To Jack’s surprise, a calm voice appeared directly inside his head.
“State your purpose.”
Jack nearly jumped.
“Well, that’s unsettling.”
The Archivist waited. Jack glanced at Madelaine.
She gave him an encouraging nod. Right. Press on. Fate of the universe involved. But did she know they were speaking in his head? Maybe not.
Jack tried again. “I’m here on behalf of a traveler.”
The silver alien blinked again. But no words lit up in Jack’s head. Nothing.
“I’m looking for something that was left in your care.”
The Archivist’s glowing eyes brightened.
“Many things are left in our care.”
“Okay. Fair point.”
Jack rubbed the back of his neck.
He thought about everything they’d been through.
The Secret Keeper. The packages. The wedding. Malvoraxis Veil. Verdara. Crooked Halo. The mission. Then something clicked.
Every clue they’d found so far had centered around one thing. Not ownership. Or even stewardship. The Paladin Courier didn’t own anything. She collected things. This was basically all some elaborate scavenger hunt to retrieve and collect a bunch of things, hopefully for a grand purpose they’d be told about in the final clue.
Jack looked directly at the Archivist.
“We seek what was long ago entrusted to your care. Now the Paladin Courier is ready to collect it.”
The glowing eyes intensified. The surrounding Archivists suddenly turned toward him. The marketplace noise seemed to fade.
Jack swallowed. Apparently, he’d said something important. The group of them seemed to be mentally discussing something.
The Archivist turned back to him.
“You are not the Paladin Courier.”
“No,” Jack said and pointed to Madelaine. “She is. However, my understanding is that I—as her husband—must speak for her in this forum. Is that accurate?”
The Archivist looked at Madelaine briefly and turned away. There was a longer silent pow-wow with his friends. After several moments, they seemed to come to a decision.
For long seconds, nobody moved.
Then the nearest Archivist—Jack thought it was the being who’d been speaking in his head—slowly reached beneath the counter.
When its hand emerged, it held a translucent crystal rod about the size of a flash drive.
A thin beam of light flickered and came to life on one flat side of the crystal flash drive. There were several colorful and shifting images—Symbols? Coordinates?—that Jack definitely did not understand.
Inside the drive, tiny threads of silver light flowed like living circuitry. The thing practically glowed.
He hoped Madelaine would understand the meaning of the colorful shifting images. Perhaps it wasn’t important. Just a lightshow for him during the retrieval process.
