The Death Ray

15

Regdar couldn't have been more relieved when Naull and Maelani crept out the door of the room below and he was finally able to let the watchmen back in. The surprising appearance of Maelani had thrown him more off-balance than he would have imagined. Regdar wanted to believe that Naull didn't think he and the girl had planned it. Regdar wanted to tell Naull in no uncertain terms that he had no interest in Maelani and did nothing to encourage her to sneak into his bedchamber in the middle of the night. He hadn't had the chance, though, with the duke's daughter there the whole time. Turning Maelani away could easily be seen as an insult to the duke himself, and Regdar would die before he'd do such a thing-yet he had little choice.

"Lord Constable?" the sergeant prodded, breaking Regdar from his confusing, circular ruminations.

"Yes," Regdar replied, though he hadn't heard the question.

The sergeant narrowed his eyes in confusion and was about to speak when he was interrupted by a call from below. Both Regdar and the sergeant stepped to the edge of the hole and looked down. Two watchmen stood in the room below, one looking up at his sergeant, the other down the hole in that room's floor.

"The innkeeper says this room's vacant," the watchman reported. "Should I have a look around?"

Before the sergeant could answer, Regdar said, "No. Touch nothing. I want to examine it myself, and I will have a mage examine it as well."

The watchman nodded and said, "Yes, Lord Constable."

Lord Constable, Regdar thought. Duke…"What have I gotten myself into?"

"I'm sorry, sir?" the sergeant asked.

Regdar shook off the question, barely aware that he'd muttered that last bit aloud.

"Goes all the way down!" a voice echoed up from below.

Regdar looked down again and saw another pair of watchmen in the ground floor room, two stories below.

"What's below you?" Regdar called down.

Both of them looked around, then one called up, "Looks like a pantry or something. I see sacks of rice and flour and some crates."

"There will be a door down there," Regdar told the sergeant, "but one not easily recognizable."

"A secret door?" the sergeant asked. "Are you sure?"

Regdar thought of Naull's spellcasting the day before and nodded.

"One of my men's a half-elf," the sergeant said. "He's got an eye for that sort of thing."

Regdar nodded and the sergeant slipped away to give the order.

"Nice work, anyway," one of the watchmen called up.

"What was that?" Regdar asked.

"The carving," a watchman in the room below replied, pointing at the holes in the marble floors. "It was expertly done, I can tell you that."

Regdar crouched and ran a fingertip along the smooth, rounded edge of the hole. The floors were solid marble. The place was more regally built than Regdar imagined. It must have taken magic to lay those slabs and probably to cut them so perfectly in the first place.

"I used to work with my uncle," the watchman continued from below, "carving headstones. Depressing work, and I didn't have a talent for it like he did."

"This would take time, wouldn't it?" Regdar said. "Work like this through, what, six inches or more of solid marble?"

The watchman nodded and said, "My uncle could have done it, when he was alive. It would take him the better part of a month, and you'd sure as mages mumble have been able to hear him working at it."

The floors were kept polished by the Thrush and the Jay's dedicated cleaning staff. As Regdar felt the edge of the hole, he thought he felt ripples, like ridges or depressions.

"Fingers," he said aloud.

"Sorry, lord?" the watchman below asked.

"Nothing," Regdar said. "Best get you two out of there and seal the room. I want you four to guard those rooms, two on each door. No one goes in without my orders."

The watchmen in the rooms below made various signals and grunts of understanding, and disappeared from Regdar's view.

Regdar stood but his eyes roamed the edges of the hole. He couldn't shake the feeling that he'd seen something like that edge before, and his mind wandered to his mother's pottery wheel. He hadn't thought about that in a long time, but he could see her fingers press gently into the wet, turning clay.

With a sigh, Regdar drew the jagged piece of steel from his pocket and eyed it.

"Who are you?" he whispered, "and how did you work solid marble like it was soft clay?"

And why, he asked silently, were you trying to kill the duke's daughter?