Chapter 5
Chapter
Five
It was close to ten by the time I woke up.
The building’s cheery song told me Ingrid and the crew were already downstairs, setting up for the day, and my mind was helpfully providing a rundown of the things I had to do over the next couple of hours.
I definitely needed to get up and get going, but for the longest of time, I couldn’t.
I just snuggled deeper under the comforter’s warmth and did my best to ignore the mental list. Partially because I was still damnably tired, and partially because I was still mad at myself for not accepting the situation with Cynwrig, especially if those dreams were a precognitive warning rather than a natural result of the fear that had haunted me since my father’s proclamation.
Besides, it wasn’t as if not fucking him would, in any way, ease the anguish when he took a wife. I might not have known him all that long, we might still be strangers in every way beyond the bedroom, but I was already too far down the rabbit hole of caring not to fall apart when he married.
I rolled onto my back and stared up at the ceiling.
Maybe I needed to talk to Darby about Cynwrig and that ticking clock.
I couldn’t discuss it with Lugh, because it wouldn’t be fair to burden him with that until I was absolutely certain there was no way I could win this game and stay alive.
It probably wasn’t entirely fair to burden Darby with it, either, but she was a forester class light elf, which meant that while she was far more emotionally connected, she still had an elf’s practicalities when it came to men, life, and love.
She would give me a straight, no-nonsense answer, whether I wanted to hear it or not.
Although when it came to Cynwrig, I already knew what her advice would be.
But given she was the one who always picked up the pieces after a love affair of mine had gone south—and there’d been plenty of them over the decades because I was absolute shit at choosing partners—the least I could do was give her time to stock up on the cake, chocolate, and alcohol that were a standard requirement for our “he sucks, you’re awesome” pity parties.
As for the clock... well, she was a healer who specialized in poisons, with a secondary specialization in wound repairs.
Maybe she could suggest a way around fate’s declaration.
After all, my fucking aunt had used death to get around the restrictions of the red knife, so surely there was some way I could do the same.
The phone rang sharply into the silence and made me jump. I was tempted to ignore it, but the tone told me it was Mathi, and he rarely rang without reason. I groped for it on the bedside table, then hit the answer button.
“Hey,” I said. “What’s up? Not another theft, I hope, because I’m really not in the mood today.”
“If your face is sore, you should have gone to either Darby or your doctor to get it repaired.”
“Yes, I should have, but I didn’t, and now I’m grumpy, tired, and have absolutely no patience.”
He chuckled softly. “State normal, then.”
“You, Mathi Dhār-Val, can be a bastard sometimes.”
“Indeed, I can. It’s part of my charm.”
I rolled my eyes. “Why are you ringing?”
“Got the name of the person who owned that box our thief took the contents from. Thought we might do a little illicit searching of her property.”
“It’s not the cottage he hit yesterday, then?”
“No. Different.”
I frowned. “So why not just go talk to her? Better yet, given your father or his team probably already have, why not just read the report?”
“Because they haven’t found her yet, let alone talked to her. Apparently she hasn’t lived at that address for quite a few years.”
“But she still owns it?”
“Yes, and according to the neighbors, she randomly appears, stays for a couple of hours, and then leaves again.”
“She doesn’t rent it out?”
“No. She has gardeners and cleaners coming in once a month, though.”
“Your father hasn’t ordered an internal search to be done?”
“He has no cause—she is a victim, not a suspect.”
“Having no cause hasn’t stopped him in the past.”
“No, but there are, believe it or not, some lines even my father won’t cross.”
“Are there lines the son won’t?” I asked, amused.
“Depends entirely on the line. There is one problem, however.”
“Of course there is, because when has any relic search gone smoothly?”
He chuckled. “My father has tasked the regular police with watching the building, and has also ordered me not to go near it. He doesn’t want to risk spooking the owner on the off chance this was something other than a mere robbery.”
“Like what?”
“Like a means to blackmail his target. It would certainly explain him only taking the contents of one box.”
“Isn’t it also possible that, given both lines of elves do like keeping little incriminating bits and pieces for possible use later, he was simply trying to retrieve the contents of that box, thereby stopping either a scandal or future problems for his family?”
