Honor Among Thieves (14 page)

“That happens when I watch two friends die because
someone
decided to ‘improve the story’ with a daring
rescue.”

“Two friends?” she said. “Suddenly you like the
elf?”

“I admire courage and integrity.” He shot her a dark
look. “And I like people who can think of something, anything,
beyond the possibility that a stupid and dangerous game might be
fun
.”

Vishni flung the back of her hand against her
forehead in a parody of a swoon. “So much drama, so little cause!
Fox is fine. I saw a fisherman pick him up.”

“What about the elf?”

The fairy shrugged. “Ask Fox about her when he
returns to the den.”

Avidan stood in the tunnel ahead, milling one arm in
a circle to urge them to hurry. Delgar broke into a run.

“The explosion did its job too well,” the alchemist
said. “It took out half the wall and exposed much of the oubliette
shaft. Muldonny’s men will be able to follow us into the
tunnels.”

Delgar surveyed the opening. The too-hurried mining
had stressed the stone, and the too-powerful explosion caused the
walls on either side of the opening into the shaft to crumble. The
resulting gap was too wide for him to seal using stoneshift.

A shout of discovery echoed from the ruins above.

“If you can close the tunnel, do it now,” Avidan
said.

Delgar glanced at the dagger. It was smeared with
Honor’s blood, yet the rose within remained closed and pale. If the
dagger’s magic had been amplified by contact with a traitor’s
blood, he would not dare awaken its power.

He took a deep breath and pointed the Thorn at the
sundered stone.

Power sang through his blood and bones in a song of
stoneshifting beyond anything he’d ever imagined.

Delgar joined the song, blending with it until he was
not certain where his voice ended and the Thorn’s picked up. Never
had he experienced anything like this joining—terrifying,
wonderful, intoxicating.

Boulders faded into mist and flowed to fill the
opening. The tunnel wall slammed into place with a booming crash.
Delgar instinctively knew that solid rock stretched to the far side
of the oubliette shaft, encasing bones and metal limbs like relics
of an ancient sea.

And still the power came.

Delgar sent it upward, melting stone and mortar until
the mountain creaked and leaned to fill the gap. The men climbing
down into the shaft cursed and screamed as solid rock seized their
feet and rose to encase their bodies.

Their screams faded into silence. No pursuers
remained; the tunnels were secure.

But the fortress above remained--the fortress that
had played so important a role in the adepts’s control of Sevrin,
and in the reign of Eldreath before them, and in the service of the
warlords who ruled before
him
. Delgar could bring it down.
The song of destruction and renewal sang in his ears like a lustful
mermaid.

In some distant part of his mind he felt Vishni’s
hand on his shoulder, heard her repeating a tale he’d first heard
as a boy. A tale of an ancient evil, and the last remaining dwarf
king, and the sons destined to travel the northlands in search of
secrets that could mean the dwarves survival or ensure their
destruction.

For once, the fairy did not need to improve upon the
tale.

The familiar story slowly edged its way through the
madness of power, bringing the dwarf back to where he stood, and
who he was, and what he was born to do.

When he returned fully to himself, Delgar tucked the
elven dagger into his belt and inclined his head to the fairy. “You
have my most profound gratitude.”

“Good,” she said. “Can I have the dagger, too?”

The shadow of a smile touched the dwarf’s lips. “I’m
not
that
grateful.”

* * *

Fox awoke in a bed with a straw-filled mattress and
thick woolen blankets. This was, in his opinion, a great
improvement over a pit filled with metal corpses.

“So you’re not dead.”

He squinted up at the forbidding visage of the
scarred and bearded fisherman. “Do you plan to remedy the
situation?”

The man huffed. “Ought to. First, though, I’d like to
hear how Gorm’s copper coin turned into a silver ring and back
again.”

Fox scoured his thoughts for an explanation the man
might believe, but he was too groggy and dazed for anything but the
truth.

“Do you believe in fairies?”

The fisherman made a sign of warding. “The girl with
you?”

Fox nodded.

