I'm No Longer Involved

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

"Sleeping." His mother sounded somewhat helpless.

"She ate too much at dinner. How often did she ever see so many meat dishes at home?

"Especially that creamy baked lobster. 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 softly as she spoke, but the smile quickly faded as her gaze fell on the Gargoyle in her son's hand.

She recognized this thing. Richard was almost certain of it at once.

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

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 "no longer involved," not "don't know."

"After I graduated from university, I left this house, married your father, and from that day onward, I cut ties with all of it."

Richard recalled some things from the past.

His mother had always been in poor health, especially amid Briston's coal smoke.

Yet she was uncannily accurate when it came to changes in the weather, even more reliable than the meteorological station's forecasts.

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

Evelyn had thought their mother simply had sharp ears, and Richard had believed that too.

Now he knew it was not sharp hearing.

It was intuition—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 sister's name, she sounded entirely different from when she spoke of Grandfather.

When she mentioned Grandfather, her voice was taut; when she mentioned Isabella, her whole body relaxed.

"She followed the Scholar path too. She started more than a decade before you did and has some connections in that circle."

"If you run into anything you're uncertain about in the future, Isabella is someone you can trust."

"I'll remember that."

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

"Get to bed 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, locking it behind him.

He first set 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 velvet dividers inside, separating it 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 crisp and sharp.

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

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

Enough for several months of rent for the whole family, enough to buy his mother's medicine for years, or enough to ensure Evelyn always had shoes that fit in every season.

He put the banknotes and gold coins back exactly as they had been, then shifted his attention 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 one 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, her ink-printed portrait, and the hushed discussion between those two men in bowler hats.

On the surface, Flower Moon Street was a gray area in the Imperial Capital, a place where mediums mingled with prostitutes.

But behind those walls—if there really was a behind those walls—there was probably another world.

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

The third compartment was empty. A small slip of paper lay beneath its lining, bearing several lines of writing:

"The legal channels for trading Curios in the Imperial Capital are limited.

"No. 7 Flower Moon Street deals in antique appraisal and consignment. Its proprietor is named 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."

There was another line below in even smaller writing: "Act within your means."

Richard moved the wooden box from the bedside table to beneath his pillow, wedged between the bedding and the 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 numbers on the panel slowly crept upward.

He turned the Gargoyle over and held it beneath the gas lamp, carefully studying 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, but did not fully match, the encryption methods used in these inscriptions.

He could recognize the first few characters, but obscure symbols began appearing afterward.

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, opened it to a blank page, and began copying the inscriptions on the first face of the base stroke by stroke beneath the lamp.

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

The points were still rising, slightly faster than before.

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

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 him that bronze pendant in order to test whether he had a latent circuit.

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

The fact that Grandfather had been willing to pay that cost meant the value of the test result far exceeded that of a Curio in his eyes.

But that raised a question.

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

Evelyn had gone too, and there had probably been other cousins from the branch families.

Why had only he been tested?

Given Gerald's character, there was no way he had not considered other candidates.

The true purpose of that gathering had likely never been mere reminiscing.

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

At the gathering, Grandfather had sat in the seat of honor and spoken to each younger family member one by one.

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

But looking back now, Grandfather had not spoken with any of them for long. After one or two sentences, he moved on to the next person.

At his level, detecting whether someone possessed a latent circuit was probably as straightforward as seeing whether they had a mole on their face.

Most people's results should have been clean. There would be no trace of a latent circuit in their bodies; they would be like iron plates, impervious even if Aether were poured onto them drop by drop.

Evelyn most likely belonged to that category.

If she had possessed a latent circuit, Grandfather could not possibly have given 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 blood.

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

That was why he had used a Curio as verification. The only miscalculation had been Richard's poor health.

Thinking further, even the Gargoyle in his hands and that wooden box had been carefully calculated.

Not too much, not too little—enough for him to get moving for a while, but not enough to make him think he could simply live off his inheritance.

Every word Grandfather had said tonight, every item he had given him—

All of it landed precisely on the line of "enough to give you a push, but not enough to walk for you."

This was a man who had carved the maximization of resource efficiency into his bones.

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

What did investors fear most? Their chosen stock turning rotten.

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

Richard saw that logic very clearly.