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“I appreciate that.” I flashed a smile, but she’d already turned toward the table. I hadn’t noticed before, but she had some parchment spread out. Closer examination revealed she actually had three-foot-wide sections of two ancient elven scrolls spread across the table.

I could almost hear Covey’s screams now. Covey was obsessed with the language of the lost elves and particularly fascinated by the scrolls. The fact that Qianru not only owned some, but obviously wasn’t too concerned about them being damaged out at a dig site, would have driven my best friend crazy.

If she wasn’t already. Thinking about her reminded me I hadn’t been to visit her this week. I tried to get out to her hidey hole at least once a week to see how she was doing. Mostly it was me checking on her supplies and talking to a silent room. But I had hope. Needless to say, I wasn’t going to mention this to her on my next visit.

With a deep breath, I pushed Covey out of my head and approached the table. “So, what do they say?” The only people I knew who could read elven were Covey and Alric. I sometimes understood a few words, but it hadn’t been consistent, and Covey had later argued that the words I’d briefly understood were older than the elves. I assumed Glorinal could read them as well—him being an actual elf and all. Still got a shiver when I thought about him but I wasn’t sure if it was him or his elven status. Probably both.

“Ah, they say many things. And my partner says they have many, many more things to say, but he is still working on them. But what we are concerned with now lies here.” She stabbed the parchment with a long fingernail. Unfortunately also lacquered to match her livery.

“This section speaks of an ancient weapon, one not unlike the glass gargoyle that was destroyed.”

I’d been feeling pretty good that morning, at least considering how I’d spent the night and the evil early hour of this meeting. But the sickness that rose in my stomach cancelled all of that. My life had almost been destroyed by that damn piece of glass, and unlike what Qianru and everyone else thought, that evil destructive bauble wasn’t destroyed, but had come back.

I couldn’t go through all of that again.

“Qianru, I—”

“I know, I know, I know. You were involved in that little mishap weren’t you?” The look in her eyes was far too predatory for my liking. “I suppose this would have come out sooner or later, but it was specifically your involvement with the glass gargoyle that brought me to hire you. But I assure you, this is for academia only. I am working with a group of scholars from my homeland, and we are putting together the definitive work on the lost elven civilization, and….” she paused and glanced around furtively, then dropped her voice. “The Ancients. We are certain this piece has something to do with how and why they vanished; perhaps a curse that affected the elves as well.”

I knew I needed to say something, but too many voices were screaming in my head. A nice sane voice was screaming at me to run away and find another patron. I could bounty hunt again, that wasn’t too awful, right? The other part of my brain, the damn side that was obsessed with the Ancients, screamed with glee that here I could find real answers. Visions of triumphantly going back to Qianru’s homeland with a nice stop to spend a year or two studying the Spheres filled my mind, pushing out all the pain and suffering the glass gargoyle had caused.

I whimpered.

Chapter Five

“What was that, dear? Yes, very exciting work here, I know.” She reached up and patted my cheek. “Joie, give her some lemonade and a sandwich. She looks a bit weak.”

I had sat down in a field chair that was more comfortable than my best chair at home, had a cool glass of fresh and perfect lemonade in one hand and had taken two bites of a sandwich before my brain decided to come back to visit.

More artifacts like the glass gargoyle.

More little seemingly harmless relics from the lost Ancient race that could change the entire world, with a side possibility of destroying everything. And my patroness was actively looking for them.

What I should do would be to put down the food, thank her politely, and run like hell.

But still…I looked at the fancy sandwich in my hands, the elaborate set-up and supplies for a simple dig. Just what would she do for something bigger? If we did find the newest world-mutilating gadget hiding out here, wouldn’t Qianru want to take it to her homeland? And bring along the wonderful digger who found it?

I took a savage bite of the delicate sandwich. I could live a life of luxury. Work on the secrets of the Spheres themselves. And it wouldn’t be like Qianru would use the thing, right?

I polished off the sandwich, downed the lemonade, and shoved the screaming voice in my head back into a dark corner.

“Count me in. Now, do we know what we’re looking for?” I must have swallowed too fast. My stomach was really unhappy.

“I knew you were the girl for us!” Qianru smiled and reached up to pat my cheek. “You will go down in history, my dear. We all will.” She stared off into space for a few moments, seeing things far grander than my own dreams, then shook her head. “No, we are not sure of what it is.” The look on my face stopped her but she waved her hand. “No, that’s not it, we do have an idea of what we’re looking for, a
gladenrian solidie
. As near as my partner can decipher that means an obsidian animal of everything.” She beamed and pointed at her livery on Joie’s chest. “I believe they may mean an obsidian chimera. Fitting don’t you think? And there may be more surprises, but I don’t want to give everything away at once.”