“Thought there was something about her,” he said.
“She stood and watched Gorm and me kick you six ways around the
bend and smiled the whole time. Now, I’ve seen women get mad at
their men, mad enough that seeing them on the wrong side of a fight
might make them happy. Not this girl. She was just . . .
happy.”

“Fights make for good stories,” Fox said. “She likes
those.”

He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around
the cottage. All there was to it was one room. Other than the bed,
furnishings consisted of a table, an iron pot sitting amid the
coals in the hearth, and a few pieces of men’s clothing hanging on
hooks lined neatly along one wall. There was no evidence of the
fisherman’s wife.

“It seems you got the worse of the fairy’s
mischief.”

The fisherman shrugged. “I’ve got a new worker,
Gorm’s got a new woman. At the end of the day, I’d say he came out
behind on the deal.”

Fox had nothing to add to that. “You pulled me out of
the sea.”

“If you’re gearing up for a thank-you, you might as
well hold your clockwork. I don’t want your thanks.”

“You could have turned me in to Muldonny’s men.”

“Don’t want anything from the adepts, either.” The
man paused for a grim smile. “I got a brother in Muldonny’s guard.
He came by last night looking for work, seeing how Muldonny’s dead.
One adept down, six more to go, is all I got to say.”

The fisherman abruptly turned away. He took a wooden
mug from the table and dipped up some soup from the kettle.

“Drink this,” he said as he thrust the mug into Fox’s
hands. “As soon as you think you can walk, start doing it.”

The man strode from the cottage, letting the door
slam behind him.

Fox drank the soup and tried standing. After the room
stopped spinning, he headed for the wooden chair near the hearth.
His host had draped Fox’s clothes over the chair to dry. They were
still slightly damp. Fox found that reassuring. He couldn’t have
been unconscious for more than a day.

Dim morning light greeted him outside of the cottage.
It took him to late afternoon to make his way to Rhendish Manor. He
paid for passage on the Mule with a stolen coin and rode the
rope-drawn carriage to the summit of Crystal Mountain. He stepped
out of the carriage and went in search of Rhendish.

One adept dead. Six more to go.

That was a point on which Fox and the fisherman could
agree. He didn’t expect to survive his encounter with Rhendish, but
at the moment he didn’t much care.

The adept had played him. Now his friends were dead,
leaving Fox with the knowledge that his stupidity had killed
them.

He went straight for the wall that separated
Rhendish’s private quarters from the rest of the manor complex. He
climbed it, ignoring the thorns amid the mixture of ivy and
roses.

In the courtyard beyond, Rhendish was enjoying a
leisurely stroll with his beautiful clockwork spy. A bandaged
wrapped her wounded arm, and the Thorn hung from a loop on her
belt.

The clockwork elf looked up and caught Fox’s eye.

He expected her to sound the alarm. What he did not
expect was the silent entreaty in her eyes.

She lifted one hand and ran her fingertips lightly
across her chin. Fox had taught Avidan that signal in case their
foray into Muldonny’s fortress went awry.

Return home. Friends are safe and waiting
.

The suicidal madness that possessed him flowed away
like water from a broken skin. He slipped quietly down the wall and
walked out of Rhendish manor. A couple of the guards glanced his
way, their gazes lingering on his red hair. But no one seemed to
connect him to the thief they’d been hunting for years.

It occurred to Fox that Rhendish probably thought he
was dead. No doubt he had Honor to thank for that.

He tried four of Delgar’s hidden doors before he
found one that was still open. Once he made his way into the
tunnels, he hurried toward the den, half fearing he’d find it
overrun with Gatherers and guards.

He heard Vishni’s laughter when he was still two
passages away from the den and broke into a run. He burst into the
mirror room to find his three friends holding wine goblets raised
in a toast.

Delgar tossed aside his goblet and caught Fox in a
crushing hug.

“Vishni’s alive!” Fox said.

The dwarf released him and stepped back. “She is,
yes. But we thought we’d celebrate anyway.”

“But how—”

Fox’s eyes fell upon the Thorn and all other thoughts
fled.

He’d never seen the dagger close up, but he knew this
could be no other. Delgar’s copies were good, but they lacked the
power that hummed in the weapon like an unsung song.

