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  Dr Catt was out of the throne like a shot, his self-satisfied face suddenly there over her hand, his lenses flapping down as he flicked them into place. “I didn’t think there were any of these left in existence. See, Fishy! A serpent’s eye.”

  “A serpent’s eye indeed,” Fisher said, reaching out and then pausing to look up at Tricky. They shared a glance that spoke volumes and Ralas didn’t need to know the details to see that the death wish was off the table now and something reluctant and allegiant had taken its place.

  “May I?” Dr Catt asked, looking plaintively up at Tricky without lifting his head, eyes at their maximum swivel as though he couldn’t bear to remove himself from the jewel’s allure.

  “At your own risk,” she nodded.

  Dr Catt held out a hand towards Fisher. “Glove.”

  “Is that a good thing ruby or a bad thing ruby?” Ralas asked, not certain he wanted the answer but feeling left out.

  “It’s an eye from the time before men, when creatures made of gemstones ruled the under-crust of the world and dragons fought over whatever was left on top,” Fisher said, using both hands to fit a kidskin glove precisely over the fingers and thumb of Dr Catt’s outstretched hand. Then he cast his gaze more circumspectly over Ralas and a slight twitch betrayed his unease.

  “What does it do?” Ralas asked as Dr Catt held the stone between thumb and forefinger and leant back. He held it up to the light from a brightly glowing sphere which lit the room and which Ralas had assumed to be a lamp, but which was now revealed to be simply a ball of light without a tether.

  “Watches,” Fisher and Tricky said at the same time, then glanced at each other with a lift of the nose. Fisher continued. “It watches until a time is right, and then it makes the way for something to happen.” He held up his hand and waggled it like a fish swimming or a snake slithering. “Depends on how it’s used and who by.”

  Catt slowly brought the stone down and pushed his lenses back until they sat high on his brow. He looked solemnly at Tricky. “Where did you find this?”

  “Charm’s gone, huh?”

  “Whatever it was set to look for it has seen done. Nothing left in it. It’s ready for another spell, should one ever find a mage capable and willing to risk their neck on it.” His nose twitched at the end and he folded the stone carefully into his fist. “This is really just the fee?”

  “If you can do some reading for me.”

  “So—you have…”

  Tricky held up her hand to forestall him and fixed him with a direct stare. “I have the whole damn snake.”

  “A moment, if you would.” Dr Catt beckoned to Fisher and they went into a huddle as far away as they could get, which wasn’t far. Tricky made a big show of looking in any other direction, tapping her foot and changing her weight from one leg to the other. Ralas could not even hear them whispering, only see their cramped gestures and emphatic head motions. After a minute or two they straightened up and turned.

  “Gentlemen,” she said and then with a flourish threw the object in her hand forward, allowing it to unwrap its own bindings on the way. They both had to step back smartly, flattening themselves to the wall, as most of the remaining floor space was suddenly taken up by the black, ugly shape of the lidless coffin. Whatever they’d been discussing died into the silent moment that followed.

  Ralas stared. Magic was always there in so many places, small and great, but seeing this scale of it at work robbed him of words. He was almost frightened of Tricky in that moment. She was so casual with it.

  “We need the help of Zivalah,” Catt said after a while had passed. “Go get her, would you, Fishy?”

  Dr Fisher showed no inclination to move, but he cleared his throat and a few seconds later he slid past the box and hurried out of the door. The latch clicked and the key turned at his back. Dr Catt fumbled behind him along his workbench and there was an audible click. A hum filled the air, quiet but insistent and he relaxed, reaching out his gloved fingers to run them over the box’s rim and then over some of its heavily embossed carving. “My my. This is true ebony, hardened in dragonfire.”

  “I want to know what it all means,” Tricky said, pointedly ignoring any reverence that might have been going around. “Every word, glyph and pictogram.”

  “Old Tzarkish,” Catt said, confident. “The written form that goes back to the first humans. That’s why we’ve gone for the local expert. Zivalah does tattoos now but she was apparently quite a matriarch back in the day.”

