Zachary nods, recalling the hand in the glass jar and wondering if its former owner also once occupied this chair. The knife moves away.
Allegra steps aside but remains hovering by his shoulder.
“You are going to tell me everything you remember about that book. You are going to write down every detail you can recall, from its contents to its binding and after you are finished I will put you on a train to Vermont and you will never set foot on this island called Manhattan again. You will speak to no one about the Harbor, about this building or this conversation, about anyone you have met or about that book. Because I’m afraid if you do, if you write or tweet or so much as drunkenly whisper the phrase Starless Sea in a darkened pub I will be forced to make a phone call to the operative that I’ve stationed within sniper distance of your mother’s farmhouse.”
“The what?” Zachary manages to ask despite the desert dryness of his throat.
“You heard me,” Allegra says. “It’s a lovely house. Such a nice garden with the trellis, it must be beautiful in the spring. It would be a pity to break one of those stained-glass windows.”
She holds something out in front of him. A phone displaying a photograph of a house covered in snow. His mother’s house. The nondenominational holiday lights are still up on the porch.
“I thought you might need more encouragement,” Allegra says, putting the phone away and walking back to the other end of the table. “Some pressure on something you value. You haven’t had enough time to value the other two yet regardless of how smitten you might be. I guessed your mother would be a better pressure point than your father what with his new and improved family. We’d have to take
out the whole house in that case. Gas explosion, maybe.”
“You wouldn’t…” Zachary starts but stops. He has no idea what this woman would or wouldn’t do.
“Casualties have come before,” she says, mildly. “More will follow. This is important. It is more important than my life and more important than yours. You and I are footnotes, no one will miss us if we are not included in this story. We exist outside the egg, we always have.” She gives him a smile that doesn’t reach her mismatched eyes and lifts her teacup.
“That egg is filled with gold,” Zachary says, looking at it again. What he had taken for a crack was a stray hair caught on the lens of his glasses.
“What did you say?” Allegra asks, teacup pausing mid-lift, but then the lights go out.
The sword was the greatest the smith had ever made after years of making the most exquisite swords in all the land. He had not spent an inordinate amount of time on its crafting, he had not used the finest of materials, but still this sword was a weapon of a caliber that exceeded his expectations.
It was not made for a particular customer and the smith found himself at a loss as he tried to decide what to do with it. He could keep it for himself but he was better at crafting swords than at using them. He was reluctant to sell it, though he knew it would fetch a good price.
The sword smith did what he always did when he felt indecisive, he paid a visit to the local seer.
There were many seers in neighboring lands who were blind and saw in ways that others could not though they could not use their eyes.
The local seer was merely nearsighted.
The local seer was often found at the tavern, at a secluded table in the back of the room, and he would tell the futures of objects or people if he was bought a drink.
(He was better at seeing the futures of objects than the futures of people.)
The sword smith and the seer had been great friends for years. Sometimes he would ask the seer to read swords.
He went to the tavern and brought the new sword. He bought the seer a drink.
“To Seeking,” the seer said, lifting his cup.
“To Finding,” the sword smith replied, lifting his drink in return.
They talked of current events and politics and the weather before the smith showed him the sword.
The seer looked at the sword for a long time. He asked the smith for another drink and the smith obliged.
The seer finished his second drink and then handed the sword back.
“This sword will kill the king,” the seer told the smith.
“What does that mean?” the smith asked.
The seer shrugged.
“It will kill the king,” he repeated. He said no more about it.