Chapter 957 - 956
Voss read the private ledger without saying a word.
To Liora, that silence was already an answer.
A man determined to dismiss something rarely bothered reading it carefully.
Voss had spent barely two minutes on the official inventory before setting it aside. Then he returned to the first page of her private ledger.
He read it once.
Then again until he was certain he didn’t miss anything important.
Now he was studying the acquisition dates for a third time.
His finger traced the intervals between purchases exactly as it did when he checked shipping manifests for calculation errors.
Slow, methodical, and patient.
Eventually, he spoke. "Forty-three items."
"Forty-three confirmed," Liora replied. "There are more artifacts in the collection that I haven’t examined closely enough."
She kept her voice calm.
"I wanted to bring you only what I could verify before the transfer made further inspection difficult."
Voss nodded absently since his attention had already shifted to the drawings as they grabbed his attention.
Liora had arranged them in chronological order, from the oldest acquisition to the newest.
Every sketch showed the same mark.
Different objects.
Different materials.
Different centuries.
The same symbol in every single one of them, there was no mistaking it.
He studied them for a long time.
His expression never changed, but Liora knew him well enough to recognize when his mind was working.
This was the face he wore while examining cargo records that refused to make sense.
Not because the numbers were wrong.
Because they were too consistent and were too orderly.
Experience had taught him that patterns like that deserved respect.
Finally, he looked up.
"Did you compare this against other dealers’ records?"
"I consulted a reference specialist."
That was true.
"The mark doesn’t appear in any cataloging system or provenance convention I could find."
Voss nodded slowly then his eyes drifted back to the sketches.
"The warmth in Case Fourteen."
She looked up.
"You mentioned it’s remained consistent."
"Yes." she confirmed.
"Since the morning after the key was delivered?"
"Three weeks."
She hesitated. "I’ve recorded whether it’s present each day."
Then she frowned slightly. "I haven’t measured whether it’s becoming stronger."
A note of dissatisfaction crept into her voice.
"That was an oversight."
"I should have tracked changes in intensity."
Voss didn’t respond immediately, but instead, he looked once more at the acquisition intervals.
Then at the drawings.
Then he folded his hands together and was silent for a few moments.
Liora recognized the gesture immediately.
He had reached a conclusion.
Not necessarily about the mystery.
About how he intended to respond.
"Casimir Thrane has supplied this collection for thirty years."
His voice was calm.
"In that time, he has never given me reason to question his honesty."
"Not his pricing."
"Not his judgment."
"And never the authenticity of anything he’s sold."
He wasn’t defending Thrane.
Not exactly.
He was weighing evidence.
Thirty years of trust against three weeks of discoveries.
Liora understood the calculation.
"I’m not accusing him of acting in bad faith," she said carefully.
"I’m saying the pattern exists."
"I can’t explain it."
"But forty-three unrelated artifacts carrying the same mark isn’t coincidence."
She rested a hand on the ledger.
"I thought you needed to know before all of them were moved to Tallowstone."
Voss remained quiet for several seconds.
Then he nodded.
"I’ll look into it."
The words sounded reassuring.
The meaning did not.
Liora knew him too well.
Looking into it meant speaking with Thrane.
Not conducting an independent investigation.
When Voss trusted someone, verification began with that person.
Not with the evidence.
"Continue the inventory."
He slid the ledger back toward her.
"And don’t discuss this with the packing team."
"I understand."
She gathered her papers and left.
She returned to the Reliquary and sat at the cataloguing table.
The room was quiet.
Rows of display cases surrounded her.
Soon they would all be empty.
She rested the ledger in front of her without opening it.
Instead, she thought about Voss.
Three years had taught her many things about the man.
He wasn’t dishonest.
Nor was he stubborn for the sake of pride.
But whenever new information threatened something he had spent decades building, his instinct was always the same.
Look first for the explanation that preserved what already existed.
Only abandon it if the evidence became overwhelming.
It was the instinct of a successful merchant.
Businesses survived because people didn’t discard trusted relationships lightly.
The same instinct had built House Voss into what it was.
And now...
It had become an obstacle.
She had expected exactly this.
Telling him had never been the finish line.
Only the beginning.
Thirty years of trust outweighed three years of employment.
She had known that before entering his study.
Which meant the real question wasn’t whether Voss believed her.
It was whether speaking to Thrane would accomplish anything useful.
Or whether it would simply warn the one man connected to every piece of evidence she had uncovered.
Neither possibility could now be avoided.
She opened her private ledger.
At the bottom of the day’s entry, she wrote one final note.
Evidence presented to employer.
Response inconclusive.
Transfer schedule unchanged.
Further action required.
She stared at the words after setting down her pen.
For the first time since beginning her investigation, she realized something uncomfortable.
She had treated understanding the mystery as though understanding alone solved it.
That was the natural instinct of a cataloguer.
Observe.
Record.
Organize.
Learn.
Knowledge itself had always been the goal.
But knowledge wasn’t enough anymore.
She understood there was a problem.
The problem still existed.
Nothing had changed.
If anything, it had become more dangerous.
Because now someone else knew she was asking questions.
She leaned back in her chair and began listing her remaining options.
There weren’t many.
Far fewer than she wanted.
And every one of them required stepping beyond the responsibilities of a cataloguer.
For the first time in three years, Liora understood that simply doing her job was no longer enough.