Free The Dagger X (The Dagger Chronicles) by Brian Eames Page A

back,” he said. A few moments later his hands found Ontoquas’s in the darkness where she reached out to help him. Kitto pulled himself beside her.
    “Do you still have the chain?” Kitto said.
    “Yes. You want me to put it back?” Ontoquas ran her fingers along the bauble at the end of the chain at her breast. She did not know why, but she very much wanted to see it.
    “No,” Kitto said. “But . . .” He hesitated.
    “What is wrong?”
    Kitto was not sure. Should this place remain a secret?
    “This tunnel. I do not think we should tell the others,” he said finally.
    “Not your mother?”
    Kitto considered. Was it some sort of revenge, keeping it from Sarah? And why not tell Van? Because he has betrayed me in the past? A possible answer, but that was not it. He knew Van toiled with his guilt.
    “Not just yet,” he said. “Please do not ask me why. I do not know, but I think I am right.”
    “I will not tell,” Ontoquas said, and Kitto knew he could trust her.
    Together they headed back out the way they had come, Ontoquas in the lead this time. She took care to tuck the cross of her necklace into her tunic to protect it before crawling out the opening. As soon as she emerged among the barrels that stood over the tunnel like stern sentinels, she scrambled for the main chamber and the bright sunlight that now shone directly through the crack in the ceiling. She was still inspecting the necklace when Kitto limped over to her.
    “Can we sit down?” he said, one hand holding Ontoquas’s shoulder for balance. The muscles in Kitto’s left leg throbbed. Ontoquas lowered herself and Kitto to the ground, then held out her hand before them. The necklace draped across her palm. The chain was gold, untouched by its dubious storage, as shiny and perfect as the day it was forged.
    “Beautiful,” she said. The chain was quite thin, with delicate gold links, elegant enough for a fine lady. But the crucifix was truly remarkable.
    “May I?” Kitto said. He reached over and plucked the chain from her palm.
    “You want me to put it back?” Ontoquas said for the second time, but Kitto shook his head. His brow thickened as he inspected the piece.
    Back in Falmouth, Kitto attended church each week with either Sarah or his father. At Sarah’s meeting house there were no crosses whatsoever, but at his father’s church there were both crosses and crucifixes adorning the chapel. Kitto expected to see a similar image here, with Jesus impaled on the cross with a crown of thorns on his head.
    “I have never seen one like this,” he said. There was a cross, plain enough, but at the base of the cross was a figure, a kneeling figure. A woman, her head covered in some sort of veil, but her face revealed.
    “Who is she?” Ontoquas said. Kitto rubbed at the image with his thumb as if that could reveal an answer to her question.
    “I assume . . . well, it must be the Virgin Mary.”
    “Who is this?”
    “The mother of Jesus Christ.”
    Ontoquas shook her head in confusion. “He is God, and he has a woman mother?” Kitto shrugged. Christianity might well sound strange to someone who did not know it. The girl reached over and pointed carefully at a detail of the kneeling figure.
    “She cries.”
    Kitto peered closer, then ran his thumb over thepiece again. The kneeling woman was portrayed in profile, her palms pressed together in front of her as if in prayer. Sure enough, a tiny teardrop of gold descended from her eye.
    “Why does she cry?”
    “Because the Romans, they just killed her son.”
    “He is God, and he is killed?”
    Kitto smiled at her and wagged his head. “It is a bit hard to explain.”
    Ontoquas accepted this answer. Much about the wompey made little sense.
    She took the necklace back from Kitto and held it out with both hands so that the dangling cross and figure glinted in the light.
    “I would like to wear it,” she said. She was not sure why she felt such a compulsion. Maybe it was because of