Origami_Narwhal

  I don't stop at the bakery. I skip past the theater, even though it’s pying my favorite part of the Epic of the Hero. A thought becomes a mystery becomes curiosity, and it gnaws at me incessantly:

  Why is that damned puzzle box important? Why did it need to be in a vault, why break in just for one thing?

  I push through the twin fragrances of baked starch and flour. A raucous retelling of the Hero's meeting with Daughter Moon stops me for only a few minutes, and my attention remains on distant things.

  Instead, the doors of Crawford Manor open before me. I have questions, and I will have answers.

  Benny is right there to greet me, hands csped over an apron. Perfect. “You look troubled, madam. May I be of assistance?”

  “I am, and yes.” I say, smiling a bit. Maybe the box is part of... no, baseless specution won't help. “Do you know anything about a puzzle box? The Church had it, and someone at the Station said it was formerly Crawford property.”

  Before Benny can answer, I'm already bending down to unce my boots. If they don't know, maybe one of my parents' journals?

  "Puzzle boxes." Benny rolls the words around in their mouth, their lean face wrinkling in thought. "Ah. Yes, madam. Which of your father's boxes are you referring to?"

  Which.

  Oh, Adamantine. I've pleaded for your strength today already, but I'll need your patience, now. They weren't just Crawford property, they were something my father had owned... something he wanted to leave to the Church, though that's hardly special.

  A groan of irritation won't do it. I sigh, dragging the sound out over the fnges of my voice until it crackles. I rise, slipping out of my boots, and start rolling up my sleeves. "Of course he had a bunch. Don't tell me he kept a journal or something on it?"

  Benny smiles sympathetically, shifting their stance and uncsping their hands. “I wouldn't know, madam. It will be a challenge... but I do recall he kept their prints in the library. Would you like tea and pastries?”

  “Good, and yes to both, Benny. I'm going to need them.” I follow the tension pooling in my gut and move, heading through the entry room and towards the library. Benny doesn't follow— the kitchen is in a different direction altogether.

  I offer words and magic to the Manor, letting its warmth brush against me as I give it my requests. Locate the prints. Find the family journals. Prepare the library.

  The Manor hums in acceptance, draping itself over me like a thick bnket. The doors to the library, mere marches away, swing open soundlessly.

  Rows of bookshelves and walls stuffed with knowledge greet me; parchments and scrolls collect around a broad table at the center of the room. Thick red curtains frame a view of the forest beyond Craumont, with a hint of the Imperial Temple peeking through the foliage.

  I roll my shoulders and stretch my neck. My tail taps against the carpeted floor.

  “Time to get to work.”

  The day wanes. Distant farms leave stretches of bck across the fields, and fading light gleams across the forest. When darkness creeps across my work, firemps drive it back.

  One cup of tea becomes two, then four. My conclusions, my questions, are arrayed out in piles of paperwork before me.

  I don't like what I see. Fourteen sketched out boxes, written over in my father's ugly scrawl: how he solved them, what he put in them, and who he gave them to. Trinkets, for the most part, save for when he gave one to my mother.

  I would've paid to see her reaction, really. She hated puzzles.

  Over the years, he commissioned fifteen puzzle boxes. Two from far-off Ard Judicia, three from Caliburn before its colpse, and nine from an artificer in the Ayldom's capital.

  The fifteenth puzzle box was made by an artificer in Craumont. There is no drawing of it, there are no notes on its solution. Only fragments of a greater puzzle, an emphasis on the challenge of opening it, the resilience of the enchantments.

  Next to these bare scraps of information is another stack of parchment— the wills of my parents. I took those disgusting pages down from the family histories myself to answer a question.

  And unfortunately, they held more of the puzzle, more of the answer. The puzzle box had been willed to the Church:

  The Church of the Restoration shall receive my st remaining puzzle box, for its protection.

  “For protection,” I repeat to the Manor, turning the words around. As if some alignment will reveal another shape, hidden in the angles.

