hem of her cargo pants, she thought she would feel angry, burned skin, but her fingers only glided over the smooth texture of her intact leg.

  Someone paced before her, speaking to her, but she still couldn’t process him. She’d seen him. A knight. Standing with a broadsword in hand.

  She wanted to run. She needed to get away from here. To sort things out. She didn’t care what happened to Evan Merrick. Nor did she even care about that cross or the music
box. What was going on? Where was she? How would she get home?

  Standing abruptly, she began to walk in an attempt to fight the woozy spin that struggled to pull her back down. Footsteps behind her quickened their pace. He followed—the one who had been beside her even then.

  She needed to be alone.

  “Did you see her?” Roux asked from behind.

  A desperation she had never before heard from him made Annja pause. He didn’t need to go back in time to change history. Why had he brought her here?

  “Annja!”

  Breaking into a jog, she called back, “Give me space, old man!”

  She wasn’t sure where she was going, but it didn’t matter. She had to get away from the square and any connection to the brave woman who had died for her beliefs.

  * * *

  TWO HOURS LATER the Rouen police, after receiving an anonymous tip, found Evan Merrick bound to a street pole near the market in the central square. His face was bruised and bloodied. He mumbled nonsense about Joan of Arc’s sword. And a Lorraine cross that had been stolen from a Polish museum earlier in the year was found tucked inside his shirt. The caller had also mentioned that Evan Merrick had been arrested on suspicion of stealing the cross, but that no evidence had been found.

  The evidence dropped from inside Evan’s shirt into a policeman’s hand. He was brought in to the station, booked and, after the police contacted Interpol, he was transferred to a Polish jail for holding until a trial date could be determined.

  The day following the weirdness in the central square, Annja had left Rouen, got on a train and had returned to Palermo, where Ian Tate waited. He’d shown her the footage he’d edited together during the days she had been in France. It was impressive. And just mysterious enough to make a person wonder. Maybe selkies really did exist.

  “How was Rouen?” Ian asked as they strode the stone beach not far from Matteo’s cottage.

  “It was...” She hadn’t given it a moment’s thought since leaving the city. She didn’t want to think about it because some things should simply be accepted. Like a sword that appeared whenever she needed it.

  “Where is the artifact that had been stolen?”

  “Uh, I understand that Evan Merrick—the thief—has been arrested. The police found the Lorraine cross on him.”

  “Awesome.”

  Ian didn’t know about the music box, and in fact, he didn’t need that information. As far as Annja was aware, Roux and Garin had battled it out over the treasures, and she didn’t care who had gotten them. She could guess who had walked away with the relics. And since they held no personal value to Garin, she suspected he’d sell them to the highest bidder.

  A good archaeologist would have stayed to make sure the music box and notebook were sent to a university for study, at least. This was one project she would have to mark down as a failure.

  “There’s Matteo.”

  Glad for the distraction, Annja picked up speed and met Matteo, who stood on the shore before his cottage, looking out over the waters. He turned to acknowledge her and Ian, who had the camera on. Matteo noted the camera, but made no comment.

  “Figured I’d see you again,” he said. He sniffled and tilted his head away from the sun.

  Annja did not miss the signs. “Are you all right, Matteo? Where is Sirena?”

  “Gone home,” he replied and glanced to the ground.

  Annja noted where he was looking. A hole about two feet across had been dug in the ground. Or had something recently been unearthed? Sirena’s pelt? He’d told her he didn’t know where it was.

  “I set her free. I thought a lot after you left me lying on the stones.”

  “You can’t keep someone who doesn’t want to stay.”

  “She loved me,” he told them. “We loved each other.” He faced the camera directly. “I never hurt her, Miss Creed. I can’t do a thing like that. I may be a drunk and like to pick fights, but I never laid a hand to Sirena. She loved me. But what the sea gives, the sea takes away. Her first love was always to the sea. She had this deep sadness. I felt it in her every time I looked into her eyes.”

  Deep sadness was a feeling Annja could relate to. So much had happened to her that she couldn’t begin to explain, much less process. And ever since leaving the central square particularly, Annja had been carrying a weight within her that could only be termed sadness.

