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  SHADOWS OF IVORY

  The Godforged Chronicles:

  Book One

  T L Greylock

  Bryce O’Connor

  “Shadows of Ivory”

  Book One of The Godforged Chronicles series

  T L Greylock & Bryce O’Connor

  Copyright © 2020 Wraithmarked Creative, LLC

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual events, locals, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without expressed permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-0-9991920-2-3

  Cover Art by Billy Christian

  Cover Design by Vespertilio

  BOOKS BY TL GREYLOCK

  The Song of the Ash Tree

  The Blood-Tainted Winter

  The Hills of Home

  Already Comes Darkness

  BOOKS BY BRYCE O’CONNOR

  The Wings of War

  Child of the Daystar

  The Warring Son

  Winter’s King

  As Iron Falls

  The Shattered Reigns

  A Mark of Kings

  For Laura.

  She knows why.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Interlude 1

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Interlude 2

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Interlude 3

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Interlude 4

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Interlude 5

  Chapter Eleven

  Interlude 6

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Interlude 7

  Chapter Fourteen

  Interlude 8

  Chapter Fifteen

  PART TWO

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Interlude 9

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Interlude 10

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Interlude 11

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Interlude 12

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Interlude 13

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Interlude 14

  PART THREE

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Interlude 15

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Interlude 16

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Interlude 17

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Interlude 18

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Thank You All! Please Read!

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  “You know how women are when it comes to pretty things.”

  “Technically, I didn’t steal it.”

  It was not lost on Eska that these were unlikely to be the best choice of words when faced with a pair of inspectors, the hot-breathed hounds panting at their heels, and the half dozen grunts wielding various instruments of violence just outside the alley. Not to mention the Iron Baron himself, fixing her with a steely glare. No, not lost at all, considering she was, in fact, holding in plain view the very object she was accused of stealing, an object quite dear to the belligerent baron.

  “Nor was I going to keep it.”

  The inspectors glanced at each other, but it was the Baron’s gaze that got under her skin, those condescending eyes, those furiously-angled eyebrows, that large chin which was offensive simply for being attached to his face.

  “It’s not worth what you think it is, you know.”

  This was patently false, but Eska never had learned when to keep her mouth shut, despite the numerous attempts made by more than one governess, and she couldn’t resist a jab at the Baron’s notorious lack of sophistication when it came to his home decor.

  His face reddening, the Baron plucked the carved ivory and gold box from her hands and dropped it into the waiting arms of his valet, who stared at the ground as though it were the most fascinating thing under the sun.

  “You’re fortunate you carry the name of de Caraval, girl,” the Iron Baron growled, forcing the words out through clenched teeth in a manner that reminded Eska of bones mistakenly placed in a meat grinder. The image pleased her.

  “What would you do to me, Baron, if I didn’t wear ancinni silk and have priceless jewels on my fingers? Cut off my hand? Sell me to the highest bidder? I hear you do quite the trade in such things.” The rumor rushed off Eska’s tongue as cheerfully as a waterfall leaps off a cliff.

  The Baron went from red to white in a heartbeat, his cheeks fairly blooming with iciness. If the valet could have melted into the cobblestones, surely he would have. Instead, he picked absentmindedly—or perhaps with subconscious insight—at the ring of golden daggers embroidered on the upper arm of his velvet jacket.

  “It’s dark, girl, and no one knows where you are.” The Baron leaned close. Eska smelled the wine on his breath. Sweet and sour. And cheap. “I could make you disappear.”

  Eska fought the urge to step back, but felt certain her heart was a moment from breaking free from the prison of her ribcage. “You forget yourself, Baron,” she said, hoping she sounded unruffled.

  The small dagger—hardly more deadly than a letter opener—strapped to her ankle would be of no use here, though the bone handle seemed to burn against her skin. She nodded over the Baron’s shoulder at the inspectors. “These fine gentlemen know exactly where I am. In fact, I’m quite sure they’d be prepared to tell my father, the Vice-Chancelier, exactly how you laid hands on me, how you injured me, how you dragged me off to dispose of me.”

  The inspectors kept their faces still, well-schooled in such things, and Eska wondered how much the Baron had paid them. The hounds stared up at Eska with dark eyes, panting steadily, every muscle taut beneath their smooth coats, their teeth white in the moonlight. Then the taller of the inspectors broke the silence, his words bringing Eska more relief than she cared to admit.

  “I’m sure it’s all a misunderstanding, Baron.” The inspector smiled thinly at Eska. “You know how women are when it comes to pretty things.” He gestured to the ivory, glistening in the moonlight as it disappeared into the valet’s satchel. “You have your property back. I think it’s time we all go home.”

