Shadows of Ivory

by T L Greylock

  Firenzia Company’s return to Arconia is imminent. Let us welcome these Heroes with Celebration and every Reward. Do not give Credence to those Reports that suggest the Cavern of Sorrows was empty and Void of any Prize. Those who speak so are an Insult to the very Spirit of our Fair city. Instead: Rejoice!

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Trust the Barcas to leave behind the tools to rob their own tombs.”

  “Hello, Victor.”

  Manon adjusted the high collar of her coat, pulling it up until it brushed her ears, but there was no use trying to ward off the persistent drizzle that had dogged her steps since morning. Her hair was matted down, stray strands plastered to her cheeks, the inelegant bundle at the crown of her head nothing more than a damp nest.

  Her boots, too, were wet, perhaps beyond repair, for they were already worn, the leather weary of being endlessly subjected to rain and sun. The soles were leaking, the kind of leak undetectable to the eye but easily detected by the stockings within. Manon scrunched her toes against the damp and tried to loosen her shoulders after walking miles hunched into her collar.

  The walk had not been necessary given the spending money the Archduke had given her—not necessary for her purse perhaps, but her mind was another matter.

  Marble. It loomed all around Manon, monuments to the dead, columns and arches and cold-faced statues. White and grey and veiny.

  The Barca mausoleum, its marble entry built into a grassy rise, stood before Manon, the leaf-strewn steps leading down into the ground. An iron door waited at the bottom of those steps. Manon could still hear the sound of that iron grinding shut against the marble foundation two years earlier.

  She had not been certain she would find the key to that door. That it resided somewhere in the dark Barca house, Manon had not doubted. But she had never used the key since the day she shut Victor’s remains underground, not even when Perrin had asked to visit the mausoleum, and she had no memory of where she had left it.

  And yet she need not have worried it was lost. Because the key was in the only place she could have put it, the place Victor would have thought to look first.

  The loose floorboard in the attic had been Victor’s discovery, a secret he had shared with Manon after she had given her hushed, reverent word that she would never tell of it. She could not have been more than five or six years old, and the thrill of being trusted by her older brother was one of the brightest memories of her childhood. They had left gifts for each there at first, simple things, a string of pretty shells, half an agate, the striped feathers from a hawk’s tail—until one day Manon had snuck up to the attic to leave a polished turtle shell for her brother only to find the hiding space occupied by a knife.

  After that, things of value began to appear beneath the floorboard. A carved jade figurine, a ruby-studded brooch, the handle of a cane—solid gold and shaped into a leaping wolf. Manon never asked her brother about the items, seeking instead to match them, though she knew there was no mystery behind the origin of the pearl earrings or the fine-toothed bone comb she placed there.

  But the game ended not long after Manon found a rolled up piece of paper scribbled with writing she could not decipher. She had peered at it in confusion, angling the paper toward the small attic window as though the sunlight might grant her understanding, so intent she had not heard her brother climb the attic steps.

  Victor had snatched the paper from her hand, leaving behind a slice in the pad of her thumb, and told her he had not meant for her to see it. Crying, she had run to her room, and the next day it was as though that moment had never existed, but never again did Manon put something beneath the floorboard.

  Until Victor’s death, that is.

  The key was heavy in her pocket as Manon contemplated the door at the bottom of the stairs and not for the first time did she wonder if she should turn her back on the mausoleum. After all, the Onyx Coast was a journey of several days, and she had the Archduke looking over her shoulder. She was delaying, and she had no convincing reason why.

  And yet…though Julian Barca had said he only knew the location of one Alescuan reliquary, the stone circle at Pontevellio was not all her father had spoken of. Hence why Manon Barca was standing in the rain amid the relentless silence of the Marble Field with a key in her pocket.

  Taking a deep breath that did nothing to relieve the knots in her upper back, Manon descended the steps and withdrew the iron key. Her hand shook as she fitted it into the keyhole, though whether from the chill of being over-wet over-long or due to the writhing of her stomach, she did not wish to contemplate. The lock slid easily, clean and cold and with the certainty Manon lacked. She pushed the heavy door open, meeting with faint resistance as iron scraped marble once more.

