They waited only until the longships had disappeared into the swirl of fog and snow before continuing down to the beach. Etta tried to shake the feeling that Nicholas was still there, that she was somehow walking beside an imprint of him. There were too many footprints on the beach to tell which were his, and she didn’t want to cover his tracks with her own; not if it cost her proof that he had been here. That he’d been alive, and so close.
The cave was darkness incarnate, the mouth of a thousand-toothed creature. Ice-coated stalagmites shot up from the ground, the freezing wind whistling between them. It was as if the steps had been intentionally carved into the cave, and she followed them down, stepping with intent, ignoring the splatter of freezing water dripping from above.
“All right, then,” Julian said, stopping a short distance ahead of her. They were at the very edge of the natural light emanating from the entrance, but there was a crack of sorts in the mountain above them. Etta looked up at it in wonder, watching the snow drift lazily down to her. She imagined each flake was a note falling against her skin, and the music in her began to stir once again, coaxing out a tentative, sweet song of hope. Nicholas hadn’t gotten to see this. She would bring him back here one day.
“It looks like we’ll have enough, though it might be close,” Julian said, tossing Etta one of the sacks he’d brought with him. “Come on, Linden-Hemlock-Spencer. Gawking is my job. Appreciate the beauty of the world later, will you?”
Etta shook herself out of that reverie, crossing the distance between them. It was obvious where the Ironwoods had hidden their barrels beneath false rock covers. They’d been in such a hurry, they had left the empty ones to slowly rot. Julian popped the lid off a barrel stowed beneath a pile of rocks, cooing at the bright gold inside.
“The lost treasure of Lima,” he told her, as if this explained everything. “He’s greedy as sin, but lord, does the man have taste.”
“Let’s just hurry,” she said, her fingers digging into the cold metal. There were days ahead of them before the auction, and too many chances for her plan to fail. But here, in the darkness, in the midst of their silent work, it felt safe to think of Nicholas on the beach, to wish that she had been there to warm his hands while the cold air nipped at his skin. She could almost remember what his voice sounded like as it whispered secrets into her hair.
Etta could be grateful even as she felt longing rise in her like an unfinished crescendo. One look had been enough; one reassurance that he was alive would sustain her. And whatever would come in the temple on the mountain, in the darkness of midnight, she hoped that he, at least, would be spared.
SEAMEN WERE A SUPERSTITIOUS LOT, and it did not surprise him in the least to find that stories were being traded in the confines of the forecastle, trailing him like sharks now that death had its fingers on him.
A ship’s bell, as Hall’s old sailing master Grimes had once explained, was the soul of the vessel. It was why they were meant to make such an effort to retrieve a bell from a wreck; over the course of its tenure, it served much in the way a church bell might: it marked the time for watches, and its bold sound was, to many of the men, a ward against evil and storms. But when it rang on its own, or when that same sweet tone seemed to rise from the depths of the dark water, it was an omen—it was a signal that a man was bound for his eternal reward.
Nicholas lay awake in his rented room, listening as the storm that had blown in at supper battered the city. The violent winds made playthings of the shutters and signs and roofs; it should not have surprised him that they were strong enough to shake even the nearby church bell, but it did. He felt the sound move through him as if it were striking each of his bones in turn.
The rain lashed at the window as Nicholas tried to sit up. Every joint in his body felt inflamed, locked into place. He attempted to roll himself over and put his feet down on the carpet, only to realize his left hand and wrist could no longer support his full weight without collapsing. It was slow, hard work to edge over on the mattress, and harder still to quell the disorienting feeling of foam sloshing around inside his skull. He regretted lying down for the night. It was always more difficult to begin again when you’d ground yourself to a halt.
“It’s worse now, isn’t it?”
Nicholas jerked back, forgetting yet again he couldn’t lunge for the flintlock he’d placed beneath his pillow.
But it was only Sophia. She sat in the far corner of the room, shadowed. The steady drip he’d been aware of for a few minutes now hadn’t been coming from a hole in the roof, but from her drenched overcoat. Beneath her, a puddle of muddy water was gathering around her feet.
“I feel as if I’ve been keelhauled, but it is manageable.” Nicholas coughed, trying to clear the sleep from his voice. “How did you get in?”
“The guards downstairs are drunk, and the ones outside the old man’s door are asleep,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “What’s that face for? There’s a tree outside your window I can use to climb down, if you’re going to be a grump about this.”
At least one of them felt in command of the situation. The past few days of gathering and moving obscene amounts of gold and treasure from all of the old man’s various hidden hoards to more secure locations had reaffirmed for him that he would never have a solid grip on the extent of the resources Ironwood had at his disposal. It only further served to reinforce his belief that another man or woman would simply seize control of it in the event of Ironwood’s death, and the cycle would perpetuate itself.