- 9 -
Tyki lifted a pickaxe, brought it down on a coarse-grained rock of unremarkable brownish color to chip away a few pieces, and sifted through the pile of rubble that was scattered under his feet. The fifth day of searching for a precious gemstone for their new boss was as futile as the rest. He wiped the grime off his face with the back of a dirty sleeve and repeated the monotonous movements, cracking the stone, grinding through the bedrock, until his pickaxe hit a hard vein that could only be destroyed with explosives.
While he was engrossed in tedious work, Tyki sometimes thought about the early days just after his awakening began.
After his escape from the Ark in London, Tyki pulled off a rather foolish scheme because his understanding of the truth was temporarily fractured during his prolonged awakening, and the Millennium Earl rightly showed him that he had acted like an immature boy. Tyki, at present, grasped the truth that it was impossible to refuse the awakening. Once the Noah memory stirred within him, he had no choice but to accept it and let it into him, and embark on a sacred mission he inherited from the generations of the Noah before him. All his once-human emotions about the matter were laughably irrelevant.
Tyki picked up a shovel, plunged it into the heap of rubble, and loaded the wheelbarrow with the medley of stone fragments devoid of anything resembling a gemstone. A narrow and steep path wound down to the dump site, cutting through the outdoor mine like a silver ribbon owing to the light-gray color of the pebbles on its surface. The view was bleak, rolling hills of dross alternating with heaps of barren earth. Tyki pushed the wheelbarrow in front of him onto the path and walked downhill without any hurry or care in the world. He enjoyed taking things easy, and his double life perfectly suited his tastes.
Tyki unloaded the rubble onto one of the piles of slag and waste so tall he couldn't see the other side of the dump behind it and coughed from the acrid dust that tickled his nose and throat. He could choose not to let a speck of dirt touch him, but a miner in perfectly clean clothes would arouse suspicion or, at least, pique unnecessary curiosity. Tyki already stood out from the rest because he never fell ill even with a common cold. Those memories and feelings, too, faded from his mind that his body was once frail and burdened by sicknesses, pains, headaches, or smarting in the calloused feet and hands, and all of his concerns became duller somehow. A thrilling certainty that the power inside of him was absolute overshadowed all else.
When Tyki headed back to the mine, he ran into Clark who let the two workers pass by them before approaching him.
"Did you hear, Tyki? That bloke, Bram or something, found a really nice gemstone," Clark said in a conspiratorial tone.
"Is that so? I've had no luck finding anything besides useless junk."
"I was thinking that maybe, you know, we could… relieve him of the gem before the boss gets back to town. 'Cause it's been a crappy first week for me, too."
Stealing was beneath Tyki because his pride wouldn't allow him to sneak around at night as if in shame of his own actions. He would openly challenge the man and take his prized gem from him even if he had to cheat, but he couldn't think of a suitable game they could play, except the sort of games Road enjoyed that would end in the man's untimely demise. Tyki didn't kill when he was living on the light side.
"I'm sure I'll think of something. But for now, I suggest we lay low."
"Maybe, we can talk them into playing poker with us."
"We have nothing of value to bet in a poker game," objected Tyki. "But there's—"
"What are you thinking?"
Tyki merely shook his head with a roguish grin. An idea began to form in his head, but he had some thinking to do before he could tell his companions about his harebrained plan.
Tyki unhurriedly walked along the streets of a quaint English town, with his hands stuffed into the pockets of his baggy overalls to keep his fingers warm.
The morning was bright and chilly, the sun hanging low behind the bulky buildings with elegant wooden balconies, shuttered windows, and jaunty-colored walls and doors here and there covered in drooping ivy. Tyki could choose not to feel the cold air against his skin, but he wanted to feel it because he intended to spend as ordinary and lazy a weekend as possible after a week of toiling and moiling in the mine. In his own mind, after everything that had happened to him in the last few months, Tyki Mikk deserved a vacation.
On both sides of the street, people were coming and going about their mundane matters, women with earnest faces in shawls and dark bonnets mingling with men in checkered linen shirts, pants, and warm coats, and there was not a single familiar face among them. The smells of freshly baked bread and pastry wafted from the small and cozy shops and cafes lining the streets. Children were running around on a sidewalk, throwing lumps of dirt at each other, laughing, and chasing after one another. "Tag! You're it!" was heard from the crowd before it broke apart, and children scattered every which way, a flock of jolly little boys and girls crossing the road in front of Tyki.
A lone horse-drawn wagon with a mound of hay moved alongside him at the same pace he walked, and the coachman in the spring seat waved at him.
"Do you know where I can buy cigarettes around here?" Tyki asked.
