Beyond Compare by Candace Camp Page A

haven’t seen it, or at least I haven’t.”
    “Oh, yes, quite right. Terribly sorry.” Broughton rose to his feet and crossed to one of the glass-faced cases against the wall. He unlocked the case and took out the ivory box. He brought it back and set it on the table, and everyone leaned closer to get a better look.
    “It’s beautiful,” the duchess said, rather awed. “What are those carvings on it? And that stone! It’s magnificent.”
    “It’s a black diamond, Mother,” Kyria explained, as entranced as the others with the box, even though she had seen it before. “Or at least, I’m almost sure it is. Isn’t it beautiful?”
    “The carvings are biblical scenes,” Uncle Bellard put in. “One, I am fairly certain, is the story of the loaves and fishes, and another is of the betrayal in the garden of Gethsemane. I’m not entirely sure about the two smaller ones on the ends.”
    “What’s inside it?” Alex asked, ever the curious one.
    “We don’t know,” Kyria replied. “We haven’t been able to open it.”
    “What?”
    “I have looked it over and over,” Broughton said. “I can’t find a seam, a hinge, a latch. Nothing! I am sure it must open, but there’s obviously some secret to it.”
    “Wizard!” Con exclaimed, thoroughly interested now, and came around the table to stand between his great-uncle and father and lean so close to the box that he was practically lying on the table. There was nothing Con loved as much as a puzzle.
    “The Byzantines were excellent craftsmen,” his father went on. “It was probably a clever bit of extra safety for whatever was inside the box.”
    “No doubt the relic was very important to them,” Uncle Bellard added, nodding.
    “Relic?” Kyria asked. “What relic? What are you talking about?”
    “Uncle Bellard and I agree that it is probably a reliquary,” Broughton explained. At the blank looks of most of those around the table, he explained, “That is something, usually some sort of box, which contained a sacred relic—a splinter of the ‘true cross,’ say, or a saint’s finger bone or something.”
    “A finger bone!” Kyria exclaimed, and everyone looked askance at the box.
    “Do you think there’s a finger still in it?” Alex asked, obviously pleased at the thought, and came around to join his twin and peer at the reliquary.
    “I doubt very seriously that there is anything in it,” Reed said flatly. “The thing is hundreds of years old, after all. And it wasn’t necessarily a finger, anyway. A relic could be any number of things, although obviously, it couldn’t have been very large.” He looked at the box, which was no longer than six inches and a little more than half that wide and deep.
    “Well, it would make sense that the stranger came from Istanbul,” Thisbe commented, “given that the box is Byzantine in origin. But what I wonder is, why did he bring it here? Why did he ask for Kyria?”
    Reed shrugged. “No one knows. That is all Mr. McIntyre understood of what he said. My assumption is that it is something from Theo.”
    “It seems awfully peculiar,” Desmond said.
    “Theo’s gifts are often peculiar,” Reed pointed out. “However, the last we heard from him, I thought he was in Australia or someplace like that.”
    “One never knows with him,” Thisbe said. As Theo’s twin, she was the closest to her brother, even though Theo’s adventuring had kept them apart for the past several years. “He goes wherever his whim takes him. And if he was in Australia, where we sent him the letter about Olivia’s wedding, he could have decided to come home, in which case, he would probably have taken a ship that would come through the Suez Canal, wouldn’t he?”
    “Yes, you’re right. And he would have been right there, close to Turkey.”
    “But if he was coming for Olivia’s wedding, where is he?” the duchess asked pragmatically.
    “Yes, and why wouldn’t he have brought the thing with him?” Kyria