  The interior had a chill of its own making, a child borne out of darkness and damp and the absence of all life. Manon let her eyes adjust to the gloom as the dim daylight fought valiantly—and failed—to reach the farthest corners, then stepped across the threshold.

  Third on the right. That was Victor. Manon did not need to read the name carved into the marble sarcophagus to know. Her feet carried her there with ease, passing the empty space, the second on the right, the one reserved for her. Halting before the cold box that housed Victor’s remains, Manon stretched out a gloved hand and rested her fingers on the lid.

  “Well, brother.”

  The silence that answered Manon seeped into her bones more swiftly than the cold. She removed her fingers and tucked her hands back into her pockets.

  “Perhaps I should have visited sooner. But I think you would have told me not to. You never wasted your time on anything that couldn’t give you something you wanted—and the dead have nothing to give.” Manon walked around to the head of the sarcophagus, her coat brushing the marble. “Then you should know that I am only here because of father.” She shook her head, hardly daring to speak what was in her mind, even to the bones of her dead brother. “I saw him. I went to the Hibarium and I saw him.” She pulled the glove from her right hand and let her fingertips rest against the cold marble once more. “And do you know what the last words he spoke to me were? He said to tell you he knew everything. A curious thing to say, don’t you think? One might almost imagine he didn’t know you were dead.” Manon slid her hand across the marble as she continued her circuit.

  “But he did know. I sent word to the Hibarium of your death. The last act of a daughter for her father.” Manon’s fingers traced the shapes of the letters carved into the marble. V. I. “He knew,” she whispered. C. T. “He knew.” O. R. She hesitated over the B. “Father breathed his last free air two years before I put you to rest in here. And yet somehow he has left a message for me beside your bones. Somehow.” Manon leaned over the lid of the sarcophagus, her warm breath condensing on the marble. “And so I must ask your forgiveness, Victor, for what I must do.”

  Manon stepped away from the sarcophagus and looked to the shadows lurking near the entrance to the mausoleum. She knew what she would find there.

  “Trust the Barcas to leave behind the tools to rob their own tombs.”

  Even through the leather of her glove, the crowbar was ice in her palm as she hefted it. Placing it in the fine groove between the lid and the base of Victor’s sarcophagus, Manon adjusted her stance and brought as much weight and leverage as she could muster to bear on the crowbar, the sound of metal grinding on stone reverberating through the stillness and shadows. Four attempts before the lid relented, shifting slightly, reluctantly, as though it did not like being disturbed.

  Manon moved the crowbar, bringing it closer to the head of the sarcophagus, and repeated her efforts until the marble yielded once more. She worked the lid, the damp of the rain beneath her collar mingling with sweat, until a gap began to appear. Manon set the crowbar on the lid and took a deep breath.

  “For being nearly destitute, we managed to seal you up well enough.”

  Manon eyed the second crowbar where it lay near the entrance.

 
“Apparently you did not expect me to come alone, father, but I can’t wield two crowbars at once.”

  And then something caught her eye. Manon crossed the distance in two strides and crouched on the floor. The bead tucked behind the second crowbar was no larger than Manon’s thumbnail.

  “Of course. You would never have left it to chance.”

  With shaking fingers, Manon seized the bead and turned back to the sarcophagus. She placed it on the lid, the dreary daylight illuminating the clear glass-like substance shot through with a familiar, hazy, smoky swirl. Manon stepped back.

  “Perhaps one day I’ll be able to afford to buy you a new tomb, brother. But I wouldn’t count on it.”

  Manon closed her eyes, but the spark within her ribs was already flaring, demanding to be set free. The release was clumsy and violent, sending Manon stumbling back a step as the bead burst into smoke and the marble shattered into shards and dust with a symphony of cracks that jarred Manon’s bones so forcefully she bit her tongue. As the white marble dust settled on Manon’s damp hair and shoulders and she regained her footing, she saw the lid was gone, obliterated, and large fissures ran down the sides of the sarcophagus.