  Tricky balled up the old scrap of sackcloth and tucked it in one of her pockets. “How long is it going to take?”

  Catt stood back, lips pursed forwards in a universal gesture of assessment on a task of great difficulty. “I don’t know.” Then he glanced up. “I thought you knew Tzarkish?”

  “I know enough of it not to want to risk reading something that’s not meant for my eyes,” she said, tapping the box with one finger. “They have a way with traps and mind bombs that I don’t care to risk my sanity over.”

  “But we do?” Catt put his heavy hand over his heart. “I’m affronted. I thought we were friends.”

  “The whole snake,” Tricky said, unmoved. “Hm?”

  “I’d have to see it, of course,” Dr Catt said.

  Ralas realised that the serpent’s eye was gone from Catt’s hand. He must have put it away, he thought.

  Tricky nodded, and then they heard the return of footsteps outside, in a great hurry. The latch popped at the same moment as the key turned in the lock and Fisher burst into the room, breathless, a look of surprise and concern in his face. “She’s gone. Left town.”

  “What? When did this happen?” Catt frowned, his hands clenching into fists.

  “Just now, apparently,” Fisher said, looking at the box and then at Tricky with clear misgiving. “Where did you get that?”

  “Hathel Vale,” she said. “Where the fire has gone out. Now, are you going to read this or am I going to take my snake elsewhere?”

  “As if there was an elsewhere,” Dr Catt said, drawing himself up to his full height and looking faintly green with the effort. “We shall read it. Come back later.”

  “No, thanks,” she said. “We have a lot of appointments far away very soon. Come on, I know you can read it, traps or no.”

  “Meaning you think these traps are for…”

  “Sure, whatever,” she breezed on, waving a hand in the manner of a queen dismissing a minion. “Don’t say the word and don’t think the thought. You, as ordinary men of Cherivell,” she gave Fisher a long, significant look and a pause, “well-educated but so far without any divine intervention, you’re going to be all right with it. Probably. For a Guardian it would be dangerous. But it’d be pretty unlikely the Remaker of Bones and the Gravewife have much of an interest in small-town market lawyers. Apothecaries. Bankers. I forget, what is it exactly that you do?”

  Ralas couldn’t miss the condescension of the last part but although he didn’t feel what threat it might hold something had impressed the doctors: they gave each other a nod and Catt began to slowly circle the box, head to the side, studying. Fisher stood back, surveying with what looked like one eye half shut and the other fully shut. Tricky took out a tiny dagger the size of a finger from her sleeve and removed her gloves, carefully using the point to clean her nails.

  “Here’s the start, Catty,” Fisher said after about a minute. Catt moved around the box to join him and they fussed with their lenses, moving, studying, conferring and moving on at very brief intervals. “You do the reading. I’ll write it down.”

  Fisher wrote Catt’s pontifications down on a slate, adding alternatives and interpretations, rubbing them out with the ball of his thumb very thoroughly once each one was puzzled through. Ralas and Tricky watched them work. Talking seemed sacrilegious so Ralas said nothing. After a while Tricky went out and returned with teas and griddlecakes. Ralas would have dozed off if not for the constant aching of his bones. At last the two men stopped, exhausted an
d pale with effort.

  Catt cleared his throat and patted his chest gently. “The casket you see before you is the holding maze of the greatest creation of the Tzarkomen necromancers, into which they have poured, literally, their heart’s blood.”

  “Ten thousand women, girls and babies, slain and raised in one form. Almost an entire people sacrificed to create a single being of unsurpassed capacities,” Fisher said quietly, head down, hands composed, rubbing his chalky fingertips together.

  Catt nodded eagerly, his enthusiasm for potency overrunning. “A creature intended for a great purpose beyond the realms of…”

  Tricky held up her hand. “Just the facts, gentlemen please.”

  “The being in this box was charmed with the serpent jewels to become bound to him and to serve his purposes—whatever they were. There is a sub-clause, of a kind, which prevents it from turning on its people of origin hidden right down at the bottom of the head end and disguised as a prayer. At least they had some circumspection.”

