The Museum stood over Market Row like a blocky sentinel cut in dark, grimy but classical lines. The smudging of dirt and soot along the once gleaming granite was testament to the building’s placement—at the imaginary boundary, the edge where Old Amanthus started and ended. That dirt and soot was evidence of the creeping rot attempting to spread from the old city outward. Steep steps led from the street to the wide front doors. Zan quickly climbed the steps with Caradon not far behind, a few inches from her elbow. Inside, the Museum lobby was cool, almost cold, and her footsteps clicked loudly over the polished stone floor.
Near the entrance was a wide open desk occupied by a young man, perhaps in his mid-twenties, with slicked back hair and a stiff suit. He looked up when the two visitors approached the desk and stood up, hand resting on the top of the desk.
“Ma’am, sir, are you here for a visit?”
Zan shook her head. “No. Not exactly. I’m here to see some machines that my uncle had bequeathed to the Museum after his death. It was not too long ago.”
The young man began tapping his fingers on the top of the desk, his eyes narrowing as he took in Zan and her black mourning dress and the flinty-eyed man beside her. “I do not have any access to the Museum’s pieces. Many of the Museum’s new acquisitions are stored in the archives for inspection and repair for a few months before they are put on display. May I ask which representative had contacted you for your uncle’s machines and who your uncle was?”
“Elliot Waterstone. And the Museum’s director, Gustav Kruntz had personally overseen the acquisition of my uncle’s machines.”
“Mr. Kruntz is not available today, but you may speak with Mr. Dardanus, the assistant director. He may be of help. Do you wish to meet with him?”
“If you please.”
The young man beckoned them to follow him up a small stairway hidden by a door that looked like an exit to the museum. On the upper floor, they passed a narrow stairway and the passed three doors before the young man knocked on one with a brass plaque emblazoned with the name, R. Dardanus. From within the office, they heard a voice saying “Come in.” The young man opened the door for them and then partially went into the office to introduce the visitors to the assistant director. Then after a reply, he nodded at Zan and Caradon before heading back downstairs to his post.
The inside of Dardanus’ office was sparse—bare wooden floors, plain unadorned bookshelves with yellowing documents and leather-bound books lining one wall. The copper bust of an ancient pagan god stood on the edge of an uncurtained window slowly turning green. The man sitting behind the work scarred desk had the build of an acrobat, slim and hairless, completely bald. Without that hair, his ears appeared abnormally large and his nose was red and hooked. Dark eyes glittered behind a pair of spectacles as Dardanus scrutinized the visitors.
Zan frowned at the lack of extra chairs and instead opted to stand in front of the desk, hands not quite clasped in front of her, but hands not on hips either.
“Miss Hu. Mr. Caradon. What a pleasure to meet you,” said Dardanus. His mouth stretched across his face, revealing short, yellowing teeth. “To what do I owe for this visit?”
“Mr. Dardanus, a few days ago, the Museum obtained some of my uncle’s, Elliot Waterstone’s, machines for its collection. If it wouldn’t be any trouble, I would like to take one last look at them.”
“Oh?”
“For sentimental reasons, of course,” Zan clarified. “My uncle passed away not too long ago and those machines are really the only things of significance that are left of him.”
“My condolences,” said Dardanus, his strange smile not moving an inch. “But I must say that I cannot help you here. It is true that I’m the assistant director, but even I am not privileged to certain sections in the Museum. Many of the new acquisitions are first stored in the archives. I’m afraid I do not have access to the archives. Only the museum director, Mr. Kruntz has the key. These are security measures, I should say. Some of the Museum’s acquisitions have great monetary value and we must protect ourselves from vandals and thieves.”
“Of course,” she replied. “I understand. Is Mr. Kruntz available, then?”
“I must apologize again. Mr. Kruntz is not here at the Museum today. He had an important appointment elsewhere. But if seeing your uncle’s machines soon is a priority, I can relay a message to him and I am sure that he will come to his earliest convenience back here to allow you access to the archives. In the mean time, you are free to peruse the Museum at your leisure. We open today until five.”
Her lips thinned, but she thanked the assistant director and exited the office with long tense strides. Caradon closed the office door behind them and followed her down the stairs. Downstairs, she nodded to the young man at the desk and walked into the first gallery of the Museum.
It was a moment before her mind began to somewhat settle and she began thinking and realizing what she was feeling—thwarted. She wanted to know what was inside Uncle Elliot’s last invention—what the materials that he used were. Usually answers came quickly when she asked a direct question. Other inventors and scientists, the Academy members, were blunt, direct people. Bureaucracy, she had believed, belonged to solicitors and lawyers and banks—people who were overly obsessed with money. The Museum, the bastion of learning as she had believed for most of her life, was not supposed to be like that. Or, she thought wryly, she had just arrived at an inopportune time. Surely Kruntz would be here the next time she came to the Museum.
Ancient statuary filled the first gallery. Many of the stone figures were that of pagan gods and mythological creatures, weather-worn, scratched, and occasionally missing limbs and heads. She remembered the first time that she had visited the gallery with her uncle. She had been a child and the statues had towered over her like giant monstrous phantoms. They had been frightening. But now, with older eyes, she saw them as sad old stones that had seen civilizations rise and fall during their long life out in the open. And they would still be around when the Museum fell.
At the end of the gallery was a short corridor winding in a right degree angle. Then it branched—off to a second gallery and to an adjacent room painted a deep blue. Automatically, she took stepped into the room. Sarcophagi lined the walls and in a complicated maze pattern on the floor. A single wooden bench stood in the center of the room.