If that were the case though, why go on and raid the cottage the next day?
“Indeed,” Mathi was saying, “but until we can find the owner and talk to her, we won’t know.”
“Hence the illicit comment. But why? Your father’s request isn’t unreasonable, even though it does suggest he is unaware of the true extent of your breaking and entering skills.”
“Not even my skills could get us past a twenty-four-hour ground watch. I might, however, have found another means of skirting them.”
“Why are you so gung-ho about circumventing your father’s orders?” I asked curiously.
“The mere fact he issued them.”
“Given your grand age,” I replied dryly, “I would have thought you beyond your teenage rebellion years.”
“I,” he responded, in much the same tone, “am barely on the cusp of breeding age for an elf, so the rebellion is not out of place.”
I laughed. “And the real reason?”
“He denied the council request you be sent in to investigate.”
My eyebrows shot upward. “Why would they request that?”
“I tried to access the file this morning and couldn’t. I subsequently told the council it was necessary we get into the house when I made my report this morning.”
“Why couldn’t you get into the file?”
“My access has been revoked.”
Surprise rippled through me. “It has? By whom? Sgott?”
He didn’t, after all, like Mathi’s deep access into the system and had threatened a complete lockout more than once.
“No, by my father. In the interest of protecting the victims, apparently, who do not wish their names known or released.”
Another reasonable point, given the suspected informational leaks throughout the IIT. “So, if this building is under twenty-four-hour watch, how are we going to get in without your father being informed?”
“I have enquiries open with a mage and a dwarf.”
“I daresay you’re hoping it’s the former with the best breaking and entering option, given you and underground spaces are not compatible.”
“As has been established recently, my dislike does not hamper my actions. The question is, can you control your loathing of rats if a tunnel turns out to be the better choice?”
Said loathing had been born out of having them running over my face when I was a kid. “I’ve traversed them before; I can do so again.”
Even if my brain was saying, No, no you can’t.
He laughed. “Will a bacon butty sweeten the deal?”
“Add some chips, and yes it will.”
“In what world are chips ever considered breakfast material?”
His horror was evident, and I couldn’t help smiling. “It’s closer to lunchtime than breakfast, so it’s totally appropriate. How long have I got before you arrive?”
“Traffic is terrible, so we’ll say twenty minutes, end of lane. I should have received calls from both by then.”
“And if you haven’t?”
“We will be forced to delay our adventure until another day.”
“Given the adventure might well involve rats, I can’t say I’d be sad about that.”
He chuckled again and hung up. I tossed the comforter off and padded, shivering all the way, into the bathroom for a quick shower.
Once I was dressed, I tucked my phone into my jeans pocket then ran up the loft ladder to get the knives.
I might be able to call them to me, but they tended to come sans sheaths, and it wasn’t exactly legal to carry bare blades about.
Of course, it wasn’t exactly legal to carry them sheathed either, even if, like Mom, I now had some leeway in that I worked for the council and the knives were an essential part of my relic hunting.
I reached around the back of the flue to get them, but the minute I touched the hilts, the Eye came to life.
There were visions to be had.
I cursed softly, sent a text to Mathi, then walked over to the sofa.
Once I’d made myself comfortable, I placed one hand on the blades and wrapped the other around the Eye.
The connection between me and the triune was strong enough now that my mind’s eye was swept away so damn fast it was briefly disorientating.
I found myself surrounded by darkness and stone that sped by at alarming speed, reminding me somewhat of a roller coaster in which all forms of lighting had been cut and there was only the rush of wind past face and hair.
Gradually, though, a soft luminescence appeared, lending a cold glimmer to the stone walls.
A few seconds later, I was swept over a lake that looked foul and whose surface moved unnaturally in the stillness, and then came to an island on which the altar I’d seen in the Codex library stood.
Beside it was a harp, and though the strings seemed to be moving, the vision wasn’t allowing me to hear the music it made.
Was the harp the source of the distant, jarring music I’d heard in the wind yesterday? Aasym had said that if I found the altar, I would find the means of tracing the pectoral.