Chương 24: The Safe Beneath the Church

The passage beneath the church was longer than Kichan had expected. He went down a narrow staircase, passed under a low ceiling, and opened two old iron doors. The walls were damp, and the floor was old stone. Small bulbs had been set here and there, staining everything yellow. It was the same kind of yellow light as the café. The café on the day they had parted. The place where the dreams had first begun. The moment the Voynich Manuscript had borrowed Seoyoon's face.

Strangely enough, everything kept circling back to that same yellow light. It wasn't as if the piece of Loagaeth inside his coat was moving. But the inside of his throat would not stop noticing it. One phrase. A very short opening phrase. If he managed to read just that much properly, something might open. And there was no guarantee it would open into anything good. Kichan bit his lip.

"I'm absolutely not reading it." Dust twitched its legs on his shoulder.

"Seriously." There was no answer this time either. Footsteps followed from behind. Lee Seoyoon, and the people with her. There was no way Golden Dawn didn't know about this passage. Or maybe telling him about the passage had already been part of their calculations. Kichan brushed his fingertips along the piping in the wall. Old iron, lime-caked joints, locking pins replaced long ago, wiring connected to the shop above, and farther down the passage, a door that felt noticeably sturdier.

There was a safe on the other side of it. There was simply more metal there.

"A fragment, huh." Kichan muttered under his breath.

"There's more inside." Dust climbed down from his shoulder and scurried along the wall. Its tiny wire body moved quickly through the cracks in the stone. Kichan followed the sensation. Every time the passage turned, the ceiling dipped lower, and the equipment bag on his shoulder scraped the wall. Kichan opened the zipper. As soon as he pulled out the wake-up rod, the passage felt even narrower. The ceiling was low and the walls were close. If he swung wide, he would hit the wall before he hit a person.

Even so, the familiar weight in his hand steadied his breathing a little.

"That's better." At the end of the passage was a space that looked almost like a small chapel. The ceiling was low, and old holy paintings hung on the walls. The faces in the paintings had gone dark with candle soot. A stone altar stood in the middle, and behind it was a single iron door. Kichan stopped in front of it. Three mechanical locks. One electronic lock. And one condition tied over all of them to keep the door from making noise. It was a sensation from Loagaeth. Do not make a sound.

The condition hung over the door itself. Kichan laughed under his breath.

"Everybody keeps saying the same thing." A speaker crackled from somewhere overhead. There was no way to tell where the speaker had been hidden in the old chapel. It was Lee Seoyoon's voice.

"Mr. Han Kichan. Can you hear me?" Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. Kichan looked up.

"You even have broadcast equipment down here."

"Place the fragment on the altar. If you do, we will coordinate with the local authorities and resolve this as quietly as possible."

"That somehow sounds more threatening when you put it that way."

"It really is dangerous." That part sounded sincere. Kichan placed his hand on the iron door.

"Then why are you trying to keep it for yourselves?" Lee Seoyoon did not answer at once. Kichan hated the silence.

"What you're saying is that dangerous people want to take a dangerous object."

"We can control it." Kichan gave a short, dry laugh.

"You said that in London too. And in New York." At that moment, the door behind him opened. People carrying shields came in. This time they were more careful. The muzzles were kept low, and one of them held a strange metal loop. Something for restraining a person. Another was pressing a small device deep into his ear, and someone else touched a white plastic case hanging at his neck. Sound-dampening equipment. Kichan twisted his mouth.

"So you do know." Lee Seoyoon's voice sank lower through the speaker.

"We know. That's why we're stopping you." Kichan raised the wake-up rod. He could fight. The ceiling was low and the stone pillars were close. If he shoved one shield into the wall before they could spread out, he might be able to block at least the first line. His eyes were already moving between the edge of a shield, the corner of the altar, and the iron door handle. At the same time, though, the piece of Loagaeth inside his coat was quietly opening. Kichan pressed the feeling down. Don't make a sound.

He took one step back toward the iron door. When a shield moved forward, he did not strike it head-on. Instead, he used the tip of the wake-up rod to shove an old candle stand base across the floor. It scraped over the stone and wedged itself beneath the shield. The man's upper body pitched forward, and the corridor clogged on the spot. The metal loop thrown by the second man missed Kichan's arm and hooked onto the iron door handle instead.

Following the grain of metal the Rohonc sensation showed him, Kichan slid the tip of the wake-up rod in and drove it down. The loop crumpled. The handle dropped with it. Click. Kichan stopped. So did the people with the shields. That was not what he had meant to do. But the door had reacted.

