Modern Magick

Alchemy and Argent: 17

 I didn't bother texting Val this time. I called her. If that meant dragging her out of the library and whichever book she was absorbed in, so be it.

'Yes?' she said, after three rings. The word had a dangerous edge to it.

'Valentine Argentein,' I said.

'Ves! You found him?'

'Val, you are not going to believe this.'

While Jay nipped back into the academy to return the painting — my having reluctantly let it go — I rushed through an only slightly garbled account of everything we had just experienced.

'Slow down,' said Val more than once, and I tried, but my heart was galloping and my fingers were zapping with magick and I was fit to burst with excitement.

'She's a painting,' Val said at one point. 'A painting? She, Cicily Werewode, is a painting? Ves, have you gone off your rocker?'

And later, 'You pretended to be Mary Werewode and she bought it? Has she gone off her rocker?'

At length we got around to: 'Valentine Argentein is a gods-damned place. That makes so much sense you have no idea.'

'It... does?'

'It was driving me crazy, this supposed author that vanished into thin air. But I was wrong to interpret the name as the author, not the title. The book has the air of a personal journal about it, that's the thing. It's hand-written, and so is what now turns out to be the title, but I previously interpreted as the name of the writer. As a work it's informally arranged, only loosely coherent, and pretty impenetrable. And I now have no earthly idea who penned it, but maybe that doesn't matter. The only problem is...' I heard a rustling of papers, and otherwise silence for a while. 'I don't think there's any real mention of Valentine Argentein in the book, excepting the title. So if the book isn't really about this place Argentein, what's it for?'

'What else is in it, besides that one bit about magycke silver or whatever it was?'

'A whole lot of confused ramblings. I wonder...' Silence, and more rustling.

I ventured upon a tentative point of my own. 'Is this maybe what the Lorekeeper was talking about? Some kind of code?'

'Could be. Could be. It doesn't make a lot of sense as it is, certainly, and it's hard to imagine why anyone would bother writing down such gibberish if it doesn't mean anything.'

'Get Cicily's journal back from the cryptographers. There's nothing to find there.'

'And give 'em this. Right. Begs the question, though: where's this mysterious source of Mary Werewode's work?'

'I got the impression it's in Argentein.'

'She didn't give you any clues as to where that is?'

'Not really. She's a faded excuse for a person, kept blanking on us. And while I'd love to take the portrait with us and keep pumping her for information, we can't exactly abscond with it.'

'No,' Val sighed. 'I suppose you can't.'

Her dejection echoed my own. 'I have two ideas.'

'Tell me.'

'One, she seemed to think she could talk to Mary Werewode, who of course must have died long before she was born. Unless she didn't. We think there must be a chatty portrait of Mary somewhere about, and Cicily must have got hold of it.'

'Right. Where's the portrait?'

'No clue.'

'Excellent. Idea number two?'