The Forgotten Locket Page 4
I studied the table in more detail. It was covered with papers, random, disorganized. The candles were burning brightly, but they hadn’t been burning long; the wax around the wicks had just started to melt. It looked like someone had been here—and recently—but then was called away.
In the center of the room stood a tall, narrow doorway, a freestanding frame made of blackened wood with images carved all over the surface. A sense of wrongness seemed to emanate from it. Not even the candlelight would come close to the structure, ending instead in a hard line a foot from the door. Looking at it made me shiver.
I wondered what it was.
I heard a groan next to me, and I backed away until my legs hit the high table. I held onto the edge for support.
A man lay on the floor next to the door, one hand pressed to his forehead, his eyes closed in pain. He groaned again, and then he pushed himself up into a sitting position. He shook his head slightly, his dark hair sweeping across his face.
When he opened his blue-gray eyes and looked at me, I felt the world tilt a little to the left before it snapped back into place. There was something about him that seemed so familiar, and yet it was gone before I could catch it.
“Who are you?” I managed. My throat felt raw, like I’d been screaming for a long time.
His eyebrows lifted in surprise. He opened his mouth, but the sound of approaching footsteps stalled his words.
We both looked toward the door—not the black door in the center of the room but the main door behind the rows of benches.
A tall man entered the room, an imperial stride in his step. He wore a long, dark green coat over a pair of brown trousers. Silver stars winked from his high collar. A thick belt crisscrossed his waist, and black boots thumped on the floor. Behind him scurried a second man, smaller and shorter, with a sheaf of papers in one hand, a thick candle in the other, and a satchel over his shoulder.
“Orlando di Alessandro Casella,” the tall man thundered, surprise registering on his face, followed immediately by fear, before all emotion was smoothed away. “What are you doing here?” he snapped. Without waiting for an answer, he turned to his smaller companion. “Why didn’t you tell me of this, Domenico?”
“I . . . he . . .” the small man stammered. “He wasn’t here before. I swear.” His eyes darted to the black door in the center of the room, and his face paled even more.
The words the men spoke sounded odd to my ears. I could understand them perfectly, and yet, there was a part of me that insisted the men were speaking a different language. But how could that be?
The man sitting on the floor suddenly rocked to his heels and stood up, his body tall and straight. He held his hands loose by his sides, but I could sense the power coiled in his limbs. He was strong. And clearly not someone to cross.
I noticed his wrists were black with marks that looked like chains. The sight of those chains stirred something in me, but not fear or unease. I felt a shiver of memory brush past, leaving behind a sense of calm and confidence. Whatever was going on, I felt like I was where I was supposed to be. And with a person I was supposed to find.
I took a small step, but the table was in the way. As I bumped into it, the scales tipped over, the metal making a small clang as it hit the wood.
The attention from all three men snapped to me.
“Who are you?” the tall man demanded of me. He gestured sharply to his assistant, and the small man trotted around the room, lighting the extra candles, the flames flickering madly in his haste to illuminate the space.
“How did you get in here?” The tall man took a step in my direction, his eyes dark and angry.
Orlando shifted to block his approach, his slack hands tightening into fists.
“What is your name?” the newcomer demanded of me.
My ears rang with the sharpness of his question and underneath the noise, I heard the memory of another voice asking me the same question. Testing me.
But unlike last time, now a name hovered in my mind. My name: Abigail. I held it to me like a treasured gift. I didn’t want to tell it to these strangers, though; I didn’t want to let it go. It was the one thing I could hold on to against the shifting tide of my unsteady memory.
I swallowed, forcing my body to stay still and my mouth to stay closed. My eyes met Orlando’s and in his blue eyes, I saw an unexpected calmness. An invitation to trust him.
“I did what you wanted, Angelo,” Orlando said to the man in the green coat, positioning his body so he stood between me and him. “I went through the machine, and I came back. It’s time for you to honor your promise.”
Angelo weighed Orlando with his gaze. His mouth twisted into a frown. “We’re not done with you yet.”
“You promised—” Orlando began.
“I know what was promised. What I don’t know is what happened to you. How did you return here? And when? We were not scheduled to open the door until tomorrow.”
Orlando flicked a glance at the black door that filled the room with its silent presence. He tugged at the blood-stained cuffs of his shirt, pulling the sleeves down over his hands, hiding his chains. “I came home another way,” he said quietly. “The place where I was . . . it was not safe.”
At Orlando’s words, I had a moment of sensory overload: gray light, a landscape that stretched beyond the horizon, the sound of water falling like broken glass. I pressed my hand to my forehead, but the memory was gone.
“And where—exactly—were you?” Angelo strode forward to the high table, past Orlando, past the black door. He didn’t seem disturbed by its ominous nature; he seemed to treat it like it was just another piece of furniture in the room. I didn’t think that was wise.
