Mightiest of Swords (The Inkwell Trilogy Book 1) (3 page)

“Yes.  And we are ready to leave. Here’s a tip, plus an extra $40 for you to catch a cab.” I stuck a wad of $20s into his palm. “For your trouble.”  I tipped a hundred dollars, hoping he wouldn’t object to us not returning him to job.

He counted the money, “Nope.  This’ll make up for the trouble.”

Joy was already in the passenger’s side.  I closed the door and waved at the rental attendant.  In the rearview mirror, as I adjusted it to my height, I caught a glimpse of the security guard locking the front door of the office. 

“So, I am to assume we can’t trust anything of ours at this point?” Joy was taking the news in stride, but sounded frustrated.  Or scared. Maybe both.

I set the folder on Joy’s lap as I pulled onto the street. I applied too much pressure to the brakes, sending us forward against our seatbelts. By comparison, I guess it was time to get the brakes on my car replaced. “No cars, no clothes…”

              “No books.”  Though she didn’t groan before or after she said it, it was certainly implied. 

              “Sorry, not at the moment. If we need to send someone back for your backpack, we’ll do that. That’s probably safe, but not much else might be.” I set the Post-It with the arrow weekly pointing north on the dashboard.  The glue had long since worn off and slid across the dashboard a little before catching and staying. Still pointing north.  I took the opportunity to tell Joy the complete story, hoping that with a complete set of facts, she might not mourn her books or other belongings quite as much.

              “Oh. So does that mean you’re taking me on your adventure to retrieve your stolen pyramid?”

              “Yes.” I was on the freeway now and heading the direction the arrow told me.  “Pay attention to the arrow on this note.”

              “Awesome. So the apartment? We burn sage or something? This friend of mine from Chicago said her parents bought one of Frank Lloyd Wright’s houses, but it was haunted. After what the priest did, they called a Native American chieftain who had them burn sage every so often. She swears it works.”

              I’ve heard about it, and there might very well be something to it when it comes to ghosts or whatever, but that’s not what we’re dealing with.” I had some stories to tell her why I thought the information about sage was incorrect, but knew well enough that the Native Americans swore by it. “I have a storage unite just off the freeway up here with one of my stashes.  We’re going to grab that to make sure we have enough money to rent a room.  Maybe go to a spa or something. In the meantime, map that address on your phone.  It looks like further we get away from my house and my vault, the weaker that Post-It is getting.”

              Joy looked at the arrow-note she held in her hand. She nudged it to her right—to the east—and only resettled northward after several seconds. “Yeah. I think you’re right.”

              “I don’t want anything to happen to this,” I took Shakespeare’s Quill from the inside pocket and handed it to Joy, “Put this in the glovebox, please.” I also got the inkwell and handed it to her for the glovebox.

              Close to the Big Y on Cooley, we arrived at the storage facility. Joy, up until today, did not seem overly curious about how I spent my time.  Tonight, however, she was wearing me down with her questions. Or, maybe that was the combination of the day’s events and some lingering effects of the arithmancer’s Lotus-Eater.

              “So, who knows about the vault and what the hell this pyramid-thing is?” Joy waited patiently for me to answer, staring at the orange roll-top door directly in front of us.

              “I have no idea what the pyramid-thing is, but I have a feeling that we’re going to have to find out in order to get it back.” What I did know was this: I entered my vault earlier this afternoon to retrieve William Shakespeare’s quill with which to weave a particular guardian spell I meant to cast. I was tricked, and robbed of on object that, of all objects, was one that I had no clue whatsoever as to its purpose. That was the most troubling aspect of the theft: who would have known what the object was, let alone where to steal it?  “I likewise have no idea where to start with the
who
.  I’m as much in the dark as you are.

              I exited abruptly. I Post-It noted the lock open and rolled the door open. The unit was full, but the cards and cash I needed were sewn in the giant pink penguin in a plastic tub in the front.  I took the penguin out and tore it open.  I removed a gallon-sized Ziplock bag full of my spare passport, driver’s license, credit cards, debit cards, and $10,000 in cash.