  My answer had questions. Protection from what? After all the effort to make it a challenge, make it difficult to break through, why would it need more protection?

  What, in Adamantine's name, is inside that damned box?

  I growl at the pages arrayed before me— as I have more than a dozen times today. My tail curls around a chair, stretching and loosening aching muscles. Magic burns like a lit candle inside me, spent so I don't tire... but it doesn't stop me from getting sore.

  Perhaps I'm just missing something. Some reason my father would pour so much effort into a box, only to give it to a Church that cks true Mages of any kind. Helena was an exception, and frankly not competent enough to manage wards. The Manor would be a far safer pce to secure anything.

  And perhaps I am going in circles. Spirals, maybe, making little—

  Visitor at the door. The walls whisper and groan to me, creaks and shifts made coherent in my mind.

  “What?” The word slips out of me, hoarse and rattling.

  It's enough to pull me up and out of my work, like surfacing from warm water into frigid rain. At the door? How—

  I shake my head. Focus, Ivy! “How did she get in?”

  Invited in. Butler.

  Benny had done it, evidently. I feel a twinge of irritation, but Benny is trustworthy. “And Benny— the butler— are they still around? Or have they left for the night?”

  Yes. The house murmurs. Making tea.

  I look to the cooling teapot beside me, to the consteltion of crumbs beside that. Then to the window, to the first stars of night twinkling into being. Who would be here at this hour? It's not like—

  Gelson, almost certainly. We'd agreed to meet, but it was far past time for that. Ugh.

  Let her in, I whisper back to the Manor, because it means I can sigh at the same time. There's not even a good piece of hard floor for me to run my tail against.

  The door swings open— had the Manor meant the visitor was at this door? No, it's just that broom and dustpan. They drift forward, tilting toward me in a strange bow, then hover around my tray of cold tea and loose crumbs. The pastries hadn't quite sated my hunger, but the magic coursing through my body has paid the difference. I'll need a heavy meal after it's all said and done, though.

  Without a whisper, and barely a curl of magic, the tray lifts up. All three depart as I watch, somewhat baffled.

  “I really need to get those enchantments looked at,” I mutter. There's a spark of humor in there, enough for my lips to curl, but my focus slides back to my work. The fme of curiosity burns bright, fed now by my father's schemes.

  Maybe there's a ledger entry on the expenses? I could get the artificer's name from that, and maybe get a clue as to the enchantments based on how things were... hmm.

  The doors to the library swing open, marked only by the faint whoosh of air.

  “You missed our appointment,” Gelson says, voice as ft as ever. “Suspicious activity during an investigation, where you remain a prime suspect in the eyes of the w.”

  “Prime suspect?” I chuckle, raising my eyes to lock with Gelson's. They pass boots, riding pants, and a prim blouse on the way—

  And my grin goes toothy when she flinches. Steeped in magic as I am, my eyes must burn nearly as bright as they do in Delves. Maybe it's wrong to take joy in it, but to answer her audacity in kind feels incredibly satisfying.

  “I'm trying to answer my own questions, Gelson,” I drawl, using one hand to wave across the paperwork in front of me. “And if you really did think I was a prime suspect, you wouldn't have trusted me to check the wards.”

  Gelson nods thoughtfully, opening and closing her mouth before finally answering. “You would be correct, Dame.”

  And then I wait for her to follow it with something. Anything, some indication of what she's up to.

  When it doesn't come, I huff, curling Wind around me to bend the breeze away from my paperwork. “So get on with it, Gelson. Are you here for the meeting?”

  “I was,” Gelson says slowly, brow furrowing. She walks further into the library, dragging the silence along with her as she peers over my piles of parchment. “And now I'm not. What's this?”

  Genuine curiosity colors her tone as she leans over the table, inspecting a box drawing.

  “Puzzle box thirteen of fifteen.” I indulge her, and myself, by answering further. “Made in Ard Judicia. Not the box the Church had, by the way— that'd be number fifteen.”