The bearded man briefly explained the directions to the nearest tobacco store, and they parted ways when Tyki dove into an alleyway behind a church with a sharp glistening steeple on the roof. His tobacco craving annoyed and distracted him after he hadn't had a cigarette for five days in a row, though he experienced the urge to smoke differently after his awakening. The owner of the shabby store in the mining town didn't sell his favorite brand of cigarettes, and Tyki decided he had a sufficient excuse to tour the town while he was mulling over an idea of how to get the gemstone from the miners who found it.
The tiny tobacco store had an inviting shop window on which, in a glass casing, were displayed various tobacco products, teas, and confections. The doorbell chimed melodiously when Tyki entered the store. The clerk and two young men in light-brown hooded coats with large backpacks were chatting by the counter about something boring if their expressions were any indication. Tyki recalled from the bits and pieces of the Earl's dreary and exhausting lessons that the two men fit the description of the Order's Finders.
The Order's business didn't concern Tyki when he lived his other life, and, frankly, the Finders didn't seem like an exciting bunch to him, but no rules forbade him from amusing himself a little.
"Mind if I get some cigarettes?" he said with a nasty smirk.
The three men glanced at him with polite annoyance. "Can't you see I'm busy talking to my customers? Please, wait for your turn, good sir," said the clerk.
"You see, I'm in a bit of a hurry, and the three of you look like you'll be going at it for a while."
"There's no need to be so rude," one of the Finders made a conciliatory gesture. "We'll get some supplies for the long road, and we'll be on our way."
Tyki put a few coins on the counter. "I'll take two cigarette packs of that brand and some matches, and I'll get out of your hair as well."
The clerk mumbled something irritable to himself and threw the cigarette packs and a matchbox to him. Tyki adroitly caught all three items and inclined his head in a casual display of gratitude.
"You should watch your back at night from now on," he said to one of the Finders on a sudden whim. He didn't stay at the store long enough to observe his reaction.
Tyki had another errand to run for Momo and Clark, but he did not stray far from the tobacco store when he felt that something about his surroundings was slightly off. Tyki turned his head, and his gaze fell on a plain-looking woman in her late twenties who wore a modest light-brown dress with a gray shawl thrown over her scrawny shoulders. She stood still in the swirling stream of passersby, who hurried to skirt round her, and stared above their heads with dead, empty eyes, while the wind gently played with her dress.
Tyki froze, his eyes narrowing. He recognized just what she was at once. She noticed him, too—he gave a small nod of his head, and she obediently went after him with mechanical steps.
Tyki chose an empty backstreet that was used to unload wine carts to the nearby alehouse and stepped behind the large dray that was parked by the stairs ending in a sturdy door. He made sure that no one from the busy street would spot him. It was the last thing he wanted to deal with, but the presence of that creature could only mean that his family was checking up on him.
"Hey, you, show yourself, would you? Why have you followed me all the way here?" he asked with a wry smile in the corner of his lips. "Who sent you?"
The woman bent backwards, her chest opening up like a bizarre flower, and from it emerged a wasp-like creature with a white-painted face in the middle of its belly.
"Master Noah, it is a pleasure to serve you," said the Akuma with a bow of its head antennae. "I have a message for you from Mistress Road."
Tyki wasn't surprised to learn the answer for some reason. "Let's hear it."
"Mistress Road hopes that you are staying out of trouble and wishes to remind you that your time is almost up. The necessary preparations for the next stage of the plan are almost complete. Soon, Lord Millennium will summon everyone to the Kamelot mansion."
The Akuma didn't tell him anything he hadn't already known, but if Tyki picked up a detail or two about the Noah Clan on the fly, it was that Road often acted in an underhanded and insidious manner. So, what was her purpose in sending an Akuma after him? Was Road trying to make good on her promise to discover his secrets because she wanted to play some game with him?
Tyki took off his opaque glasses and looked at the Akuma with his true eyes of a burning shade of amber.
"Akuma," he said, "I order you to destroy yourself."
"M-master?" The creature squealed in a trembling voice, "I—I don't understand… Why? Did my service displease you?"
"You heard me. I want you to blow yourself up."
"Master, please… I don't want…" The Akuma's white-painted face froze in a pained grimace, its voice fading to a whisper, and thin spider cracks began spreading all over its body. "…to disappear…"
Whatever Road's idea of a thrilling game was, Tyki decided that it was unwise for him to play along. Behind him, a loud explosion was heard, and parts of the mechanical creature were strewn about the street along with the rain of glass shards from a shattered window overhead.
After Tyki returned from his leisurely walk around the town, he went straight to the lodging house with a solid plan he was ready to share with Momo and Clark.
"I brought you what you asked for," he said on entering the room he shared with his companions.
On the way back to the mining town, he grabbed a bottle of cheap booze, and as Momo and Clark uncorked it and poured its contents into the tankards, Tyki opened the window, climbed onto the windowsill and, turning his head to the glistening disk of the sun, took a deep puff of the cigarette. He has grown tired of thinking about nothing but smoking or food for hours on end and needed to take the edge off.
