Painted Devils, page 11
It can’t be easy for him to balance between Kirkling’s insistence on my exclusion and keeping me from feeling utterly useless, and for that reason alone I repress an eye roll. “Right then, lookout it is.”
Emeric passes me his coin. “Here. The grimling should show up before Vikram’s lights run out. Just shout if you see our luck change.”
I suppose that’s one way to say, Holler if we’re in mortal peril. The boys continue on without me as I scan the area and conclude only that there are probably about a thousand pounds of cobwebs in the unlit chandeliers.
Emeric’s voice floats over to me: “… looking for … before 398 BE … Hagendorn or Boderad’s Gorge.” There’s a formless query from Vikram, and I catch in reply: “… prefect accords.”
I shouldn’t eavesdrop, not if it could put his case in jeopardy.
But I really, really want to, is the thing.
I look around for a distraction. There’s a sort of dais in the chamber’s dead center, with a stone pedestal right at the bull’s-eye, and bolted to that pedestal is a very robust-looking display case that stands no higher than my sternum. Something is glittering inside.
Something presumably quite valuable.
I am officially distracted.
I mince over, keeping one eye on Emeric and Vikram to make sure some hellion isn’t descending upon them, at least not unnoticed. When I reach the display case, I’m surprised to recognize its contents: a clear, intricately cut crystalline goblet identical to those the souvenir peddlers are hawking outside. There’s a polished bronze plaque affixed to the pedestal. It reads:
THE MOSTE HOLYCH CRYSTALL GOBELET BORNE IT OF SANKTVS VVILLEHALM THE SCRYBE
This isn’t a display case, I realize with a start, but a reliquary.
There’s a shuffling rasp from behind me. I whirl around. Some deserted parchment sheets flutter into the air as a faint breeze rings the rotunda. It almost—almost sounds like a whisper.
Then it’s gone.
“We’ve been noticed,” I call to the boys. There’s only a brief grunt of acknowledgment. A little annoyed, I turn back to the reliquary.
Something catches my eye as I move the coin light. I catch my breath and wave the coin from side to side, watching rainbows dart through the goblet.
I check on the area Emeric and Vikram are picking over. No sign of a grimling, though, as I watch, one of Vikram’s glowing marbles winks out and disintegrates. All that hits the floor is a thimbleful of dust.
That’s enough of an all clear for me. I circle the pedestal, scouring the reliquary’s base until I see a narrow keyhole in the dull brass. I crouch for a better look. Sure enough, the coin light sparks on a few bright scratches around the keyhole—too new to have faded, too few to have come from anything but a seldom-used key.
Someone’s unlocked this. Recently.
I send one final glance over my shoulder, this time to be sure Emeric and Vikram are wholly occupied, because Emeric won’t like this and Vikram may not find it as amusing as a butt on formal paperwork. Fortunately, they’re both immersed in the bookshelves. Less fortunately, the remaining light-balls are flickering. Another two go dark. I’ll have to work fast.
I set the shining coin on the pedestal so I can see, then reach into my satchel and slip out my lockpicks.
It’s not a very difficult lock, especially because I’m not worried about leaving a trail. If I’m right, it won’t matter anyway. All it takes are a few prods of the pins and a flick of the tension wrench, and the base of the reliquary releases from its frame with a soft rattle.
“About a minute of light left,” I hear Vikram warn.
That’s enough time for Emeric to stop me, so I try to keep it down as I rock the case, easing it off its base. The light-cloud in my peripheral vision is shrinking, shrinking—the case comes free with a jolt—I hold my breath as I lay it on its side on the nearest table, nearly folding myself in half to do so quietly—
When I straighten, I see my face reflected in the dark glass—
And a twisted, gray, half-rotted face gaping over my shoulder.
I scream.
“LIAR,” a wretched voice shrieks in my ear as I dive under the table, my heart thrashing, every nerve ablaze with adrenaline. “LIAR!”
The table goes flying, crashing somewhere in the rotunda with an ugly splintering sound. The reliquary case falls to the stone floor nearby, cracks spiderwebbing the glass panes.
