the last ring and took the call.
As usual, no hello.
“Cadence, Mel. Listen. Great news. I’ve received an offer for the manuscripts. Through another agent. Anonymous client. It’s a sale. A hundred grand for all the documents. As is, just the way they are. That’s a hell of a deal! Especially when you have nothing, really. They could take all this away with a court order.”
“Who said anything was for sale?” Her anger momentarily pushed back the tide of fear.
“Cadence, that’s my job. I’m not a potted plant here. What did you expect me to do?”
“I guess be like you are, like everyone else. Bois-Gilbert put a lot of money on the table just for spilling my guts on French TV. Even more for letting them have all the documents.”
“And?”
“I knew you’d say that. Just that way. It would help pay off my grandfather’s debts. But it would sell out what he left. I said no. I don’t trust them.”
“You’re right. Bois-Gilbert is an idiot. I was just playing there. Here’s a real deal. Maybe we should counter. Keep some rights, sure. But how am I gonna help you if—”
“Tell them no.”
“Look, if we don’t act now, there could be no residuals for anyone.”
“Jesus, Mel.”
“Come on kid. This—”
Click. Man, that felt good.
The phone rang again. She thought it would be Mel, but it wasn’t. She answered.
“Cadence? Bossier Thornton.”
“Oh yes, thank you! It’s been … very hectic … since I saw you.”
“You sound nervous. You all right?”
“Well, to be honest I’ve been worried that someone is following me, a stalker type. He’s gone now. I just thought I’d call you.”
“You did the right thing. Are you in danger now?”
“Oh no, I’m in a public place, corner of Sixth Avenue and Fifty-second Street.”
“OK, good. Just be careful and stay with the crowd in public places. Are you sure you’re safe?”
“Yes. I’m all right. Thank you for calling back.”
“I can be there if you want …”
“No, I’m all right for now.”
“Call me if he shows up again. It was nice meeting you the other day. Did you find out anything else about your documents?”
“More that I would have imagined. These seem to be very interesting to a lot of people. I appreciate your help. The library just told me to come on over. I hope I didn’t intrude.”
“Not at all. I’m only there once a week. Sort of a volunteer thing. NYPD lets me do it so I can practice with their gizmos.”
They said good-bye. She felt better, knowing there was a decent, slightly oddball, sane person to turn to. The Algonquin was only a few blocks away. She decided not to trouble Osley with her latest scare. He needed to concentrate.
Unfortunately, waiting for her when she checked on him in his room, was Osley the Wrecked. He looked like he’d slept, if at all, on a rack of nails.
“Osley, what gives?”
“I haven’t slept so well. Looking at, working with these documents, after so long. At first they seemed like old, interesting friends. But then I felt their spell. A siren song that is turning into a maddening screech in my head.”
She set out the food from Orkney’s and made him stop and eat.
After awhile he recovered to ragged good spirits. He resumed his work. His eye and hand once again became a relentless team as the pile of translations grew. Pieces of a time and a world emerged, some from the middle and some from the beginning, but none telling of Ara. He gave her a report. “Her fate seems lost. A fate of its own kind.” Then he resumed with dogged intensity until, without explanation he just stood up.
She looked up just in time to see him leaving. “Where are you going?”
“Out for a bit. Meet me at two this afternoon at our library table. I found her trail. The name is spelled differently, but the story fits. The pages are on the desk.”
“But …” The door closed.
Cadence thought about Osley’s mercurial tendencies. If he were a playing card, he’d be the One-Eyed Jack. She needed to see the other side of that face. Before she left, she would find the moment to corner him and flip that face card over.
She stacked a foursome of oreos and picked up the scrawled yellow sheets. As she munched and smiled, she felt as if she sat right next to Ara as they blended into the torch-lit Great Room of Prince Thorn’s castle:
“Hwat!” announced the crier, and the banquet began. Threescore gentlemen and ladies, amidst laden tables and bustling servants, spread down the axis of the vaulted room.
Ara, seated at a side table of minor guests — most appearing to be wanderers and emissaries from distant lands — tried to match the nobles with the wild tales and earnest warnings given to her by Lady Bregan. In those few hours since she entered the castle, the Lady had provided a short oral history of the realm. “A place where, by the patronage of my father the king, the arts of verse and tale have grown strong and bold. It is such great irony,” she sat at the main feasting table and looked past Ara, “that we huddle here next to the Great Blackness and yet are allowed to idle and make merry. So long as we muster no army, and pretend to neutrality, we are overlooked.”
“And where is your king?” Ara asked.
“Gone. Perhaps lost to us.” She paused. “We have neither tidings from him nor demand of ransom. In our world, that means ill. Even were he dead by someone’s hand, they would seek our treasury as bounty for the return of his bones.”
She shook her head and looked to her hands, as if they were little dead birds. “We warned and pleaded, but he said that the arts are vital, even as woe and fear spread through the lands. He was asked to come to the north. Our troupe would perform for a great stipend. We last heard that he was en route, entering a domain at the far end of the Northern Road. Then all has been silence. Each visitor we politely interrogate. Have you heard any news that may help?”
Ara knew a truth here, and decided to reveal it. “My lady, you have been most gracious, and I must tell you that there are no longer any domains north of the few villages that huddle where that road ends to a mere track. I have been there not two months ago, and I know those lands by my own reckoning. If the king journeyed there, he was misled for some ill purpose. But of his specific journey, I know not.”
“This confirms the worst. I fear I have no father and we have no king.”
Ara realized the sadness she had now given in return for kindness and hospitality.
“I am sorry, my lady. Perhaps he journeys here by paths unplanned, as many are forced in these days. But what of the Prince?”
“Prince Thorn,” said the lady, “though he is my brother and is dear to me, has fallen under the influence of a certain dissolute and disreputable knight. They drink and revel and squander the thin coin of safety by which we survive. We are on a precipice, and they jest and pimp the emissaries of the very hand that can destroy us.”
Ara, sensing that this hole was getting deeper and that the ear was the best instrument of policy, nodded with empathy. Lady Bregan then revealed more, “I must tell you, that there have been questions, raised at our borders, subtle inquiries, as to whether any of your size and appearance has ever entered our realm. Thus far, we have had the luxury of truth and could say ‘None.’ Now that you are here, I know not what our policy will be.”
Ara was totally alert now. “Were the questioners of fell mien? Wraiths on black horses?”
“I saw them not, but their inquiry was relayed to the prince as one more signal of our failing sovereignty. He no doubt will speak to you.”
“When?”
“Perhaps now, as the banquet begins. Do you hear the cry?”
Ara listened as a voice from somewhere on high, echoed through the castle.
