Something powerful is drawing Ward back to Devil's Island. Something he thought he had forgotten. He must evade vicious lighthouse keeper George Jaggles in order to rescue it, but Jaggles will soon be the least of his worries. Because an assassin is...
"The MSI'll have confiscated them," he said. "Mildew reckons they would have seized my stuff when they released me."
"You didn't tell Mildew that they can...?"
"I didn't tell anyone. The MSI won't know what they are. What they can do."
Carmen wasn't so sure about that. It was possible the MSI knew exactly what the dice were. That they had freed Ward only to get their hands on the dice. "Did Mildew have any idea what the MSI would do with them?"
"She reckoned they'd throw them in the Arcane Vault."
"Does that even exist?"
"She thinks so."
"What if they..." she swallowed "...use them?
"They'll only work for me," Ward said, and there was that petulant note in his voice again. "They came to me."
She looked down at her lap and thought about all she had been told. She knew Ward was watching her closely, and she knew why. He had not forgotten. Of course he hadn't.
"You know something about them," he said.
She nodded slowly. She wished she'd never said anything. The dice seemed to have some kind of unhealthy hold over Ward's mind. This would only feed it. But she had already let the fel out of the bag: to lie now would only make him more suspicious.
"I've seen them before," she said.
His eyes widened.
"Not for ages," she went on quickly. "But I recognised them from your description. My pere had them."
"But that's impossible."
She shrugged. "He had them in his workshop up on a shelf. I figured they were just something handed down through the family. They looked very old, like you said. I never asked him about them. I definitely don't remember anything like – like what you said they did."
"What happened to them?"
"I don't know. It only occurred to me now that I haven't seen them in years."
Ward frowned. "It doesn't make sense."
"Maybe there's more than one set?"
Ward shook his head. "There's only one. Don't ask me how I know that. I just do." He was silent and thoughtful for a moment. "I have to get them back. They belong to me. I could use them to – help Nick. They're very powerful."
"And dangerous," Carmen said.
"Not in the right hands. I think I was beginning to be able to control them. Each time it was easier."
"You have no idea what they can do Ward. They could get you killed. They almost did."
"They came to ME," he spat. Then he checked himself. "They came to me," he said more evenly. "That man, the Author. He dreamed about me."
"And you dreamed about him," Carmen admitted, but her thoughts had gone to the man who had given the dice to the author, who had appeared suddenly on the street and was killed by the metal wagon. Had he thought the dice were his too?
What she wanted most was to run all this past Corvus. He would be able to make sense of it. But it would be hopeless to suggest this to Ward. She already knew what his answer would be.
As if reading her mind, he said: "We can't tell anyone about this. Okay? Not even Slops. Nobody. Remember the Oliphant?"
Of course she did. How could she forget? Asking Snapper too many questions had set in motion a chain of events that had almost got her own parents killed.
"But I do want you to ask your pere about the dice," Ward said. "I need to know where he got them. Where they went. Please?"
Carmen looked away. She didn't like any of this. On the other hand, what could it hurt to find out as much as she could? If Mildew was right, the dice were safely locked away in the Arcane Vault by now, a place of which not even the location was known, and, if the legends were true, an impregnable stronghold.
"Okay," she said. "I'll do it."
Ward smiled, and she saw a momentary flash of the boy she had once known.
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