  “Godly puppet,” Fisher said, looking grey with fatigue. “But… why on earth would they give him such a…”

  “To get him to leave them alone,” Ralas suggested. “Because not even death can stop him.” He looked at Tricky. “It can stop him, can’t it. If he’s the one who’s dead?”

  Dr Catt broke in. “Where is she? Did you get this from her?” He held up the red gem.

  “Don’t know and yes.”

  “So then she’s bound to someone already.” Catt sighed, deflating somewhat, pushing away his scrying lens so that he could rub his sore eyes. “If not him, then who?”

  “Don’t know, doesn’t matter,” Tricky said briskly. “Good job. Here’s your snake.” She was suddenly brandishing a beautiful jewelled strap composed of a good number of the scintillating stones from Lysandra’s dress, twined together with the golden wire that had bound them in their original positions. As she modelled it for them, draping it across her own arm, it moved of its own accord in a soft, unmistakable ripple as though a long-lost memory was attempting to reconnect it with the world of the living.

  Catt leaped backwards, or tried to. Instead he crashed heavily against the bench, gasping for air. “Can’t stand snakes!”

  She tore it in two and put the halves on the workbench where they twitched but otherwise remained suitably mineralised. “Only to prove the puissance,” she said. “Thanks. See you later.”

  “Wait, where are you going?” Fisher asked, working a handkerchief across his brow. He gestured vaguely at the box. “Take it with you. Please.” There was more than appeal in his gaze as he looked at her. Ralas read there something much more important.

  “Pleasure, darling,” Tricky said, “I have to see some Tzarkomen about a dog anyway.” She reached out with her scrap of rag as though she were going to use it to take a hot iron from a fire. A second later she was wrapping the thimble-sized black casket up and a second after that it had vanished about her person somewhere. For the life of him Ralas could not have said what she’d done with it but the look of relief on Fisher’s face was matched only by the wistful sadness in Catt’s.

  “We could put it in a Vat of Holding, Fishy,” he began but a look from his friend quieted him. “Ah, no. Maybe not. Perhaps it’s best that way as you say.”

  Within moments Ralas and Tricky were both outside in the street again. The bell tinkled merrily at their backs. In its aftermath they could just hear Catt’s voice complaining about snakes and devious vixens from the nether pits of hell. He sounded very pleased with himself.

  “Mission accomplished. Family feud laid to rest. I think it’s time to get a commemorative tattoo,” Tricky said, straightening her cloak and tossing her head so that her dark red hair flowed out into the breeze. “This way.”

  “Wait. What?” Ralas set off after her, struggling to keep up as she set off to the markets at a pace. He wasn’t sure what he’d witnessed. He recalled a vague notion that Doctor Fisher was not a Cheriveni antiquities dealer or a lawyer, but the Guardian Fury, but he couldn’t for the life of him remember where he’d picked that up from. It was as though some veil was drawn over it. As soon as it occurred to him it darted away again and he was filled with doubt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  "ARE YOU SURE she’s gone?” Catt waited as Fisher held the seashell to his ear and balanced the tip of it against the wall closest to the street.

  “Gone,” Fisher said, taking the shell down and replacing it on the high shelf over the workbench.

  They both of them leaned on the workbench for support and then Fisher reached underneath it and pulled out a little chest. He placed it on the bench and opened it. A gentle radiance of rosy gold filled the room as they both looked down on the Diadem of the Forinthi, which had once adorned the crown that Wall had taken from the Kinslayer. The gem in its midpoint had a similar glow to the eye of the serpent which Catt now held up towards it, but there was no mistaking the fact that the god-given blessings it was capable of were gone. Even so, its history and its possible restoration made it the most valuable object of their entire collection. As one they sighed, and then Catt lovingly wrapped it up and put it away. He set out the jewels that Tricky had left behind.

  “I do believe that it may be time to dust off the Sheep Chariot,” Catt said.