  Manon ran her tongue across the back of her teeth, tasting blood, and wondered what the dead ancestors surrounding her would say if they could speak. Surely Aunt Leandra would approve.

  “If you have lied to me, father,” she said, “if I have done this for nothing, I’ll see that you are pumped so full of the dread you’ll never know a moment of sanity or peace again.”

  She had not, during her long walk to the Marble Field or in the sleepless hours of the night, dared to imagine what she might find inside. She had not given herself that luxury. To imagine was to hope and Manon had learned that hope was a restless, inconstant friend, as quick to disappear as to be conjured. The last time Manon had felt hope was the day she had knelt before the Archduke of Arconia and pleaded for mercy for her father. The Archduke had smiled at her, had said kind words about Julian Barca. And then he had sworn that her father would never leave the Hibarium—until he left as a pile of ash. Four days later, when Manon’s mother had promised to return after seeking friends and finances in the other cities of Bellara, Manon had known better than to hope. And when Victor had stumbled home in the dark of night, pale, eyes wide and wild, blood streaming between the fingers pressed to his abdomen, Manon had turned hope away even as she admitted the finest physician her last sapphire could buy.

  And so it was with a resolute blankness of mind that Manon stepped forward through the still settling marble dust and took her first look inside Victor’s sarcophagus.

  He was in there. Or, a thing that might have once been him was in there.

  Sealed away in darkness and deprived of air, Victor was still a creature of skin. It had settled against his bones as the flesh beneath melted away, shrinking him. He was a thing made of collarbones and cheekbones and brow bones. No doubt his ribs and his pelvis, hidden beneath fine velvet gone slightly foul, were like sharp mountains rising up above sunken valleys that had once been filled with muscle.

  His features were recognizable, if no longer handsome. His hair, once full and thick, had settled about his skull in limp strands. And he smelled. Sweet and rank. The odor took a moment to make its presence known, but then it sent Manon reeling backward, retching, eyes watering. Her hands on her knees, Manon waited for her lungs to clear, then spit excess saliva onto the marble floor. Straightening, she steeled herself, took a deep breath she knew she could not hold long enough, and returned to examine the contents of her brother’s sarcophagus.

  The first thing she noticed was the ring on her brother’s hand. It certainly wasn’t Victor’s, nor had Manon ever seen that particular ruby before. Even in death, the knuckle was too large for the ring, though the gold filigree band sat loosely on the desiccated finger. Manon placed one gloved hand over Victor’s and lifted the brittle joints until she could slide the ring free. In the dim mausoleum, the ruby was a dull red, but the quality was unmistakable.

  “A pretty thing, father, but surely not why you sent me here,” Manon murmured. She slipped the ruby onto her hand—the fit was perfect over her glove—and turned back to the corpse. “Now, Victor, what have you got in your pockets?” Easing open the velvet jacket to reveal the stained waistcoat and white shirt beneath, Manon slipped her fingers into the interior breast pocket and withdrew two items, the pocket watch she had stopped at the time of Victor’s death and buried with him, and, so smooth it fled from the touch of her gloves, a small metal disc. She held it in her palm and eyed the unfamiliar markings for a moment, then tucked it into a small pocket of her coat, not yet impressed with her father’s hidden treasures. A quick search of Victor’s remaining pockets yielded nothing.

  At last Manon, gingerly at first, then with greater nerve as the body proved resistant, placed her hands on what was left of Victor’s shoulder and hip and rolled him onto his side. Roll was a generous term for it, Manon decided. Bones and partially decomposed flesh shifted beneath her touch, giving way, and as a result, Victor compressed more than rolled. Grimacing, Manon tried not to look at the newly misshapen figure that had been her brother.

