Dead Man's Shadow, Chapter 9

The sun was just beginning to rise when Elena spotted Felix returning to Valeri’s Books. She was crouched near the corner of one of the front windows, watching the street outside for any sign of Inquisition pursuit. Valeri himself was elsewhere in the store, pouring through his vast collection of books and retrieving portions of them. His movements seemed utterly incomprehensible to Elena, but he assured her that he was doing nothing more than assembling the portions he had of the documents that Felix required. “It’s best not to leave the documents in a completed state when possible,” he explained. “If they are scattered, it is easier for prying eyes to miss them, and safer for some parts if others are discovered.” She had just nodded, offering to keep an eye out for danger while he worked, and so had spent the remainder of the night in that task.
The two of them had returned to the shop after exiting the storm drains. Elena’s hunch had been correct, and the downward path had allowed them to emerge near the riverfront of Barcino, not far from a metal ladder that someone had helpfully bolted in an inconspicuous place when viewed from the street. It seemed that they were not the first ones to use the storm drains as an escape tunnel. Valeri, who knew Barcino far better than Elena did, had led them on a long circular path around the city before cutting back to reach his shop. It had taken them some time to arrive, but they had seen no sign of anyone along the entire path back.
Felix moved past the front door of the shop and to the alley, just as he had done when he and Elena had met Joana in the shop the night before. Elena warned Valeri about Felix’s arrival, and a few moments later the back door to the shop opened and the priest entered. Elena rose from her concealed position and moved back to greet him. He flashed her a small smile that faltered a bit when his eyes reached her neck.
“That bad?” she asked, wincing as she brushed her fingers against her neck. By now, the ache in her throat was beginning to diminish, and her voice was slowly returning to normal now that she had spent some time without talking.
“Let’s just say the mark is… impressive.” The smile slipped off of his face entirely. “I am sorry that you got caught up in that sort of brutality.”
“Well, I’m just sorry that I got caught.” Elena turned away from him, letting the levity seep out of her voice. “It’s not something that I want to think about ever again.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Felix’s nod. Somehow, she knew that he would never bring it up again; that his nod was as good as a promise. Valeri emerged from behind another shelf with a sheaf of papers. “Felix!” he said, a smile blossoming across his face. “You have returned! I trust the rest of your evening was productive?”
“More than you would guess,” Felix replied, the smile returning to his lips.
“Wonderful! Unfortunately, I have bad news for you. I have far fewer of those documents here than I originally thought I did.” He hesitated, clutching the papers to his chest in an unconscious gesture. “I’m sorry that I cannot thank you as thoroughly as I deserve for saving my life.”
“You have already done more than enough,” Felix told him. “I am only sorry that I cannot help you much further. You have as many contacts as I do within the Invisible College, and you know that they can sometimes be slow to act. We will have to find a way to keep you hidden until I or they come up with a good way to get you away from the Inquisition’s reach.”
Valeri’s expression slipped. “I am not sure what to do about that,” he admitted. “I am not a fighter, nor any sort of survivalist. I am a book salesman. I doubt that I would be able to escape to Eisen or any of the other countries around here. Even when the College finds a way to get me out, I do not know how long I would be able to survive.” “I’m sure that we will come up with something.” Felix sounded almost like he was trying to convince himself as well as Valeri.
Elena frowned to herself. She wished that she could do something further for Valeri. Even breaking him free of the Inquisition seemed like it wasn’t enough to repay him for saving her. And if he was just recaptured or died in the wilderness somewhere, then she would never be able to live with herself. He would never know just how much he had done for her in saving her from hanging.
That thought made her think of her father, and a new idea began to take hold inside her head.
“I think I might have a way to help you,” Elena said. She spoke slowly, giving the thought time to fully manifest itself as she went. The more she spoke, the clearer the idea became. “I’ve got a ship heading back to Avalon in about a week. I was going to use it as my way home if the archaeological dig I’ve been on didn’t pan out. The ship is one of the Hunt fleet, so I guess I technically own it.” She smiled apologetically. “I haven’t thought of my father’s business beyond just the money and travel convenience it provides for a while. It would be easy to get you onto it as a ‘crewmember,’ and you could ride along all the way back home. I could probably do the same for Joana. Once you’re there, I’m sure that I could get you working in a shop that sells some of the goods that we trade across the world. It wouldn’t be selling just books, but…” She shrugged. “Better than bivouacking through a haunted wasteland.”
