Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1) (19 page)

    “Okay.  They coin.  What made it so remarkable?”  My time was dwindling, but a quick glance at my phone assured me I was still on time.

    “Oh, it was a remarkable specimen,” he intoned with significant more confidence and clarity.  “It was Roman.  1
st
century A.D.  In fact, I was goint to send it to the auction house.  It is unbelievably value…” he trailed off once more.

    “How much did you sell it for?” I asked, acknowledging my time was well past being up. 

     With that question he hurried to his cash register, opened it, lifted the tray, and rifled through several hand-written receipts.  He slammed it down, slipping from agitation to panic.  “I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know…” He flipped through his receipt book and then ran to the back to, I assumed, look at security footage.  That was my cue to exit, though before I did I took out another Post-It, drew upon it, and took a photo of an incomplete pattern, and sent it to Joy.  I asked her to delay the train by writing her own Post-It and putting it near the engine.   And to have Gavin wait for me with my ticket.  I then sent her the word to finish the spell, as completing it would have caused my smartphone to go on the fritz.  

   I arrived at St. Pancras and met Gavin at the gate.  While it did garner some looks, we made it through to the train.  Most of the attendants and conductor were standing by patiently as a mechanic was checking the undercarriage of the train.  It was only 10 minutes past its scheduled departure time, but the fact a mechanic was already checking the train spoke volumes to the efficiency of the system.  I wrote once more on a Post-It and held it in my palm.  I surreptitiously summoned a powerful wind gust and pointed my hand toward the front of the train, hoping to dislodge Joy’s own Post-It.  Confident that it worked, I closed my hand and crumpled the paper.

    Once seated in the First Class section of the train—I immediately sent a thank-you text to Victoria. 

   I recounted to Joy and Gavin what happened at the British Museum and told them about the coin and its apparent theft.  

   “So, no immediate ideas what significance this little episode holds for us?” Gavin asked, bending forward, hands steepled over his mouth.

   “I have some ideas, but nothing of much substance so far.”  I held back that there was something that bothered me, mostly because I couldn’t put my finger on it.  The uneasiness would have to linger.

     Joy removed my
Gulliver’s Travels
from Gavin’s satchel, and handed to me along with a legal pad with several notations not written by her hand, and seemingly not by Gavin’s either.  “And then there is this…”  She tossed a pile of notes and the book onto my lap.

Chapter 18

                 “The woodcuts are from different books,” Gavin attempted to explain Professor Engel’s handwriting.  “Five different books. He’s written them down here for you.”

                  “Five different books,” I furrowed my brow, puzzled, “and he knew exactly what he was looking at?”

                 “Yeah.  For the most part,” Joy answered. “He knew his stuff. He ended up calling one of his colleagues into his office for a consult, but his conclusions are solid.”

                  My phone started ringing.

                  “Victoria?”  After a few minutes conversing with the goddess, I mouthed
Victoria
so they knew to whom I was speaking. “She doesn’t know what the deal with the coin is,” I confirmed what they already heard from my end of the conversation.  “But she’s going to inquire.”

              “So, we sit on the coin business for the time being,” Joy held up Gulliver once more.  “I’m wondering why the inspector came to Clio’s office”

    “I’ve been ruminating about that one, too.”  And I had.  I think he was there for fact-finding on what Dr. Valentine witnessed.  But he had also asked Valentine what Clio had been working on lately.  I didn’t think for a moment he was actually interested in what came across Clio’s desk.  Rather, Inspector Simmons was looking for something she possessed.  Could it be the coin?  Surely not, or he would have been to the coin shop first.  Also, whatever they sought, it was not on her person.  “We need to ask Victoria to investigate that aspect, if she already isn’t.”

    Gavin laughed.  His laughter made Joy smile.  The laughter was grim, though not the result of gallow’s humor; at least not yet.  Rather, the twisting, turning, ambushes, and close-calls were taking their toll.  Joy, however, remained wide-eyed and indomitable.  

    “What are you thinking she’ll find?” Gavin asked.

    “I have no idea.  But rEvolve needs something Clio had, and Clio sold this coin moments before she was taken.  It’s impossible the two aren’t related.”

    “Could she have just needed the money to hide her sisters somewhere?  Maybe take them back to the States and Solemn Ages?”  Joy posited.  Those were sound questions, and perfectly reasonable, but, “I honestly think she would have asked Victoria to arrange that passage.  We have no idea what their financial station was, but, judging by their manor in Mousehole, I don’t think money was an issue.”

    “Then was she trying to hide it?  We know the rEvolver,” Joy eyed both of across the table at which we were seated, “we encountered in Cambridge followed her to the shop.  If he saw her selling a coin, would he not have followed up?”

    “He might not have gathered the significance?” Gavin asked us both.   

