Free Codex by Lev Grossman Page B

to take care of this,” she said irritably. “Myself, for example. But that’s the Duchess for you all over.”
    â€œThe Duchess?”
    â€œYes, the Duchess.”
    She sighed, settling her hair absentmindedly, and bent down to open a desk drawer full of hanging files. Was that the barest trace of whisky on her breath?
    â€œAll right. If it’s clues you’re looking for, look at this.” She lifted out a typewritten letter and copied out something from it onto a yellow sticky.
    â€œHere’s the title—this is the name of the book they’re looking for.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Her handwriting was neat and refined, no doubt the product of some inconceivably exclusive boarding school. It read:
A Viage to the Contree of the Cimmerians.
    He nodded sagely as he scanned it, as if the words meant something to him.
    â€œDo you mind if I ask you why we’re looking for it?”
    She regarded him with unnervingly pale, slate-colored eyes.
    â€œBecause the Duchess asked for it.”
    The molten orange sun was almost down over the edge of New Jersey. He was suddenly very conscious that they were alone together in an empty apartment.
    â€œThis project is her idea,” she went on, “in case you hadn’t gathered that. You’re her idea, too—you Esslin & Hart people. Whatever it is you did with her finances—don’t tell me, thanks, not interested—you all seem to have made quite an impression on her, you in particular. I sometimes wonder if we aren’t all her idea, in some complicated metaphysical way. Her world seems somehow more substantial than ours.
    â€œAs for the book, I suppose it would be valuable, though how valuable is beyond me. Apart from that, I couldn’t say why we’re looking for it, just that she was extremely insistent that we do so. It is a little unusual. It’s not often that I hear from her directly. This is a fairly remote outpost of her empire—the American Embassy, we call it.”
    Her irony had a trace of bitterness in it. He wondered if she wasn’t a little lonely.
    â€œYou do know about the Duchess, don’t you?” she went on.
    â€œWell,” said Edward, with calculated vagueness, “I do and I don’t.”
    â€œWell, you’d better learn, if you’re going to work for her.” She seemed less severe now, more collegial, now that she was talking about the Wents. “Blanche and I were at school together. They advanced us both a year ahead of schedule. I sometimes think it was a mistake for her. She was brilliant, certainly, but she had a difficult time. Hers is a very old family—nobody knows them here in America, but in England everybody wanted to get at her. It had an...effect on her. Made her very shy and untrustful of some people, and maybe too trustful of others.” She glanced at Edward. “It’s a cliché, but she really has led a very sheltered life.
    â€œAs for Peter, I’ve only met him a few times, at the wedding and then later. They’re very reclusive now. They live on an estate in the north of England, and they hardly ever leave it. It’s enormous—they bought up the land all around it for miles, though it’s mostly fairly wild. Deer park.”
    Next thing you know she’d be telling him about the ancient family curse that haunted them to this day whenever the moon was full. Edward stifled a smile. It all sounded so unreal—like the clumsy exposition in a cheap horror movie. Edward remembered a guy he’d known in college who was supposed to be an aristocrat. He was Swedish and very tall, and people said he was a baron. They were in a Chinese history class together, but the baron never said a word the entire semester. He spent all his time in the basement of his dorm playing pinball and pining—Edward supposed—for his faraway fjords.
    â€œSo you’ve met the Duke?” Edward prompted