Chapter 7
He paused at the threshold. His long fingers hooked into the carved oak doorframe, his knuckles turning the color of bone as he anchored his weight to the jamb. He didn't turn around to look at me; his head hung low between his broad shoulders, his dark curls damp with sweat.
“The lower vaults,” he said, his voice dropping into a harsh, strained rasp. “There is an iron-banded naval coffer from the Portsmouth admiralty. Three dozen coastal rolls. I’m bringing them up.”
“Those vaults are unlit, Vance,” I said, the remaining anger in my chest curdling into a sharp, cold knot of dread. “The stairs are worn down to concave stone. You shouldn't be hauling fifty-pound chests up spiral steps alone. Wait. I'll come down and help you carry it.”
“I don't need your help,” he spat, though his shoulder leaned heavily against the wood, as if standing upright was an exhausting feat of willpower. “I am entirely capable of managing my own property.”
He hesitated, his fingers flexing against the timber.
“Just stay at the bench,” he added, his voice suddenly dropping so low it was almost swallowed by the hiss of the braziers. “Keep the fire stoked. And for God’s sake, Julian...”
I watched his rigid silhouette. “What?”
“Make noise,” he whispered. The admission slipped out before he could catch it, small, hollow, and bleeding at the edges. Then, snapping his head up, he forced the arrogance back into his throat, projecting it toward the ceiling. “Sing, recite Latin, whistle—I don't care. Just make noise while you work. I can't stand the silence of this tomb.”
He stepped out onto the gallery landing.
His boots struck the bare oak with that heavy, deliberate *clack*, fading down the dark corridor toward the spiral stairs until the hollow thudding was swallowed by the howling wind outside.
I stood alone in the warm, golden light of the solar.
The fire crackled in the hearth. On the table, the 1342 Mercator precursor lay open on the linen, its cinnabar coastlines and gold-leaf sea monsters glowing under the steady northern light.
I looked down at my hands. They were trembling.
I touched my throat, where the phantom imprint of his cold fingers still burned against my skin—that charged, breathtaking moment of surrender, followed immediately by the terrifying, frantic collapse of a man whose body seemed to be falling out from under him.
The stomping. The trailing fingers. The desperate demand for sound. The bruised bicep on the stairs.
A conqueror returning home to rub his fortune in my face. That was what he claimed to be.
Then why had his eyes looked so lost when the log snapped? And why did every step he took across an open room look like a man trying not to plummet into the sea?
I pulled my magnifying loupe from my pocket, my jaw setting into hard, unyielding resolve.
I was going to finish this condition report. And when Vance Montgomery came back up those stairs, he was going to give me the truth—whether his pride could survive it or not.
The gale struck the headland just after three o’clock, turning the Atlantic into an engine of gray froth and roaring gravel.
Inside the solar, the daylight died prematurely. The vast, arched casements shuddered against their lead cames as sheets of rain lashed the glass, transforming the cold northern light into a murky, underwater twilight. The draught found every fissure in the ancient stonework, making the velvet hangings billow like the sails of a foundering brig.
I didn't light the candles. High-grade tallow produced soot, and until I had finished flattening the second maritime survey, I refused to foul the dry air with carbon. Instead, I worked by the steady, focused beam of a heavy brass astral lamp set at the center of the refectory table, its circular wick drinking whale oil with a soft, hollow hiss.
Beneath the steady amber glow, the vellum yielded to my bone folder. Millimeter by millimeter, I coaxed the curled margins flat between sheets of dry blotting paper, weighting the edges with leather-wrapped lead ingots.
Yet my hands weren't entirely steady.
Every few minutes, my ears strained against the howling gale, listening for the dull thud of boots on the gallery floorboards. Vance had been gone for nearly forty minutes. The lower vaults were a damp labyrinth of salt-cellars and coal bunkers beneath the foundations; carrying a fifty-pound chest up two flights of unlit stone stairs was an exercise in pure obstinacy.
*Let him strain his back,* I told myself, pressing down on a cockled seam. *Let the great metropolitan salvage broker see what real labor costs.*
Then I heard it.
Not footsteps, but a dull, concussive *slam* from the end of the outer hall. It sounded like an iron-banded trunk striking oak. It was followed immediately by a sharp, violent curse.
I laid my bone folder down on the green felt and stepped away from the table. “Vance?”
The gallery answered with the hollow whistling of the wind.
I crossed the circular solar toward the arched entryway, my boots silent on the Persian rug. The corridor outside was swallowed in shadow; the single lantern hanging at the stairhead had blown out, leaving the gallery plunged in an impenetrable, soot-colored gloom.
“Vance, do you need a light?” I called out.
“Stay where you are,” came the reply.
His voice didn't carry from down the corridor; it was shockingly close, scraping out of the darkness barely ten paces away. It was ragged, strained to the point of cracking, yet steeped in that reflexive, venomous arrogance.
“I don't require an usher, Julian. Keep your hands on the parchment.”
Before I could answer, a dark silhouette detached itself from the gloom of the gallery.
Vance was carrying the chest. It was a massive naval coffer of bound black oak, heavy enough to buckle a lesser man’s knees. He carried it braced against his belly, his broad forearms locked beneath the iron hardware, his shirt plastered to his ribs with sweat despite the freezing draught.
He wasn't walking in the center of the hall. He was hugging the left wall so closely that the brass studs on the chest scraped against the plaster with a dry, grinding shriek.
“Vance, stop,” I said, stepping into the doorway. “You're going to clip the—”
He didn't stop. He didn't even adjust his vector.
Instead of swinging wide to clear the arched doorway into the solar, Vance drove forward with blind, unstoppable momentum. His left shoulder struck the solid oak doorjamb with a brutal, sickening impact.
The sheer force of the collision tore a low groan from his chest. The heavy wooden box slipped from his sweat-slicked fingers and crashed onto the floorboards with a thunderous *crack* that rattled the glass in the casements.
Vance bounced off the timber framing, his boots sliding against the polished parquet. His arms flailed out—not defensively, but with a wide, frantic sweep of his hands—until his fingers struck the heavy velvet curtain beside the door. He caught the fabric in a white-knuckled fist, his whole weight dragging the drapery taut as he fought to keep his boots beneath him.
He was trembling from head to foot, his chest heaving like a blown horse, his breath rattling in his throat.
