Chapter 31
thirty-one
Isahn does some reading.
When the room faded back to its normal brightness and Lia had recalled her magic, a charred body lay crumpled against the wall.
“Fuck,” Hildy exhaled. “I wish Burke was here.”
Isahn had to agree. The stench of burnt flesh was jarring. “Lia, thank you.” Turning, he found his sister standing with her arm still outstretched, panting from exertion.
She dropped her hand at a snail’s pace and rotated to face Isahn, eyes wide and pupils massive. “I didn’t mean to. I was only aiming for the weapon.”
“It’s all right. It had to be done. You saved my life.”
Slowly, she nodded, still looking shocked.
Hildy bravely approached the body, took stock of the situation, and cleared her throat before shooting Isahn a look of concern.
“Lia, you don’t need to see this. Why don’t you go and rest? We’ll catch up soon.”
Solaelia dipped her chin but didn’t move away from the gruesome scene.
“Yunus,” Isahn called to the guard at the top of the stairs.
“Yes, my lord?” His lower legs stepped into view.
“Please escort Lady Tarcadu to her chambers. No, to the library. Go to the library and complete a puzzle together. She needs to clear her mind.” Isahn was worried for his sister’s mental state.
She was typically sharp and emotive. Her flat, gormless expression was alarming. What if saving him cost Lia her sanity?
Yunus reached her side and tapped her gently on the elbow.
Solaelia jumped, startled. “I am quite all right, I assure you. It’s as you said, it had to be done.” She flashed Isahn a tiny smile. “But you’re right, I should clear my head. I’d hate to become plagued with nightmares or whatever happens in these situations.”
Gracefully, Solaelia raised her palm, prompting Yunus to offer a crooked elbow as escort.
“Once you have that mess taken care of, let’s meet in the breakfast room to discuss the state of affairs.” Lia’s lyrical voice floated down to them as she disappeared up the grand staircase.
“I’m worried about her,” Isahn confessed once his sister and the guard were out of earshot.
Hildy pressed her lips into a thin line. “I don’t know her as well as you. But she’s a strong woman, that’s obvious. I’m confident she’ll be all right.”
He hoped Hildy was correct. Taking a life could have unpredictable consequences on a person’s mind; not that Isahn had any direct experience, he’d simply read a great many books.
“Isahn.” Hildy called his attention back to the big, burnt, issue at hand. “It’s gone.”
“What?”
“The tapestry.” She nudged a bit of non-human ash with the tip of her boot.
“Shit,” he breathed, moving closer to the body. “Oh, shit. We’re absolutely fucked.” Isahn shot out a substantial stream of water, pushing Peros to the side so he could see if—just maybe—some of the artifact survived, trapped behind the body.
There was nothing there.
“At least Gasparo can’t get it, right?” Hildy grimaced, her bright side still rather cloudy.
“And George will never know what her father’s end goal was.
She won’t know why he needed it. It might’ve been the answer to taking down the veil.
” Frustration bubbled up his throat as he drew back his fist. “Fuck!” He slammed his hand into the charred wall panel where the tapestry, the stupid fucking tapestry, once hung.
Wood splintered, and Isahn yanked back his smarting fist, eyeing the damage to his knuckles. That was a shortsighted decision.
Hildy let out a humph.
Isahn thought she was judging him for his embarrassing outburst, until he followed her line of sight to the spot he’d punched.
“Shit,” he said, peering into the hollow space staring back at him. All the night’s excitement did a number on his current vocabulary.
Sticking his hand into the hole he’d made, Isahn felt around. It was about a foot square, gritty, with solid stone walls. Definitely a carved-out niche of some sort.
“Shit,” he said again as his fingers touched something that wasn’t splintered wood and certainly wasn’t the sandstone of the outer walls of Staridge. “Oh, shit.” He trailed over a bumpy, rectangular object.
“You’re really going to have to give me more than— Oh, shit.
” Hildy cut herself off as Isahn pulled forth a thick, ancient-looking tome.
Bound in embossed leather, with gold and jeweled inlays and a solid golden clasp, the book was a work of art.
“I’m just going to say it. Do you think that’s the tapestry? ”
“It’s a book.”
“Well, no shit, Isahn. But Eanraig said there’s variation in the possible translation. And that letter Gasparo had, it says the tapestry lay in Selwas, not hung. And remember, Wynnie thought it might not even be about a tapestry?” she asked.
“It looks ancient. I’m afraid to open it.”
“We have to see what it is.”
“I know. We will. Let’s do it with Lia.” His sister played a big role in the night’s events, and she deserved to be there if they had successfully saved the relic.
“What if it contains information she doesn’t know?”
