CHAPTER EIGHT
Harvin slept for ten hours, in a pile of blankets in the Box. Despite his lack of visible injury and the impossibility of his carrying an infection, he’d agreed without complaint, and when he woke there were two things waiting for him. A reward in the form of a tray of food, and Ferad, less a reward and more herald of a new task.
“Bout time.” Ferad stretched his way off the chair he’d lounged in, and before Harvin could ask, continued, “Smeaton sent me to get you two hours ago, but said I couldn’t wake you.” He yawned, and while it started wide and false, it ended with what seemed a more genuine expression. Harvin’s jaw ached to echo it, but surprisingly nothing else hurt.
“Couldn’t wake you, couldn’t touch anything in the Box . . . you owe me a drink and at least one game of cards.”
“I didn’t order you down here,” Harvin replied as he gathered up the blankets. “But make sure I sleep in a real bed tonight and it’s an agreement.”
“I’ll consider it. Eat, drink, then I believe you’re allowed a single trip to clean bowels and teeth before we’re going back out.”
Harvin stilled, then forced himself into motion. “More?”
“Maybe. Smeaton wants us patrolling.” Ferad’s tone was neutral, and Harvin couldn’t decide if he should be worried or suspicious. The event in Cavella last night had been harder to end than an isolated outbreak without a single human involved should have been, but weird things happened. Dealing with the weirdness was the exact nature of his charge—handle the strangest of shit before it became the deadly shit. For there to be more areas of concern in Broadside proper less than a day later was unprecedented in the last few decades, but not in Broadside’s history.
Whatever it was, he wouldn’t get closer to solving it standing here with a mouth full of Muckers. He ate and drank without tasting anything, shoved the blankets at Ferad and grabbed the tray, then went to see what drowned hell awaited them.
As evening gathered over the tops of the Terraces, Harvin had readjusted his expectations from drowned hell to volcanic piles of shit raining upon his city. He’d thought to walk jeweler’s row quickly, the well-to-do craftsmen unlikely sources of trouble. Instead, hours later, he had four concerning jewels secured in his inner pockets and a longer list of people to track. Not quick, not remotely.
“Senton’s is clear, and the Lily, but Morrey Hill’s jewelers have a shop girl who was in yesterday and missed work today. Track her, and I’ll walk the rest of Terraces.” Harvin gestured for the last of his scattered colleagues to come closer.
Wernoc grunted in acknowledgement, then spoke, “I was going to send Ferad and Vizmit deeper into Ossington. We’ve got Terraces covered, far as I can tell.”
“Leave it to jewelers to see something pretty and not think it might bite,” Vizmit said with grunt, his usual blank expression marred with a sneer. “Oh look, Ossington trash with fine jewels, I should definitely buy the shinies and not consider they’re stolen.”
“Hey now, the last jeweler said they were a perfectly lovely Terraces brother and sister, selling their parents’ old gear to fix up the house.” Ferad pitched his voice for utter seriousness, and Harvin twitched the corner of his mouth in an almost smile.
“Because jewels that fine would be the first thing to go.” Vizmit put a hand over his heart and flicked his eyes toward the ocean. “And require the sweet little siblings to go shop to shop with the same story, rather than have their family’s representative finagle a better price for the lot.”
“No, see, there you’re wrong, Viz.” Wernoc poised himself to deliver a tale, no doubt on the ins and outs of Terraces families, and how they were different than Hiane’s, and Harvin had heard enough of the rants that followed that particular pose to cut Wernoc off.
“None of the jewelers had the perspective we did in questioning their fellows. They were more likely to preen over their windfall than wander down the street and check in with a competitor.” Harvin shot a quelling look at Wernoc, and the other man subsided with an overdone sigh.
“Quality is good, smarter to buy on the spot rather than lose out.” Ferad waved a hand in agreement.
“Especially if they had a sense the jewels might be stolen—all right, all right, they bought the innocent tale. Still, even the lost, drowned gods would have the sense to see treasures like these are more likely to be trouble than not.” Wernoc, rarely entirely serious, pushed his cheeks together and pursed his lips in a truly terrible impression.