  The notion that Eska was like a crow when confronted with a shiny object irked her as much as the Baron’s chin, but for once she held her tongue. Madam Mantua might have died of shock to see it.

  The inspectors broke their shoulder to shoulder blockade, opening a path for her to leave the alley. Eska leaned over and patted the young valet on the shoulder. “The de Caraval household is always in search of good people,” she said. Without a glance at the Baron, Eska swept past the inspectors, trying not to shy away from the hounds who sniffed her with more interest than she’d like.

  “We don’t bite,” she called over her shoulder, “and I’m quite certain my father would never send you on such a ridiculous task in the middle of the night. And as you can see, I run my own midn
ight errands.”

  Despite the words of the inspector, the men outside the entrance to the alley did little to allow Eska easy passage. She managed to traverse the obstacle course comprised of their large booted feet, broad shoulders, and stout clubs without incident, but it wasn’t until she had put several wide avenues between her and the Baron that she felt capable of slowing her pace. She crossed the expanse of the Decadronum, the clacking of the heels on her boots horribly loud on the white stone as she followed the line of sentinel columns across the ten-sided plaza, and only then, sinking into the familiar shadows of the Lordican’s portico, did she allow herself to relax and breathe deeply.

  The eerie water chimes at the far end of the Decadronum sounded the second song of the morning as Eska took a moment to wait for her heartbeat to return to normal. As the song faded, sending a shiver down her spine, she pressed the concealed release that unlocked one of the library’s tall wooden doors and slipped into the dim interior. Cursing her shoes once more, she crossed the marble entryway, the unfortunate clackety clack ringing after her, and entered one of the grand reading rooms, the empty desks lined up like a flock of sleeping swans. Eska threaded her way to the rear of the reading room and pressed another hidden lever, this one disguised as the big toe on a statue of a man clothed in nothing but a sweeping cape and gesturing dramatically—with equally dramatic muscles—toward an unseen horizon.

  Nothing happened.

  The bronze studded door in front of her, which ought to have opened to reveal a passageway restricted to staff at the Lordican—and therefore the sort of door Eska should not know how to open—remained steadfastly shut.

  “Really?” Eska cast a withering gaze up at the blank eyes of the statue. “Now is hardly the time, Lyndronicus.”

  The statue made no reply and Eska bent over to fiddle with the long-dead conqueror’s toe. It was known to stick, a faulty mechanism, the staff claimed. Eska was inclined to believe the door’s creator had deliberately made the latch tricky and susceptible to damp. If half the stories about the library’s first and greatest patron, who also happened to be its designer and architect, were true, Eska would expect the statue’s toe to crumble to dust at some predetermined future date—rendering the passageway useless. It was the kind of joke she was sure Giovanespi de Varetteau would enjoy.

  “Perhaps,” Eska muttered as she wiggled the toe this way and that way, ears straining for the faint click that would signal the alignment had been corrected, “a different appendage would be more appropriate. At least if I yanked it, I ought to get a response.”

  “That’s rather vulgar.”

  Eska whirled around, nearly convinced the statue of Lyndronicus had finally answered her after years of one-way conversations. But the voice belonged to a slender man who had crossed the reading room far too stealthily, a stack of books pressing up against his chin as he cradled the tomes in his arms.

  Eska sighed and pushed a strand of hair out of her face. “You are far too—”

  “Quiet for my own good, yes, you’ve made me aware of that,” the young man said. “Unfortunately, I have yet to discover my stampeding abilities.”

  Eska rolled her eyes. “I should fit you with an obnoxious bell, like a goat. Whenever you enter a room, it would warn the occupants that an insufferable know-it-all is in their midst.”

  “Good thing this know-it-all also happens to know that you need to be gentler with the toe. You’ll never find the right spot if you bash it around like that.”

  Eska laughed. “What woman hasn’t had to tell a man that at least once.”

  Blushing furiously, much to Eska’s delight, the young man brushed past her, left his books on a desk, and, with a well-practiced flick of a finger, set the lever in place. The door swung open.

  “Don’t smirk, Albus.”

  “I never smirk.” The young man performed the tiniest of bows before scooping the stack of books up once more. “After you, my Lady de Caraval.”

  ***

  “That was the best you could manage? ‘Technically, I didn’t steal it?’ I’ve come to expect so much more from you, Eska.”

  The library employee never looked up from the pages he was bent over, his gaze intent on the intricate, ancient script he insisted he could read.

  “This is where you choose to interject? Not when I related my fear at being confronted by the Iron Baron and a host of lowlifes? A gentleman would inquire after my safety and ascertain if I was unharmed. You know the stories about Thibault de Venescu.” Eska stopped pacing the length of the worktable where Albus sat. Her fierce frown, however, was lost on the librarian, who still had eyes only for his book.