A chimera. What was with these elves and Ancients that they kept making mythological creatures into dangerous weapons? And surprises didn’t bode well in my book, at least not ones associated with potential weapons of mass destruction.

“A chimera—interesting. Is the reference in these scrolls?” If I could at least write the terms down I might be able to figure out what the surprises were.

Now that she felt we’d bonded, and she was secure in the fact I was okay with looking for more archaic weapons of potential world destruction, Qianru went back to her normal upper-class self.

“What? Oh yes, dear, but not in these. My partner has them. Now shouldn’t we get started? I just feel our luck is about to change.”

I gave a sigh then nodded. Hopefully these surprises would be of the good variety for once. Our dig site had already been cleared of almost all of the encroaching jungle. Unlike the newer digs, the passages of previous patrons and diggers had pulled the plant life out of here and the barrenness gleamed in the morning light with nothing to mask the lack of interesting objects.

Unrolling my gear, I waited to see if Qianru was going to give direction as to where she wanted to dig. However, considering she was settling herself in quite comfortably in a huge divan chair, I guessed the “we” in getting started didn’t include her.

***

Many hours, and at least three more sandwiches and lemonades later, I was ready to walk away from this deal.

It wasn’t the whole potential weapon of mass destruction issue, although that voice was still muttering in the far back of my mind. It was the fact that if I had to go through another nine hours of her kibitzing my dig, without actually helping, I was going to start screaming.

I originally wanted to dig where I had been searching previously. An area that, up until this morning, had been deemed as superior by Qianru. She had other plans, and kept moving my digging over a few feet in a variety of directions every half-hour or so.

Elven ruins were mostly all sunken, especially in this part of the jungle. A few taller ones still stuck out of the ground a story or two, but all of the areas with artifacts lay below ground. The huge trees had covered the old buildings until their weight, along with the soft soil, caused the ruins to be pushed far underground. Which meant that each time she had me move I hadn’t even had enough time to dig to a single elven layer, just a few layers of more recent refuse.

“I suppose we should stop now. The sun is almost down, and I, for one, am exhausted,” Qianru said.

It was a good thing my back was to her when she said that. She was exhausted? I’d spent the entire day hop-scotching around the dig area, not being allowed to actually get deep enough to find even a salt shaker, and
she
was exhausted. I took a deep breath and forced a smile as I turned around.

“I am tired as well.” I watched as Joie packed up all of her personal items with more speed than a karthian snake. At least someone still had energy. “I’m sorry we didn’t find anything, but we may not have gone deep enough.” I
knew
we hadn’t gone deep enough, but telling an academic they were stone-cold wrong was never a good idea. Especially if that academic was paying your salary.

“On the contrary, my dear.” She held up a grouping of small glass containers filled with dirt. “I found plenty of interest.”

I had noticed that Joie had followed behind me after each change in digging location, but I hadn’t paid enough attention to see what he was doing. Clearly he’d been gathering soil samples.

“Dirt?” I tried to think of anything unique about the collection of areas she’d moved me to. Nope, pretty much all were the same, and none of them were interesting.

“Oh, don’t worry your little head about it. It’s just something I’m working on.” Qianru patted me on the cheek. “You just keep on doing what you do, and leave the thinking to me.” She turned back to the houseboy. “Come along, Joie, we have other engagements. Same time tomorrow.” She strode off with Joie trailing behind with his arms full of supplies.

I was filthy and exhausted and all without the chance of finding something of interest. I was so busy in my own little pity party that I didn’t notice the forest was on fire until I almost walked into it.

Granted, the strip of trees that the city pretended was a park wasn’t a forest, nor was it all on fire. They’d planted magically fast-growing trees to cover some of the wreckage caused by Thaddeus and the glass gargoyle three months ago. And just the one tree right in the middle of the strip was on fire. But still, it was damn startling.

Once I’d stepped back and gotten over my surprise, I realized it was also damn weird. The fire engulfed the entire tree, but nothing else. Looking closer, a translucent yellow glimmer told me a spell was involved to contain the flames. Even flame-engulfed leaves that broke free of the flambé didn’t start another fire. Instead they drifted about a bit, then went out the moment they touched anything. A small crowd was watching the odd fire, but no one seemed to be interested in putting it out. And a quick scan of their faces told me that none of them were fire wizards who could have contained it through magic. Heavy magic like that was limited to a few big hitters, and all of them were very well-known.

