“In a way,” Mihai said, excitement dancing behind his eyes, “we’ve been waiting foryouto findus.”
20
ADISTRUSTFUL NOISE BURRED FROM HUCK’Sthroat. His hand gripped my elbow and tugged urgently. He wanted to leave, but I couldn’t just walk out. Not now.
“You’ve been... waiting for me?” I finally managed to say. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“Your father searches for the bone ring, yes?” Mihai said. “He mistakenly thought his employer’s ring was a reproduction and that we were in possession of something that was more authentic.”
Silence filled the small shop. I didn’t know how I should respond, whether I could trust them or whether to run far, far away. But they already seemed to know this much, and I needed information. Since when was I scared of two skinny old men?Steel spine.
“Yes?” I said, and then more firmly, “Yes. That’s right. But if he thought you had what he was looking for, why didn’t he come here?”
“It would have been a waste of time for him to visit us,” Mihai explained. “We would not have given him our ring anyway.”
Huck made a choking sound. “You... have one of the bone bands?”
“Oh, yes,” Petar said. “We acquired it twenty years ago in an estate sale near Sibiu.”
“A few have coming looking for it,” Mihai said with a small smile. “Recently, they have mostly been associates of your father’s employer.”
“Do not worry. They cannot enter our shop. We’re protected.” Petar gestured behind me to the window, and for the first time I realized there was more than thehamsatalisman there: scrawled Hebrew and esoteric symbols of the kabbalah were painted around the window’s glass.
Spells. Magical wards.
This was no antiques shop. And the twins were not simple merchants.
I had the sinking feeling that they were like Lovena. Witches. Wonderworkers. Magicians... or at the very least, knowledgeable about such things. My head swam with disjointed thoughts; goose bumps raced over my arms.
“Maybe that’s why Mr. Rothwild hired your father,” Petar said. “He and his people wrongly thought they could trick their way in here.”
Mihai chuckled. “They cannot.”
“His people... Rothwild’s associates, you mean?” Huck asked.
“Societas Draconistarum,” Mihai said, spreading his arms.
“The Order of the Dragon,” I murmured.
“Indeed.” Petar thrust the inky tip of his quill into a brass stand on the counter as he elaborated. “Order of the Dragon, founded in 1408 by the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund as a secret society. Kings, popes, politicians, noblemen graced its membership. It is said that the order dissolved and disappeared from history because its highest-ranking members were secret occultists.”
Mihai added, “It was Sigi’s wife, Barbara of Cilli, who was said to be the original occultist. She was accused of alchemy, witchcraft, and immoral behavior by the courts. They called her the Black Queen, and she would have likely been burned at the stake had she not been taken by the plague. Some say her ghost still haunts the Yugoslavian city of Zagreb.”
His twin leaned over his ledger. “Some also say she had a macabre ring made to aid the order in their fight against the Ottoman Empire. They needed a secret weapon to keep the Turks from advancing across the continent. The Turks were rich and powerful, and very smart. The Holy Roman Empire needed something big to push their borders back.”
“And what is bigger than a dragon?” Mihai said, eyes shining with excitement. “But they would settle for the might of a dragon tethered inside a human body.”
Hot and cold chills raced over my body. My mind flicked back to the traders’ camp and Valentin’s stories of the Dacian great white wolf: a man’s soul inhabiting the body of a legendary beast.
But this was inverted. A mythical beast inside a human body.
Petar held up one finger. “However, in order to achieve this miraculous weapon of war, the Black Queen fashioned a ring from the femur bones of Turkish sorcerers. And she forged this ring in the blood of a Wallachian ruler named Vlad Dracul, whom we would know as the father of Vlad the Impaler. But the older Vlad would not wear it. He was a bit afraid of the Black Queen and feared the ring was cursed.”
“Rightly so,” Huck mumbled, still gripping my elbow.
“So he instead secretly gave it to his son,” Petar said.
Mihai smiled devilishly. “A bit like a king asking his right-hand man to taste his soup in case it’s poisoned. He wasn’t a very good father.”