As he approached me, I sidestepped away, skirting the edge of the freestanding door until I was standing close to Orlando. Though I didn’t know exactly who he was, I felt like there was something that bound us together, and I knew I would rather side with him than against him.
Angelo positioned himself in the elaborate center seat with all the ceremony of a reigning king. His assistant followed in his wake, quickly setting out the paper on the table and withdrawing a pen and an inkwell from the satchel at his side. Angelo pinned Orlando with a sharp look. “You will tell me everything that happened to you from the moment you stepped through that door”—he pointed at the black frame—“until the moment I stepped through that one”—he pointed at the main door to the room.
Orlando hesitated. Then he folded his arms across his chest, the fabric of his shirt pulling tight across his back. “Why are you here?”
“What?” Angelo barked, looking up from a scrawl on one of the papers on the table.
“If you weren’t planning to open the door until tomorrow, then how did you know I would be here now? How did you know I had returned?”
Angelo’s frown deepened and a muscle jumped along his jaw. “I didn’t,” he said finally, and I could see what it cost him to admit that. “I was here on other business. Your appearance was . . . unexpected.”
“How long was I gone?” Orlando asked, a huskiness in his voice.
“A day shy of one month.”
Orlando nodded as though he had expected that answer, but I could tell that it still made him sad.
“Where did you go?” Angelo asked again. He gestured to his assistant, who dipped the pen in the ink and held it over a blank parchment.
Orlando glanced at me, his blue eyes filled with a strange light. “Beyond this life. Beyond time itself. Perhaps even to heaven and back.”
Angelo’s assistant sucked in his breath in a small gasp. A drop of ink fell to the paper, marring its pristine surface.
Angelo’s face paled. He swallowed, and a thin line of sweat graced his upper li
p. “Blasphemy,” he whispered. “No man could see heaven and live . . .” His eyes rested on the black door, closed and quiet. Now he seemed willing to grant it the fear he had withheld earlier.
I suspected it might be too little, too late.
Orlando lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “You told me what the machine did—what you hoped it would do—before you sent me through. Why is it so hard to believe that it worked? That it did what it was designed to do?”
Angelo kept his gaze on the door, and I could see how his fear was slowly giving way to something else. Something that looked like cunning. Like satisfaction.
His mousy assistant coughed, and Angelo returned his attention to us, quickly masking his expression. “But we sent you alone. So I must ask again: Who is she?” Angelo stabbed a finger in my direction, and I flinched even though I was across the room. “Where did she come from? And why is she wearing men’s clothes?”
I looked down at my clothes: blue jeans, T-shirt, sneakers. What was so strange about that? It was what I always wore, wasn’t it? I felt a weight around my neck and brushed my fingers over a heart-shaped locket on a silver chain. When I touched it, two faces appeared in my mind, but the images were sketchy. Just fleeting impressions. Two men. Both with dark hair—but one with a fringe of white along the edge, one with a hint of a curl. Both with dark eyes—but one with black, the other gray. Two smiles—one sly, one small. Had one of these two strange shadow-men given me the locket? I couldn’t remember.
Orlando didn’t even glance at me; he kept his gaze locked on Angelo’s face. “I did what I said I would do. I expect you to keep your promises: Protect my family; tell them I died a hero; restore my name—and my honor—in their eyes. And I will keep my promise: I’ll leave here and never return.”
Angelo shook his head before Orlando had finished speaking. “You have information we need—”
“You know the machine works,” Orlando said. “You have your list of names. I don’t have to tell you anything else.”
Orlando turned to me and grasped my hand before I could do more than take a single step back. He pressed his palm flat against mine.
I felt a flash of energy when our fingers touched, and for a moment his eyes took on a brighter, more electric-blue hue.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, his voice low and private.
I heard an echo of his words, but in a different voice, a different time.
I felt off balance, as though my next step would either be on land or in the air. I would either fall or fly. And either way, my fate would be decided. Would I trust him? Could I? What did my heart say?
“Orlando!” Angelo shouted, standing up behind the table.
“Please, my lady of light.”
The words sent a jolt up my spine. I knew that phrase. I remembered it. Tracks of fire burned hot in the blackness of my mind until I could almost see the shape of the language on his lips. Could almost see that he wasn’t speaking English, but Italian.
How did I know Italian?
“Domenico, stop them,” Angelo ordered.
The small man at his side startled, then took a tentative step in our direction.
Orlando held my gaze. I thought I glimpsed an infinite measure of patience in his eyes, but I knew we were running short on time. The mysteries of strange languages, black doors, and missing memories would have to wait.
I knew if I wanted answers, I would have to go with Orlando.