Valeri stared at her with his mouth hanging open. Felix stared at her as well, though his shock was communicated exclusively through his eyes. “You are being serious?” Valeri gaped. “You are not playing a joke on me?”
Elena shook her head. “No. I’m not. I owe you for saving me. It’s really the least that I can do.”
Tears filled Valeri’s eyes. “You… you would…” He gave up on whatever he had been trying to day, too overcome by emotion to finish. He dropped the papers he was holding and raced over the few steps that separated him from Elena. He seized her hand and began to shake it vigorously. “Thank…” his voice choked off. He stopped shaking her hand and began to kiss it instead. “No, there are no words to express my gratitude,” he managed to say between kisses.
“You’re… uh… you’re welcome.” Elena bit her lip at the gesture. She wasn’t entirely sure how to react to Valeri’s gesture. She awkwardly extracted her hand from the crying man’s grip. She habitually cleared her throat, which she immediately regretted. Her own eyes began to water, and she realized to her surprise that it was only partially due to the pain.
Seeing that she needed a moment, Felix took Valeri by the shoulders. “Dionís,” he began, “may I see the documents that you have now?”
“I… of course. Of course.” Valeri turned away and bent to scoop up the papers from where they had fallen. It took him a few moments to gather them up, and by the time he had finished, Elena had managed to compose herself again. Valeri passed the pages to Felix. “Again, there are fewer of them than I thought, but…”
Felix waved off the comment as he took the stack. “Having even one is more than I was expecting to have by this time.”
“Still, I will arrange to have the others sent to you before I leave.”
A distracted nod was Felix’s only reply. He had already started leafing through the papers, and a frown came to his face. The frown deepened as he made it deeper into the stack.
“Something bad?” Elena asked. “Not precisely.” Felix reached the bottom of the stack and returned to the top sheet. “These don’t seem like anything that the ATC would be interested in. I cannot fathom why they would want these.”
“May I see them?”
Felix glanced over at Valeri. “She isn’t a member of the College. Is this something that we could show?”
Valeri shook his head. “As if I had any right to refuse her now. I trust her. Do you?”
Felix turned to face Elena. He met her eyes for a moment, and she read the hesitation there. Perhaps two seconds passed before he nodded slowly. He said nothing, instead just offering the document stack to her. She took the papers, wondering somewhere if she should be offended or not. She shook off her uncertainty as she turned her attention to the papers. Her eyes had only just reached the first few words on the page when a jolt ran through her body like a lightning strike. The first page was merely a pinned annotation to a larger document, but she recognized the handwriting.
M's latest expedition bore fruit, it read. These are reproductions of his notes on what appear to be writings referencing the Heart. I have annotated them with the translations as far as we have been able to determine. I believe M delivered the originals to the Society.
The note was signed, Richard Hunt. Her father’s familiar signature.
Elena quickly flipped through the next several sheets. On many of them, she saw more of her father’s handwriting, and in others she recognized his words, likely copied by another hand. Not all of these documents were apparently originals. It was as though her father had come back from the dead, speaking about his hobby, for each of the pages contained drawings of Syrneth writing and artifacts. Many of the drawings were annotated, as promised, with Old Théan text indicating translations. Deeper shock swept through Elena as she read these.
No one is supposed to be able to read Syrneth, she thought. How did my father find out how to? Not all of the pictures had translations, and more than a few of the annotations expressed an uncertainty into the translations that they provided. Was this what he was working on when he died? Quite a few of the pages referenced another person, only ever referred to as “M.” Who is M? Elena wondered.
“Something bad?” Felix asked, just enough of a smile in his voice audible to make it obvious that he was intentionally quoting her.
“It’s… these are written by my father,” Elena managed to say. She almost missed the surprised look that came to Felix’s face. “Do you know when these were originally written?”
Valeri shook his head. “I don’t. The best that I can tell you is that they started circulating among the members of the Invisible College a little over five years ago.”
Right before Dad died, Elena realized. Maybe he was working on these when he died. He never would tell me what his work was about. A lot of his papers are still at home, locked in the attic. She went momentarily dizzy as she realized that if her father had really cracked the secret of the Syrneth language, then she might have been sitting on top of the answers that scholars had been seeking for decades. What might I have missed because I was in too much pain to go through those journals? And why did he give these papers to the Invisible College instead of the Explorer’s Society?
All of a sudden, she realized that she knew far less about her father than she had ever suspected.