Dead Man's Shadow, Chapter 11

A little under a month after leaving Barcino, Elena rode up the wide path that led to her home, her speed enough to make the wind lift at her hair that she had – as usual – tied into a practical tail. As she passed through the gate, Hunt Manor loomed up before her, a stately two-story mansion befitting a family that had gotten wealthy through trading across most of western Théah. She had gotten back to Avalon that same day. She had stayed at the dock long enough to ensure that Valeri and Joana would be taken care of while Marcus got things organized to allow them to get their own shop near the docks. Someone had apparently anticipated their arrival, and whoever it was had sent a carriage to take her back to her home. Elena hadn’t wanted to wait the amount of time that it would take the carriage to return to the Manor, so she had unhitched one of the horses and ridden it back directly instead. She had left the surprised driver behind and had made good time by cutting across fields and other tracks she knew from growing up in the countryside. She was glad that had not yet started raining yet, though the grey sky hinted that it probably would soon.
Now that she had reached her destination, she turned to the side, riding up to the stable. She left her horse in the care of one of the stable hands and made her way up to the front door of the manor itself. She entered without knocking and found Winston Gladstone, the family’s butler, waiting for her just inside the entrance hall.
“Good afternoon, Miss Hunt,” Winston said as she closed the door. “I see that you opted not to use the carriage that I sent for you. I trust that you did not frighten off the new driver.”
“If he’s not used to his master occasionally running off with one of the horses from his carriages, then he needs to get out more.” Elena rolled her shoulders as she walked into the house.
“I believe that’s why he took the driver job in the first place, ma’am.”
“Well, then, I guess I just need to keep him on his toes.” She grinned at Winston, then wrapped him in a hug. “I’ve missed you, Winston.”
The aging butler patted her on the back before extricating himself from her grip. “I am glad to see you return,” he told her. “For how long can I tell your callers that you are back for this time?”
“Callers?”
“Gentlemen callers, I’m afraid.” Anticipating her next question, he continued, “Lord Weatherby is most eager to make your acquaintance.”
“What, Alan?” Elena scrunched up her face in disgust. “What an insufferable bore. If he’s the one coming to call on me, then tell him that I’m never coming back.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Winston’s lip. “I shall take that into consideration.”
“Excellent. And feel free to quote me on that.” Elena glanced up towards the upper floor. “Listen, Winston, I have an odd question for you.”
“More odd than usual, ma’am?”
For once, Elena did not take the opportunity to return Winston’s sarcasm. “Odd for me, anyway. What is the state of my father’s rooms?”
Winston’s steel-blue eyes shone in surprise. “They are still in order, Miss Hunt. No one has used them long-term in years. The only things left in his office are copies of documents relating to the operation of the merchant fleets, though I do not know how up-to-date those are. Most of them were taken by Mr. Dantes after your father passed away.”
Elena nodded, not surprised to hear that her father’s business partner had most of the business documents. “And what about the rest of his papers? The ones that don’t directly relate to the fleets?”
“I believe that they are still in the attic,” Winston said. “To my knowledge, they have not been touched since you ordered them stored away.”
“Thank you, Winston.” Elena began moving towards the stairs leading to the second floor.
“Shall I have someone get them for you?” the butler called after her.
“Not at the moment,” she replied. “I’m not sure if I’m going to find what I’m looking for in there just yet.” She left a bemused Winston behind as she climbed up to the second floor. From there, she moved through the familiar hallways to the ladder that led up into the house’s attic. Though she knew the route by heart, she realized that over the past five years that the house had begun to feel less like a home to her than the tent that she took along with her on her expeditions to Syrneth sites all across Théah. She wasn’t sure whether she should feel saddened by the realization or not.
After taking a quick moment to retrieve the key to the trunk from her father’s desk, she headed to the room that provided access to the attic. She climbed up into the dark space and hesitated. For a moment, she considered going back down to get a candle, but then reached into her satchel and pulled out the Syrneth crystal. As its soft white light brightened the small space, she felt a surge of satisfaction. This felt more appropriate than simply using a candle.
It only took a moment of searching to find her father’s trunk. It was the largest object in the attic by far, and it was still locked. Nothing about it seemed to have changed from the last time that Elena had seen it. She brushed the thick dust off of the top and hesitated. For the first time, she felt a trickle of foreboding. Somehow, this felt more invasive than opening an old tomb or a set of Syrneth ruins. Inside these papers was something of her father’s soul, one of the few things that he had left behind after his death five years ago. She had been too grief-stricken to look at the papers then, and had never felt the strength to go and look through them. The memory of those dark days, the days in which Elena had become an orphan, almost made her get up and leave the trunk behind once more. In that moment, Elena thought back to the notes in her father’s handwriting and felt her determination harden. She had to know more about this shadow that her father had cast. She pulled the key to the trunk out of a pocket and unlocked it. With a single motion, she flung back the lid and peered inside.