Harvin considered the objects in his pockets, and didn’t disagree.
He parted from the other Eyes without further conversation and marked which of the jewelers they would need to search later, when the owners returned to their shops. He had no reason to break into the closed storefronts, but the enormous emerald, the lustrous amethyst, the color-shifting diaspore, and the unnaturally perfect pearl in his pocket bled power so loudly he couldn’t have heard anything else if he tried.
None of his colleagues hesitated or perked with interest about the other jewelers as he moved away, so chances were in their favor—how many pieces could there possibly be?
The question stabbed spears of ice through his gut, and he paced the streets of Terraces like he was caged. Neither he, his fellows, nor Smeaton herself had been able to create a plausible enough connection between the quirl house in Cavella and jeweler’s row that made the events one issue. He’d searched the house, and sent two more Eyes to check after him, besides. No hint of a recent exploration, no afterimage of magic soaking there for centuries.
Which meant the jewels had come from somewhere else. Likely the pair of supposed Terraces siblings had found them in Cavella. Or stolen them and passed through the district, and . . . then hopefully come directly to the jewelers to unload their loot.
And hopefully they didn’t have more.
And hopefully the pair were holed up with adjustment sickness, rather than out spreading their infection through Broadside.
Harvin never counted on hope. Instead, after three more blocks with nothing to show for it, he told himself he needed to approach this with deliberation. Since it was unlikely he’d register a single other trail of magic with all his own skill wrapped around the objects he carried, he pivoted. Let Nuret diffuse the items. Then he could return to his hunt.
“You are absolutely not going back out there.” Nuret stared at the four gems on her table, arms crossed, expression blank and unmoving.
“Smeaton, there may be more, and—”
“And your fellow Eyes are more than capable of finding them. And the thieves.” Her fingers spasmed against her upper arms, as though she resisted the urge to grab for the array of gleaming treasure before her.
“I am the best—”
“Enough of that. You are not my best tracker. You are not the best sniffer. You are the best at ending the threat and while these pieces are certainly a threat . . .” She trailed off, and the column of her throat worked as she swallowed back whatever she’d been about to say.
“What else do you know?” he asked, the long muscles in his legs tensed before he mastered the urge to step away from her.
“These . . . Pick this up. Clean it.” She lifted a single feather and indicated the pearl.
“I thought you’d want to study them first?” Harvin had kept the four gems close against his body, flexed his void of power to pull all of their possible effects into him rather than risk their spread into the world. Maintaining the balance hurt, open enough to negate, but not so wide as to empty them of power entirely.
“I do.” The skin around her eyes pulled tight, her clever mind sharpened on whatever she meant to see.
He didn’t sigh—he’d known all his life it did no good to show even a hint of frustration in front of the Smeaton Councilor—but he held still a moment longer than necessary to display his annoyance. He reported to Nuret, but she did not own him. When her own gift and precautions inevitably failed, overrun by her fierce curiosity, he would be the one to sever her connection, and they both knew it. Unlike stories he’d heard of past Smeatons, Nuret held her own line with her cadre of Eyes by sharing what she knew, of being open about her research and her suspicions and her discoveries.
This . . . silent test, or whatever it might be, snarled his thoughts.
Let it be done, he thought, and snapped his hand around the pearl.
Its cool smoothness warmed against his skin, as though the magic within it attempted to lick at him. Searched for a way in. As though it wanted to spread. Disgusted, he squeezed, opened the void, and pulled.
And nothing happened.
He frowned at the pearl, and it glimmered. In response to his regard? At that he glared, wrapped his other hand around it, and mentally cut around the jewel. Sank tendrils of fire and pain into it to disrupt its connection, like he had with the spiral on the house.
The pearl glowed brighter.
A quick glance toward Nuret showed the older woman leaning forward, face intent, everything in her focused on his hands. On the item in his hands. On its refusal to obey.
Without consideration for her permission, he grabbed the emerald. The dark heart of it flared, a pulsing motion, hypnotic like a whirlpool in the ocean. Harvin gazed into it, confident in its inability to drown him, and used the power that had never failed him. The opposite of power, truly, the void that took all power into it, absorbed it, rendered it inert.