"... Huh?" Lee Seoyoon's voice sharpened through the speaker.

"That door must not be opened."

"I think you're a little late with that one." Kichan touched the iron door. A condition from the Book of Soyga wavered along its edge. Custodian. Church. Bookseller. Silence. And carrier. Kichan felt the piece of Loagaeth inside his coat. The fragment was the key. The door was already recognizing him as the carrier. Kichan turned his wrist just a little. The iron door opened. The safe beyond it was small. But the air inside was completely different from the air outside.

Old drawers lined the walls, and a low preservation stand sat in the middle. Several torn pieces of paper had been placed on it. Not all of them were from Loagaeth. Some looked like sheet music. Some looked like prayers. Some had so many blank spaces they looked like pages that had simply been ripped apart. But Kichan knew. The three pages in the center. Those were the core fragments of Loagaeth. The three pages were not attached to each other. The gaps between them mattered even more. Kichan did not reach out.

Dust climbed onto the preservation stand first. Just before its tiny legs touched the edge of the paper, Kichan snapped his fingers. Dust froze.

"Don't touch it." Dust folded its legs. Kichan slowly stepped beside the stand. He could not read the letters with his eyes. But the inside of his throat kept trying to imitate them. Kichan tightened his jaw. One. Two. He moved his fingers as if he were counting breaths. Instead of making sound, he pressed the rhythm with his fingertips. Like playing guitar.

The way the left hand remembered the shape of the chord and the right hand remembered the beat, Kichan used his fingertips instead of his mouth to press the position of the opening phrase. The pages trembled, just slightly. Then the trembling lost its weight. One page at the edge lifted a little from the glass surface. The other fragments followed slowly, as if they had taken in a damp breath. The blank spaces moved. The plant diagrams of the Voynich Manuscript. The metallic grain of the Rohonc copy.

The conditions of the Book of Soyga. Those three sensations hung around the blank spaces of Loagaeth like lines under tension. Kichan saw his own throat reflected in the glass of the preservation stand. Every time he swallowed, his Adam's apple moved just a little, and the blank spaces between the pages trembled with it. This was how the other three documents were made to sing. It was not a conclusion he had reached by reading.

The lines at his fingertips were being drawn up into his throat, and his body understood it before his mind did. He did not take all three of the central pages. He took one page from the edge, the one that fit with the first fragment already in his possession. It was the part where the opening phrase began and the severed breath after it continued. Kichan now had two pieces of Loagaeth in hand. Two core fragments remained inside the safe. He wrapped only that much in cloth.

Lee Seoyoon's voice sank lower through the speaker.

"Mr. Han Kichan. I am telling you this for the last time. If you carry that out of there, this becomes an affair between states." Kichan tucked the cloth inside his coat.

"Then the states can do a little reflecting."

"This is not the time for jokes."

"I know." Kichan looked at the shields outside the safe.

"That's why it's so irritating." He raised the wake-up rod again. Beside the preservation stand was a narrow vent. Dust ran there first. Kichan caught the vent cover with his fingertips. The screws were old. They did not come loose at once. He pressed down on the screw head with the tip of the wake-up rod. The dented groove caught again, and the cover dropped free. The passage beyond it was narrow. Too narrow for a person. But Dust could get through. Dust vanished inside.

Kichan kept his eyes open and followed only the sensation. At the end of the vent, Dust found its way to a small door behind the chapel. Beyond that door was the alley beside the church. It was already blocked off. Kichan turned back toward the safe door. The men with the shields had reset their stance.

"Move." Kichan said it. None of them understood him. Even so, they all understood what he meant. Kichan ran. The wake-up rod struck the underside of the first shield, and his body slipped past the altar. The shield caught on a stone pillar. The second man reached out, but at that very moment Dust touched the wiring overhead and the lights in the chapel flickered once. That half beat. Kichan shoved the door open and burst outside. The afternoon light of Rome stabbed at his eyes.

And in that light, police vehicles were waiting. Vehicles. Shields. Gun muzzles. Farther off, something that looked like an armored vehicle too. Tourists had been pushed back below the church steps. Some were holding up phones. Some were crying. Each time the red emergency lights swept over the wall, the windows of the shop with the holy paintings flashed as if blood had been smeared across them. Kichan stopped.

"Ah." He spoke under his breath.

"This is definitely making the news."