Honor Among Thieves (4 page)

“Only as a last resort.”

She sniffed. “That’s what you said about my
illusions. 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, Avidan
assured him, lack only saltpeter. He lowered the spoon into the
pit. Working quickly, he scraped off some of the white crystals
that had formed on the top of the pile and transferred them to the
bag Vishni held open.

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

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

“Oh.”

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

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

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

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

Vishni stopped a few feet from the ledge, clinging to
a large rock and staring down at the ledge with an expression most
people 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 on
the gravel covering the ledge. He kicked aside some of the stone to
reveal an expanse of rusted iron.

For several moments he shoved at the gravel with his
boot. The ledge had been paved with vast plates of iron, the edges
of which had been welded together to form a surface too large and
heavy 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 to
the 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 to
the manor.”

“Seems like a lot of work.”

“The tunnels were already here,” Fox said. “Rhendish
built a clockwork system similar to the Mule, with ropes and
pulleys 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 clear
fluid, one careful drop at a time, onto the lid’s iron hinges.
Better the hinges, he figured, than the padlock. The latter was
more likely to be warded against intrusion with lethal shocks,
small capsules that would release noxious fumes, or some other
nasty little alchemical trick.

The metal melted away like sugar in hot tea.

Fox took a metal bar from his pack and pried the lid
open. 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 his
arms to Vishni.

The fairy jumped.

It didn’t occur to Fox until after he’d caught her
that Vishni didn’t need his help to keep from touching the iron
floor.

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

Before she could respond, he dropped her into the
shaft.

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

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

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

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

They stood, waiting, until the grinding crunch of
gears resumed. Ropes creaked and began to move. Vishni leaped onto
the rim of one wooden bucket, holding the ropes that attached it to
the main line. Fox followed. Their combined weight did not slow the
machinery 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 out
the wrinkles. He donned it and pulled a pale wig over his tell-tale
red locks. Most Sevrin natives were fair-haired, and the blue robe
marked him as a student of alchemy. In this garb, he’d look like
one of dozens striding around the compound.

Vishni tried the lock and shook her head. A few drops
of 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’s
visitors gathered to rest and wait.

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

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

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

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

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

A macabre wind chime hung in a corner, nearly
obscured from view by a painted screen. It was a skeleton, narrow
of frame and apparently fashioned of pale pink crystal. He’d never
seen anything so beautiful, or so disturbing, nor had he heard such
music. He had the strangest feeling that there was more to it than
his ears could hear. For the first time, Avidan’s theory about
sound seemed not only sane, but obvious.

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

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

The people of Sevrin loved curiosities—strange
objects and plants and relics gathered from distant places and lost
centuries. The city housed two public museums and several fine
private collections. Rhendish’s warehouse put them all to
shame.

Tall, glass-fronted shelves held relics from “extinct
races” such as elves, griffons, and dragons. There were elven
weapons ranging from simple bows to intricate swords. Jewel-toned
dragon scales had been polished to a high gleam, feathers as long
as Fox’s arm displayed to advantage against sky-blue velvet.
Mundane supplies were also plentiful: bins of dried plants, casks
labeled with words he’d never seen and could not begin to
pronounce, piles of rare woods and thinly hammered sheets of
metal.

There was, however, no sign of Delgar.

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

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

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

Fox’s jaw clenched.

Delgar was a Carmot dwarf, a race distinguished by
the ability to change color to blend into their surroundings. There
were few of his kind left, for the Carmot numbered among the “stone
races,” dwarves whose blood was believed to amplify alchemical
transmutations.

Fox hiked up his blue robe and took the flask of
restorative from his pocket. The dwarf dragged his head up at the
sound of Fox’s approach. Bruises darkened his face and his left eye
was swollen nearly shut, but one corner of his mouth lifted in a
shadow of his cocky grin.

“That color does not suit you.”

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

“So the crazy bugger did it, then?”

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

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

The metal fell away. Delgar grinned, a disconcerting
sight to anyone not familiar with a Carmot dwaves’s nature. The
dwarves were pale silvery gray—hair, skin, even teeth—unless they
chose to appear otherwise. At the moment, Delgar’s smile resembled
a drawer full of knives.

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

“The way out?”

“We walk.”

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

“Don’t forget the teeth,” Fox said.

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

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

“Let’s go.”

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

The sound of shattering glass filled the dungeon.

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

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

“Fuggle!” the dwarf spat.

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

Three men clattered down the stairs. Delgar waved
away Fox’s dragon tooth vial, put his shoulder to the door, and
heaved.

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

Vishni leaped to her feet, a pewter mead cup in one
hand. 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 resembled
the fugitives. A flick of Vishni’s fingers created a phantom swarm
of 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 than
usual.”

“True.”

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

“Shut up and walk.”

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

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

Finally the black-bearded guard waved them through
the 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,” she
murmured.

Fox followed the line of her gaze and groaned. Three
tall, burly guards stalked toward them, moving with the stiff
precision of clockwork.

And clockwork creatures were not affected by
illusions.

“Run!”

Vishni took off like a jackrabbit, weaving her way
through the crowd so effortlessly they might as well have been
strands of meadow grass.

The dwarf ripped off the blue robe and hurled it
aside. 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 milkmaid
fleeing a satyr.

Delgar shot past him and veered into a narrow alley.
He came to a stop so abruptly that Fox plowed into him. The
experience 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 footsteps
behind them told him the reason why.

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

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

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

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

Fox’s gut twisted at the sight in the alley ahead. A
small woman in a dark cloak whirled and twisted, trying without
success to break free of the two men who spun her back and forth
between them, like tomcats toying with a lone mouse.

She needed help. He couldn’t just leave her. But if
they stopped, Rhendish’s clockworks guards would catch them.