              I inspected the contents before returning to the car and handing the bag to Joy.

              “Next stop trouble.” Joy said, with perhaps more mirth than I was comfortable.

Chapter 3

              My dad says he and my mother chose “Grey” because it sounded elegant; a name for a lady. That may be true. I did not think so, however. However, I was fairly positive that in some way, my name was meant to protect me. While “Theroux” isn’t a common surname, it isn’t uncommon either. In the disciplines of magic, it is feasible that knowing a name makes a person easier to bind.  It makes sense—believing a word and understanding it at an atomic-like level was absolutely necessary to performing logomancy. The other disciplines likely required the same sort of fundamental understanding. So, if a person is named something typical, it is easier to associate that person with whatever magic one is attempting to perform—especially from a distance. Dad always told me that our last name was of the utmost importance and that we could never change it. This made giving me a mundane first name all that much more important.
Grey
passes as a first name, sure, but it’s also a color commonly spoken and commonly written.  And my father was an exceedingly clever man. A synonym for when something is unclear is that it’s
gray
. My name itself, I think, was always meant to cloud any sort of magic a wielder might wish to perform on me. Of course, my name is the English spelling, but my father no doubt took into account the number of Americans who spelled it the traditional way. In a way, ignorance provided its own kinds of protection aside from bliss.

              Sadly, I wasn’t able to reconcile the knowledge that in my experience, ignorance was something that would get you killed, not something that could protect you.

              Even so, Dad never told me about Joy Hansen’s name, but I’ve assumed that Joy was named under the same reasoning that I was named
Grey
.

              The address from the file we lifted from the apartment complex office led us to a line of drab brick houses in Northampton.  “How long are we going to sit here?” Joy was not, generally, an impatient person, though the days’ events, and perhaps residual effects of The Lotus-Eater leaving our systems continued to plague our temperaments. “I’m about to fall asleep. Can we at least go grab a muffin and some coffee from Haymarket.”

Our adventure had, until this point, brought us into the early hours of the morning. It was 4 a.m. and I had to keep the windows cracked so that our breath would not fog up the windows in the car. There was yet to be any indication of anyone stirring inside the house. While my interactions with the world’s remaining magoi was severely limited, what I did know was that none of them kept banker’s hours. I did not keep normal, civilized hours most days either—I just happen to know that night time not only brings out the assholery in human beings, but also in the creatures of The SUB too.

“Yeah, I could kill for a toffee bar and a smoothie about now,” I agreed, starting the vehicle, and turning up the blower for the heat. Septembers were usually a fickle time of the year in Massachusetts. The day could be sweltering, but also frosty by midnight. “Wait,” I sniffed at the air now circulating through the car. “Smells like a fire…”

Joy inhaled, her diaphragm expanding slowly. “And not the good-smelling kind, either.” She moved her hand to the door handle, but did not pull.

“Good smelling?” I asked, unsure as to what she meant.

Joy snuffled at the air much like I had only a moment before. “Like someone’s wood stove or fireplace or something.”

“Oh. Yeah.” Many people felt nostalgia for that scent.  This was not something I had ever experienced, but like much of my knowledge of the rest of the world, I was informed from having exhausted most shelves of the Springfield Public Library system. “I think you’re right. Definitely not the good kind.” I found myself climbing out of the hatchback before I could even tell Joy what I was about to do.

From inside the car, I hear Joy: “Grey, look! It’s the house!” She pointed to the bay window next to the front door of the house. The curtains were dark and drawn closed, but there were definitely flames flickering in a room toward the back of the house.

Walking briskly to the front door, I began writing out an incantation to pop open the front door. Joy beat me to it and found the door unlocked already. I used one of my last few Post-Its to write out an inquiry charm, discovering that the house had wards and protections from hostile intent, but nothing to hinder us from entering or to hurt us once we did.