All of the papers were still in place, just as they should be. She reached in and picked up one of the tomes, holding it reverently in the hand that was not holding up the Syrneth crystal. After a moment, she carefully set the crystal on the trunk lid, where it would give light at an angle that would allow her to read. She opened the book, feeling the pages crack from years of disuse. Inside was her father’s writing, which felt at once as familiar as her own childhood and as foreign as a Vesten raider. She studied the pages, almost holding her breath in anticipation.
Time lost meaning as she knelt and sat in the attic, reading through the papers and journals in the trunk. Many of the loose pages were drawings of Syrneth writing with various attempts at translation scribbled around them. The journals detailed Richard’s struggle to understand the language. He made frequent reference to the same M mentioned in the Invisible College pages, but, frustratingly, never referred to the man by name even in his private writings. From what Elena could gather, it seemed that this M would find the ruins and bring his drawings of the ruins and text back to her father. At first, she thought that her father had been the primary translator, but the presence of annotations in another hand on some of the pages seemed to indicate that it was more of a joint effort between the two men. As time went on, the light coming from the Syrneth crystal began to dim, but Elena hardly noticed. The more she read, the more she began to realize that there was a hidden purpose to the translations and the drawings. It was not just a simple attempt to understand the Syrneth language that her father had been engaged in. Over and over again, she saw references to the same word. In many cases, the word was merely circled, but some of the pages had the translation scrawled next to it: Heart. She searched for more, but it was not until she had reached almost the very end of the journals that she found what she was looking for. In a stack of pages bound together with a string rather than bound into a book, she found an image of a massive Syrneth tower with a sentence written below it in the shaky form of her father’s handwriting that he used when he became excited.
The Heart of Souls beats within the World’s Chest.
“Excuse me, Miss Hunt?” Winston’s sudden voice made Elena jump so badly that she nearly dropped the pages she was holding. She turned to see Winston’s head sticking up through the trapdoor to the attic. He was apparently standing on the ladder.
“Winston! Don’t do that to me!”
“My apologies, Miss Hunt. There is someone here to see you.”
Elena’s heart began to slow back down. “Oh, Theus, not already. Didn’t I say to tell Alan that I wasn’t actually back?”
“It is not Lord Weatherby, ma’am. I’m afraid that it is Mr. Thomas Lowe of the Atabean Trading Company.”
“What?” Suspicion immediately flooded Elena. Lowe had never once so much as sent her a letter in the five years since her father had died. His sudden arrival now that she had been reading her father’s journals, and so soon after encountering him looking for her father’s papers in Barcino, seemed to be far more than a coincidence. “Did he say what he was here for?”
“Only that he wished to speak to you if you had returned from your latest escapade.”
“Was that his choice of word, or yours?”
“Mine, ma’am. Was it incorrect of me to choose it?”
“No, but it was more accurate than you probably realized.” She glanced around the attic at all of the papers that she had spread over the floor. “Tell him I will see him in a few moments. I want to get these cleaned up first.”
“Of course.” Winston’s head vanished back down the ladder. When he was gone, Elena gathered up the papers and returned them to the trunk, all save one. The page with the picture of the tower and the full sentence on it she folded in half and tucked into a pocket of her coat. Only once she had locked the trunk did Elena descend the ladder from the attic. She also made sure to close the attic itself before moving down to meet Lowe.
Back on the first floor, Elena spotted Winston standing beside the door to one of the sitting rooms off of the main hall. He nodded to her and subtly gestured to the door. She thanked him and stepped through. Lowe was sitting on a couch, glancing around the room’s décor, but he stood when she walked in. A smile broke across his face, and he stuck out his hand towards her. “Ah, Lady Hunt! So pleased that I was able to catch you at home!”
Inwardly, Elena winced at the use of what was technically her title. She had never felt right using it. “Please, Mr. Lowe, call me Elena.” She reached for his hand, and his expression cracked just a bit. She glanced down at her hand and saw that the sleeve of her digger’s coat was covered in dust. Belatedly, she realized that she had not taken any time to clean herself off before meeting with the ATC representative. A quick glance over herself made it obvious that she was actually quite dirty. “Oh, my apologies, Mr. Lowe.” She moved away from him before taking his hand and dusted herself off. She glanced into a mirror on one wall and picked a few cobwebs out of her hair before turning back to her guest. “I’ve only been back home for…” she trailed off as she realized that she had no idea how long she had been in the attic. She glanced over at Winston, who had followed her into the room and was waiting respectfully at the door.
