“You’ll get filthy,” Gerard warned.
She shot him one of those bright smiles that smote his hard heart with a thousand darts.
“Have you ever smoked a bee’s nest out of a tree? Sheared a sheep? A little brick dust is nothing. I am smelling something interesting here.” She poked the dirt beneath the bricks.
“Besides a urinal?” he asked in derision. But he crouched down beside her and used a sharp piece of wood to dig a little deeper.
She chuckled and let him dig. “I generally only smell live people, as a bee would sense live flowers. Dead ones hold no interest. But every so often—a child’s loved blanket, a bride’s hand-stitched linen—I can smell emotion embedded in an object. Perhaps a little bit of our souls? I am not smelling love, though, but a murkier sensation, perhaps some combination of hate and guilt?”
She spoke so easily of her extra sense—as if everyone understood her ability.
“Not exactly an object one wishes to touch then. How did you learn what each emotion smells like?” His stick hit a hard object, and he dug deeper, suppressing any excitement.
“Trial and error mostly. Children learn easily, so perhaps it was like learning the differences in word sounds.”
A lesson he had thankfully missed. He couldn’t imagine going through life sorting out the complicated feelings of the many people around him.
“Isolation probably helped,” he concluded. “It must be easier to sort and study when there are only a few familiar faces about instead of hordes.”
“I’ve never given it much thought, but you might be right. The scent is stronger now. Do you feel anything?”
He thought for a second she was referencing his peculiar ability, but then realized she meant his digging.
In fact—hedidfeel the object, as he often did when an artifact called to him. He simply thought of it as an object speaking to him in the same way an artist might say a subject spoke to him.
Not the same, the soldier protested.
Gerard refused to argue with a voice in his head. That way lay insanity.
He uncovered filth-encrusted metal. Producing a penknife from his pocket, he pried around the edges until it loosened. “Possibly a knife,” he concluded. “I think I see insignia beneath the dirt.”
“Kitchen knife or long ago murder weapon?” she asked, as if he’d know.
And he did know, the instant he pried the blade from the clay and held it in his bare palm. “Someone’s prized dagger, reluctantly buried after an unfortunate fight.”
He regretted his observation the instant he uttered it.
Eighteen
As if just seeing him,Iona regarded Gerard with shock. “You have agift. Or you’re a very good storyteller. But I don’t smell the lie on you.”
Cursing himself, still shaken by his reaction to the dagger, he handed her the filthy object. The tip of the blade had broken. “I doubt it’s precious metal,” he said dismissively, attempting to brush aside the incident.
“You’re only interested in the monetary value?” Disturbed by his reply, she didn’t appear to notice that he hadn’t answered her observation.
“That would be practical,” he agreed. “But no. I’m interested in the history. We could take it to someone knowledgeable, but what would be the point?”
She scraped at the dirt-embedded insignia with a hatpin. “We’ll never know the history if you can’t read more. I wonder how long ago it happened?”
Knowing better than to expose himself this way, but challenged by her question, Gerard removed the medallion from his pocket. He set it aside so as not to have two nags in his head and took the dagger back. His mind sought an inner voice as he’d learned to do as a curious child.
He had the vague sensation of rude curses but not an actual voice. “Medieval, like the tenement,” he guessed, hoping that sounded as if he could identify the hilt by its looks, which he couldn’t.
She reached for the object, and for a moment, both their hands gripped it.
A violent, dimly-lit scene struck him. A whirlwind of anger, betrayal, and pain swept through his head, followed by the slicing of flesh, a cry of anguish, and a wave of terror.
Iona dropped the knife and backed away. “Did you feel that?”