“You stay here. Please,” I implored at Joy. “Keep an  eye out—you’re my only line of defense if the arithmancers decide to get feisty.

Joy’s jaw slacked momentarily before clinching it tight. “What am I going to do against those guys,” she hissed through her front teeth.

“Keep an eye out—yell if you see anything coming my way.” I took a step inside, keeping an eye on her.

Still ostensibly nervous, she relaxed. “Okay lady, no problem,” Joy impersonated Short Round from one of the Indiana Jones movies. She had made me watch them no less than 20 times each since becoming roommates. If I had not also come to love them as much as she, I would have never consented to multiple viewings.

Sharpie in my hand, cap loose and ready for my thumb to flick it off, I treaded carefully toward the smoke at the back of the house.  Closer now, the fire turned noxious, making it difficult to breathe and see through heavily-tearing eyes. I exchanged the Sharpie for a ball-point and summoned some fresh air in my right hand. I kept that hand cupped over my mouth and nostrils like a surgical mask. Despite that, the smell was acrid and seemed through the cracks in my fingers. In the back of the house, in what may have been a study or office—it was empty space, so hard to tell—the flames were high and licked at the ceiling, engulfing most of the room’s square footage. Smoke filtered through and out of the room, but did not consume beyond the study. The fire was contained, indicating some kind of magic containment that was porous enough to allow oxygen to filter through. Furthermore, in the middle of room was a pile of miscellany: evidence burning right in front of me.

Taking out my notepad, I began scribbling furiously and setting them around the parts of the room I could manage to reach at the edges of the bubble. As soon as I laid the last paper down, water began flowing from underneath the papers as if summoned from hidden springs. The water erupted into torrents that pressed against the containment field. After an uncertain moment or two, the water began to trickle through the field, filling it as if it were a giant, translucent water balloon. When it reached the flames in the middle, touching upon the now-charred detritus heaped in the center of the room.

Something else besides extinguishing the flames, though.

The flames fought back, heating the water into steam in mere seconds. While there wasn’t enough time in those milliseconds to fully form the thought, there was a memory from one of those novels that came to mind: steam burns can potentially peel the skin clean off the bone. Even while that idea came to me, I was already attempting to write my way out of the situation. The first word was to paper when I heard something pop. I fell over, covered with near-boiling water.

              In the next few seconds, I plead with whatever fates who might be to not let my eardrums have just ruptured. My eyes were closed. Either I was too shocked to open them or I was physically unable. I beseeched the same unknowable fates that my eyeballs weren’t somehow boiled in my skull and that, somehow, through some mercy, I would not feel the skin sliding from my face.

              I could neither see, nor hear. Whether or not the steam had done something irreparable to my eyes and ears, I did not have the acumen just then to tell which part of my body was which. Since the world was already dark, I had no way to mark myself.

              I passed into unconsciousness.

              I came to, and although I could feel my eyelids fluttering open and closed, all I could see was black with intermittent starbursts in my vision…or lack thereof.

              “GREY! C’MON! DON’T DO THIS TO ME!” Joy sounded irate. The word
apoplectic
came to mind, but that was one word I was just never able to incorporate into my personal lexicon. “GREY! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME!” Joy sounded less angry, but more weepy. I still had the feeling she was yelling at me. No, not yelling necessarily, but whatever she was saying sounded like it was coming through inches of cotton balls packed into my ear canals.

              “I’m not seeing anything,” I declared. “Joy, I can’t see!”

              “You’re burned real badly, Grey. What do I do?” Joy sounded frantic and pained, as if she too, suffered some of the steam burns. “Call an ambulance? Drive us to a hospital? I don’t know what to do!” Joy was burned, too, apparently, but she it did not sound like she was crying. That was good. She was probably in considerable pain as well, but she was not yet resigned to fate. Those same fates I had, it appeared, successfully lobbied on my behalf minutes before.