“Three hours, ma’am,” he supplied.
“Really? That long? Wow.” She shrugged and gave Lowe a sheepish grin. “I got caught up in a book I was reading. I have a weakness for a good story, you see.”
Lowe’s overly sweet smile returned. “Don’t we all? Think nothing of it. To the contrary, you actually match your reputation more in this way!” He finally took her hand and shook it.
“My reputation? I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or not, Mr. Lowe.” She invited him to sit, and she did so herself in one of the room’s comfortable chairs.
“I beg your pardon if it seemed it wasn’t meant to be one. I only meant that I would not expect the woman who wrested Syrneth artifacts from the very depths of the Walder to arrive wearing an immaculate dress with her hair perfectly done. It would be disappointing were it to be the case, in fact. I respect anyone who is willing to get dirty for a cause they believe in!”
Elena smiled, his enthusiasm creeping into her despite her best intentions. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit? And may I offer you some tea?” The old habits of etiquette were not as lost to her as her appearance might have indicated, and she slipped back into them easily.
“That would be lovely.” He waited for Elena to send Winston for the tea before continuing. “I hope that I do not dredge up any unpleasant memories by what I must request from you.”
“Please, Mr. Lowe, you do yourself a disservice. I never had anything against you.”
Lowe’s expression slipped for an instant. “That’s not what I…” he cleared his throat as he recovered. “Perhaps I should just explain. The Atabean Trading Company is preparing to set up a new trading waypoint – I can’t say where because of company policy, of course.”
“Of course,” Elena interrupted, a sly smile coming to her face.
“I’m sure you understand. Anyway, on the island that we have chosen for our waypoint is a remarkable set of Syrneth ruins. Naturally, we want to know more about the ruins before we decide whether to establish the waypoint there. You of all people know how dangerous some Syrneth ruins can be.” Winston returned with the tea, and Lowe paused while it was served. Once he had a cup in his hand, he sipped once before continuing. “We believe that your father may have information about that particular set of ruins in his research papers. Papers he was working on before his tragic passing.” He allowed an apologetic expression to replace his neutral smile. “I apologize if thinking of those papers brings up unpleasant memories.”
Elena waved a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, Mr. Lowe. My father’s death is in the past. I have had years to come to terms with it.” She stirred her tea for a moment as though thinking. In reality, she was simply making sure that her suspicion stayed in check. “I’m afraid that you’ve been misinformed, though.”
“In what way?”
Now Elena allowed her apologetic smile to return. “My father practically never went on any expeditions to Syrneth sites. He would pay members of the Explorer’s Society to perform the excavations for him.” It was the truth, though he had apparently been slowly changing that before his death. “It was my mother who was the adventurous one,” Elena went on. “If you are looking for information about the ruins, then it might be better if you tried some of the men and women he contracted for that particular job. I would be happy to get you their names from his journals.”
Lowe let out that breathy laugh of his that set Elena’s teeth on edge. “I’m afraid that you misunderstand me. I must not have been clear. I don’t need Lord Hunt’s journals, but rather his research papers. Those ruins are directly related to his research.”
Elena let her eyebrows raise in feigned surprise. “Is that so? He never told me what he was researching. I know that Syrneth ruins and artifacts were his hobby, but I never had any reason to believe that he knew anything special about them. I feel as though I have learned more about the Syrne since I started exploring the ruins myself after his death.” Especially in the last three hours, she added to herself.
“I have it from a source who worked with your father, and he is quite reliable,” Lowe assured her. “Richard Hunt knew something about those ruins.”
It had to be a lie. Elena doubted that anything of what Lowe had told her was true. At best, he had been talking to someone close to her father, perhaps this mysterious “M.” His information had to come from somewhere. Briefly, Elena wondered if Felix had decided to give the papers to him, and that he was basing his request off of that. To cover up her line of thinking, she shrugged helplessly at him.
“I’m afraid that I don’t know where those research papers are. Many of my father’s papers were packed away when he died, and most of them haven’t been looked for in five years. I will look for them, and when I find them, I would be happy to send you copies.” Her promise was as much of a lie as her claim to not know where the papers were.
