Chapter 26: "You're up early!"

Nikko peered blearily at the vaguely familiar symbols on the paper before him. Eyes shining with the light of discovery, his father peered up at him.

"Do you know what this is?" Solomon asked eagerly. "Can you read it?"

"I… No… I mean, I think…" Nikko closed his eyes, pushing his memory back through the hectic few years just past. "It's not something we've come across here, but I recognise it from somewhere."

"It was in amongst some of your Mom's papers," offered Solomon.

"Mom's?" Nikko looked up sharply. "But I've read all of Mom's stuff: I never found anything like this."

"Not those papers," his father grudgingly admitted. "These are things I've kept to myself. Letters and such."

"But Dad!"

"Letters to me," Solomon hinted, cutting short his son's admonition. "Private letters."

"Oh," Nikko's eyes glazed in an effort to re-route his brain. "Yeah, you can keep those."

"By the sounds of it you wouldn't be able to read them anyway," shrugged Solomon, rising and sitting down on the side of the bed by his son. "They're all written the same way as this one."

"Wait: so you can read this?" Nikko frowned, looking round at his father. "Then why ask me…"

"It was written for you," replied Solomon. He leant over and pointed at the top line. "See that there? That says 'Dearest Nikko' right there."

Nikko peered at the top line. "No, it doesn't: it says 'Dearest Nicholas'."

Solomon smirked. "So you can read it."

"Enough to know there are more than five letters in the second word!" Nikko countered. "I mean: some of the characters are familiar, but…"

"It's been a long time since you've seen them, I know," nodded Solomon. "Me too. I just wondered, when I saw it was addressed to you, if you knew it as well as I did. It was our code, you see: your Mom and me. We invented it. I never knew she taught it to you – or that she even thought about teaching it to you – until I found that."

Nikko focussed his mind on his mother. She had taught him a lot in the short time he had shared with her. Things like the odd characters on the page before him, however, were not among the list of things he had made it a priority to remember. Things like the sound of her voice. He focussed on her voice. She was telling him the story, about the star that Sagittarius shot down. The frown deepened on Nikko's face, brows drawing together and head tilting in mild confusion.

"What is it?" Solomon pressed, his voice hushed to avoid breaking the concentration so obviously written across his son's features.

"I don't know," murmured Nikko. "Might be nothing. Might just be because we've been talking about it recently."

"What?"

"I can't remember ever learning the symbols individually," he admitted and Solomon sagged a little. "What I do remember of them, the one time I can think of seeing them, was when Mom was telling me that story: the one about the star."

Solomon patted his son's shoulder. "That's what it is."

"Huh?" Nikko looked round, eyes wide, then down at the paper again.

"That's what's written there: the story," his father explained. "The one about Sagittarius and the star."

"Okay…" Nikko looked from the story to his father and back again. "And this is what couldn't wait for breakfast?"

"Not exactly," Solomon admitted. "At least, not just that. Here." He handed Nikko another few sheets of paper. "I translated it. I didn't want to wake you if I could do it myself. It was what I found that made me come wake you up."

Nikko placed the original papers down on the bed beside him and scanned the translation. For the most part, it was the same as Nikko remembered. The lonely god asked Sagittarius to shoot down a star, and the god rode the star to Earth and went in search of a bride. That much he remembered clearly. There had been stories of the perils the god had encountered on his journeys, but this had most often been a bedtime story, and by the time the god began his wanderings around the world, sleep had at least fogged, if not erased, the memory of those tales. Here, however, he held the complete legend. At least, so it appeared. The list of travels and travails went on with an unsettling familiarity until, finally, his tasks complete, the god found his bride and settled down on Earth, living, and dying, as a human.

Nikko looked up from the papers. "Woah!"

"I know!" Solomon enthused. "Nikko: this could be the clue we've been looking for! All this time! All this time and it was right under our noses! Hidden away in your mother's things."

"Do you think she knew?" Nikko breathed.

"How could she!" Solomon shrugged. "We didn't know then even half the stuff we know now. The crystal skulls, Antarctica: that all came later!"

"No, but…" Nikko floundered, waving the translation around in mid-air as he sought for words. "But Mom, this, the Sacred City: surely she must have known something in this was important?"

"Your mother liked to believe there was a grain of truth in every legend, and that that's how the legend starts."

"Dad, this is more than a grain!"

"Maybe that's what she didn't realise," offered Solomon. "I don't know: maybe she did know there was more to the story than just that."

Nikko nodded, looking down again at the legend he had once loved to hear. When he spoke again, his voice seemed far away. "We need to tell the others."

