Honor Among Thieves

Chapter Three: Curiosities

“What kept you so long?” Vishni demanded.

Fox held up the herbalist’s vial. The girl took aninvoluntary step back.

Her caution was probably unnecessary, but fairies hadstrange and sometimes dangerous reactions to an odd list of things.Iron, of course, but several plants and fruits could have oddeffects. In times past, certain green witches knew the secret ofherbs that could ward against the fey, bind them to a promise,render them helpless through fits of giggles, or simply make themsneeze. Fairies believed, with some justification, that elves hadtaught witches these things.

Elves belonged in this world. Fairies did not. Noneof the fair folk forgot this for a moment.

Vishni flicked one hand toward the waulking bowl asif she could ward off the stench.

“You couldn’t have picked a better place tomeet?”

The waulking bowl was actually a barrel, broad as acottage and nearly as tall as Fox. It provided a place for servantsto empty night water, which, in sufficient quantity, could stripthe grease from sheep fleeces. As useful as the waulking bowl mightbe, Fox could see why it had been located downwind of the workshopsand cottages.

What interested Fox, however, was a second, tallerbarrel.He took a bundle of carefully carved sticks from his packand fitted them together until he had a long-handled spoon. Foxscampered up the ladder secured to one side of the barrel andtwitched off the canvas covering. A cloud of flies arose, alongwith a barnyard stench.

Inside was a mound of dung, surrounded by a mulch ofrotting potato leaves. A neat pile of buckets stood on the groundnearby. Judging from the smell, they were used to carry thelant-stale cow urine-that was poured on the pile three or fourtimes each moon cycle.

Vishni’s face brightened. “Saltpeter! We’re makinggunpowder! How wonderful! You didn’t tell me there would beexplosions.”

“Only as a last resort.”

She sniffed. “That’s what you said about myillusions. You can’t have more than one last resort.”

“I’ll assign numbers to them. In case of disaster,we’ll count back in reverse order.”

The fairy nodded as if this made perfect sense.

Fox tossed her a half-filled leather bag that, Avidanassured him, lack only saltpeter. He lowered the spoon into thepit. Working quickly, he scraped off some of the white crystalsthat had formed on the top of the pile and transferred them to thebag Vishni held open.

He jumped down from the ladder. Vishni had alreadycinched the bag’s strings and was giving it a good shake.

“Thanks for mixing the gunpowder,” he said. “But justso you know, shaking won’t make it explode.”

“Oh.”

Fox laughed at her woe-stricken expression andreclaimed the bag. He tucked it into his pack and drew out a curvedivory flask as long as his hand.

Vishni’s eyes sparkled and she clasped her handstogether in delight. “A dragon tooth! Avidan was right? He solvedthe alkahest conundrum?”

“Seems likely,” Fox said. “The more bizarre his ideassound, the better they seem to work.”

That seemed to satisfy the fairy. They hurried pastthe odorous vats and half walked, half slid down a rocky incline toa narrow ledge.

Vishni stopped a few feet from the ledge, clinging toa large rock and staring down at the ledge with an expression mostpeople reserved for poisonous snakes.

“There’s iron down there. A lot of iron.”

“You’re safe where you are. Just stay put.”

Fox jumped the last few feet. His boots crunched onthe gravel covering the ledge. He kicked aside some of the stone toreveal an expanse of rusted iron.

For several moments he shoved at the gravel with hisboot. The ledge had been paved with vast plates of iron, the edgesof which had been welded together to form a surface too large andheavy to dislodge.

Finally he found what he sought: A round metal lid,padlocked and chained to the iron floor.

Vishni looked up at the distant manor, then back tothe lid. “This is the adept’s well? Way over here?”

“No, this is just an access shaft to the aqueduct.Rhendish has water moved through a tunnel leading from the well tothe manor.”

“Seems like a lot of work.”

“The tunnels were already here,” Fox said. “Rhendishbuilt a clockwork system similar to the Mule, with ropes andpulleys and buckets that carry a steady flow of water up to there.”He pointed to a water tower within the manor walls.

Fox uncapped the dragon tooth and poured a clearfluid, one careful drop at a time, onto the lid’s iron hinges.Better the hinges, he figured, than the padlock. The latter wasmore likely to be warded against intrusion with lethal shocks,small capsules that would release noxious fumes, or some othernasty little alchemical trick.

The metal melted away like sugar in hot tea.

Fox took a metal bar from his pack and pried the lidopen. He tied a rope to the chains holding the padlock in place.After he dropped the rope into the shaft, he stood and held out hisarms to Vishni.

The fairy jumped.

It didn’t occur to Fox until after he’d caught herthat Vishni didn’t need his help to keep from touching the ironfloor.

