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“He should have had a silver cuff with him,” Esta explained, making a circular motion around her own arm, where the cuff had once sat. “A bracelet that held a dark stone, and he should have been carrying a necklace as well. A beautiful necklace, with a bright-blue stone that looks like stars are trapped within it. But the cuff is what’s really important. If I have the cuff, I can help him. I can take him away from here, and you and your son would no longer be in danger from someone discovering him.”
The woman’s eyes had widened slightly. She looked suddenly unsure, maybe even guilty.
“Please,” Esta pleaded. “If you know what I’m talking about at all, if you saw anything like the pieces I described, you have to help me. I can pay you for them. I can give you whatever you want. I can save him if I have that cuff.”
The woman didn’t respond or react.
“If you do have the pieces I’m talking about, you can’t keep them. There are people looking for them—dangerous people,” Esta told her, trying another approach. “If you’re worried about this Committee, they’re nothing compared to the people who will be coming for you.”
Patience hesitated a moment longer. When she finally spoke again, she made her voice no more than a whisper, like she was afraid the walls themselves might overhear. “My husband brought home pieces like you describe some days ago. But they’re gone. I gave them to satisfy my husband’s debts when his creditors came demanding payment,” she said. “What could I do?”
Esta’s stomach sank. “Tell me you didn’t give away the cuff. Tell me.”
“I didn’t have a choice,” Patience explained, her voice filled with remorse. Then the woman’s expression shifted. “You can’t imagine what it is to live my life. Do you know that my father lost me in a card game? To be rid of his responsibility, he forced me to marry a man I would never have chosen. Now all I have is my child and this house. Our only chance to survive is to keep my husband’s shop. Unlike you, I cannot pull on trousers and jaunt off and leave my responsibilities—my son—behind.”
“I know,” Esta told her softly. “You’re right. I don’t have a child to protect or a husband to find.”
“I don’t want to find my husband,” she told Esta. “If he never returns, our lives will be hard, but in the end, they’ll be better. A man like that can’t be saved from himself. A man like that leaves only destruction in his wake.”
“I’m sorry,” Esta said, speaking truly. She had a feeling that the woman was on the cusp of some revelation, and she needed the right combination to unlock her willingness. “But this man, the one you were so good to tend to and comfort, even when it could have put you in danger? He is an honorable man. You must know something more.”
Patience knew something about the artifacts, there was no question of that fact. Without her help, Harte would die. But even with the cuff, even if she could take him forward to a time where medicine might save him, Esta knew that it still might not be enough.
“Please,” she said. She had never begged before. She had never felt desperate enough to beg, not even when she’d been tied to a chair at the mercy of a madman. “Please,” Esta repeated.
Because she could not imagine a world where Harte Darrigan didn’t exist.
The woman’s mouth pressed into a tight line, and Esta knew that everything was lost—Harte, the artifacts, herself.…
But then Patience relented.
“When my husband brought the pieces home, I sensed them, even before he showed them to me.” She paused.
Esta waited silently, because it felt like something as simple as breathing might shatter the moment. But she immediately understood the implication of what Patience Lowe had just told her.
“I knew that my husband couldn’t have obtained such pieces honestly, because I knew that they were too important for someone like him to have. When their true owner came for them, I didn’t want to be empty-handed.” She went to the bed and lifted the mattress, propping it on her shoulder so she could pull something from within the frame. Then Patience brought a small package wrapped in white linen and knelt next to the hole in the floor.
Esta’s eyes were locked on the package that rested in the woman’s lap. But she was afraid to lean too much into the hope that already made her feel light-headed.
“My husband never knew what I was or what I could do. He was too fond of talking about righteousness and abomination, and I knew from the beginning that it would be dangerous to reveal myself to him,” Patience told Esta, her expression sour. “He thought these pieces were merely expensive, but I knew better.”
“You knew they were powerful,” Esta said. Because Patience is Mageus.
Patience unwrapped the package, and Esta almost sobbed in relief the second she saw the glint of silver and felt the power of the cuff’s dark stone call out to her.
“You may be right about this one being a good man. He saved my boy when my husband would have sacrificed his only child for a bit of gold. If you truly believe you can save your friend, then I can’t keep these from you.” Patience held out the parcel, the necklace and cuff gleaming against the soft linen.
“Thank you,” Esta said, taking them. The artifacts were delicate pieces, but they were heavy with the weight of magic, and when Esta touched them, she could feel their power calling to her. She slid on the cuff immediately and tucked the necklace into the leather pouch with Maggie’s concoctions.
Esta had no sooner secured them and turned her energy to figuring out how she would get Harte up from the hole in the floor than bells began chiming. It was almost like the heavens themselves were celebrating, except that there was nothing celestial about the sound. It was a tinny, jagged noise that sounded every bit like a warning.
“Mama,” the boy said, coming into the room with a look of panic.
The color had drained from the woman’s face. “There’s someone in the tunnel,” Patience said, glancing back over her shoulder. She spoke to the boy in urgent, rapid German.
“Were you followed?”
“No. I was careful.”