  “Where there’s a will there’s a relative?”

  “This created woman must have had many interesting Tzarkomen relatives, probably all dead. They may have the other half of that snake. Or knowledge of its whereabouts. Finding so many pieces of it does hint at a great ability with detection I had never heretofore expected of them.”

  There was a knock at the door and someone called in, “Oi! Are you available for makin’ a bill of sale? Hello?”

  They ignored it.

  “Do you think she gave us half deliberately?” Fisher asked, nearly hypnotised by the sway of movement inside the gemstones. These had once been part of a celestial being, maybe even the one that the Forinthi jewel had come from and there remained the chance that if they found every single part of it, they could put it together again. Minus one small segment, of course, otherwise said being may not find itself fully content with remaining in the little Cherivell shop not-on-display. One part was miraculous. But the whole thing…

  The light danced over Doctor Fisher’s long, solemn features like sunlight through water and gave him the illusion of a certain underwater fluidity.

  “I’m reasonably sure she did, so that’s more or less an invitation from the gods themselves, is it not?” Doctor Catt said, polishing a facet here and there with a fine cloth he drew from his pocket.

  “And the labyrinth in Nydarrow?”

  It was as though Catt hadn’t even heard him. “I think you must head for Tzark. I shall brave the barrows and warrens of the Wretched Darkness and any salivating serpentine sorceries within. The Book of All Things is out there too and we cannot leave such things to the vagaries of the illiterati. You must obtain it before there is a disaster. Yes. It would be a terrible thing if it fell into the wrong hands.”

  Fisher looked at him in surprise. “We’re splitting up?”

  “Needs must, Fishy. Think on. There are already at least three Guardians abroad with similar destinations in mind. You read the left hand side of that coffer. It was very specific that the Book is beyond the Tzarkona Gate, in the south, in the forbidden place. Imagine—” He stood back and sketched the scene out in thin air with his hands as though he could already see and hold the precious item. His face was alight. “The Book of All Things; the past, the present and the future all within its leaves. What a firenight storytime that could make, eh Fishy? And what insights, what clues to the location of so many more treasures of the ancients! There would be nothing we could not find!” He closed the imaginary book reverently and set it aside on the desk, giving it a pat. Then his tone turned business-like and sharp as though he were ready to debate against the finest scholars in open court. “Now, let’s see what I can take w
ith me. Hand down the inventory.”

  Fisher took up an actual old ledger from the shelf nearby and opened it by one of its many ribbons. “Grey, for the most powerful items.” He tapped his finger on the page where plenty of space was still left between the neatly ruled margins.

  Catt surveyed the page listing their premium items with satisfaction. “Capital. No end to the ambiguity of power, is there? Let’s start with the Endless Satchel.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  TRICKY WAITED IMPATIENTLY for Ralas at the end of the market’s busiest thoroughfare. “Come on, you can do better.”

  “Tell that to my feet,” Ralas said, puffing with effort and the pain of rushing his boots over the cobblestones. He glanced up to see her clocking two strolling guardsmen and took advantage of the time it took them to enjoy a moment of respite before he was bundled off past the wooden stands of fresh produce and bleeding, fly-swarmed meats—which were uncomfortably reminiscent of several parts of his anatomy—to an alcove of fortune tellers. A Grennishman like a scrawny spiderish dwarf, thick in the middle but long and spindly in the arm, looked up hopefully as they came in, then quickly clomped a bowl down over his divining snails and pretended to be busily occupied with something on his seat. Tricky gestured at the empty chair beside his stall.

  “Where is she?”

  The Grennishman looked with one set of eyes, then the other set on the side of his head. His single antenna bent itself in a leisurely arc and scratched his head. He shrugged, moving some runestones quietly about with his other limb. A hasty movement and some swearing made all three of them dart a look to the back of the painted tenting behind the chair and then in almost the same moment Tricky had hurdled the chair and punctured the canvas wall, dragging a dagger-blade through it and stepping through the new hole to grab someone on the other side.