The emerald glowed so brightly Harvin saw the bones through the flesh of his hand. His stomach lurched, pure energy radiating through his limbs. He dropped the emerald, and his hand turned opaque again. Returned the pearl to the table next to the emerald, snatched the amethyst. The diaspore. Failed again, and again.
Now all four glowed, mocking him, their power undiminished.
“Fascinating,” Nuret murmured, and Harvin had no idea if she’d spoken before.
“What are these?” he asked, even though he couldn’t imagine she had an answer. The heaviness of his talent, unspent, weighed his limbs as nothing ever had before.
“Old. Ancient, perhaps. And protected.” Nuret tsked and stepped back from the table, the rich blues of her close-cut dress brighter in the reflected light from the gems. “And not the only ones I’ve seen today.”
“The Eye—”
“You are not our only eyes, Harvin. Forgive the terrible joke.” Nuret waved a hand and continued without waiting to see if he had any reaction. “One of our salvage contractors in the Terraces sent a message yesterday.”
“Artifacts found in Cavella?” Eagerness for the hunt flared in his gut—combined with the information from the jewelers, they could narrow in on the origin, tighten the snare.
“She was vague on details, meaning it was likely from another side of her business, and not from a legal scavenger operation. But the artifacts are similar, in essence if not design. We already tested them, and . . .” Nuret reached for one of her hair sticks, arrested the motion, and placed her hands at the edge of the worktable instead.
“I will go to her place of business immediately, ensure she—”
“She works for us, Harvin. She is not infected.” Nuret tapped her fingers on the thick wood of the table, and didn’t lift her gaze from the jewels there.
“But there will be—” He’d half-turned, so sure she wouldn’t stop him now, not with this compound threat, and had taken a full step away before he realized she’d spoken.
“No. I am going to show you something, Harvin. And once it’s done, you will be an Eye no longer.” Her tone was neutral, but when he pivoted to face her he read satisfaction in the lines of her face.
Cold replaced the weight in his body, climbed his bones, and sank inside them. “Smeaton—”
“You won’t be that, either. Come.”
She turned and left the Box. He should have grabbed her arm, ensured she was safe, but it didn’t even occur to him. Though he turned his back on the emerald, pearl, amethyst, and diaspore, they were all he could see as he stumbled free of the Box and followed Nuret blindly through the basement.
At some point, he blinked his eyes clear and stopped short. Where were they? Had he gone up a set of stairs? He cast dulled thoughts over the last motions of his body and decided, no, but then . . .
“There is more than one passageway from the basement,” Nuret said, either understanding with exact timing that he’d returned, or part way through a conversation that he’d missed thus far.
Though he opened his mouth to ask the obvious questions—“what” being the most broadly comprehensive and pressing—he shoved the impulse away and remained silent at her heels. The narrow hallway they walked through had been built into stone, walls brushing his shoulders, studded with carved cubbies slightly above his head filled with glowing cave algae.
There were no turnoffs that he could tell except for the door ahead of them, round and snug against the stone of the wall. It was too dark to be wood, but as they approached he noted it was grained like wood, only in a bluish black color. No obvious latch or knob, but Nuret placed her hand against it, ducked her head, and it swung open on silent hinges.
Inside . . . his thoughts grayed out again, but he forced himself present. The layout was very like his suite behind the Council House, if on a grander scale. The large main room, also round, was lined with floor to ceiling curved shelves, all of them loaded with books and a plethora of small objects. Thick rugs covered the floor, and four oversized, stuffed chairs were placed around the open space in the middle, each with their own tables. Lanterns hung from the ceiling on thin-chained pulleys, glowing with a mix of yellow-green algae and small flames. Two open doorways across the room led to other rooms—one of which was a bedroom judging from the enormous canopied bed, and the other a kitchen with all the important fixtures in sight built directly into the stone. Harvin assumed there was a necessary closet tucked away somewhere, and potentially more around curves he couldn’t see, but he really only considered any of that to avoid dealing with the one undeniable fact he already knew about the chambers.
A ghost lived there.