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“Do you think so?” Neil asked hopefully.
Constance rolled her eyes, then braced her hands against Neil’s tweed waistcoat and shoved herself up into a seated position.
She paused as she thoughtfully pushed against his chest. Her gaze down at Ellie’s brother shifted to one of dangerous interest. “Well, that’s a surprise.”
“What is?” Neil asked weakly, his eyes wide.
“If any other shoes have been swallowed,” Mr. Al-Ahmed begged, “let us please leave them where they are?”
“Fine by me,” Adam replied. He held his boot in one hand and very carefully pulled his feet free of the loose debris at the edge of the collapse.
Ellie sat up—and realized that her own hand was empty. With a worried jolt, she patted at her muddy blouse and skirt, then the ground around her. “I’ve lost it!” she burst out.
“What—your bone?” Constance lurched across Neil to grab the lantern, then pivoted to straddle him before crawling free.
Neil sucked in a whoosh of breath, staring after her with shock.
Constance held the light up to the wall of splintered wood and earth. “Here it is!” she announced cheerfully.
She reached for the white stick of the bone where it protruded from the pile.
“No!” Mr. Al-Ahmed and Ellie both shouted at once—but Constance had already plucked it loose.
Nothing happened.
“Here.” Constance handed the arcanum over.
Elle accepted it with a wash of relief and gave it a flick. The bone whispered with a subtle spark of illumination—and nothing more.
She tried it again, using the same practiced snap of her wrist. The arcanum stayed dark.
“What is she doing?” Mr. Al-Ahmed asked quietly, staring at her with worry.
“Maybe try it the other way,” Adam suggested sympathetically.
Ellie repressed a scowl at the thought of how ridiculous she was about to look—but shook the bone like an angry toddler.
Mr. Al-Ahmed’s eyes went wide. Constance’s lips pursed into a puzzled frown.
Neil stared aghast as though he had just concluded that his sister was, in fact, a lunatic.
“It isn’t working,” Ellie concluded desperately when the arcanum didn’t so much as flicker.
Adam took it from her and gave it a casually vigorous shake of his own.
Neil looked queasy.
“Huh.” Adam moved the bone into the light of the lantern. “Something dinged it—right here.”
Ellie took it back from him. She examined it urgently, and her stomach dropped. “It looks like a stone chipped off one of the Glagolitic characters.”
“Can’t you just draw it back on?” Constance suggested.
“I don’t know if that would fix it,” Ellie said woefully. “And my Glagolitic is terrible!”
“What does the bone in your cigar tube have to do with an early Slavic writing system?” Neil asked with an excessive, nervous care.
Ellie stared at him. How could she possibly explain to her skeptical brother that she was holding a piece of a legend in her hand—now that she’d lost her only means of convincing him that such things actually existed?