I nodded quickly, squeezing his hand in mine for emphasis.
His sudden grin transformed his face, stripping away the strain and worry I hadn’t realized was there until it was gone.
That sudden sense of familiarity was back, stronger than before. He looked so much like someone I knew. But who?
“Then don’t look back,” he said and pulled me toward the main doors of the courtroom.
“Domenico!” Angelo shouted.
I heard a commotion behind me—the scrape of wood on wood as a chair fell over, the flurry of papers taking to the air—but I didn’t look back.
All I could see before me was Orlando’s dark hair, his broad shoulders, and his strong arm linked to mine. There was a part of me that hoped he would never let go.
We pushed through the door and into a narrow hallway. More light flickered, this time from torches. My breath surged in my throat, clotted and cloying; I felt like I might throw up. I stumbled, feeling the walls close in around me. My eyes were unfocused, blurry with double vision. I had been somewhere like this before, and recently. Somewhere dark. Somewhere I didn’t want to be again.
“Wait—” I gasped, pulling on Orlando’s hand to slow him down.
He turned, and I saw the same claustrophobic terror around the edges of his eyes. He wanted out of this suffocating place as much as I did.
I gathered my courage and forced my eyes to focus on the here and now.
Behind us the hallway stretched out long and thin before falling off into a staircase descending into darkness. A guard stood at attention at the top of the stairs. His eyes locked with mine and he bristled with suspicion. He took a step forward.
“Not that way,” Orlando said in a hurry. “That way leads to the dungeon. No, this way.” He tugged me forward.
Shouts sounded from behind us. A door slammed open, the bang as loud as a drum. I could hear the staccato rhythm of boots thumping on the wooden floor, the crispness of metal on metal. The sound made me think of a knife on bone, or a fingernail scraping over a tightened string. My mind shied away from the mental image, from the music I could almost hear, and I shook my head, trying to concentrate on staying upright and moving forward.
My feet tripped over themselves until I found a fast rhythm. Keeping pace with Orlando, I counted my steps, knowing each one was taking me closer to freedom and the promise of open sky.
Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven.
Orlando swung around a corner, stuttering to a stop. Three more guards clogged the hallway, each one with narrow eyes and a thin blade. Their intensity hit us like a wave.
“Go,” Orlando barked, turning me on my heel and pushing me in front of him as we ran down another hallway.
I could barely breathe; the air tasted like smoke and filled my eyes, my nose, my mouth with ash. I squinted through the darkness through eyes that burned. Was there no end to these narrow hallways?
Sixty-nine. Seventy. Seventy-one.
Orlando grabbed my hand, pulling me to the left, then left again, then to the right, until whatever small sense of direction I had retained was gone.
We ran past seemingly endless rows of torch brackets, the light blurring in my peripheral vision into one thin, unbroken stream of fire. We passed door after door; some stayed closed. Others swung open, disgorging guards, officers, men with swords, men with clubs.
Five hundred six. Five hundred seven.
My world dissolved into a cacophony filled with shouts to stop, to go, to turn, to wait, to go back, to go forward. I clutched Orlando’s hand like a lifeline. As much as I didn’t want to be stopped, caught, trapped by the guards chasing us, I didn’t want to be lost forever in these twisting tunnels, either.
We ran up a flight of stairs, exchanging rough-hewn stone walls and plain wooden doors for more lush surroundings: colorful carpets and rugs on the floor, tapered candles instead of torches on the wall, even a slice of a window or two. The hallways were empty here on the upper level and, though the sound of footsteps still thundered behind us, I harbored a hope that we might make our escape after all.
I ran until my lungs ached, until my sweat burned, until my legs lost their strength and a sudden cramp locked my muscles. I stumbled and fell to my knees with a cry and—two thousand twenty-eight, two thousand twenty-nine—the numbers ran out of my head.
Orlando turned and, without missing a step, reached out to catch me before I fell any further. He lifted me up and then, with one arm behind my back, swung me into his arms.
He was unrelenting, his energy unfailing. I
could feel his breath on my neck, the rise and fall of his chest as he carried me toward the door at the other end of the hallway.
I blinked the sweat from my eyes and clutched at the collar of Orlando’s shirt.
An open door.
Could it be true?
Orlando arrowed his way outside, breaking free from the courthouse without breaking stride.
He headed for the spacious plaza that lay outside the courthouse, his footing swift and sure across the mosaic-patterned cobblestones. Despite the late hour, there were several other people scattered across the plaza, but they were all wrapped in heavy cloaks, heads down, intent on conserving warmth and not getting involved.
I tilted my face to the stars and gulped down a steady stream of cold, clean air. The sweat on my body tingled like snow melting and I felt a trickle of relief slide down my neck and spine.