Chapter 15.5: An Answer in Silver

The rain had found its way through the roof again. Tavian watched the drop gather between two warped boards above him, swell, then fall neatly into the bowl he’d placed on the floor. 

Plink

He shifted the bowl an inch to the left. The next drop missed. “Of course.” He moved it back. There were three bowls scattered across the room now. One beside the hearth, one near the foot of his bed, and this newest addition beneath the table. By morning there would probably be a fourth. 

The landlord had promised to mend the roof before the rains came. The landlord had also promised it the year before. Tavian pulled his chair closer to the table and bent again over the page in front of him. The candle had burned low enough that reading required a squint. He could light another, but that would leave him one fewer tomorrow night, and tomorrow night he would likely be doing exactly what he was doing now. Reading the same six lines he’d read a hundred times before. He ran one roughened finger beneath the faded words. 

Seven wrought.

Seven parted.

Seven-

The rest was gone. Not illegible, gone. Someone had torn away the bottom of the page long before it ever reached Tavian’s hands. He leaned back with a sigh. “Very helpful.” Silence answered him. It usually did. 

Tavian rubbed both hands over his face. He needed to sleep. The docks would not care that he’d spent half the night studying the ramblings of a dead scholar. Crates would still need lifting before sunrise, and Master Vey would still dock his pay if he arrived late…again. 

He folded the page carefully. It wasn’t his. He couldn’t afford books like the one it had come from. He couldn’t afford most books at all. Three nights ago he’d paid a scribe two coppers to copy the passage while the bookseller wasn’t looking. Two coppers for six words. Five, really. 

Tavian looked toward the small stack beside his elbow. Scraps. Copies. Notes written on the backs of old bills. A map he’d drawn himself from a merchant’s description and later discovered was almost entirely wrong. 

Twelve years of searching reduced to a pile small enough to fit beneath his bed. He should have stopped years ago. People had told him so. Some gently, some less so. Tavian reached beneath the collar of his shirt and pulled free the thin leather cord around his neck. A small piece of silver hung from it. 

It was an odd little thing. Too small to be useful. Too plain to explain why anyone had ever bothered passing it from one generation to another. A diamond, if one was generous with the description. The edges had softened with age, though the strange marking etched into its silver face remained clear. 

Tavian turned it between his fingers. “You’d laugh at me.” His voice sounded too loud in the room. He looked toward the empty chair across the table. It hadn’t always been empty. For years he’d considered getting rid of it, he never had though. “You would,” he said. “You’d tell me I’ve finally lost whatever sense I had left.” He could almost hear the answer. 

Finally?

A smile tugged briefly at his mouth, then disappeared. Tavian looked back at the silver. It had taken him seven years to get it back. Seven years of names and lies and men who wanted money before they’d remember anything. Seven years following a necklace that had been traded, sold, gambled, stolen, and sold again. 

He’d found the man who took it from her in the third year. That hadn’t brought her back. He’d thought perhaps it would make something inside him quieter. It hadn’t done that either. So he kept looking for the silver. Then he’d found it, and somehow that had only given him another question. Why?

Why had their mother guarded it? Why had her mother? Why had Elira refused to give it up when giving it up might have…

Tavian closed his fist around the metal. No. He knew better than to follow that thought. There were some roads in his mind that led nowhere good. He let the necklace fall against his chest and reached for the candle. 

Enough. Sleep. He had nearly pinched out the flame when something touched his skin. Tavian froze. He looked down. The silver rested against his shirt. Still. He frowned. 

Then it happened again. A faint tremor. Tavian’s hand closed around the piece. Nothing. He waited. Rain struck the roof. Water dripped steadily into the bowls. 

Plink… Plink…Plink

Tavian slowly opened his hand. The silver lay in his palm. “Do that again.” Nothing. He stared at it until his eyes began to ache. A tired laugh escaped him. “Wonderful. Now I’m talking to metal.” 

He lowered his hand. The silver jumped. Tavian nearly dropped it. He caught the cord instead and stood so quickly his chair scraped backward across the floor. The piece was moving. Not swingly, not trembling with his hand. Moving. 

A low vibration hummed through the cord and into his fingers. Then stopped. Tavian didn’t breathe. His gaze snapped toward the pile of papers. “No.” He dragged them toward himself. One page fell to the floor. He ignored it. “No, no, where are you?” 

Bills. Maps. Half-translated inscriptions. A charcoal rubbing so faded he could barely see the symbol anymore. Then….there. Tavian pulled free a scrap no larger than his hand. He had copied the words six years ago from a book belonging to a traveling priest. The priest had called the story nonsense. Tavian had nearly agreed. 

His eyes raced across his own handwriting. ‘Scattered shall they sleep, beyond voice and beyond knowing.’ His heart pounded. The next line. ‘Yet when one is returned to the bond, the others shall…’

Tavian stopped. The word had always bothered him. He translated it three different ways. 

Wake.

Stir.

Answer.

The silver vibrated in his hand. Tavian stared at it. Once. Twice. Then stillness. The room suddenly seemed too small. He sat down without meaning to. For twelve years, he’d followed stories that ended in nothing. Crossed half the continent when he could scrape together the fare. Gone hungry for books that turned out to be frauds. Worked until his hands split because questions were more expensive things for a poor man to have. 

And through all of it, the silver had never done anything. Until tonight. Tavian looked toward the empty chair. His throat tightened. He reached for it, fingers curling around the worn, wooden edge as though someone might still be sitting there. “Elira.” 

Her name broke in the middle. He looked down at the silver. Somewhere, across a border, across an ocean, perhaps farther than Tavian could ever imagine, someone had found another. Someone had done what he could not. For the first time in twelve years, Tavian allowed himself to believe the stories might be true. 

He pressed the silver to his lips and closed his eyes. “Someone found it.”