Page 31

“Okay. Third floor.”

He doesn’t hesitate. He takes a ring of old iron keys from his waistcoat pocket and puts them in my hand, closing my fingers over them with both of his.

“Those rules were for an employee,” he says. “You are my mate. Nothing in this house is closed to you.”

Hoard is hers, he adds, in a lower voice that isn’t quite his own. Then he blinks. “He wanted you to hear that one directly.”

The first room is gold.

Actual gold. Coins in open chests, in neat stacked columns, in a bathtub, for some reason. Ingots on shelves. Candlesticks, chalices, plates, a crown I am choosing not to ask about. The air smells like metal and cedar and him, and the lamp he switches on makes the whole room glow like the inside of his eyes.

The second room is paintings, hung frame to frame from floor to ceiling. The third is books and manuscripts behind glass, climate-controlled, humming faintly.

I stand in the middle of the gold room and do the only thing I know how to do in a crisis. I start asking questions.

“Where are the appraisals?”

“There are none.”

“Insurance?”

“No.”

“Inventory? Provenance records? A spreadsheet? A list on a napkin?”

He looks genuinely puzzled. “Nina. One does not appraise a hoard.”

“One absolutely does. One appraises everything. Silas, there is a bathtub full of doubloons in here.”

“They are Spanish escudos.”

“That is not making me feel better.”

The corner of his mouth moves. He is enjoying this. I can tell because his eyes have gone amber with little flecks of gold, the color they go when I argue with him and he likes it.

“You may catalog all of it,” he says. “If it would make you happy. The coins are stacked by denomination.”

“It would make me ecstatic. It would also take ten years.”

“I am in no hurry.” He holds out the last key. “There is one more room.”

The fourth room is smaller than the others. Older. A dark red rug, a single window looking down the mountain, shelves of velvet-lined cases with glass lids. Jewelry. Fabergé. A sword with a hilt full of rubies. Things so beautiful I’m afraid to breathe near them.

And on the center table, in the place of honor, a new case.

The velvet is the deep blue of a jeweler’s box. Under the glass, arranged as carefully as he arranges everything, are four objects.

A blue Bic pen with a chewed cap.

A white mug with a chip along the handle.

One small gold hoop earring.

And a cheap brown claw clip with one slightly bent tooth.

I stare at it for a long time.

“Disposed of?” I ask finally.