Chapter 6: Twelve Green Rings

I asked him in the car, with the harbor lights going past the window.

"Lukas says you know who was in my cellar."

Matthias kept his eyes on the road.

"I don't know his name," he said.

"That's not what I asked."

"It's the only honest answer I have."

He took a long breath before he went on.

"The men who took you were not mine. I'd stake my house on it. I can't tell you who they were yet, and I won't lie and say I can."

"Why can't you?"

"Because the one who knows is in a place I can't reach tonight."

I looked at him for a long moment.

He looked straight ahead, and a muscle moved in his jaw.

I did not believe him, and I did not disbelieve him, and I hated being stuck in the middle.

"Then I'll find out myself," I said.

"You do that," Matthias said. "I mean it. Be careful."

In the morning I told the driver I was going to the dressmaker, and he drove me three streets and let me out.

I walked the rest of the way alone.

Matthias had said any man who could pay a jeweler could buy a green ring.

So I would ask the jeweler.

Fell Street was a row of old shopfronts, one of them with a gold ring painted on the glass.

Inside, a small man with a loupe on his forehead looked up from a bench.

"We're closed," he said.

"I'm Ilse Brandauer," I said.

He put the loupe down.

"The bride," he said. "The one from the papers."

"I'm told you make the Kell rings."

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