He walked over to the shaft and held her over theopening. “Ready?”

Before she could respond, he dropped her into theshaft.

She’d barely cleared the rim before rose-coloredwings unfurled to catch her and ease her fall. She dropped in acrouch. By the time she rose, the wings were gone.

Fox slid down the rope after her. “Someday you’regoing to explain how you do that. It’s a great trick.”

Vishni smirked. “You can pee standing up. Don’t begreedy.”

Their words echoed in the silent tunnel. Fox pointedto an antechamber, where a clockwork machine stood ready.

They stood, waiting, until the grinding crunch ofgears resumed. Ropes creaked and began to move. Vishni leaped ontothe rim of one wooden bucket, holding the ropes that attached it tothe main line. Fox followed. Their combined weight did not slow themachinery in the slightest.

Once the odd aqueduct reached the water tower shaft,they leaped clear. Fox took a blue robe from his bag and shook outthe wrinkles. He donned it and pulled a pale wig over his tell-talered locks. Most Sevrin natives were fair-haired, and the blue robemarked him as a student of alchemy. In this garb, he’d look likeone of dozens striding around the compound.

Vishni tried the lock and shook her head. A few dropsof alkahest burned straight through the door and the outer lock.Fox stepped out into sunlight, Vishni close on his heels.

He nodded toward a tent where servants to the manor’svisitors gathered to rest and wait.

“Keep an eye on the blue door toward the back of thewarehouse,” he murmured. “If Delgar and I walk out of there, justfall into step with us. If we’re running, do whatever comes tomind.”

An unholy gleam lit her eyes. “You come up with thebest plans.”

Fox arranged his face along arrogant lines and headedfor a long, low building hugging the seaward edge of the manor.

He stopped on the way to claim a broom and some ragsfrom a passing servant. Armed with cleaning supplies and a scowl,he foot-dragged his way toward Rhendish’s storehouse, the verypicture of a student condemned to menial labor for a crime ofcarelessness or stupidity. No one paid him much heed, and the onlyreaction he elicited was a quick, superior smirk from anotherblue-robed youth.

Once inside the building, Fox stood for a moment andlistened. The only sound was a faint, musical chiming. When heglanced in that direction, his jaw dropped in astonishment.

A macabre wind chime hung in a corner, nearlyobscured from view by a painted screen. It was a skeleton, narrowof frame and apparently fashioned of pale pink crystal. He’d neverseen anything so beautiful, or so disturbing, nor had he heard suchmusic. He had the strangest feeling that there was more to it thanhis ears could hear. For the first time, Avidan’s theory aboutsound seemed not only sane, but obvious.

Fox swiped a hand down the back of his neck, wherethe hair beneath his wig rose like the hackles of a spooked hound.It didn’t help.

He shook off the uncanny feeling and hurried throughthe crowded room.

The people of Sevrin loved curiosities-strangeobjects and plants and relics gathered from distant places and lostcenturies. The city housed two public museums and several fineprivate collections. Rhendish’s warehouse put them all toshame.

Tall, glass-fronted shelves held relics from “extinctraces” such as elves, griffons, and dragons. There were elvenweapons ranging from simple bows to intricate swords. Jewel-toneddragon scales had been polished to a high gleam, feathers as longas Fox’s arm displayed to advantage against sky-blue velvet.Mundane supplies were also plentiful: bins of dried plants, caskslabeled with words he’d never seen and could not begin topronounce, piles of rare woods and thinly hammered sheets ofmetal.

There was, however, no sign of Delgar.

It took Fox nearly an hour to find the cellar dooramid all the clutter. He took a small lantern from a nail, struck alight, and crept down the stairs.

As he suspected, the room housed the sort of suppliesSevrin’s people would find less palatable than metal and wood andoils.

Several large cats eyed Fox from their cages. Livinglights blinked weakly in a glass box. There was more, but Fox’sgaze skimmed over it and settled on the stocky young man sagging inchains bolted to the wall. A strip of linen bound one arm, and abeaker of blood stood on a nearby table.

Fox’s jaw clenched.

Delgar was a Carmot dwarf, a race distinguished bythe ability to change color to blend into their surroundings. Therewere few of his kind left, for the Carmot numbered among the “stoneraces,” dwarves whose blood was believed to amplify alchemicaltransmutations.

Fox hiked up his blue robe and took the flask ofrestorative from his pocket. The dwarf dragged his head up at thesound of Fox’s approach. Bruises darkened his face and his left eyewas swollen nearly shut, but one corner of his mouth lifted in ashadow of his cocky grin.

“That color does not suit you.”

