I'm No Longer Involved

"Mom, where's Evelyn?" Richard asked.

"Sleeping." His mother sounded a little helpless.

"She ate too much at dinner. When had she ever seen so many meat dishes at home?

"Especially that lobster gratin. She ate more than half of it by herself."

"She got sleepy as soon as she returned to her room, so I told her to lie down early."

Margaret smiled faintly as she spoke, but the smile quickly faded. Her gaze fell on the Gargoyle in Richard's hand.

She knew what it was. Richard was almost immediately certain of that.

"Mom, Grandfather told me a lot. Do you have anything..." he began cautiously.

Margaret raised a hand, stopping him from continuing. "I'm no longer involved in matters of that world."

Richard noticed that his mother had said she was "no longer involved," not that she "didn't know."

"After I graduated from university, I left this house and married your father. From that day on, I cut myself off from all of this."

Richard recalled certain things from the past.

His mother had always been in poor health, and the coal smoke in Briston made it especially bad.

Yet her predictions of changes in the weather were astonishingly accurate, more reliable even than the weather station's forecasts.

She could also tell who had come before they even entered the house.

Evelyn had thought their mother simply had sharp hearing. Richard had thought so too.

Now he knew it was not sharp hearing.

It was Inspiration, suppressed, sealed away, voluntarily abandoned... but the foundation was still there.

"Oh, right. You should be able to meet your aunt Isabella after the Cicero Cup ends."

When his mother mentioned her younger sister, her manner was completely different from when she spoke of his grandfather.

Her voice tightened when she mentioned his grandfather; when she mentioned Isabella, her whole body relaxed.

"She follows the Scholar path too. She started more than ten years before you and has some connections in that circle."

"If you encounter anything you're unsure of in the future, Isabella is someone you can trust."

"I'll remember that."

Margaret nodded but said no more. She reached over and straightened his crooked shirt collar.

"Get some sleep early."

"You should rest early too, Mom. Don't force yourself when you're unwell."

His mother froze for a moment, then rubbed her son's head. "Since when did you learn to care about people?"

"Recently."

"Then keep it up."

Richard turned and pushed open the door to his room, then locked it behind him.

He first placed the Gargoyle on his desk, then sat on the edge of the bed and laid the wooden box flat across his knees.

Opening the lid, he saw that the interior had been lined with velvet dividers, separated into three compartments.

The first compartment held a stack of folded banknotes and several gold coins.

He checked the denominations one by one—five pounds, five pounds, two notes.

The gold coins were two Sovereigns, in excellent condition, their serrated edges clear and sharp.

Together with the banknotes, they came to roughly twelve pounds.

Twelve pounds. The figure automatically translated itself into Briston prices in his mind:

Enough to cover the family's rent for several months, buy his mother medicine for years, or ensure Evelyn's shoe cabinet never lacked a pair of properly fitting shoes in any season.

He returned the banknotes and coins exactly as they had been, then shifted his gaze to the second compartment.

The second compartment contained a sealed letter of introduction, its wax seal stamped with the Ashford Family crest.

There was no recipient's name on the envelope, only a single line: "Present this letter at No. 7 Flower Moon Street."

Flower Moon Street. The page from that newspaper on the train surfaced in his mind.

Medium Lady Mary, the mimeographed portrait, and the hushed discussion between those two men in bowler hats.

On the surface, Flower Moon Street was a gray area of the Imperial Capital, a place where mediums and brothels mingled.

But behind the walls—if there truly was something behind them—there was probably another world.

He carefully turned the envelope over. The wax seal was intact, with no sign that it had ever been opened.

The third compartment was empty. Beneath it lay a small slip of paper bearing several lines:

"Curios have limited legal circulation channels in the Imperial Capital.

"No. 7 Flower Moon Street deals in antique appraisal and consignment. Its proprietor is surnamed Donald and has had dealings with the Ashford Family for many years.

"If you need to purchase or consign related items, you may go there with this letter."

Below that was another line in smaller writing: "Act within your means."

Richard moved the wooden box from the bedside table to beneath his pillow, wedged between the bedding and mattress.

He left the Gargoyle on the desk, pulled over a chair, and sat before it.

His palm pressed against the stone surface again, and the number on the panel slowly crept upward.

He turned the Gargoyle over and leaned close beneath the gas lamp, carefully identifying the first set of inscriptions.

He had seen the basic framework of the Western Continent's ancient inscription system in From Temple to Podium, the book Mr. Hutton had given him.

But that book focused on the origins and evolution of religious Ritual terminology. It overlapped with the encryption methods used in these inscriptions, but did not entirely match them.

He could recognize the first few characters, but unfamiliar symbols began appearing after that.

There was no rush today. He would first copy down all the inscriptions, then compare them slowly when he had time later.

He took a notebook from his schoolbag, turned to a blank page, and began tracing the inscription on the first side of the base stroke by stroke under the lamplight.

After about ten minutes, he set down his pen, righted the Gargoyle, and covered it with his palm for a while longer.

The points were still rising, slightly faster than before.

Probably because his palm had more contact area and fit more closely against it.

As he stroked the Gargoyle, his mind raced.

The conversation in the study had contained too much information. He needed to break it down piece by piece.

First was the matter of the pendant.

Gerald had personally admitted that he had instructed Vincent to give Richard the Copper Pendant in order to test whether he had a potential Circuit.

A Curio, even one of ordinary quality used as testing material, was still extremely valuable.

His grandfather's willingness to pay that price showed that, in his eyes, the value of the test result far exceeded that of a Curio.

But that raised a question.

At the last family gathering, he had not been the only member of the younger generation present.

Evelyn had attended too, and there had probably been other cousins from collateral branches.

Why had only he been tested?

Given Gerald's personality, he could not possibly have failed to consider other candidates.

The gathering's true purpose had probably never been merely catching up.

Richard tried hard to search through fragments of memory from that day.

At the gathering, his grandfather had sat in the seat of honor and spoken with each junior in turn.

At the time, Richard had paid no attention to it, assuming it was simply an elder's routine concern.

But thinking back now, his grandfather had not spoken with any of the young people for long, moving on to the next after only a sentence or two.

At his level, detecting whether someone possessed a potential Circuit was probably as straightforward as seeing whether there was a mole on their face.

Most people's results should have been clean, with no trace of a potential Circuit in their bodies. They were like iron plates—Aether could be poured over them, and not a single drop would seep in.

Evelyn most likely belonged to that category.

If she had possessed a potential Circuit, Grandfather could not possibly have sent only Richard a testing pendant.

And what about himself?

Richard lowered his head and looked at his palm.

His mother should have a Circuit... though she had not said so directly just now, judging from Grandfather's attitude and all the signs, it was practically certain.

His mother's Circuit might have been passed down to her descendants through bloodline.

When Grandfather had looked him over at that gathering, perhaps he had already caught something unusual, though he had not been entirely certain.

That was why he had used a Curio as verification. The only miscalculation was that Richard's body had been too frail.

Thinking more deeply, even this Gargoyle and the wooden box in his possession had been carefully calculated.

Not too much, not too little—enough to let him operate for a while, but not enough to make him feel that he could lie back and live off his savings.

Every word Grandfather had spoken to him tonight, everything he had given him,

had fallen exactly on the line of "enough to give you a push, but not walk for you."

This was a man who had carved maximum resource efficiency into his bones.

But precisely because of that, the support he offered was relatively reliable.

What did investors fear most? Their target stock turning worthless.

So long as Richard continued to produce value, Gerald would continue increasing his investment.

Richard saw that logic very clearly.