As he gazed, the rose petals within the crystal blade
folded to herald the setting sun.

“Honor threw the dagger to Vishni. The fairy caught
it and brought it to me. We closed the tunnel.” Delgar spread his
hands, palms up.

“You’re not much of a storyteller,” the fairy said,
“but that will do.”

“Vishni said you had a story to tell us about Honor,”
Delgar said.

Fox told them what he had seen in Rhendish’s garden.
For reasons he did not quite understand, he didn’t tell them about
the clockwork he’d glimpsed under her skin.

“Well, that explains a few things.” Delgar pulled a
glass copy from his belt. “You only took two copies to Stormwall
Island. This is the last one left in the den. I figured she took
the others.”

“If Rhendish thinks he has the dagger, he won’t be
looking for it,” Fox said. “Impressive planning.”

“Even more impressive is her sense of honor,” the
dwarf said. “She’s well named.”

Fox turned a wry smile in Vishni’s direction. “Do you
have anything to add to the accolades?”

The fairy smiled sweetly. “She’s not half bad,
considering what she is.”

Honor sat in stoic silence as the adept probed the
clockwork in her arm with a slender metal tool.

“The mechanism is broken,” he announced. “I fear it’s
past repairing. It will need to be replaced.”

“Remove it, then.”

Rhendish shook his head. “That would take months.
Years, perhaps. It would be a terribly painful process, and there’s
no guarantee that you would survive it.”

“And if I did, you would have no guarantee that I’d
be of further use to you.”

“A harsh assessment,” he said, “but true
nonetheless.”

“Give me my sword arm back, and I’ll serve you of my
own will.”

The adept smiled. “As much as I appreciate the offer,
you must forgive me if I prefer my own proven methods to your
unproven word.”

Honor pulled the dagger from her belt and laid it on
the worktable. “You offered me a position if I decided not to
return to the forest. Well, I’ve decided. Everything you said was
true. The dagger will condemn me, for the rose blooms at the touch
of a traitor’s blood.”

She picked up the dagger and pressed it deep into the
open wound.

Blood flowed into the blade, rising up a tiny pipe
Avidan had hidden in the long stem of the rosebud. It flowed into
the tightly furled rose, and then into tiny, petal-shaped chambers
behind the rosebud, each petal thinner than a whisper’s shadow. To
all appearances, the rose was blooming in response to a traitor’s
blood.

Finally the blood reached the last rose petal
chamber, where Avidan’s latest alchemical marvel waited.

The substance ignited at the first touch of Honor’s
blood. Rhendish watched, entranced, as light dawned in the heart of
the blade and gained brightness and power until it seemed that the
rose itself might catch fire.

Honor jerked the knife from her arm. “That is what my
sister expected the other elves to see. I intend to ensure they
will not.”

She rose and hurled the dagger at the wall. It
shattered like lost innocence. Crimson light hovered around the
shards for a breath or two, then faded.

Rhendish regarded her with narrowed eyes. “Was that
truly necessary?”

“Would you do otherwise, in my position?”

“Perhaps not,” he said. “And if I employ you, you’ll
take me into the Fox’s lair?”

“If I can,” she said. “Before we left for Stormwall
Island, Delgar shifted the passages beneath the city beyond
recognition. I’m not sure I can find my way back into the passage,
much less locate the den.”

The adept rose and began to pace. “So. The dagger is
destroyed and I do not have the thief.”

“What does it matter if you find his lair? Fox is
dead. They’re all dead. A dozen witnesses saw the fairy shot out of
the sky. The explosion destroyed Muldonny’s workroom and collapsed
the escape shaft. If your concern is, as you said, ridding Sevrin
of a band of thieves, you have achieved your goal. Define another,
and I will help you achieve that as well.”

Rhendish came to a stop beside a curtained alcove.
“And what do you want in return?”

She removed Muldonny’s ring from her coin bag and put
it on the table. “I want
this
back. When you remove the
gears and metal shafts from my arm, put the crystal back. In time
the crystal will grow together, like human bone.”

A low, sly smile crept over the adept’s face. “There
is a quicker way.”

He pulled the curtain aside with a flourish.