Magic was obviously involved and it didn’t involve me. My new motto in life was not my faeries, not my problem. I was just turning away when I caught sight of three bright shapes hovering on the far side of the tree.

My faeries.

In war feathers.

I’d managed to forget about them zipping out of the house armed and carrying their war feathers. Willful and stubborn denial usually worked best when thinking about those three. Alas, there they were in person, reminding me they
were
my faeries and what they were up to
was
my problem.

The tribe of demon-possessed squirrels they had been battling three months ago had all been vanquished. But I wouldn’t put it past Garbage Blossom to go find some non-possessed squirrels to pick a fight with. She was the only natural fighter of the three and had been stomping around looking for something to fight about a week after the battle.

I really didn’t want to know what made a single tree burst into flame, especially if the girls were involved. But I forced myself to creep forward. I didn’t want anyone to notice me, and worse, notice who was flying around over their heads. Even though there were now hundreds of faeries living in and around Beccia, pretty much everyone in town knew who those three were.

The flames were going out. There wasn’t much of the tree left to burn at this point, and whatever spell was containing the fire was still doing its job. Since there was clearly no chance of something exciting going on, people were starting to drift away.

Within a few minutes it was just me hiding behind a thin hedge, my three faeries, and some drunk who was bonding with a nearby tree.

I leaned forward to try and see closer, but the scrawny branches of the hedge failed me and I tumbled out and landed on the turf of the clearing. The faeries looked up quickly and the drunk hissed at me and stumbled away. Something shifted in the crumbling tree husk and all three faeries ignored me and swooped in closer as the spell containing the flames vanished.

I thought about following the drunk—I knew that hiss. And why Harlan was hiding dressed as a drunk in the park was something I’d really like an answer to. But I could hunt him down later.

Which left the girls.

“Coming to get you—FIRE!” Leaf swooped near my head as I dusted myself off from the tumble. She also pointed to the now almost completely out fire in case I hadn’t seen it.

They were hell-on-wings on a good day and rarely listened to anything I said. But since the battle they sometimes pretended to care what I thought. After they’d already completed whatever recent horrible action was possibly going to land us all in jail.

“Okay, you here now, bye!” Leaf apparently was the spokesfaery on this adventure as Crusty just nodded and Garbage was using the supposed distraction to swoop closer for a final inspection of the pile of ash.

“We home late!” Satisfied with what she saw, or didn’t see, Garbage yelled over her shoulder as the three of them flew off before I could get a word out.

Damn it. We had a rule: if they weren’t home by the time I locked up the house, they had to stay out in the bird house I’d built on the front lawn—unless they told me they’d be late. Knowing those three, “late” could be any time before dawn. I really needed to find a solution for the faery fly-by door that would let them in, but keep the wild ones out.

I was turning away when the burnt tree rustled. Or something in it rustled. Most likely it was just the embers falling in on themselves. And not something I needed to worry about.

Except that my faeries had been seen at the scene of the crime and if there was something to worry about because of that very suspicious fire, it was going to come back to haunt me.

But, magical fire or not, I wasn’t going to paw through hot embers with my bare hands.

I wandered around the tree husk, then the trees next to it, looking for a sturdy stick. No luck until I got to the one that Harlan had been pretending to talk to. Interestingly, there were a number of sticks of various lengths scattered around the base of the tree and all looked fairly recently removed from their trees. Whatever he had been doing, he planned on poking through the remains just like I was about to do. Leave it to Harlan to be fussy about a stick.

I took the most helpful-looking stick and went back to dig at the fire’s remains.

Fortunately, there were no bones of any size that I found. Whatever the faeries had been up to it wasn’t squirrel-icide this time. I was just about to give up and go home, when the tip of my stick stuck on something buried deep in the ash. A few harsh tugs brought out a melted pile of metal and leather. Pulling it further from the ash brought some burnt but not destroyed chunks of wood.

The metal consisted of a pair of hinges and a lock almost as bright as day. Even I could feel the remains of the spell that had been placed on it for protection. A chest obviously, or rather, what remained of a chest. And judging by that magic lock, it was one of the good ones only sold to folks high on The Hill.

Another ten minutes of digging brought nothing. Whatever had been in that chest was gone. Whether it had been taken before or after the fire started was another issue.