“I’m finished with my work,” she said.

“Oh … well done?”

She looked around the room. “You have not found what you are looking for yet.”

Enrique deflated a bit. Ever since their meeting the night before, he had been searching for clues in the matriarch’s safe house about the location of House Janus and the Carnevale gathering. But so far, he had found nothing. In the other room, Laila was busy reading all the objects she could, searching for a hint. An incognito Hypnos had gone to make secret inquiries in Venice about the mascherari bar that created the invitations. So far, all Enrique had managed to do was pull every book and framed picture off the library wall.

“You need help,” said Zofia.

Enrique was a bit stung, but he had grown used to the way Zofia processed the world around her. She never meant it as an insult, merely as an observation.

“I do,” he said, sighing.

There were only three days before Carnevale. Hypnos had made it clear that he thought if they could not find a hint about House Janus or the mascherari salon soon, then finding Séverin was their best chance of getting to the temple beneath Poveglia.

“We must face it, mon cher,” said Hypnos, right before he’d left the house. “He always knows what to do and where to look.”

Perhaps in the past that had been true, but now? Enrique had no trust in this new Séverin and the things he wanted. A vicious part of him imagined Séverin waiting for them at the meeting place, only for them not to show. Would he feel abandoned? Would he look at all the things he had done and hate himself? Would he be shocked? Enrique hoped so. Then, maybe, Séverin would know how they’d felt.

“What should I do?” asked Zofia.

“I … I have no idea,” said Enrique, gesturing to the two tables piled high with papers and objects. “I arranged most of the items on the tables. I figured it would be useful to look through them. House Janus is named for the Roman god of transitions and change, and is generally depicted with two heads. He’s often associated with doors, so perhaps look for a key? Or something that changes shape?”

Zofia nodded, walking to the first table. Enrique was too ashamed to tell her that he had already examined all the objects in the safe house. And he was far too ashamed to admit to himself that the person whose perspective he wanted most was the same person he would be happy never to see again.

Enrique could almost imagine Séverin as he had once been … wearing something immaculately tailored and chewing on a clove as he surveyed a room. He had an uncanny ability to know where treasure liked to hide. It was something Enrique had grudgingly admired, how Séverin could contextualize an object and weave a story around it.

“Treasure is like a beautiful woman,” Séverin had once said. “It wants to know that you have taken the time to understand it before it reveals itself.”

Enrique had feigned gagging. “If I were treasure, and I heard you utter that, I would sink to the bottom of the ocean where you would never find me.”

He then proceeded to parrot the line for six months straight.

Séverin had not been amused.

When Enrique thought of it now, he almost smiled, but the movement disturbed the wound where his ear had been. His smile dropped.

“What’s this?” asked Zofia.

He turned to see Zofia holding up a small metal frame. Inside were five clay fragments, their surfaces covered in a wedge-like script. Before, he would have held it closely—almost reverently—to his heart. He would have traced the air above the wedges, imagining the blunt reed that had taken an idea and pinned it to this shape. Now he glanced away.

“Assyrian cuneiform, I believe,” said Enrique. When Zofia looked at him expectantly, Enrique took it as an invitation to explain. Zofia did not always want to listen to him. On more than one occasion, she had simply walked off when he was in the middle of a lecture, and so he had learned to wait and let her decide. “About ten years ago, the Society of Biblical Archaeology wished to corroborate events in the Bible with historical events, particularly the deluge.”

“Deluge?” asked Zofia.

“Also known as the great flood,” said Enrique. “Noah and the ark.”

Zofia nodded in understanding.

“There was an article published in 1872 that talked about the discovery of cuneiform tablets in the Library of Ashurbanipal near Nineveh…” said Enrique, glancing at the frame. “When they translated the tablets, they found another mention of the deluge. It was the first time people realized there were various instances of a ‘great flood’ occurring across the world … across different cultures, different traditions. As if this one great event didn’t belong to a single people. It’s groundbreaking, really, though the Order of Babel has tried to block further research and translation of the tablets ever since.”

“So they no longer wish it to be proven?” asked Zofia, frowning. “The higher the frequency of a recorded event, the higher the likelihood that it actually happened.”

“Not if it contradicts their view of themselves, I suppose,” said Enrique.

He couldn’t hide the bitterness that snuck into his tone. In the past, he would have been livid. He remembered an essay he had written at university arguing that such practices were an effort to take a paintbrush and pair of scissors to history, an act that no human had a right to commit. At the time, anger shook through him, turning his handwriting scratchy and feverish.

But now, he felt curiously flat. What was the point of his frustration? Of his essay writing and plans for great speeches? Would it even make a difference in the world, or did the right to make a difference only lie in the hands of the privileged few?

The Order of Babel riffled through history as if it were a drawer. To them, culture was little more than an appealing ribbon or glittering ornament. Then there were those like Séverin and Ruslan … people who could flip the world order, but only if their wants were at the center of it all. And then there was Enrique, suspended between it all like a useless jewel left to hang between them—wanted merely for appearance’s sake.

“Their view of themselves,” said Zofia slowly. “Perhaps they do not know how to see.”

“Perhaps,” said Enrique.

His gaze went to the mirror on the far side of the wall. He didn’t understand why the matriarch had placed it there. It did not fit amongst the books and objects. It didn’t even seem to face the rest of the room. From this angle, it was unevenly skewed to show the library’s entrance. Perhaps it was to keep track of strangers entering the room? At first they had suspected it might be a Tezcat door, but Zofia told them it was not.

How does a treasure wish to make itself known? Séverin used to say when it came to finding something. What does it want you to see?

Enrique shoved the words out of his head. The last thing he wanted to do was think of Séverin.

“I have not found anything,” Zofia announced. “No key. No object that changes.”

Enrique blew out a breath. “I figured as much.”

“On Isola di San Michele, you said Janus was a god of time.”

“And?”

“And time does not share the same traits as a key,” said Zofia.