Fox uncorked the potion and tipped it into hisfriend’s mouth. The dwarf swallowed and nodded his thanks. His goodeye widened when Fox produced the dragon tooth flask.

“So the crazy bugger did it, then?”

“Other than the dragon’s tooth, I haven’t foundanything it won’t dissolve.”

“Don’t be adding dwarf to the list,” Delgar mutteredas Fox tipped a drop onto one chain.

The metal fell away. Delgar grinned, a disconcertingsight to anyone not familiar with a Carmot dwaves’s nature. Thedwarves were pale silvery gray-hair, skin, even teeth-unless theychose to appear otherwise. At the moment, Delgar’s smile resembleda drawer full of knives.

Fox made short work of the chains. His friend gavehis shoulders an experimental roll and bounced on the balls of hisfeet like a fighter getting ready for a match.

“The way out?”

“We walk.”

He handed the dwarf a second robe. Delgar grimacedbut made no complaint. He pulled the robe over his head and tuggedit down, revealing blue-gray eyes, a thick shock of blond hair, anda skin tone a shade darker than Fox’s.

“Don’t forget the teeth,” Fox said.

The dwarf bared a dazzling white smile. “Pass forhuman?”

Oddly enough, Delgar could. He was tall for his kind,standing near the midpoint of five feet and six. Fox had no ideahow many years the dwarf could claim, but he and Delgar looked tobe about the same age. The dwarf was clean-shaven, with a squareface and impressive slabs of muscle. Women noticed him, which wasone more reason to disguise him with an alchemist’s robe.

“Let’s go.”

Delgar turned back toward the table holding thebeaker of his stolen blood. In one fluid motion he stooped, caughtup a length of chain, and swung.

The sound of shattering glass filled the dungeon.

Fox lifted one brow. “I appreciate a defiant gestureas much as the next person, but-”

A board creaked overhead. Running footsteps beat acrescendo toward the cellar door.

“Fuggle!” the dwarf spat.

Fox sprinted toward the bulkhead door he’d pointedout to Vishni, the dwarf close on his heels.

Three men clattered down the stairs. Delgar wavedaway Fox’s dragon tooth vial, put his shoulder to the door, andheaved.

The wooden doors exploded upward, and the two friendsraced out into the bailey.

Vishni leaped to her feet, a pewter mead cup in onehand. Her form blurred. A blue-robed alchemist stood in her place,patrician disdain written on his face.

Fox glanced at Delgar. The dwarf looked slimmer,taller, and enough like the altered Vishni to be her brother.

Two of the servants in the mead tent now resembledthe fugitives. A flick of Vishni’s fingers created a phantom swarmof bees and sent them whirling toward her victims.

The men fled. The guards followed.

Delgar glanced at Fox, then down at his own longer,slimmer hands. “Something tells me I’m less handsome thanusual.”

“True.”

“On you, though, it’s an improvement.”

“Shut up and walk.”

Vishni fell into step with them. They strolled downthe hills toward the twin gates. Never had three alchemy studentsexuded more casual arrogance.

Never, Fox was certain, had the road out ofRhendish’s compound ever been longer.

Finally the black-bearded guard waved them throughthe gates. A trio of sighs escaped them.

“Good illusion,” Delgar said to Vishni.

She beamed. “It is, yes.”

“Better than the one that got me caught.”

The fairy boggled in mid stride. “Up ‘til now,” shemurmured.

Fox followed the line of her gaze and groaned. Threetall, burly guards stalked toward them, moving with the stiffprecision of clockwork.

And clockwork creatures were not affected byillusions.

“Run!”

Vishni took off like a jackrabbit, weaving her waythrough the crowd so effortlessly they might as well have beenstrands of meadow grass.

The dwarf ripped off the blue robe and hurled itaside. It cost him a moment, but Fox soon saw the sense of it.Holding up his skirts as he ran made him feel like a milkmaidfleeing a satyr.

Delgar shot past him and veered into a narrow alley.He came to a stop so abruptly that Fox plowed into him. Theexperience was not unlike running full speed into a tree.

The dwarf seized Fox’s shoulders, spun him around,and shoved him in the direction of a side alley. Metallic footstepsbehind them told him the reason why.

“How many of those things did Rhendish make?” Foxcomplained.

“Seven so far,” Delgar grunted, pointing to two moreguards emerging from a gap between workshops just up ahead.

They veered off again, hopping a low stone wall andtrampling a vegetable garden. Fox wrestled off his robe and wig ashe ran. An errant wind caught the robe, whisked it skyward, anddraped a scarecrow in alchemist blue.

Delgar grinned in appreciation. His smile droppedaway, though, at what he saw in the alley ahead.