  “You’ve had your share of risky adventures,” Albus said mildly. “You should take my lack of concern as a compliment on your abilities.”

  “Yes, well, that may be, but you might reconsider your assumption of my safety if you knew what was in my possession.” Eska planted her hands on her hips, certain her dramatic air would at last draw Albus away from his text. The librarian seemed not to have heard.

  “Albus.”

  “Mmm?”

  “Don’t you want to know what I have?”

  “I daresay you’re going to tell me regardless of what I might desire.”

  “By all the dead librarians, Albus, you really are horrible. Now get your nose out of that book and look at me.”

  Smiling faintly, the librarian lifted his gaze at last, but the humor vanished the moment he saw what lay in Eska’s palm. Albus lurched to his feet, the book forgotten, his hands hovering over the pages.

  “What is that?”

  “I should very much like you to tell me. I don’t suppose you happen to know what a long-dead queen stashed in a box that has been lost for centuries and no one knows how to open.”

  “Then you did steal something.” The librarian seemed torn between rushing to examine the object Eska held and maintaining his composure.

  “I must insist that technically I did not. The box containing it was handed to me. By a source I shall keep nameless.”

  “But you removed it from the box.”

  Eska shrugged, though the thrill of the moment in which she had discovered the box’s secret sent her stomach tumbling over itself still—as though she were racing across the rooftop once again, voices careening after her, the ivory reliquary spilling from her grasp to land in a shard of moonlight. She took a steadying breath. “Someone had to.”

  “And the Baron?”

  “I think he has no idea what, if anything, was in his precious box. To him, the ivory reliquary is merely a priceless relic of the Alescu dynasty. If he knew how to open it, he would have done so in my presence to ascertain the contents were safe.”

  At last Albus’ gaze fixed on Eska, his face grave. “That was a risk. If he had opened it….”

  The memory of that moment and the terror she had felt tightened like skewers into Eska’s temples. “But he didn’t.” She swallowed hard and was glad that at last Albus could see what the evening almost cost her.

  Their gazes remained locked for a long moment, the librarian’s brown eyes full of concern.

  “May I?” he asked at last.

  Without a word, Eska extended her hand. Albus drifted silently around the corner of the long table. His fingers hesitated over Eska’s palm as he took in the disc and the pattern of markings—thin lines of varying lengths and direction, interrupted here and there by dots and empty spaces carved into the metal and stained black—and then, hesitation replaced by scholarly purpose, he plucked the disc up by its edge.

  “No, not like that,” Eska said. But it was too late. The disc, strangely malleable despite the appearance of bronze, crumpled, folding in on itself like a threatened hedgehog until it resembled a large and rather lumpy twenty-sided die. The librarian stared at it in confusion and surprise. Eska couldn’t resist a grin. “Now you’ve done it.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Well, when one is in a hurry and trying to steal s
omething, one is not often very precise about where one places one’s fingers.”

  Albus frowned and looked Eska up and down. “How on earth did you transport it and keep it flat?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know. And wouldn’t you like me to tell you how to restore it?”

  “It’s unbecoming to gloat, Eska.”

  “I never gloat.”

  It was Albus’ turn to roll his eyes, but so great was his impatience that he handed the strange object back to Eska without another word—and then proceeded to screech in horror as she placed it on the floor and brought the heel of her boot down onto it as hard as she could.

  “I can hardly believe that’s the proper method,” Albus said, aghast.

  “You are undoubtedly correct. But it worked, didn’t it?”

  Indeed the disc was once more a disc, gleaming up at them from the wooden floorboards.

  “I don’t think I want to know how you discovered that.”

  “In a fit of anger, naturally.” And fear.

  Albus sighed. “Naturally.”

  “I’m sure you were going to attempt to coax it back with some clever rhyme spoken in sixteen languages.”

  “Nonsense. Metal doesn’t understand language, Eska.” And yet the librarian, for all his seriousness, couldn’t suppress the smile forming on his lips. “Though that would be a beautiful thing to see. You trying to sing to it in ancient Azarian.”

  “Ancient Azarian has no vowels,” Eska said, eyes narrowing.

  The smile grew. “Precisely.”

  Albus turned his attention back to the disc, frowned, then grabbed a shapeless chunk of grey rock from a shelf and knelt on the floor. As he held the rock over the disc, it leapt from the floor and clung to the grey stone. Looking up at Eska expectantly, he made a little shooing motion with his free hand.

  “Go on. You know I can’t work with you hovering over me.”