  I point to the will, as much as that thing disgusts me. She picks it up without comment, messing up some of my pages in the process.

  “I have read old reports about this document,” Gelson frowns. “Entirely against Ayldom w. No, this is against Imperial w that has persisted beyond the Colpse. Why will everything to the Church?”

  “Zealotry? Anger?” I sigh, reaching for my teacup. I spent far too much time tossing and turning over that, years ago. “Only found out about the changes after they died. Doesn’t matter. The box was willed separately, though.”

  “And given to the Church for its protection.” Gelson frowns, then frowns harder. “Do you know what's inside?”

  “Not at all. See why I've been up here, Gelson?” I lean across, fixing what she'd moved. “And you said you were here for the meeting. What now? Pnning to int—”

  My sarcasm is cut off by Gelson speaking up, and speaking quickly.

  “Protecting it in a less secure location, with weaker defenses and a history of being broken into.” She pauses again, humming. Her foot taps against the carpet with inscrutable rhythm. “By you. Dame Crawford?”

  “Go on.” She's clearly got something, and I just know I'll hate it.

  “Do you know if there will be bck tea?”

  Okay, I don't hate it, but I do see what she's aiming for. My tail thumps against the carpet once, then twice. “Pnning to stay, Gelson?”

  “Yes. I have a theory. Need tea to stay awake, I've been up since before dawn.”

  More rapid words. She puts down the will more carefully than it deserves, then walks off to drag a chair over.

  I pause, thinking about it. I'd let Helena in on impulse— but it's not the same blend of emotions driving me. This one is a mix of thrill and intrigue, without a hint of... whatever I felt for Helena at the time. Gelson is merely a detective doing her job, and I’ll exercise due caution.

  “There'll be tea,” I promise her, pointing towards the left side of the table. “You'll want to start over there, I'm going to pull the ledgers.”

  Watch the guest, I tell the Manor, trickling magic down to its heart, keep her on this floor.

  The half-moon hangs heavy in the starlit sky, its silvery light drawing only faint shadows across the nd. As my own reflection stares back through the window— orange eyes glowing softly from within— I track the process of a train as it churns through the darkness. Some days ago, I’d arrived on that te-night train, and I feel like I’m going to be here for a long time yet.

  Gelson is still here, reading over a ledger. We're both here, counting the hours by an Elm clock, asking questions of a dead man's belongings. It's far from fruitless, though.

  The artificer's name is Ulrich Bckwood. They made the box of alchemical steel and hardwood. Once they finished it, it was sent out for enchanting, brought back, then enchanted more by my father.

  Gelson found the rough size of the box, buried in notes. It matches up with what the Church had told her, evidently.

  But we are no closer to knowing what's in the box, why it was given to the Church, or why anyone would steal it. Gelson might be getting something out of this, but my curiosity outstrips my energy, now.

  “Maybe it just looked expensive?” I suggest, turning back from the window. I don't even believe what I'm saying.

  “By witness testimony, it did.” Gelson chews her lip. “But nothing else was stolen. The priest let me into the vault and shared the inventory. Nothing else was stolen. I counted.”

  I wince, thinking about all the coin, books, and other such things inside that damned vault. “By yourself?”

  “Detective Tracer helped.”

  Right, the other detective. Shaking my head, I walk over to the main table, turn everything over in my head, and think.

  “He wanted to protect it,” I repeat slowly, tracing a cw above the maze of parchment. “From what?”

  A rasp of air, a sharp intake of breath. Gelson puts down her pages and looks at me, studiously avoiding my eyes.

  “Dame,” she says slowly, one leg jittering against the floor. “What at this estate could be a threat to Sir Crawford and his interests?”

  So I tell her the obvious— and the truth, in turn, is id bare.

  I'd prayed to Adamantine for a house fire, all those years ago. Maybe I should've tried harder.

  Origami_Narwhal