Chapter Thirty-Eight
“You’re amazing, Simon,” Jemima’s voice cooed again over the speakers. He had just hung up the call from Rika’s office, where Puma’s right hand person—Jordy, he remembered—had given a report of what she had found on the footage. It was disappointing.
The few people who even came close to matching the description she had been given were all regulars known to Puma and Rika: one of the vending assistants in the Bladesmyth’s booth, another was a traveling bard who performed with a dragon puppet perched on his shoulder, and still another was a cook for one of the on-site restaurants. Yet another was on the grounds maintenance crew, and another was a member of Security who would have been at his station far from the Royal Court of Food during the time that Col was there.
As a matter of course, Rika was sending over to Simon the staff ID photos of all of those individuals to show Col, but he knew that whoever had abducted Col could not have been a regular.
As for anomalies that were reported, Jordy had dutifully given details on what she considered to be even slightly unusual, but Simon didn’t concern himself with them. It would be far more efficient for his trusted directors Rika and Puma to vet Jordy’s reports first with their vast experience of day-to-day operations, and then bring to his attention anything that they deemed worthy of note.
So pretty much a dead end there, although it was necessary due diligence.
Nothing new from Miller either, in terms of Blake Rickert’s murder. Simon had already hacked into the police database, but there was little to add to what they had already learned. His friend the realtor’s death was still a mystery, although there was speculation that it was a drug-fueled robbery, or tied to any number of messy breakups in his past. Apparently Blake had a very colorful — and dramatic — private life that was going to keep the investigators busy for quite some time.
Unfortunately for Simon, that pointed to an increasing possibility that his friend’s death had nothing to do with the person inquiring into Simon’s holdings.
With all of his technical skills, all he was getting was more confirmation that he was going in circles. He felt fucking useless.
How were we doing on the solving the mystery of our parents’ death front, Simon? Yeah, another big fat zero.
And since it was obviously turning into a pity party of epic proportions, let’s roll the tape of what happened a mere half a year ago, when his life completely changed. Not that it was what made him a loser, just on a more epic scale.
The motion detector alarms had gone off in the network of chambers underground that had once been an active, functioning mine when the town was first founded. Jemima’s voice had woken him, and he in turn got Miller awake.
The two had raced down through the cleverly hidden entrance that had been rigged up with even more of Simon’s technological inventions. There was a possibility—there was always a possibility—that it was a simple error. An animal might have gotten in, set off the alarms. Or there was a glitch in the wiring, a short in the solar-powered generator that had been cleverly embedded into the surface above. It was unbelievable that this could be it, the moment that he had been prepared for all his life, even before his parents’ death when he had been trained over and over to repeat a strange collection of syllables that he hadn’t ever been able to find online.
It would have helped if he knew what it meant at that time, of course. It wasn’t until after that it was interpreted for him.
It wasn’t until after he and Miller reached the site of the alarm. And indeed, there was motion that had activated it.
Holy Guacamole, there was motion.
The lids of the five stone sarcophagi lay smashed on the ground, beside where they had been pushed off with tremendous strength.
Five enormous males, larger than any he had ever seen live, and possibly even on screen — without some CGI enhancement, or help of the steroid variety, and most definitely without a gram of carbs— were in various stages of sitting or standing in their respective sarcophagi, recovering from that tremendous output of energy after however many centuries they had been unconscious.
They were dressed in thick leather armor and furs, and had looked at Simon first with distrust, rousing themselves into a readiness to fight.
Miller had instantly readied his gun, blocking Simon with his body. The five men had started growling at him, a medley of strange languages unlike anything except….the pattern of syllables that Simon had been trained to say, since the time he could speak. That had been ingrained in his memory, even after his parents were gone. Simon slipped under Miller’s arm before the older man could hold him back, and quickly began the cadences from his childhood.
His incantation cut through the babble of the five large men, until their voices trailed off into a stunned silence.
Later, when Tybalt, Merek, Barric, Aylwyn and Col, had learned enough to communicate with him, he learned what he had said:My Lords, you have arisen. I live to serve you.
It was an ancient language, in fact the formal dialect of the Royal Court, that nobles and those that served them used. It was understood by all five, although, as he also was told much later, they came from five different tribes, and spoke their own dialects.
But they spoke the language of warriors, and for that he was grateful that Miller helped guide them into the present day.
Which was Simon’s job. Because it wasn’t like he was left a fucking instruction manual, after his parents’ death. No “How to Care for People Who Could Use You to Pick Their Teeth When Their Mission is to Fight”, with the appendix onWhat the Mission Is, and How to Help Them. There wasn’t even an app on how to teach grown men to use a modern toilet. Yeah, that first week was fun.
His favorite part was finding out that the sarcophagus lids that had been destroyed contained some sort of inscriptions on the inside, probably meant for theWaryeors’ eyes. Before they did theHulk Smash!bit and shattered the megaton stone covers into the worst jigsaw puzzle ever.
Oh, and Simon remembered. The smashed Sarcophagi lids, which probably held The Answer Keys to Everything? That wasn’t the only mystery. When theWaryeorswere able to make themselves understood in the underground chambers, they had an urgent question.
Where were the other two sarcophagi that were supposed to be with them?
Simon still didn’t have an answer for that, either. Yeah, he’s been doing just spectacularly, hadn’t he? Sorry, Mom and Dad. Whatever you died for, I still don’t know, and I’m sucking at what little bit I do understand. And by the way, I still don’t know either who killed you and why.
He was tapping the locket inside his shirt, as he always did when he was stressed out. His pity party did uncoveronething he was good at.