Alone with the dead. And then she found her mouth twitching as she realized who was with her. Or almost.
“You were lying,” he said. Caradon stood slightly behind her, not touching, but his voice was close to her ear. She shivered, vaguely remembering her dream. “You didn’t really want to see your uncle’s machines because you were sentimental.”
“I was not lying. Do you think that I am so cold hearted?” she said as she examined the engravings on one of the sarcophagi instead of looking at him. “Of course I want to look at my uncle’s machines for sentimental reasons. My uncle left me many things, but the machines are the only things that are purely of his creation.”
“All right, so you were not lying. But you weren’t telling that assistant director everything either. Just as you are not telling me everything.”
“Would you stop bothering me if I told you everything?” she said.
“I would stop asking you that particular question.”
She turned her head to glare at him, but he was simply looking back at her, dark gray eyes solemn and serious. Zan let out a breath. “Mr. Caradon, I am of no concern of yours. What I seek isn’t of any significance to you.”
“I beg to differ, Miss Hu. Many things concern me.”
Seeing no one else in the room of sarcophagi and no other Museum visitors wandering out in the adjacent hallway, she sat down on one of the coffins lying on the floor. She leaned over and put her elbows on her knees before looking up at him, gaze veiled by eyelashes. “The answer would bore you.”
“I want to know despite the boredom.”
“Very well. I want to know what materials my uncle used to build his machines. Pure curiosity.”
He sat down beside her. “Curiosity, hm?”
“Have you just wondered about anything?” she replied. “Anything at all? Or is that not in your temperament? People like me wonder about things all the time. How things work. Why things do the things they do. What are things made of. How things came about as they do. So I should think it is natural for me to wonder what my uncle was using to build his machines. He discussed his work with me, of course, but since I had my own work, he never bothered me with the details.”
“Of course I wonder about things.” He was grinning and she felt her skin prickling. It was the combination of the shape of his mouth and his teeth, she thought. “I wonder about a lot of things. Granted, the questions I ask aren’t the same as yours. They’re more in the line of how profitable a particular stock is. How good will the weather be in the coming months for my ships to sail. How much the market will fluctuate in the coming year.”
“You have the mind of a businessman, not a scientist.”
“Ah, but I also wonder about how things work. How flowers bloom every year, how poems are written, how paintings are painted. Why the city is slowly deteriorating no matter how much the buildings and streets are repaired.”
“You have a bit of an artist in you? I wouldn’t have guessed.”
“Those sorts of questions usually come late at night when I am relaxing with various sleep aids,” he admitted. “They are merely the more mundane ones that cross my mind. Sometimes,” and then he leaned a fraction closer and she straightened her back as her hands closed into fists on her lap, “I wonder about you.”
“There is nothing interesting about me,” she said, more harshly than she had initially intended.
“Oh, you’re infinitely fascinating. What aren’t you telling me, Miss Hu? What are you trying to hide? What lurks behind those golden eyes of yours? What lurks underneath that placid façade? A strange energy? A touch of the unusual? No ordinary woman would go into the sea to let her uncle go…”
“Mr. Caradon!” She suddenly stood up. “What I did at my uncle’s funeral is none of your business.”
He looked up at her. In the angle of the light, his eyes turned black. “It may not be any of my business but I’m free to wonder, can’t I? Just as you’re free to wonder about how the world works.”
“Some kinds of wondering border on the nosy.”
“So I am nosy.” He stood up as well and followed her out of the sarcophagi room and into the second gallery filled with more modern sculpture. This gallery, as well, was empty of visitors. Their steps echoed in quick taps as Zan quickly traversed the room, not pausing to look at the artwork. “What I do know is that you are suddenly interested in the workings of your uncle’s machines when you haven’t bothered to ask your uncle when he was still here. You’re up to something—perhaps resurrecting your uncle’s experiments—yet you tell me that the only work you intend to pursue is that of your chemical studies.”
They entered a long hall peppered on one side with small pastoral paintings by unknown renaissance artists. The other side of the hall were long and tall windows; afternoon light streamed through them, illuminating dust motes drifting down from the ceiling like fairy dust. Zan stopped in front of a painting—one of a vast green hill with a dark city appearing on the horizon. It reminded her of standing just outside of Amanthus in the countryside and looking over at the city as if one was a bird, looking from far away.
“So what if I want to resurrect my uncle’s experiments,” she said. “I can do that if I want. I don’t have to tell you about it. The only things I’m responsible is for the reports that I’m sending you. If my results are good, you will know about it.”
“If you choose to tell me in the first place,” he said. He reached out and took hold of her right elbow when she made to move again. “Miss Hu, you can tell me. I’m no gossip. I’m not funding any of your rivals.”
She was silent for a moment, face averted. Then she pulled her arm out of his grasp. “There’s only one more gallery in this section of the Museum before there’s another exit from this place. I was planning to find that amulet shop in Old Amanthus that Mr. Tarlton had mentioned.”
“Old Amanthus! No proper young lady would ever venture into such a neighborhood!”
“If you offer to give me a ride in your carriage to the place in question, you’re welcome to accompany me.” Then she turned her head and gave him a stingy smile. “That is, if you are comfortable venturing into such a neighborhood.”
“You dare to take advantage of me?”
She gave him a sharp laugh which was amplified eerily in the large gallery. “And will you let me?” Before waiting for his answer, she started her trek down the gallery again.
In response, he stormed after her, muttering something about ladies and entitled carriage rides.
