The Gilded Wolves (The Gilded Wolves #1)(37)

She did not wait to see his expression.





11





ENRIQUE


Enrique collapsed in his favorite blue armchair in the stargazing room. A thunderstorm rattled the windows, and the curtains covered in embroidered constellations shook like rags of night sky.

“Someone was waiting for us.”

“Revolution man,” said Zofia softly.

He looked up. Zofia was curled warily in the armchair across from him. As usual, she chewed on a matchstick.

“What did you say?”

“Revolution man,” she said, still not looking at him. “That’s what he talked about. About the start of a new age. Also, the sensor should have picked him up, but it didn’t.”

That had bothered Enrique too. It was almost as if the man had watched them from somewhere, materializing only after they had secured the area for signs of any recording devices or other people. But there was no way he could have gotten in. The entrance had been locked. The windows were all covered with murals. The exit had been closed and barred until the police officers had broken it open. All that was in that room were the Forging displays and the massive mirror wall.

Zofia opened her palms, and a golden chain spilled out. A pendant no larger than a franc dangled from it. She brought the chain to her face, turning over the pendant.

“Where did you get that?”

“He wore it on his neck.”

Enrique frowned. Behind Zofia, the hands of the grandfather clock tilted slowly to midnight. All around them, the stargazing room bore signs of their planning. Papers and blueprints covered every surface. Different sketches of the Horus Eye hung from the ceiling. Until now, this had felt like any other acquisition: planning, casing, squabbling over cake.

Until the man had raised a knife to him.

It struck him then. The cold knowledge that perhaps someone didn’t want them to find the Horus Eye and would do anything to make sure they didn’t find it. Enrique pulled the artifact from the breast pocket of his jacket. According to his research, it had been placed above the entrance of a Coptic church in North Africa. Enrique turned over the artifact in his hand. It was made of brass, its edges jagged. When he ran his thumb along the top, he could feel the depressions of grooves, but it was too caked with verdigris to see properly. The back of the square showed chisel marks from where it had been hewn off the base of a statue depicting the Virgin Mary. According to the locals, the square at the base of the statue emanated a strange glow when someone stepped into the church carrying evil in their hearts. He’d never heard of a stone Forged to do such a thing except verit. If this square held a piece—or pieces, though that seemed impossible—of verit, then perhaps it had detected a weapon on a man who had entered the church. Perhaps the man truly was bad, and when they’d noticed the glowing stone, they’d accosted him, found the weapon, and made their own connections. There was always an observation at the root of a superstition.

“It’s a honeybee,” said Zofia suddenly.

“What?”

She held up the chain pendant. “It’s in the shape of a honeybee.”

“A strange fashion choice,” said Enrique, distracted. “Or a symbol, perhaps? Maybe he sympathized with Napoleon? I’m fairly certain honeybees were thought to be a symbol of his rule.”

“Did Napoleon like mathematicians?”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“Honeybees make perfect hexagonal prisms. My father called them nature’s mathematicians.”

“Maybe?” said Enrique. “But seeing as how Napoleon died in 1821, I don’t think I’ll have the opportunity to ask him.”

Zofia blinked at him, and a pang of guilt struck Enrique. She couldn’t always process jokes the way the others did, and sometimes his attempts at wit came off severe rather than sophisticated. But Zofia didn’t notice. Shrugging, she placed the honeybee chain on the coffee table between them.

Enrique turned the artifact over in his hands. “Where did he come from, though? Was he waiting the whole time, or was there a door there?”

“No doors except the entrance and exit we noted.”

“I just don’t understand what he wanted. Why wait for us? Who was he?”

Zofia glanced at the honeybee necklace and made a noncommittal hrmm sound and then stuck out her hand. “Hand me that.”

“Have you never heard the saying ‘you attract more flies with honey than vinegar’?”

“Why would I want to attract flies?”

“Never mind.”

Enrique handed it to her. “Be careful,” he said.

“It’s nothing but brass with some corrosion,” she said disdainfully.

“Can you take off the corrosion?”

“Easily,” she said. She rattled the square. “I thought you said this could be solid verit inside? This looks like the superstitious charms sold in my village. What proof did you have? What was your research?”

“Superstition. Stories,” said Enrique, before adding just to annoy her: “A gut instinct.”

Zofia made a face. “Superstitions are useless. And a gut cannot have an instinct.”

She took a solution from her makeshift worktable and cleaned off the square. When she was finished, she slid it across the table. Now, he could make out a gridlike pattern and the shape of letters, but little else. In the stargazing room, the fires had been banked. No lanterns were allowed so as not to disrupt the view of the stars, and only a couple of candle tapers stood on the table.