Silas threw his shoulder into the door, forcing it to open all the way. He grunted, and when the door finally gave, something crashed on the other side.
“What was that?” Elswyth asked.
Silas disappeared through the crack in the ancient door. Elswyth followed, squeezing into the opening. They came into a pitch-dark room, but Silas had already produced his elderwood wand. Dim light illuminated a pile of wooden boxes and broken clay. Shards of it lay smashed on the floor, scattered amid more crates, all of them stuffed with vases and tablets.
“I imagine it was some very priceless pottery,” Silas said. His wand cast light around the room. A hallway lined with endless dust-covered shelves stretched before her.
“What is this place, Silas?” she asked.
“I did say something was stolen from me, didn’t I? We’re where the Empire keeps all its stolen things.”
“And where is that?”
“The museum, of course.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
In floriography, Blackthorn meansdifficulty.
Are you mad? I am not going to steal something from the British Museum.”
Silas stepped over the pottery shards and into the larger room. “As I said, it was stolen from me. You can think about it less as theft and more as… repatriation.”
“And who exactly stole it from you, that it wound up here?”
“The government,” Silas said.
“Then that’s not stealing! That’s confiscation. Quite legal confiscation, which is more than can be said about breaking into museums through tunnels. The guards likely already heard the pottery breaking, Silas. We should leave while we can.”
“We’re deep in the museum’s archives. Trust me, no one is patrolling down here. It’s only us, and the collective cultural history of half the world stored in boxes.”
Elswyth raised her elderwood wand, which cast a glow over the entire room. Shelves extended on either side of her until they vanished into shadows. Each shelf held innumerable artifacts: masks and scrolls and goblets, jewelry and totems and idols. Any of themcould have been displayed proudly in another museum. Here, they sat gathering dust.
She turned around. Behind her, the dark catacombs stretched endlessly. She couldn’t imagine the repercussions if they were caught. And yet, could she find her way back on her own? The tunnels stretched for miles, twisting into the earth like roots. She thought of wandering for days, strength slowly fading, only to die in the dark. The thought made her shiver.
She tapped her foot, refusing to move forward. “And why, exactly, did the government confiscate your artifact?”
Silas looked at her sidelong, arching an eyebrow. “It has some unique properties. They felt it would be better off in the hands of more competent researchers.”
Elswyth’s curiosity prickled at her. “What sort of unique properties?”
“You’ll see. Come on.”
Silas approached a large staircase and began to climb. Elswyth took one last glance at the tunnel behind her. Then, flustered, she followed.
“You are not very forthcoming. Do you know that? Especially for someone who claims to need my help.”
“You would do well to whisper from here on, Miss Elderwood. We’re entering the main rotunda.”
Silas opened a heavy black door, and the two stepped out into a cavernous room. Above them, a glass atrium sprawled over the central rotunda of the museum. At the center of the room stood an elderwood tree in a raised bed, ringed by white marble. The leaves rustled without a breeze, casting eerie white light over the empty room. She thought about the cluster of glowing roots by the sealed door. Had that been the very same elderwood tree?
Silas closed the door behind them, gently pulling it shut. Still, the click seemed like an explosion in the empty room. He took Elswyth’s hand and strode across the central chamber. Elswyth watched the moon peer through the glass roof, casting long shadows across the marble floor.
They entered one of the archways on the opposite side of the courtyard and then lost themselves in a labyrinth of halls. Whole Babylonian temples stood reconstructed in huge alcoves, alongside Sumerian tablets and Akkadian statues. Finally, they came to a glass case, tucked away in an unfashionable corner. A beam of moonlight from the high window illuminated the case and lone artifact within.
The amber jewel shone in the soft light, seeming to burn with a flame of its own, like an animal’s eye peering out from the dark. Silas moved toward the case, the orange light reflecting in his eyes. Elswyth realized that she’d seen the amulet before. Silas had been wearing it the day she caught him with Venus in the hedgerows and again the night when they’d been alone together in the laboratory. She’d assumed it was an artifact, but certainly not something worth confiscation by the government. Up close, she could see a pattern of leaves delicately etched into the amber.
“There you are,” Silas said, the stone’s light reflecting in his eyes.