              “Oh motherfucker, this hurts.” Millions of words in many of earth’s languages available to me, but there has never been, nor likely ever would be a phrase that could exorcise one’s own demons like the word
motherfucker
. “Are they just first degree burns? Can you tell?” I concentrated on not trying to sound panicked, but knew I was failing miserably.

              She waited a moment, used my hair to turn my head; my still-warmly-drenched clothing to reposition my body. “Looks like just first, but it’s dark in here. Might be second degree,” she let my arm fall gently back to my side.

              Good, at least my flesh was intact. This was going to be difficult. I felt for the Sharpie in my right jeans pocket, flicked off the cap, “Can you make sure my left forearm is dry?”

              “Maybe. I’ll have to take your jacket off.” She was already in the process of rolling me out of the jacket. I grunted and wondered what in our ancestors’ evolution caused us to develop wincing as a reaction to pain.  Any movement hurt. Wincing in response to pain hurt. This made me wince as tightly and as painfully as I could possibly wince. “I think I the back of my shirt is dry underneath my jacket. Hold on.”

              I heard her shuffling of her own coat and moving around. I felt her rubbing the skin on my forearm—which hurt, but not nearly as badly as other parts of my skin.  It had to be pink and burned as well by the boiling water, but since it was not directly exposed, it was a matter of degrees in its pain differential. “I think I can write a simple heal charm, but I will need you to direct my hand to form pictogram. I’ll make it a simple triangle.  That’s all you’ll need to watch for.”

              “Okay.” Joy grabbed my hand and set it carefully on my forearm, adjusting my hand. “Like, what kind of triangle? Isosceles? Acute? Wait—should I go grab Shakespeare’s quill? Will that help?”

              “Great idea. Phenomenal, actually,” I confirmed.

              “I’ll be right back.” I felt more than heard the rushed movements of someone running away from me.  She was back in what had to have been less than a minute. “Okay. Back.  Now, how do you dip this thing in the ink?”

              I was already struggling not to scream; to stay conscious. The fear of never being able to see, to write washed over me and the prospect of such a possibility allowed the inner turmoil to ratchet up the pain externally. “Just dip it in the well and we’ll go from there.  You’ll have to tell me how much ink it’s letting.” The quill itself is one of goose feather and once belonged to The Bard himself: William Shakespeare. It was white and the vane of the feather was inked with additional
magikoi
from the various disciplines. Logomancy and arithmancy were included. The inkwell was filled with a proprietary blend my father obtained a few years before he died.

              The point of the quill was sharp and never seemed to dull, so the first time it touched my skin, it poked through the dermis.  It was the least of my concerns. I exhaled, desperate to keep my breathing and my hand steady. “Okay, the first word should read M-E-D-I-O-R. Is it legible?”

              “
Medior
. Latin for “I heal.” Yes. Are the next words of equal size? This one took up about two inches of real estate?” It was a good question. And I wasn’t aware that Joy had taken Latin in high school.

              “I know you’re not a sorority girl, but the next one is going to be Greek letters.” I press hand the pen back to her to dip into the well.

              She hands it back, “No, but I’ve had to learn them anyway. Go for it.”

              “Epsilon-pi-omicron-upsilon-lambda-omega-sigma-iota-sigma. You got it?” I ask, letting my hand fall away, as if the exertion itself were killing me. I allow myself the moment of melodrama.

              “Okay. Good. One more.” Joy places my hand at an awkward angle.

              I gurgle in response to this seemingly new experience of pain. I wince again and immediately regret it. I needed to clear my mind.  Logomancy required will to make it work. The words must be forged in concert with the will and understanding.

              I take a moment, concentrate on my breathing, and start in on the last word. “How’s the ink look?” I pause.

              “Fine, really.  Thick. Dark. You can still read it pretty well.” Joy cleared her throat on the last statement.

              “H-E-I-L-E-N. German this time.” I remain motionless, hoping upon hope it was already working and I would be able to move, maybe even see within minutes.