The grimling hovers above me, unlike anything I’ve seen (and a kobold eating a man-horse monster doesn’t make it into even the top ten weirdest things I’ve seen, so that’s saying something). Its ghoulish face looms in a swirling incorporeal pool of coarse-woven black rags, the ruined features contorted with fury. Threads of darkness twist into two gaunt arms, with long fingers ending in mortally sharp points. “Thief,” it half sobs as I try to crawl away, “liar, get out, bring it home, GET OUT!”
It lunges for me—only to be dragged back, shrieking, as silvery light spears it through. I push myself up and see Emeric halfway across the rotunda, feet planted wide, one fist holding the other end of the spectral light. If I thought the grimling looked furious, it’s nothing compared to the look on his face as he makes a swift, savage gesture. The light frays at both ends, splitting into a dozen ties that anchor to rafters, columns, even the base of the pedestal.
The lenses of Emeric’s spectacles flash as he looks frantically around the room. “Vanja!”
I roll to my knees, keeping a table between myself and the grimling. “Here!”
Relief washes over him. “Are you hurt?”
“No, I—”
“Get clear,” he grits out, then adds a conciliatory “please.”
The creature writhes on the shining hook. “Lies, lies, LIAR, mine, mine, it’s mine—”
I want to get away, but …
The goblet’s still glittering patiently on the pedestal. And if I’m right, it’ll give us just as many answers as the records Emeric was digging up.
Vikram’s voice echoes from behind me: “This way, Miss Schmidt!”
“I need that goblet,” I call, bracing myself to stand.
Emeric twists to look at me, almost offended. “Is now really the time?”
I feel a small little crumple of dismay. He thinks I just want to steal it. It’s not the wildest assumption to make, all things considered.
I just hate that it’s his first.
But we don’t have time to interrogate that. With an unearthly wail, the grimling tears loose. “GIVE IT BACK!”
It strikes like an adder, those needle-sharp fingers darting toward me—
They shatter against a sudden arc of silver light. It yanks its hand away, screaming. Emeric’s saved me again.
It can’t be for nothing.
Emeric ducks another hurled table, squinting up at the howling ghoul with the expression he gets when he’s found the first loose end in a complicated knot. He draws a dagger. To my surprise, it’s not copper but silver—the one meant for the undead. “Poltergeist,” he calls up to it, “tell me what you need to be at peace.”
A poltergeist? Why is a hostile spirit in a library, of all places?
“LIAR,” it accuses, sending a chair his way.
“I can banish you,” Emeric says sternly, “or we can put you to rest, your choice. Why are you here? What do you want?”
In response, the ghost chooses violence. A chandelier rips from its moorings and flies at him as the poltergeist screams, “I want what’s MINE!”
A burst of light knocks the chandelier aside. Emeric scowls and makes a complicated-looking gesture, his mouth moving in an incantation. Wheels of silver light wreath the poltergeist, trapping it in place. It lets out a half growl, half whine.
Now’s my chance. I roll out from under the tables and bolt for the pedestal.
My hand has just closed around the stem of the goblet when I hear Emeric’s incantation stop. I look up. The rings of light are constricting, tightening until they’ve just about sliced through the squirming, screeching poltergeist. Emeric draws his arm back, then flings the silver knife up and into the heart of the dark shrouds.
There’s an explosion of shadow and screams—
—and the poltergeist breaks free.
Emeric staggers, briefly stunned as if by recoil, the silver knife ringing against stone at his feet. A terrible shudder rocks the rotunda. Tables, chairs—anything not bolted down—are pitched into the air. I see Vikram running toward us, see the ghost’s horrible face fix on me; I know what’s coming—
I toss the goblet to Vikram just before a table rams into me like a runaway wagon.
Here’s the thing about a bad fall: The worst part isn’t the impact, not really. It’s the moment you’re airborne a little too long, when you know that once you hit the ground, you aren’t getting back up.
