“I need to make some things for tomorrow. I’m afraid I’ll need to be here all day and night.”
“What about my lessons?”
“We’ll pick back up tomorrow. I won’t count today against your room-and-board days.”
“Well…” Skate couldn’t complain about that; after all, she needed to get away from Belamy to report in to the Ink anyway. “Yeah, okay.”
“Good. Now, unless you’re ready to spend tedious hours helping me measure things in exact amounts, you should probably get above ground. The fumes won’t do you any favors.”
“Sure,” Skate said, smiling and crinkling her nose. “Gonna shut the bookcase, too.”
“Good idea.”
Skate walked up the stairs and shut the bookcase with a dull click. She picked up her plate and dropped it into the tub in the kitchen, where Rattle was busy banging away at the dirty pots and pans. Then she bounded upstairs two at a time, threw on her dress—which Belamy had cleaned a few days earlier—and ran back down. In the entryway, she pulled on her boots and draped herself in her coat (similarly cleaned). She peeked back into the kitchen and said, “Rattle, I’m going out. I don’t know if I’ll be here for lunch or not.”
The eyeball did not turn from its work but fluttered two of its legs at her, shooing her away. She obliged, and stepped out into the cold.
There was a fresh, thin coat of snow over the cobblestones. Winter was still here in full force and would remain for at least four weeks more. As Skate walked, small flurries began to flutter around from the overcast sky.
The Old Town safe house was north of Belamy’s house. It was north of Ossertine’s, too. She thought of the map of Caribol, and straight lines from each place to the others formed a somewhat lopsided narrow triangle. The warehouse was much less claustrophobic than the docks place, and the thought of not having to be stuffed up underground put an extra spring in her step as she strolled through the fluffy flakes of snow.
Skate’s steps slowed as she neared the storage building. There were two large, irritable-looking men posted on either side of the front door, both dressed in heavy black coats to ward off the cold and furry ushanka hats to protect their ears. They did not say anything to her when she went inside, but their eyes followed her with suspicion.
Two more guards stood by the clerk at the front desk. The owner was also behind the counter, examining a set of charts and documents, and occasionally looking from those charts to the small boxes that lined the wall. The guards here watched Skate, too, but made no move to stop her when she stepped toward the clerk.
“I need to speak to the owner.”
“What about, young miss?”
“My goods. I have three crates of Shivadian tree bulbs stored.”
The owner of the warehouse pointed to the door to his right, which led into the warehouse and to the Boss. Skate had no idea what Shivadian tree bulbs were, but the password was always easy to remember. On her way back, she caught the owner’s attention. She nodded toward the men in black and said, “Did you decide to hire some more security?”
The owner, a slightly balding man with a set of spectacles perched on the end of his nose, said nothing, but his mouth tightened. He shook his head and continued his work. She shrugged through the door.
As she wound her way through the maze of crates and boxes and shelves and barrels, Skate wondered what these grim-looking men were doing here if the warehouse man hadn’t been the one to hire them. Did Boss Marshall think he needed the extra security? She’d ask him, she decided. She came to the end of the maze and knocked on the thin wood door mounted between two shelves.
When she was told to come in, she did so. Once more she saw unfamiliar faces: two more stony, black-clad guards, and a pallid man dressed in exquisitely sewn clothes in the latest fashion of the aristocracy, including a dark green jacket embroidered with a golden filigree of curls and swoops along the arms and chest, and showcasing a fluffy pouf of cloth at the neck in layers, like a waterfall of white. The effect on the man’s color was to make it seem even more unhealthy; the off-white skin tone contrasted nightmarishly with the actual white of his blanched undershirt, making his skin look bone-like and dead. He was like a skeleton in a black-haired wig given flesh and dressed to impress. He was sitting in Boss Marshall’s chair and looking very, very bored.
Boss Marshall was seated across from this stranger, a drink in one hand and his pipe in the other. He winked at Skate as she came in. Haman was in here, too, off to the side with a stack of papers set on a barrel. He was examining a sheet at a time and making marks in his ledger book, carefully and expertly ignoring everyone else in the room, hearing and seeing nothing.
Boss Marshall spoke first, his gravelly voice setting Skate somewhat at ease. “Skate, let me introduce you to the Big Boss,” he said, raising his glass in a toast to the man behind the desk. He took a healthy sip from the glass, and Skate realized with a jolt of embarrassment that this was not the first drink he’d had today; his eyes were bleary and watery, and his voice had the slightest hint of a slur toward the end of the sentence, making “Boss” sound like “Bosh.” The ease his voice had begun to bring her disappeared. He came dangerously close to spilling some of the drink as it sloshed around after leaving his lips. “He’s honoring us with his presence this week as part of a…a tour, of sorts.”
The Big Boss turned his full attention to Skate. His eyes—dark, wide, and intelligent—roved her face, as if filing details about each individual feature onto a parchment page in his mind. He finally settled on her eyes, and fixed her gaze for so long without blinking that she became uncomfortable. “You are the burglar currently living with Barrison Belamy, the dead wizard in Old Town.” Though they should have had the cadence of a question, his words were a statement of fact. His voice was smooth and calm. He gave an air of being unshakable, as if every trouble in the world were something to be watched, catalogued, and sorted, but never felt or experienced. He was the type of man who would never ask a question, she realized. He knew everything already, and if he did not, he would not ask for missing information, because he knew it would be given to him.
“Yeah—yes, Big Boss.” She knew he wasn’t asking for confirmation of the facts but didn’t know how else to respond. There was something deeply unsettling about the way he stared without blinking, giving no clues as to what he wanted her to say or do in response to his words. Not getting any help there, she decided to talk some more, if only to break the increasingly uncomfortable silence. “I’m looking for the thing he put his soul into for safekeeping. I thought it may have been a couple things so far, but I don’t think they’re it anymore. He either doesn’t care about them enough, or they’re from after he already did the magic that changed him.”
Big Boss nodded. “In the time you have been studying your mark, you have made no monetary contributions to the Ink.” Another statement, another question removed of all its thrust.
“No, Big Boss.”
“Because taking what the lich has, his soul jar, will give you power over the thing. He will do anything to keep this safe, so the one who has the soul jar controls the lich.”
Yeah. Not a “questions” guy. “Yes, Big Boss. That’s the idea.”