  “So you—” she would be reaching here, but, she reminded herself, it was for the show “—gave her back to the sea?”

  Since, after all, some things a person just needed to believe in.

  Matteo nodded. “That’s all I have to say. Will you turn the camera off now?”

  “Ian.”

  The cameraman lowered his camera and stepped back.

  “Story’s over,” Matteo summed up. “They can’t all end happily ever after.” He turned and strode off toward his cottage.

  France, 1488

  THE TAVERN OUTSIDE a small village a day’s journey from Lyon was cool and quiet. The evening was quickly chilling as autumn settled across the land, sweeping leaves from the trees and sending animals deep into the forest to prepare for rest.

  Roux found a table near the open hearth, ordered the stew—the tavern’s only offering—and a mug of hot spiced mead. The sweet drink settled in his belly with a warm splash.

  He’d managed to give Braden the slip two days ago while crossing from Italy into France along the Alps. He’d known the man’s eyes had fixed on the wench in the Italian inn, and thinking that Roux was going to rest for the night, Garin had taken her upstairs.

  Roux hadn’t slept. He felt sure he’d gotten a half day’s head start on the man. And by veering south instead of north, he hoped he’d given him the slip. For months perhaps. Maybe even years. They two came together through odd, unpredictable ways. Sometimes their union was amicable, and at other times they were opposed to one another. They were destined to play this game for— Who could determine the amount of time they would walk this earth?

  Roux tugged out the leather pouch he kept secured beneath his shirt and tied up high so it hugged just under his armpit. He unlaced the opening and tilted the contents into the palm of his hand. Firelight glowed across the small jagged steel pieces. He’d collected many, but there were so many more to be found. It was incredible that they had traveled so far from Rouen, the place where they had originated.

  “Forgive me,” he muttered, then poured the pieces back inside the pouch and secured it with a tight knot. “I could not save you, Jeanne. But I won’t cease my search to bring together your sword.”

  Who knew what such a quest would lead him to? Might it erase the travesty done against an innocent woman?

  He could not begin to guess, but he was confident his quest would not be in vain.

  * * *

  NOT AN HOUR after arriving back at her Brooklyn apartment, Annja signed for a delivery. No return address, but the tracking slip said the package originated from Rouen, France. Something from Roux? She hadn’t spoken to him since leaving Rouen. There had been no need.

  Peeling away the plastic strip to open the postal box, she had to admit she felt slightly anxious. Inside, snuggly padded in Bubble Wrap, she spied the music box and the notebook. A note scribbled on a plain piece of paper read:

  You’ll know what to do with these. G.

  “Interesting.”

  She did know what to do with them. Most important? Ensuring the cross, music box and notebook were never again connected to each other. That would be fairly easy. The cross would remain in police custody until it was eventually returned to the museum. The music box she could trace its history and return it also to the castle or wherever Merrick had lifted it from. And the notebook...

  The notebook was the key that tied them together.

  Annja went t
o her desk and flipped aside the postal box to reveal what lay beneath. A random ziplock bag. She carefully placed the leather-bound notebook in the bag to keep it from further damage until she could determine the correct place to send it.

  She placed her palm over the plastic and entertained the idea of copying the pages before handing it over to the rightful owner.

  “At the very least,” she said, “the sketch of Roux.”

  Was the world prepared for what would result should the notebook be preened over and its contents released for all to see? Was Roux prepared? Certainly someone would recognize him and call attention to it.

  “Not as if they could convict him of a crime four centuries after the fact.” And of what crime could they accuse him? The evidence of his theft was hers to protect now.

  She opened the ziplock bag and, grabbing a set of latex gloves stuffed in a drawer, put them on, then pulled out the notebook. Paging to the sketch of Roux, she stopped to consider her options. Did she have options? She could certainly make options. Yet could she live with that choice if she made it?

  Annja took the corner of the page in hand and turned it forward, as if to rip it away from the stitched binding. Just testing, she thought as she eyed whether or not the paper would tear easily or instead pulling would result in the removal of more than the single page. The paper was so old it would tear with but a flick of her wrist.

  “This is what I can live with,” she said and drew in a breath.

  She hoped Roux could live with her decision, as well.

  * * * * *

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