Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
Ludwig hopped along the edge of the bookcase, down onto the mantelpiece, to the back of Corvus's chair. Presumably he didn't want to startle them by opening his wings and flying down. It was as if he had come down to whisper something in Corvus's ear, but all he did was ruffle his feathers and grow still again. He perched on the chair back, looking in avian fashion sideways at Grim, who was stretched out sphinx-like on an arm of Carmen's chair. Carmen wondered if the archon had heard something of interest and had come down to hear better. Grim did this sometimes: she had seen him saunter casually into earshot when she was arguing with her parents. She wondered what had caught Ludwig's interest now.
"Who caught it?" Ward said.
"One of the Oruvian kings." Corvus said.
"How?"
"Do you know what lead is?"
"Yeh," Carmen said. "They use it for weights. And pipes I think?"
"They used to, until they discovered it was poisoning people – it's highly toxic. But it can also shield you from radiation. The ancients knew this. The Oru knew it too. The king had his workmen line one of the rooms beneath the palace with lead. Then he lured the Corpusant in."
"How?" Ward said.
"I don't know. He claimed he had spoken to it like those old prophets did. That he had convinced it somehow. He called it the God of Fire. Believed it was the sun iself. Obsessed with it. But he was obsessed with fire in general."
"The Black King," Carmen whispered.
Corvus nodded. "Yes, it was King Sol who imprisoned the Corpusant beneath the Royal Palace. And there, we must presume, it has remained ever since."
There was a long silence.
"I heard King Sol liked to gamble," Ward said carefully.
"That is well known," Corvus said.
"What about his dice?"
Corvus's bushy eyebrows rose. "What do you know about The Devil's Bones?"
"Snapper told us about them," Ward said. "But he didn't tell us what they were called. Why are they called that?"
Corvus leaned back in his chair. "The Devil was a spirit of the ancients, not unlike the Dark Traveller of Hattoism. He was the embodiment of evil. Sin. Because gambling was considered a sin, that led to ruin, dice became associated with this Devil. Back in those days dice were usually made of bone. So they came to be referred to colloquially as Devil's Bones. King Sol couldn't have known this though. Someone else must have stumbled upon the name and given it to his particular set of dice. I don't know why."
"How do you know so much about them?" Ward said, and Carmen heard a note of suspicion in his voice.
"I took it upon myself to learn as much as I could about them, after they came into my possession."
"You owned them?" Ward said.
"They were given to me."
"Grandmere -" Carmen said.
Corvus nodded. "She often brought me things she thought might interest me. She either didn't know or didn't remember how she had come by them. I had no idea what they were, beyond the obvious fact that they were dice – though I'd never seen dice with pictures instead of dots on them – and that they were very old. But I enjoy puzzles like this. I sought out every historical reference to dice I could find. I eventually came upon a description of the dice of King Sol in a forgotten, tedious study of the lives of the Oruvian kings. It was a match. The puzzle solved, I put the dice on my mantelpiece and soon forgot about them." He glanced up at the mantelpiece. Carmen and Ward did too. Carmen half-expected to see the leather pouch sitting there still. But of course it wasn't.
Ward was watching the old man intensely. "What happened to them?"
"I gave them to a friend of mine, about five years ago."
"Why?" Ward said.
"He seemed oddly taken by them." Corvus paused, his brow wrinkling, as if he was having trouble finding the right words. "Oddly taken," he said again, as if having to settle for this. "He quizzed me about them and I told him what I knew. I could tell he wanted them but was too polite to ask. So I offered them to him."
"You gave them away?" Ward said, unable to keep the incredulity out of his voice.
"They had only ever interested me as a mystery to be solved. I do not covet objects. Anyway, he was delighted. He stayed for a while and we chatted, but he hardly took his eyes off the dice the whole time. Then he left. That was the last time I ever saw him." Corvus frowned. "He was already under surveillance. Asking too many questions, prying into arcane subjects. A week after his visit I learned there was a warrant out for his arrest – back then the State still needed warrants to enter people's properties. He became a fugitive. I don't know what happened to him. He seemed to vanish off the face of the earth. And I haven't heard any rumour of him since. Very sad. Frank was a good friend."
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