Algernon Black

(Chapter 45) Carry on, Hope is not yet Gone

Jared was exhausted after another long day of prying information from books older than modern language. Transcribing took the majority of his mental capabilities and left him with little more than useless facts such as the king's affinity for olives, or his fondness for helping children, or his talents in carpentry. His fingers brushed over a well-worn page where a man was chiseling a chair out of a wood stump. It may have been the king but the face was too faded to make out. Only the man's eyes were clear as if they alone couldn't be affected by the aging of time.

"How is your research going?" Selice asked, coming to stand on the other end of the table to look over Jared's chaotic spread of papers.

Jared withdrew from his book to glimpse up at her. Selice's entrance and presence were always quiet and Jared often didn't realize she was there until she announced herself.

"Stale." Jared released an exhausted breath and drove a hand through his hair.

Selice bobbed her head understandingly. "I really hope you can find what you're after. So you can get your sister out of that place and away from that boy."

"I hope so too." Jared smiled at the kind girl, who currently looked like a very feminine boy.

He had divulged everything to Loy and Selice the other night but worried retroactively if he made the right decision. He trusted Selice because they swapped secrets and she couldn't cause him any trouble without fear of jeopardizing herself. But Loy was just the opposite. Jared had no idea who he truly was and fear seemed as foreign a thing to the young prince as the lost languages in these ancient texts.

"Well I came to tell you I'll be leaving soon, and if you're gone by the time I come back, I just wanted to thank you for keeping my secret." Selice bowed her head politely.

"So suddenly?" Jared asked. "Where are you going?"

"To the edges of my sanity probably." Selice pursed her lips as her head slumped down. "Or wherever Loy's whims drag me too."

Jared was tempted to pet her head as she revealed the top of it in the same way he used to console Lucy but contained himself.

"Then I wish you safe travels," Jared replied as he bowed his head back. "And thank you for all your help as well." When he stood up he took notice of the thin chain that disappeared under Selice's tunic. It had been poking at his curiosity since he met the girl and this may very well be the one answer he could find. "But if I may ask, how long have you had that necklace for Selice? It's not common to find such powerful charms anymore."

"Since I came to the castle," Selice said. "When I was four."

Jared grew so confused his eyebrows almost touched. "And you've never replaced the stone?"

"Stones?" Selice asked as she went to pull out the pendant. "It doesn't have any stones." She double-checked it herself before holding it out for Jared to see.

"That's impossible," Jared said, as he came forward to inspect it with his own hands. "All magic artifacts use stones, except for the ancient...ones." Jared's pupils transfixed on the pendant as the whites of his eyes expanded.

"Selice, where did you get this?" Jared asked in dire urgency. There was no stone anywhere on the small rectangle. Only a bird carrying a limb from a tree imprinted in silvery metal. "From who?" 

"Just a passing stranger," Selice said with only the vague recollection of a far-off memory she had to draw from.

"This-" Jared stuttered over his thoughts as he couldn't logically process what he was seeing. The pendant didn't have any markings to show it was anything but a necklace, and no stone for the magic to come from. "This is an artifact, from the time of vessels."

"Is that important?" Selice asked.

Jared finally looked away from the necklace back at the hidden her. "These artifacts haven't been made in over a thousand years. The knowledge to do so was lost around the time the vessels died. That's why we make stones to power weapons, but stones break, rather quickly. But these are suffused with unlimited magic, just like the..." Jared's words fell as he took notice of the metal, the metal that shimmered unlike gold or silver but in its completely unique way. He had only seen three other pieces of jewelry like this in the world, and very recently a fourth. An onyx black ring, a pair of twin golden cuffs, a jade dangling earring, and a silver chain necklace.

"Do you know anything about the man who gave you this necklace?" Jared pressed her. "Where he came from? What he looked like?"

Selice was driven back by his zealousness. "I don't remember. I was so young." She had never thought to ponder the man or the necklace. "He just seemed like a kind man who took pity on a poor homeless girl."

Jared's heightened ardor dashed to the ground.

"But I do remember he had an accent, though it wasn't one I've ever heard before, or have heard since." Selice's forehead creased as she thought back to the man's voice that had been so distinct she couldn't forget it to this day. "And he said he wanted me to live a happy life as all children should."

Jared's eyes relit as he inspected the bird closer. It bore an olive branch in its beak a marking he had seen before. 

"What's going on here?" Loy suddenly demanded to break apart how intimately close Jared stood with his hand on Selice's necklace.

It worked as Selice jumped back. "Nothing," she said throwing the necklace back under her tunic.

Jared's mind was running rampant with too many thoughts to hear the anger in Loy's voice. Instead, his eyes fixed on the prince's necklace, then back to Selice and it triggered a flood of recollection.

Jared stepped away from them both. His head started to spin as all the information he ingested exploded in his mind. Facts of the king overlapped with what Selice had just told him in one chaotic choir. The king's love for helping children. An impossible charm. His carpentry skills. Jared looked down at the clothes he wore. This jacket was gifted to him by Aloysius from a foreign customer who had never come back to claim it. He came in a week before Jared and talked about the king's will. An instance Aloysius felt was outlandish enough to mention. Jared reached into his pocket and he felt the small chisel he had been carrying around with him all this time. He ran his thumb over the flat top circle that had been worn away from years of use, but up close he saw the same pattern on Selice's necklace as the one engraved in the metal.

"A courier," Jared said as his face lifted in the keenest excitement.

"What?" Loy asked, inspecting his guest worriedly.

"A courier," Jared repeated. His logic and common sense tried to build a wall against the impossibility he was piecing together, but it fell to his hope.  "A courier of King Leviathan's diary."