I crash down onto something that crunches awfully beneath me, my arm snaring with another horrid snap. A different, sharper pain blooms all along my left side. Everything fogs red. A tinny scraping sound fills in the gaps: I’ve landed on the shattered glass of the reliquary.
I hear Emeric calling my name. Everything hurts too much to answer in more than a whimper. I’m dimly aware of being picked up, the stagger of an unsteady run, urgent shouting. Rumbling and roars of “GET OUT, LIARS, THIEVES, GET OUT!” echo dully in my ears.
I glimpse the hideous specter behind Emeric, its face twisting even more horribly as it reaches for us—
And then, for a moment, I think I see a shrouded figure drag it back.
The fog lightens. There’s a rush of fresh air and a crack from the doors thundering shut behind us. We’re outside again. I am carefully lowered to the ground. Numbness spreads down my side a moment later, loosening the hurt’s stranglehold on my head.
“… my fault.” Emeric’s voice fades in. “I should have gone in alone. Vanja, I’ve stopped the bleeding, and you shouldn’t be in pain. You just have to hold on until we get to the inn.”
My head lolls as I try to look at the damage. I catch a glimpse of a pink splinter jutting from my wrist before Emeric turns my chin. Guilt burns like acid in his dark eyes. “You don’t want to see, trust me. I’ll—I promise I’ll fix it, you’ll be fine, all right?”
“Not your fault,” I croak. “I went after the goblet.”
“I should have known better than to leave you unsupervised around a priceless artifact, then.” He’s trying to force it into a joke, but there’s too much frustration seeping through for plausible deniability.
He still thinks I was just after it for larceny’s sake. I try to gulp down the sudden knot in my throat, my heart still racing a million miles a minute.
“You owe the lady more credit than that.” Vikram’s peering at the goblet through his loupe, turning it in his hands. “I’ll be damned, Miss Schmidt. Spotted it even inside Saint Willehalm’s reliquary. Well done.”
Emeric looks between us. “Spotted what, exactly?”
“What our ghastly nuisance is after, I wager.” Vikram licks the tip of his index finger and runs it around the rim experimentally; there’s only a muted yet audible squawk.
Crystal sings. The prisms cut into it should throw rainbows like the sun after a storm. I handled too much crystal at Castle Falbirg not to know it on sight.
And all I saw in the reliquary was glass.
“That goblet’s a fake,” I push through my teeth. “The real one’s been stolen.”
CHAPTER NINE
HANDS AT WORK
The trip back to the Book and Bell is a blur. Just because I can’t feel my injuries doesn’t mean I’m not going into shock, sinking into a gray haze in Emeric’s arms. It’s only occasionally broken when his voice throbs through in rumbles and murmurs and, once, a curious spur of anger.
When lucidity waxes back in, I’m facedown on a mattress. Late-afternoon light streaks around the morning-glory tendrils framing a window on the far side of the room, and I see my luggage and Emeric’s in an oddly haphazard heap near a door. Emeric is sitting at the bedside to my left, his coat tossed over the bed’s footboard. A prefect coin is set on a bedpost, casting clearer, steadier light than the nearby oil lamp’s. Emeric pauses rolling up a sleeve when he notices me stirring.
“Welcome back,” he says softly, brushing a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “The worst of your injuries are gone, and I would rather you slept through this last part, but it wouldn’t be … I need to…” He grimaces. The words come out in a rush: “I need to remove the glass from your wounds but since it went through your clothes it’s caught on fabric, too, so I need to cut through the sleeve of your shift and the side of your bodice and I think some of your skirt. And. That is. I don’t know if you’re comfortable with that.”
“Well,” I slur dizzily, “it sounds sexy when you put it that way.”
He lets out a strained laugh, but it doesn’t dispel his nerves. “To be clear, you have glass in your arm, your upper shoulder, your hip, and along your left side. I … might see more than you want me to.”