    “It’s almost like, they did know until later on?  And the guy I saw was…”  I shuddered.  What was gnawing at my gut finally was coming into the light of day.  I looked at Gavin and Joy, “he was with me, or, at least listening to the conversation in Clio’s office.  Once he heard, he knew to check back there.”

     “Plausible, I suppose.  There could have even been a collar-cam like the cops back home have to wear,” Joy posited.

    “Then maybe this trip to France isn’t quite so random.  Maybe the coin has something to do with it,” I exhaled sharply, settling my neck on the cushion of my chair.  I could easily take a nap then and there, were it not for the mountain chain of conundrums plaguing us.  My mind was working overtime as it was.  I reached forward and grabbed the copy of Gulliver’s.  Then I reached for the legal pad with Professor Engall’s notes and read them over to myself several times.  

    “So he had nothing to say about the maps, right?” I asked them both.

    Joy and Gavin looked at each other.  “No,” Joy shrugged.  “He said though printed, they do not match anything he was familiar with.”

    “Then I’m sure my father made them, had them printed and melded with the book.  I’ll come back to those,” I held the legal pad in front of me, pointing at the list Engall made of each illustration’s origin:

P. 21 is Shakespeare’s  Collected Works    Rowe’s 1709     Play—Romeo and Juliet

P. 60 is Shakespeare’s  Collected Works    Rowe’s 1709     Tempest

p. 115 is Shakespeare’s  Collected Works    Rowe’s 1709     Pericles

p. 179 is Shakespeare’s  Collected Works    Rowe’s 1709     Merry Wives of Windsor

p. 209 is Shakespeare’s  Collected Works    Rowe’s 1709     All’s Well that Ends Well

P. 244 Chatelet’s French Etymology         1766 edition    Owl depiction

p. 283 Colby’s Sound
Waves and Acoustics    1938        *Not woodcut; diagram                                                                                     (DeHaan  consulted)

P. 305 Encyclopédie Française         1897?        steam engine diagram   

P. 322 Malone Studies in English Phonology     1922        tongue/mouth diagram

“This is nothing short of intense.  It had to have taken him a while to compile this?”  I had my own pen out, doodling in the margin.  

“It took him all of last evening,” Joy paused, grimacing, “We gave him the $2,000 that we brought. Otherwise, he had a dinner he was supposed to go to.”

“I understand.  He needed some convincing.  Expenditure approved.” I stiffened my posture and pulled my jacket down.

“Ha.  Thanks.  I would kill for a good cup of coffee right now.  You guys want some?  I’ll flag our attendant down.” Joy waved her arm like a school girl, though the attendant was nowhere in sight.

“Absolutely,” Gavin, since Cambridge, had not lost his dour expression, though it did seem to now be softening.

“Not at the moment.  But I am thirsty.”  Within a few minutes more, Gavin and Joy were each nursing a cup of coffee, and I was given a bottle of water.  

Refreshed, I took another look at the Shakespeare plays.

it was staring me plainly in the face:
All’s Well that Ends Well
.  

“Guys!” I exclaimed, a little too loudly, startling Joy.

“Ouch.  Damn it,” she spilled some of her coffee on herself. “What?” The hot coffee dribbled down the hand the held the cup, though she attuned herself to what I was about to say.

“The last play is ‘All’s Well that Ends Well,’” I beamed.  “Well!”

“Okay, but what about the other plays?” Gavin chimed in.

“Dunno. I think they might be filler, because my dad put the Well-one last, like, ‘Okay, everything after this one is now important.’”

Gavin was unconvinced, “That seems quite a leap in logic.”

“Not really.  I knew her dad.  Not well, but it seems like something he would have done,” Joy turned and looked at me, “He loved Shakespeare.  It’s kind of like he was waving at her to get her attention, plus using a Shakespeare nod is the way to do it.”

“I’m thinking so,” I took another gulp of the water.  I took one more drink and spoke, “The books are far-flung enough that they can’t be related.  Different times, different subjects.”

“Then how can they be related.  Some sort of secret code from your father to you?  I mean, it is meant for you, right?”

“Has to be.” I thought about telling him about my memory that allowed me to open my vault, but skipped over that part.  “He came over to this part of the Europe a few months before he died.  He told me he was on vacation.  When he got back, he told me he brought back several antique books.  Then, all he wanted to talk about was how he felt like Gulliver on his travels across the world.  The conversation delineated into stuff about the book, but, looking back at it, that conversation was very intentional.  I think he wanted me to associate him, his trip, with that book, I think.  It’s a stretch, but I don’t think we could just come out and talk about it.”

Gavin never lost his look of skepticism, but he relented.  “Okay.  I believe you then.  What’s the connection with the other books. Like you said, different times, different subjects.”

