He shifted in his chair, his expression struggling toward neutrality.
“I’ve a few more surprises for you tonight,” Dr. Silk announced, “entertainments I’m sure you won’t soon forget.” He gestured and six men in white face rolled out a stone sarcophagus, balanced on a hand wagon, and placed it in front of the daïs.
Karigan groaned.
“From within the Capital, I bring you a box of mysteries, the sarcophagus of a prominent person who lived long ago.”
Karigan tensed. The Capital, she remembered, was essentially her home province of L’Petrie. She was too far away to make out the glyphs carved in the stone of the sarcophagus.
“What treasures were buried with this man?” Dr. Silk asked. “He was, after all, an affluent merchant of Corsa.”
Karigan stiffened even more and, as Dr. Silk took a dramatic pause, her fear grew with the pairing of the words “merchant” and “Corsa.”
“Open it!” some of the guests called out. “Let us see!”
“You want to know what has lain asleep for so long?” Dr. Silk’s question was followed by choruses of, “Yes! Open it now!”
“It is a good thing the professor is not here,” Cade grumbled to Karigan, unaware of her growing horror. “He cannot abide these performances of desecration.”
“Open it!” the guests cried out.
Dr. Silk clapped once and the servants in white face returned with tools. While they worked levers beneath the heavy cover, Karigan sent up a prayer that no one from her time was in that coffin, no one she knew. A merchant of Corsa? It couldn’t possibly be her father, could it? There had been many affluent merchants in Corsa throughout the centuries. Even if the chances were miniscule, she could not help but think it.
To her, her father still lived, carried on, if in another time. She could not help but wonder what had become of him. How would he have responded to her never returning from Blackveil? He would not have remained idle while Amberhill ravaged Sacoridia. No, he would not have stood for it. Had he been lost in the turmoil as many of her friends must have been? Or had he died of sickness or old age?
Surely Dr. Silk knew nothing of her true identity. He couldn’t have found out, could he? Was he doing this to torture her? Anything was possible in this strange world, but she did not think he’d allow her to walk freely if he knew who she really was. The coffin of a Corsa merchant was quite a coincidence, though.
She swallowed hard, wishing to be someplace else, anywhere, but she could not tear her gaze away from the servants levering the cover off the sarcophagus. Stone grated against stone and the cover teetered on edge, finally sliding to the floor with a thunderous boom. Dust rose from the open sarcophagus, and Dr. Silk gazed down into it from his perch on the daïs.
“Ah, yes, a nicely carved coffin lies within.” He gestured, and the servants reached down into the sarcophagus and lifted. “Gold handles. Very nice.”
Karigan chewed on her bottom lip. She would skewer Dr. Silk if this were her father, and then they could desecrate his grave.
The servants hoisted a coffin of dark wood out and rested it crosswise atop the sarcophagus. The handles did appear to be gold. Would her father have demanded gold handles on his coffin? Would he have been so frivolous? Not her father, no, but her aunts might have done so for their younger brother.
“There is an inscription on the lid,” Dr. Silk said. “Here sleeps the greatest merchant of all Corsa . . .”
DR. SILK’S EXHIBITION OF BONES AND BLOOD
Karigan closed her eyes, waiting.
“He is,” Dr. Silk said, “Orhald Fallows, gold merchant.”
A breath of relief gusted from Karigan’s lungs, her veil fluttered in front of her lips. Not her father, but yes, she’d heard of Orhald Fallows, who, it was rumored, had had Breyan’s touch for gold. From his shop came all sorts of fabulous objects, including a gold and bejeweled bathtub for the last Sealender king. That put him at two hundred years earlier than her father’s time. She was surprised his entire coffin was not made of gold, but perhaps he was humbler than legend made him out to be.
Dr. Silk also seemed to know Orhald Fallows’ history, and Karigan felt the excitement build in the audience as he tantalized them with whatever incredible artifacts might have been buried with the gold merchant. He gestured again, and his servants lifted the lid off the coffin. She was not close enough to smell the immediate fetid air that would have risen from it, but she could imagine the stink of old rot, of bones that had lain undisturbed for about four centuries. The servants paused before reaching into the coffin.
“Careful now,” Dr. Silk instructed them.
While everyone’s attention was riveted on the coffin, additional servants placed a table on the daïs next to Dr. Silk. The shrouded form of Orhald Fallows was then lifted out and carried up to the table.
Dr. Silk explored the winding sheets, cutting them away with a knife layer by layer, seeking burial items and tokens as he went. He found a stoppered gold flask that would have been filled with wine or brandy that served as a common ritual offering to the gods. There were unformed gold nuggets scattered throughout and a scale bundled at Orhald’s feet. Sheaves of parchment were found between the wrappings, prayers for the departed written by the family. Dr. Silk ignored such mundane items, digging for gold. At last he cut away the final sheet, and there lay Orhald Fallows’s skeletal form, exposed, with a full head of white hair and garbed in faded red velvet robes.