That’s when it sinks in. It’s one thing to let his hands wander under the safety of a hitched-up linen shift, or in the forgiving dark, or when his spectacles are on the nightstand. But there’s no lenience in this light; he will see me as I am. The blemishes, the hair, the—the scars. Even though he knows the von Falbirgs whipped me for someone else’s lie, he’s never seen the full ruin of my back.
And as with so many ugly parts of me, I am terrified that once he sees it, he will know he deserves better.
I try to catch my breath. “How much will you—I mean—where—Oh, you already said—”
“I can put a sheet over most of you,” he offers swiftly, “so the only area that’ll be uncovered is just around the injury, even if—if anything else slips?”
“Even sexier,” I mumble. “Go for it.”
Linen settles over me, and it does help, a little. “Do you want to sleep through this?”
“No.” I want to know what he’s seen, so I can brace myself for the worst.
“Right. Then…” I hear him uncork a vial. “You’re under the strongest pain-suppressant spell I can balance against other physiological—er. This mostly won’t hurt, and feeling should return once … Why are you smiling?”
I point with my chin at the vial. “You got juniper.”
“Oh. Yes, the poltergeist was more tiring than it had any right to be, so Vikram brought over witch-ash oil from the outpost. I’m going to start now, if you’re ready?”
At my nod, his fingertips rest on my left wrist. After a moment, I understand what he meant by “mostly won’t hurt”: There’s a strange little jolt when I feel him brush against a glass shard buried in my forearm, like the wiggle of a milk tooth ready to slip the gum. I suck in a breath. He pauses, and I bite out, “It’s fine, just … odd.”
“Tell me if you need a break.”
“I will.” I’m not sure I mean it. Especially as he moves up my arm and, with a preoccupied apology under his breath, begins cutting the sleeve of my shift with a pair of what looks like sewing shears. I can’t help stiffening, then squeezing my eyes shut as I feel bits of glass dig into muscle in response.
He pauses again, and I steel myself for a rebuke. Instead, he says, “I’m sorry for earlier.”
“What?” I know when I’m being distracted, but I’ll allow it.
“What I said about leaving you unsupervised. And assuming you wanted the goblet for … mundane reasons. I acted like you can’t be trusted, and you don’t deserve that. Especially not when I brought you into a dangerous situation unprepared and you secured our only lead.” There’s a soft plink.
I open my eyes and see a red-stained shard sitting in a nearby clay dish. Bits of bloody fabric are still caught on its edges. “Ew.”
“There’s unfortunately more where that came from.” Emeric is carefully cleaning the tips of a pair of forceps, a furrow in his brow. “I’ve never encountered a poltergeist like that … A simple banishment should have handled it.”
“Historically,” I note, trying to focus on the bright white petals of the morning glories outside, rather than the forceps, “banishments have not been your strongest suit.”
He makes a noise of indignation. “My banishments are fine. The nachtmahr in Minkja was an anomaly because it was tethered to a material—I won’t bore you with the theory. But … I left you in the rotunda so Fortune could give us warning. Didn’t she tell you danger was coming?”
There it is again: some sort of foresight I’m supposed to have. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you haven’t told me of the precise mechanics”—he drops another piece of glass into the dish—“but didn’t you see Death or Fortune before the poltergeist attacked?”
My mind goes blank as he folds the sheet over my back, the crease parallel to my spine. The sewing shears creep along my arm, up to my shoulder, and my throat tightens as they get closer and closer to where I know my scars begin—then, mercifully, they stop. He peels the bloody fabric away from the wounds, but the old scars stay hidden. I’m so relieved, I barely mind the unsettling dig of the forceps.
Then my mind catches up to what he said about seeing Death. “Sorry, what?”
“Death or Fortune.” Emeric lifts one more shard free. At my puzzled stare, he sets down the forceps. “Because … you can see their hands at work.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I say.
Emeric studies me a long moment. “Vanja, when was the last time you saw your godmothers?”
“What?” It’s a perfectly normal question, I know it is, but—but there’s no traction when I try to think of an answer, the question whirling aimlessly like a spindle with no thread.
“Your godmothers.” Emeric leans closer. “Death and Fortune. When did you last see them?”