Gavin made for an excellent sounding board—different subjects indeed.  “Whoa.  Whoa. No…surely not?”

“What?” Joy asked enthusiastically.  

“My battery is almost dead,” I removed my phone from my pocket and checked the indicator.  This international calling-thing drained the battery down quickly.  “I need one—or both—of you to look up the Dewey Decimal system.  Wikipedia.  Whatever.  Doesn’t matter.”

“Okay, okay,” Gavin removed his own phone while Joy did likewise.

“First non-Shakespeare book is about French etymology.  Though I know my Dewey well enough to get a girl through a library, I need precisely what number that corresponds to,” I instructed, fetching one of my pens out of my messenger bag.  

“Right,” Joy read from her phone, “looks like…442.”

I wrote it down.  “Next book is, what, science of sound?”

“Yeah,” Gavin’s turn, “So, that should be physics.   Physics, physics, physics.  Okay—sound & vibration is 534.

I wrote the next set of numbers down.  “A French encyclopedia.  Where does that fall?”

“Doing this on a smartphone screen is much more difficult than it should be.  Can we get tablets soon?” Joy scrolled through her screen.  “Okay, here we go: General encyclopedic works in French, Occitan & Catalan,” she read.  “034.”

“Last book is a linguistics book about English phonology,” and no sooner had the words left my mouth, Gavin was on it…

“Writing system, phonology, phonetics of standard English 421.  Wait, are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked, sounding more like a true-believer.

“Coordinates!”  Joy shouted loudly enough a middle aged couple sitting near us stopped what they were doing and scowled at us as much as their old-fashioned English sensibilities would allow.  

“Bingo!” I confirmed with zeal to match, though a little quieter.  “But I have no idea how to put the numbers together.  Do either of you?”  

“I think so.  Give me your pen and pad,” Joy requested.  As she wrote, I thought of my storage unites full of old books and how some of those books would have books of similar size missing pages of woodcuts.  A minute or two later, Joy had written, and rewritten a few different attempts, but settled on this: 44°25′34″N 03°44′21.  

“Okay, Gavin, plug those numbers into a map app, please,” I asked him.  He took the pad, placed it on his knees and began punching in the numbers.

He looked up, and now it was his turn finally look something like happy. “Here we are ladies—Cevennes, France,” he held up his screen for us to look.   Gavin’s smile looked strange on his face, but I noticed for the first time, his teeth were a little crooked.  Still, it was a warm, endearing smile that one day I hoped to more than emulate.

“So do we go there next or do we even need to?” Joy asked.

“First item of business,” I explained, “is track the Muses.  Try our very best to rescue them, if we can.  Then we have to do something about rEvolve.”

“What do you think that should entail?” Gavin asked, smile wiped clean.

“I’m not sure yet, but I have no doubt they won’t stop until we’re dead.  Question is,” and I wasn’t sure if I was saying this in attempt to come to terms myself, or if I was saying it for the others’ benefit, “—are we ready to kill, not out of vengeance, but out of self-preservation?”

“That is the question.  But is there a difference?”  Surprisingly, it was Joy saying it, though I wasn’t sure if it was for her benefit or Gavin’s.  Or mine.

“I don’t know.”  The conversation was one I dreaded having, but our circumstances were only moving us toward making decisions we had not yet come to terms.  I thought back to Trivium and to Doctor Linden in the Mill Street Cemetery.  I made the choice to leave Linden alive and with a likely chance to survive. As we moved toward finding the Muses and rEvolve, I started to believe it was not the right decision, or at least, would no longer be the right decision.  I fully intended on making it deadly for them, and not us.  “Seems like there has to be, but I’ve never had to kill someone.  But in everything I’ve ever read, there’s big difference.”

“I don’t think any of your authors were killers either.” Gavin shifted uncomfortably.

“True,” I agreed, “But I think we have to consider the effect our decision will have upon our humanity.  So we’re committing to wiping them out? For ourselves?”

“And the gods,” Joy added, taking a sip of her coffee and reclining into her seat. “When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you,”
she recited.

At least she knew we were squarely staring down that abyss.  And I had to admit—I wasn’t nearly as fearful of it as I thought I would be.  At least I realized that might be a problem.

In just over two hours, we made it to Paris with some sort of tacit agreement between us.  We would do what needed to be done.  Maybe this was one of the reasons why the
magoi
divorced themselves from the entanglements of religion: no divine fear of reprisal.

A youngish man, no older than I, greeted us.  The lanky, dark-haired man’s were sallow—a physical trait for someone my age who started smoking early into one’s youth.  He was standing outside of a black Mercedes, holding a sign that read
Theon Greyjoy
.  It took me several walks back and forth across the concourse of the train station before I realize I was looking at a
Game of Thrones
character’s name.