“I’m sure it’ll have information that none of us know. If it’s really a thousand years old, does it matter if it speaks of the fae?” Isahn lowered his voice to a whisper on the last question, cognizant of the staff who were flooding the now-safe basement.
“Valid point,” Hildy agreed. “Freshen up, then meet with Lia?”
With the book cradled against Isahn’s chest like a fragile baby, they headed toward the stairs. “Clean this up, please. I don’t care what happens to his body.”
His household guards acknowledged the command and jumped into action. Isahn could hear Adana grumbling about the mess with a few of the maids as he and Hildy rounded the staircase to continue on to their rooms. They’d all be getting exceptional bonuses for their troubles.
“Did you bring it?” Solaelia asked, clapping eagerly when Isahn entered the breakfast room.
In her seat, with a cup of tea in hand, Hildy chuckled, having clearly told his sister about their find.
He shot Lia an incredulous look and tapped the book in his arms. “Are you blind?”
“Just excited.” She shrugged.
He joined Lia and Hildy at the table laden with a feast. It seemed no one had gone back to sleep after Peros breached the house. The first rays of dappled light flickered through the trees lining the east side of the manicured back lawn and glistened off the calm lake below.
The women had already cleared a wide section of the table, anticipating Isahn’s arrival.
“You didn’t peek already, did you?” Lia bounced up behind him, poking him in the side.
“Seriously? I’m a grown man,” he groused, though her resilience truly surprised him. She seemed back to her usual, happy self.
She lifted her brows.
“No. I haven’t opened it up.”
“Let’s get to it.” Hildy pushed back her chair, coming to join Isahn and Solaelia.
With a fine thread of water magic, he picked the gold lock. It popped free and slowly levered itself down to rest on the table. The miniature hinge worked perfectly, even after hundreds of years in a wall.
“Open it!” Lia prodded.
He did.
The book belonged to Tiyar Tarstani, if he was reading the faded, angular inscription correctly. Gingerly, Isahn turned to the next page. A date at the top indicated the entry was from over one thousand years before.
“A journal,” Lia exclaimed on an exhale. “How diverting.”
“What the fuck language is that?” Hildy asked, sounding equally as intrigued, but expressing it differently.
Isahn was busy doing math in his head, so Lia answered, “It’s the Old Tongue.”
“Not our Old Tongue.”
He turned a few more pages. “It’s ours, Old Selwassan.”
“Can you read it?” Worry etched Hildy’s brow.
“Some, not well.” He flipped a few more pages, trying to make out any recognizable words.
Solaelia shuffled beside Isahn, leaning in for a better look. “Is it related to your journey? Is this what Peros was seeking?”
Frustrated anticipation had his skin buzzing.
Was it? What were the odds that an old and clearly hidden book was directly behind a tapestry with the Domossan old tongue on it, a tapestry Peros identified too, and that it had no connection to the mysterious Domossan Queen who lived at the exact same time period?
Slim to none. He placated himself as he continued skimming pages.
“It might be related. Maybe the note we discovered in the capital was translated from this,” Hildy replied to Lia with hope coloring her voice. “Does anything look familiar?”
Isahn was about to say no when his eye caught on something curious. “This says ‘Rasdavol.’ That’s here in Selwas.” He traced a few sentences he couldn’t make sense of. “Oh! And here, ‘kaboor,’ that means north.”
“North could be anywhere tho—”
“Ah! Look! Here. It says ‘Deiwomont,’ Hildy.”
“Oh, shit. It does.” Her fingertip hovered over the recognizable word. “That was in Domos,” she mentioned for Lia’s sake.
“By the old capital, right?”
“Exactly.”
Isahn turned through several more pages before stopping again. “The handwriting changed.” He double-checked, just to confirm. It was definitely different.
“What does it say?” Hildy asked as though the new penmanship would suddenly give Isahn a working knowledge of the Old Tongue.
“Wait, this part here, look. This is not in Old Selwassan—”
“lt’s Old Domossan,” Hildy finished Isahn’s thought. Then she began to read aloud, “‘Peregrinia Regnia, nektoi memonai toutas, animod usad potentiad, ex nei kreiat, orbom serkom, pakai ab irad okidenti.’”
“‘Solos fabrikator praesidium nekore potest,’” Isahn read the ending, the unfinished line on the paper in Domos.
“What does it mean?” Lia asked.
“We don’t really know,” he answered her honestly. “But it might be the solution to a massive problem in Domos.”
“We need to return to Hepiko— Nowosmont,” Hildy corrected herself.
It was too late; Isahn glanced at his sister to see an intelligent fire spark up in her eyes.
“Where?” she asked coyly.
“Uh— It’s the name of a villa in Nowosmont. Homage. You know,” Hildy lied badly.