"So, here's my plan to get the gem," he said at last. "I'm going to make a crazy bet with those miners, and you guys are going to have to trust me on this one."
Momo put the cards down onto the blanket, abandoning the poker game he played with Clark. "What do you mean by a crazy bet? Like betting on an underdog in a horse race?"
"I picked up a couple of tricks during my travels. They are pretty impressive. But," Tyki conceded cautiously, "what I'll tell them is going to sound crazy, so I need to know that you have my back."
"Well, how do you mean?"
"Mister Tyki, you can do magic tricks?" Eez, who was listlessly counting silver coins he inherited from Tam, livened up. "But the other day you said there's no secret magic—"
"It's just different kind of magic," Tyki quickly interrupted him. "And besides, I'm not saying I can do real magic. What makes a good trick is how convincing it is to those who don't know how it's done."
"Can you show me a trick, please?"
"All right, find me a box with a lock."
Eez jumped off the bed and searched through the wardrobe until he found Clark's old, frayed briefcase.
"Yeah, it'll do," said Tyki. "Now, I'm going to walk out of the room. You'll pick a card, put it in the briefcase, lock it, and place it on your bed."
"And then you'll tell us what card I picked?"
"Better yet, I'll get the card out of the case without moving it or unlocking it."
"You sure you can do that?" asked Clark with a note of disbelief in his voice.
"You just watch."
Tyki stepped out of the room for a moment, and when he returned, Clark's briefcase was lying on Eez's bed, its two rusty locks tightly shut. Tyki knelt by the bed with his back to his companions so that they could see the briefcase but wouldn't detect the movements of his immaterial right hand under the bed. He forced his palm through the springs and the sheets and the briefcase, and rising to his feet, triumphantly twirled an ace of spades between his fingers. Eez checked the untouched clasps on the briefcase and stared at him with a mixture of reverence and shock.
"Damn, how did you do that?"
"I'll be honest, that creeped me out a bit, Tyki."
"I'm planning on showing them something crazier," boasted Tyki. "They wouldn't be able to resist taking that bet."
"Can you teach me that trick, mister Tyki? I wanna impress everyone, too."
"No, Eezy, kids can't do those tricks. Maybe I'll show you something suitable for your age when you grow up."
"Then I'll do my best to grow up quickly!" Again, the kid beamed at him with mysterious simplicity that defied Tyki's comprehension, and Tyki faintly smiled back at him.
The miners who found the valuable gemstone lived in a small hut in the labyrinth of buildings behind the foreman's mansion near a deserted stretch of road that led into the town. The foreman was out of the town on business, and the miners, cognizant of his absence, were more boisterous and loose-lipped than usual. They plied each other with cheap beer and sat on the porch, chewing tobacco and playing cards.
When the miners caught sight of them, a short but burly man with a middle-aged face made repulsive by a large scar that ran across his left cheek got up and, instead of a greeting, loudly spat under his feet.
"Name's Bram. And you must be the rabble our boss recently hired out of the goodness of his heart."
"We're just vagabond orphans, trying to stay out of trouble," said Tyki. There was some truth to what he had said: the four of them were orphaned in early childhood.
"I dunno. You stink of trouble. So, what d'ya want, anyway?"
"We want the gem you found in the mines the other day."
Bram cackled. "What makes you think I'm willing to part with the gem? The boss will pay generously for it when he comes back." Several other miners surrounded them with improvised clubs, but Bram stopped them by casually raising his arm. "Calm down, friends. You know the rules. If the rabble starts a fight, they'll be out of a job by tomorrow. The boss doesn't care much for troublemakers."
"We don't want to fight ya," said Momo.
"We'd like to propose a fun and friendly wager," added Tyki.
"You better be good on your word, otherwise we might have to teach you a painful lesson for running your mouth."
"You'll bet the only thing you have, the gem. And I'll bet that I can take it off your hands without you noticing anything… Let's raise the stakes. You can hide the gem in a box, lock it, and leave it on the table. And I'll be in your full view the whole time."
Bram clicked his tongue. "I like you, lad. You're crazy. But what if you lose? We don't want your dirty rags."
"I won't lose."
"Very well, lads. I think you're a swindler and you're counting on me not to call you out on your bluff. But I happen to be pretty good at poker, and I know when a man's bluffing."
"Then it's settled. You get to pick the box because I don't want you to think that I intend to cheat you."
While the miners looked for a suitable container, Momo and Clark called him to the side.
"Tyki, this idea is a bit out there. I'm worried something will go wrong," confessed Clark.
"I asked you guys to trust me," Tyki said a tad impatiently. "I've done this trick a handful of times."