"I agree," nodded Solomon. "We should get started on it right away."

"No," said Nikko, slowly, marvelling that he had to be the voice of reason at this juncture. "We should each go take a shower, get dressed properly, have breakfast and then get started on it. By that time, Vincent and Maggie at least will be awake, and you can go find Cal and Juliet."

"Why me?" Solomon protested, laughing a little.

"Because I'm not gonna!" Nikko declared, standing and setting the translation down atop the original. "Now I'm hitting the shower and, Dad, I say this with love in my heart: you really ought to go do the same."

Solomon laughed and rose. "Yeah, yeah: I get it. The old man stinks. Fine. I'll see you downstairs."

XXXX

Juliet looked down at her notebook and sighed. The sigh became a yawn. She could still go back to bed. It was light outside, but still early. The nagging thoughts that had dragged her from sleep in the first place, however, would still be there. She tapped her pen on the pad. There were words dotted about the page, circled and joined with lines. The Templar scroll was one. The Wissembourg box was another. There was much rubbing out and changing of lines, but in the centre of the page, the word "Ring" was circled twice. At the bottom of the page, Juliet had written "Dorna" and circled it. Four lines led off of that circle, the first and straightest leading straight up to the Ring. The others led to the three items that had involved Dorna in some way: the Jerusalem finds, the Templar scroll, and the manuscript poor Ibrahim had contacted Professor Zond about. At the top of the page was a maze of circles and lines indicating the finds that Dorna had not interfered with, as far as she knew, and how they connected to each other and to the ring.

On either side of the word Ring were two separate articles: on the right, a circle encased the words "Ring legend", a line with an arrow mid-way connecting it to the Ring; on the other was "Nikko". The line that connected Nikko to the Ring had two arrows on it, in opposite directions, and the words "cause or effect?" scrawled under it. A solid line connected Nikko to the Egyptian box he had discovered in Wissembourg. Dotted lines picked their way through the tangle from Nikko to the Alaskan pyramid and the two finds that came directly from it. Juliet tapped the diagram again. Every find that was or possibly contained a part of the Ring had a link to Nikko. Those that didn't either linked to something that did, like the tablet in the Wissembourg box, or formed part of the lower half of the page. Of the three finds there, all of which Dorna had been on the trail of, two connected directly to the legend of the Ring. The only circle not connected to either the ring or its legend contained the words "Jerusalem finds". There had been a lot of artefacts brought home from Jerusalem, even with a brief tussle with Dorna there that had hastened the end of their work in the region. Some had been studied in detail since their return, but by no means all.

Juliet groaned and sat back. So Nikko seemed to have some connection to the Ring, but not the legend of the Ring. Surely that couldn't be right? And Dorna were having more luck at present tracing clues to the Ring legend than to the Ring itself. That surely had to be down to the two main expeditions: she knew the Ring was their main goal. If they'd missed the clue that led Professor Zond and the others to Alaska, but spotted the one that took them to Jerusalem, would that be enough to explain it? She closed her eyes. Maybe if she just let her mind drift for a minute.

"You're up early," said a voice behind her, startling her into wakefulness.

Juliet blinked in the glare of bright sunshine. She couldn't have fallen asleep, could she? Maybe she could have, she thought, rubbing her eyes. Sleep had been a fickle friend lately. She stretched and looked round. What she saw had the effect of three large espressos. Juliet floundered to cover her notes with her arm but it was too late. Nikko frowned down at the name peeking out from under her elbow.

"Why is my name in your notebook?"

XXXX

Anthony Blake inspected his reflection in the mirror. It was early, but he couldn't risk missing his target. She always stopped at the same coffee shop on her route to work. He would be there, waiting. If he got in before the crowds, he might be able to find a table that let him watch both the street and the interior. There was one he had in mind: one where she would have to walk past and turn around before she would see him. From then on, whether she went into the shop or not, he knew his next move. He would beg, he would plead, he would grovel if necessary! Whatever it took to draw her back to him, at least for long enough to find out what was going on in there and plan out the best time to put his other instructions into practice.

He had spent the entirety of the day before ensconced in his home office, memorising plots and plans, and was now confident he could find his way around any of the floors of the Veritas building. He had memorised the known security measures and taken heed of the advice on how to avoid them, bypass them, or detect others not listed. All that remained was to acquire some sort of update on the state of affairs in the building itself, and to somehow get close enough to Juliet to slip the button-sized device in his pocket into one of hers. Simple. He was ready. All he needed now was Juliet.