  This wasn’t difficult to do because a rather large quantity of square gold ingots was staring back up at her—quite literally. The eye stamped into each ingot was unmistakable and synonymous with the former owner. She knew this gold.

  What she did not know was how Julian Barca had gotten his hands on gold from the Principe of Licenza’s personal treasury and stashed it in her dead brother’s sarcophagus—all from the confines of a locked cell he would never step foot outside of again.

  Interlude 11

  Note to an unknown recipient, from Leandra Barca, dated just prior to Julian Barca’s imprisonment

  You’re a disgrace. Don’t be ridiculous. I will not permit you to leave your post. You’ve only endured three months in that house—a true friend to this family would never countenance such an idea. If you wish to marry my nephew, you will need to discover the whereabouts of your spine—if you have one. You will serve that family for as long as I say. You will report everything to me, unfiltered. You will make no attempt to decide what is important information and what is not. I do not trust your meager mind to decipher the difference. And above all, you will make the de Caraval family love you and trust you. Smile at them. I’m told that is effective on such people. By all my dead ancestors, I know it worked on my nephew.

  Do not make me remind you what befalls you if you speak of this to anyone. Julian will know of your placement when the time is right, but not from your lips.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “These bones are too young."

  The Regatta Master of Lake Delo had asked for three days.

  First he had scowled, protested, tried to insist he alone would try the depths of the lake in the diving helmet. Eska had let him run the course of his objections, arms crossed, staring him down, until at last he had relented, succumbing, she thought, as much to the rush of anticipation she knew was running through his veins as to her silent insistence.

  And so Eden San-Germain had banished her from his workshop and Eska was left to make her way back to her small band of Firenzia crewmembers with the promise that he would find her there when he had finished the second helmet.

  Her story had been met with a great deal of skepticism, mainly from Bastien who did not have the authority to express such opinions, but made them known nonetheless by stomping about the camp for the next day. The young man was, she realized, quite protective of her, an appreciated but unnecessary quality that she hoped he could grow out of.

  Eska passed the first day training with Perrin in the morning—footwork, footwork, and more footwork at the edge of Lake Delo—and then working on the skeleton through the afternoon and evening. Sequestered within her tent, she hardly looked up from the linen sheets the bones were occupying, her neck aching as she knelt and leaned over them for extended periods of ti
me. They had recovered nearly every bone—save for those of the left arm, of which only the better part of a broken humerus had been found.

  She slept in fits and starts that first night, her mind plumbing the depths of Lake Delo, and bent to her task of cleaning the bones first thing in the morning despite insisting the rest of the crew take a day for relaxation—there was little to do, after all. She could hear them splashing and laughing in the lake.

  It was Perrin who came to stand behind her, his shadow stretching over her, who watched in silence until Eska could no longer suppress a very large yawn.

  “So this is what you call not working. You’re obviously exhausted. You should rest.”

  “My mind doesn’t often rest. Especially when it has a puzzle in its grasp.” Eska gestured to the skeleton. “I must know why this individual was buried in a refuse pit. In my line of work, I can’t afford to ignore an anomaly.” She bent her head to her task once more. “Isn’t it time you had another lesson in proper brush technique?” Eska asked without looking up. “I’m afraid you’re the worst apprentice I’ve ever seen.”

  The shadow didn’t move for a moment, but then at last it shrunk as Perrin squatted down beside her. Eska turned her head to look at him, glad to see a smile gracing his lips.

  “The worst? Am I to feel ashamed?”

  “Exceedingly. I’ve taught children with more success.”

  “Then I suppose I had better behave and take copious notes.”

  “No notes,” Eska said. “Notes won’t teach you the feel of your brush.” She took Perrin’s hand and placed her brush in his palm. “Hold it like this,” she said, bending his fingers around the slender handle. Her hand atop his, Eska guided Perrin toward the tibia she was working on. “Use long strokes here,” she said, showing him the movement. “And then as we come to the joint, a bit more speed, more wrist motion, a bit more pressure. But always be gentle.”