The Man of Bronze by James Alan Gardner

blackness.
    Cowards.
    I stood there for several more minutes. Just breathing. Looking at the stars. Making no noise. Thinking of a time when Reuben and I got kicked out of the National Diet Library in Tokyo for laughing too loudly at an inept translation of the Pnakotic Manuscripts. And another time we were trying to decipher a set of Mayan inscriptions, when Reuben—the idiot!—read them aloud and summoned a swarm of locusts into my study. And another time he tried to make beer from an ancient Babylonian recipe but didn’t bother sanctifying the brew kiln first, so anyone who drank any began speaking in Enochian . . .
    When I finished thinking of all those things, I dried my eyes and went back inside.
    “Tell me everything,” I said.
    Father Emil looked up. He was sitting at the table where we’d had our earlier chat. A bandage wrapped whitely around his forehead; the doctors were dabbing antibiotics on a long gash up his arm. His robe was spattered with blood. I didn’t know if it was his or Reuben’s. Reuben’s body was now covered with a sheet. Father Emil had already promised to transport it back to Reuben’s family. I would make sure he kept that promise.
    “Tell me everything,” I said again. “What does your Order do? Why would someone want to blow you up? Who killed Reuben and where do I find the person responsible?”
    Father Emil glanced at Kaisho and Myoko. They both shrugged, as if to say
do what you think best.
    “All right, Ms. Croft,” Father Emil said. His gaze flicked to Reuben’s shrouded corpse . . . then he closed his eyes and turned away. “I’ll tell you what I can,” he said. “But in exchange—”
    I cut him off. “No exchange. Just tell me who killed Reuben. Otherwise, I take it out on you.”
    “Ms. Croft,” the monk said, “you aren’t the only one here who was Reuben’s friend. I’ve known him for years; he’s helped our Order many times. Reuben will be in my prayers every day for the rest of my life.
    “But,” Father Emil went on, “the Order of Bronze has been attacked. As chief administrator, I must put the Order’s safety ahead of personal grief. Don’t think I’ll jeopardize our secrets for the sake of vengeance.” He locked gazes with me a moment. Then he lowered his eyes. “There’s so much at stake, Ms. Croft. Do you know what that statuette was?”
    “A fake,” I said. “The original was stolen from Reuben at the rent-a-car agency.”
    “I believe you’re right,” Father Emil replied. “Which means some enemy has the real Osiris. That’s a fearsome blow to the Order.”
    “Why?”
    “The statuette is a map. The hieroglyphics engraved on Osiris’s body—the
real
Osiris—are coded directions toward the location of . . . certain items.”
    “What kind of items?”
    “Powerful artifacts: dangerous in the wrong hands. Now that the killers have the statuette, they can find those artifacts before we do. Unless . . .”
    He let his voice trail off. I asked the obvious question, though I guessed the answer. “Unless what?”
    “Unless,” Father Emil said, “you can retrieve the items first, Ms. Croft.”
    I came close to punching Father Emil in the face. I’d been in this position many times: a map stolen, a treasure to be found before the Forces of Evil got hold of the Mystic MacGuffin.
    Please, Ms. Croft, sign up with us and save the world.
    I didn’t want to save the world. I just wanted to do something for Reuben. But after the urge to lash out subsided, I realized I shouldn’t pass up this opportunity. If the real statuette was a map . . . if Reuben’s killers would follow the map in search of the mysterious “items” . . . if Father Emil could help me reach the target destination before the killers . . . then I could catch the murderers when they showed up. And that was something I dearly wanted to do.
    “All right,” I said. “I’ll listen to your pitch. No promises, but I’ll listen.”
    Father Emil gave me a sour look—he