Lowe, however, nodded in acceptance. “I suppose that it was too much of me to hope that you would let me take them with me while I was here. I will look forward to those copies. But please, Elena, do not take too long. Time and tide wait for no one, after all.” He finished his tea with a single gulp and stood once more.
Elena stood as well, taking the hand that he offered to her. As she shook his hand, she decided to try and call his bluff. She wanted to know what was so important about this “Heart of Souls” that her father had apparently been looking for.
“Mr. Lowe, perhaps if time is such an important factor, I could help you in another way. I would be willing to work with the Company to explore the ruins for you, rather than try and use whatever my father may have known five years ago.”
Lowe’s expression cracked. “I, ah, would need to speak to my superiors about that.” He tried and failed to keep his voice sounding confident. “I’m afraid that I’m not authorized to hire anyone for such a task…” His excuse fell incredibly flat. He moved to release Elena’s hand, but she would not let it go. She fixed him with a piercing stare.
“Mr. Lowe,” Elena said, allowing her voice to grow cold and hard. “I am no longer the naïve little girl that I was the last time you saw me. I’ve done a lot of growing up in five years. Be level with me. There are no ruins, are there?”
To his credit, Lowe did not cringe under her intense gaze. He looked back at her in silence for two seconds, his eyes flitting back and forth as he sized her up. At last, his lips tightened, and he nodded once. “No, you are correct.” All traces of false politeness had vanished from his voice, replaced with what sounded like a grudging respect. “I was wrong to treat you like the teenager that you were the last time that I was here. There are no ruins. The Company is actually after an artifact that your father knew about.”
Elena released his hand and allowed him to step back from her. “The Heart of Souls,” she guessed.
Lowe nodded. “The very same. I see you know of it. We need the papers that he mentioned the Heart in. We, as a Company, are prepared to compensate you generously for those papers, including providing a cut of profits directly related to the use of the artifact. Name your price, Miss Hunt, and we will meet it.” He smiled faintly. “As to your offer to work for us, well, we will need someone to retrieve the Heart for us. There is no reason whatsoever that it cannot be you.”
Something dark seemed to settle through Elena’s soul. “Mr. Lowe, my father searched for this thing for years without telling me. He probably killed himself over it. I think it might not exist.”
A very tiny flicker of something went through Lowe’s eyes at her words. He peered at her with a completely unreadable expression for a moment before speaking again. “I can assure you, Miss Hunt, the Heart does exist. And the Atabean Trading Company will be the ones to find it.” The passion in his voice was strong enough that Elena was tempted to believe him.
And then she slammed a lid on those feelings. Hatred at Lowe for what he was doing to Felix simmered just underneath her surface. Adding to that hatred was the thought of what he would do to her father’s legacy. She may not have known exactly what the Heart of Souls was or why the ATC wanted it, but she knew in that instant that she would never allow them to have it.
“I will not give you those papers,” she told him. “No matter how much money, or fame, or anything else that you promise. If this ‘Heart’ had anything to do with my father’s death, then I would rather that it remains unfound. Those papers will remain in my possession. I’m afraid that you have wasted your time here.”
“I see.” Lowe’s eyes narrowed. “That is… unfortunate.”
“Indeed.” Elena gestured towards the door. “You may leave now.”
Before Lowe had a chance to say anything else, Winston appeared over his shoulder. “I will show you the door, sir.” Lowe’s lips moved silently, but then he nodded. Winston led him out of the room in silence, and Elena stood where she was, thinking. She was already planning on her next move, for while she had told Lowe that she would rather have the Heart of Souls go unfound, the truth was that she wanted to find it before they did.
After a few more moments, Winston returned to the sitting room. “Are you sure that angering Mr. Lowe was wise, ma’am?”
“Probably not,” Elena admitted. “Still, I had to make sure he knew that I am not one to be walked on.”
Winston nodded once. “And will you be going after this ‘Heart,’ then?” The question was more of a formality. He knew what the answer would be.
“Yes.”
“Very well then, Miss Hunt. I shall begin the preparations here. If I may ask, where do you intend to start?”
Elena reached into her pocket and unfolded the paper that she had taken from her father’s trunk. She pointed at the drawing of the tower. “Do you recognize this, Winston?”
“Should I, Miss Hunt?”
“Not necessarily. That’s a picture of the tower at the center of Freiburg. And that’s where I’m going to start. The Heart of Souls beats within the World’s Chest.” She folded the paper once again and tapped it against her palm. “Send Marcus a message. Tell him I’m going to need his help again. I’m going back to Eisen.”

End of Book 2