The miners predictably found a durable wooden trunk reinforced with iron, placed the gem inside, attached two large locks to the hasps, and turned the keys with a click. Then they lifted the trunk onto the table that they dragged out to the porch. Tyki touched the wooden surface of the chest with the tips of his fingers—nothing made in this world could hold him back. He was a relentless force that could walk through the mountains.
Tyki sat on the edge of the table with his back to the chest and showed both of his hands to the small crowd of miners who kept glancing at him with curious hostility.
"Well, show us that stupid trick of yours already," said Bram gruffly.
"I get it. Everyone's a bit impatient to see what I can do, so all of you should gather round the table. You," Tyki pointed at one of the miners with his left index finger, "should stand behind my back. And you, too." While he was ostensibly directing the gullible men around, he slipped his right hand behind his back, made it intangible and snatched the gem from the trunk before anyone realized he had moved at all. He pushed off the table, clutching the gem in his fist. "Ask your men to check the locks," he told Bram.
"The chest is locked." Bram went to examine the hasps himself. "You're just bluffing and wasting our time, aren't you?"
Tyki tossed the gem up in the air and caught it—a colorless, rough piece of crystal before the meticulous cutting and polishing would breathe life and color into it.
"How did you—" several voices began saying at once.
"It's just a trick I learned," Tyki assured them with a light-hearted smile. "But I won the bet, so I'll be taking the gem with me."
"This lowlife hoodwinked us!"
"There's no way he didn't cheat!"
"I beg to differ. I won fair and square." Tyki put the gem into his chest pocket and patted it several times. "Now if you don't mind, we should be going. I'm afraid we overstayed our welcome."
If Bram was a vindictive sort, Tyki knew that he had just made an enemy.
"How did you do it?" Eez kept asking him on the way back to the lodging house.
"Sorry, I can't divulge my family's secrets," Tyki brushed the kid aside. "But you've got to look on the bright side. We have the gemstone."
Clark rubbed his temple in bewilderment. "Still, if we knew how to pull off those tricks, we could earn a fortune."
"It's not some lame trick you can learn in a few days, so give it a rest, guys."
"At least, we should celebrate the occasion," suggested Momo.
"Now, that's an excellent idea. I'll get you something to drink from that store around the corner. Meet you back at the room?"
Tyki was glad to be rid of their company for a bit. His stunt may become the talk of the town for a while, but he wasn't worried that anyone would figure out what his abilities were. The miners would gossip until they grew tired of gossiping, or a new and exciting piece of news would distract them and they would forget about him. The high society was no different in that regard from the mining town in the middle of nowhere.
The payphone rang early in the morning.
Momo and Clark were still asleep, snoring lightly into their pillows, while Tyki sat on the windowsill in his sleeping pants and watched the mining town stir awake in the distance, shifting his gaze from the thin wisps of chimney smoke rising to the pallid sky to the dark figures emerging from the huts. Someone lit a small fire to hold the autumn chill at bay, and several of those dark figures gathered round it to warm their hands.
Both of his companions drank themselves into stupor the night before while laughing and reminiscing about their childhoods of shared hardships, neglect, and poverty. Tyki mostly stayed quiet; he enjoyed a simple and comfortable life as a boy, and he never had to scrounge for food while living on the streets. In any event, the less they knew about him, the safer they would be.
When he heard the payphone ring, Tyki hurried downstairs at once not to keep the Earl waiting.
Eez was wide awake by the time Tyki came back to the room.
"Do you have to go away again, mister Tyki?"
"Yeah, but I'll be back as soon as I can," he said, quickly stuffing a few articles of clothing into his knapsack. "Try not to miss me too much. Ah, I almost forgot." He fished the gemstone out of the pocket of his overalls and put it on the bed by Eez's side. "It's yours."
"But I'll have to give it away to the scary man who gave us the job."
"One day, I'll bring you a treasure you'll get to keep. I promise."
"Okay, mister Tyki! You won't say goodbye to Momo and Clark?"
"Nah, they drank a bit too much yesterday." He shot a disapproving glance at his companions. "I trust you'll take care of them. So long, Eezy!"
With his knapsack over his shoulder, Tyki crossed the desolate street from the lodging house to the gate where the Earl waited for him in his light-brown coat and garish top hat, holding Lero over his shoulder.
"Well, well, what a wonderful morning, don't you think, my boy?"
Tyki took off his glasses and closed his eyes, reaching deep into his mind to the Noah inside of him to unleash it. He felt enormous relief.
"You're a sight for sore eyes, Lord Millennium," he said, half-seriously. "How is everyone getting along without me?"
"You look like you lost some weight and could go for a filling meal at a five-star restaurant."
"I appreciate your concern, but I'm good. I heard that your home-cooked meals taste better."
It was time Tyki came home again.