the hands of the Romans, but of course it didn’t stay there for long. The vamps somehow got their hands on it and used it as a symbol of their omnipotence and undefeat. Naturally it was all bullshit though.”
“Naturally,” I murmured.
“The vamps’ stronghold was broken into years ago by a wraith thief called Tryyl, and several artifacts were taken, the Palladium among them. Tryyl was caught and tortured horribly and the vamps recovered everything pretty much apart from the statue. Nobody really cared all that much. It was ceremonial and the vamps felt their honour had been restored through the mental and physical destruction of Tryyl so although they looked for it, they didn’t really search all that hard, you get me?”
I nodded.
“But this old vamp, powerful dude, someone who’s been around for several hundreds of years, was reminiscing with a bunch of his bloodsucking buddies and decided last month that he’d like to see if he could get it back. I think it was some kind of dare or something, I dunno. So instead of getting his own hands dirty, he calls in me – or rather he calls in the Ministry – and pays us a bunch of money to get the Palladium back for him. I track it, eventually find it buried in an old cellar in a cottage up in the Lake District and give it back.”
I was puzzled. “So what’s the big deal? It doesn’t do anything, it’s not going to hurt anyone and you did your job.”
“See that’s just the thing,” said Alex, pulling his hands away from mine to run them through his hair. “When I initially started tracking the Palladium, my inveniora, that’s…”
I nodded, “Yeah, I know what that is.”
“Okay, my inveniora did something really strange. It sort of split off into two. At first I thought maybe it was because the statue had been damaged somehow and was in different sections – we’ve had that kind of thing happen before. So I just chose one randomly and followed it. When I got to the end, the statue was there all whole and shipshape and not damaged in the slightest, so I picked it out from the rubble and gave it to the vamp.”
“Right. But?”
“But then I got curious. I wanted to see what else had triggered the inveniora. So I went looking and found this.” He dug into a satchel that was lying by his side and pulled out a small wooden statue.
“Uh, Alex, that looks like it might be…,”
“The Palladium,” he said miserably.
“So what did you give the vamp?”
“Well, I checked up on the Othernet, trying to see if maybe there had been two statues. There hadn’t. But what I found was another wooden statue called the Ancile. It’s meant to have appeared on earth much later than the Palladium, but it’s much more powerful. It’s made of the same stuff as the Palladium, and is meant to be indistinguishable from other similar wooden statues if it’s stolen. Which is why my inveniora couldn’t tell the difference between it and the Palladium. What the Othernet also said is that it belonged to Mars himself, and that if wielded in battle and touched by blood, it would cause fire and war and destruction.”
“And you think that you gave the Ancile to the vamps?”
“Yeah.”
“And that because blood is their dejeuner du jour, you think that they will set off the Ancile if they touch it.”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Well, why don’t you just tell the vamps that you made a mistake? Get them to give you the Ancile in return for the real Palladium.”
Alex looked unhappily down at his feet.
“Oh, I see,” I said slowly. “Because you think that once the vamps realise what they have in their possession, then they won’t want to give it up.”
“Got it in one. Yeah, vamps aren’t always as bad as everyone makes out, but they’re not going to give up a relic of that kind of power just because I asked them to.”
“Get the Arch-Mage to ask them to. Surely they’ll want to keep in his good books.”
“Yeah, I could do that. The thing is…” His voice trailed off.
“What?” I prodded.
“Well, the thing is that the Arch-Mage isn’t doing so well right now. A lot of other factions are unhappy with the way he’s running things. They’re just looking for an opportunity for him to screw up and they’ll jump right in there with a vote of no confidence.” Alex looked at me with panic in his eyes.