Lost (19 page)

I
had the whole night before anyone would come looking for me. As soon as the sun set, I brought the lockpick wires over to the door. I’d heard the lock open and close enough times to know exactly what it looked like inside.
Quick
hands, steady hands
, I picked the lock. I eased the door open and peered out into the hallway. It was empty and dark. After slipping out the door, I slunk down the hallway, quick-quiet on my bare feet. Then down some stairs, across another hallway, and down again, until I got to the ground floor.

Nobody was about. I felt the heaviness of the dread magic gathering. I wondered if all the human guards hid themselves away at night when the magic came out. I wasn’t sure about the Shadows, though.

My legs were shaking, and I couldn’t quite catch my breath. Not enough to eat and not enough sleep. I stayed close to the walls in case I stumbled, and crept through empty stone rooms on the ground floor until I found a small doorway at the end of a passage that let out at the edge of the courtyard.

Every thief knows, when planning to steal something, that the first thing you do is find
another way out of the place you’re sneaking into. That way, if the job goes wrong, you may not nick the thing you came for, but at least you don’t get caught at it.

Jaggus still had his locus magicalicus, and he and the dread magic were planning some kind of attack against the Wellmet magic. They must have tried weakening the Desh magic with slowsilver mining, just like they’d weakened the Wellmet magic with Crowe’s prisoning device. I had to stop them if I could. But first I needed an escape route.

I opened the door onto the courtyard and looked out. The rain had cleared off, and the clouds had thinned enough that the moon, a little off full, shone through, making the night shadowy, not completely dark. A good night for creeping around.

I crept across the courtyard until I came to the wall, and then I followed it away from the main gate, hoping I’d find a smaller door, one
less likely to be guarded. Sure enough, I found one, down at the end of a passageway through the thick wall.

The lock on the outside door was a simple lock. After picking it, I put the lockpick wires into my pocket and cracked the door open.

The door was jerked out of my hand and swung wide.

A shadow loomed up before me. “Be still,” growled a deep voice, and then a cold sword edge rested against my neck.

I stayed still. Why did they have guards on the
outside
?

“Wait,” said Rowan’s voice. “Conn, is that you?”

I laughed. I’d thought she’d be halfway to Wellmet by now. “Hello, Ro.”

Argent was the one holding the sword; it glinted in the faint moonlight. Rowan was just a shadow behind him. She pushed Argent’s sword arm down, swept past him, and grabbed me into a fierce hug.

“You’re all right?” she asked, letting me go.

I nodded.

“Don’t
ever
do anything like that ever again, Connwaer,” she said.

Argent muscled in between us and grabbed me by the scruff of the neck. “I should cut your throat right now,” he growled, “for all the trouble you’ve caused.”

“He
has
caused us trouble,” Rowan said. “But he came to meet us. That’s something, Argent. Let him go, and we can be off.”

Argent let me go.

“Ro, did you bring the guards with you?” I asked.

Her face looked pale in the moonlight. “Conn, we’re all here. We’ve been searching for a way in for hours. But we didn’t have anyone who could pick the lock on this door.” She gave me her slant-smiling look. “We’re leaving Desh, and we came this way because we guessed you might be imprisoned here. Come along.”

I shook my head. “I can’t.”

Argent growled. He still had his sword out. Kerrn stepped up beside him.

“Hello, Kerrn,” I said, glad to see her. “You’re all right?”

“I am well enough,” she said. “No more talking; we must go.”

I stepped back into the doorway. “I can’t leave,” I told them.

They were silent, staring at me.

“You don’t have to come,” I said quickly. “But I have to find Jaggus and destroy his locus magicalicus, and if I can’t do that, I have to steal it again.” That was the only way I could think of to deal with Arhionvar as the magic of Wellmet wanted me to. Without Jaggus and his locus magicalicus, Arhionvar wouldn’t have a wizard to do things for it, like order the mining of slowsilver in Desh to destroy its magic or make Shadows to attack Wellmet.

More silence. Then, “I suppose you have a
good reason to do this,” Rowan said, her voice shaking.

I nodded. “The same reasons as before. You could wait out here. I’ll try to hurry.” I thought of something. “Can I borrow a sword?”

Kerrn huffed out a breath that sounded like a laugh. Then she winced. “I will come with you, thief, if the Lady Rowan permits it.”

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.” I felt the dread magic swirling around. We needed to hurry.

“We’ll all come,” Rowan said firmly.

“What is the guard contingent?” Kerrn asked.

I thought back. “At least three guards, and one of them is Half-finger, the captain. There might be more that I didn’t see. And some Shadows, I’m not sure how many. We have to get past them to get to Jaggus.” I decided not to tell them about Arhionvar; it would take too long to explain.

Argent went to bring up the guards. Rowan stepped up next to me and handed me a sheathed
sword on a belt; she wore her own sword at her waist.

“Would Magister Nevery approve of what you’re doing, Conn?” Rowan asked quietly.

She didn’t know about the birds or my letters from Nevery. “He would, Ro, sure as sure,” I said. My stomach growled. “D’you have anything to eat?”

She gave a half laugh. Kerrn gave her something, and she passed it along to me. A bag with food in it, cheese in a roll of bread. I took a big bite. She held out her canteen. I took it and had a long drink. Much better.

I heard the
shuff, shuff
of footsteps on sand, and Argent came up with seven guards. He’d left three with Nimble, he said, who refused to come along.

“You lead,” Kerrn said.

I gulped down the last of the roll and cheese and hung my sword belt over my shoulder. “Be as quiet as you can,” I said, and led them back into the fortress.

The guards wouldn’t have made good thieves because their footsteps echoed on the stone floors and they kept whispering questions to each other, and to Kerrn.

Jaggus, I guessed, would have his workroom in the tall tower in the middle of the fortress. It would likely have only one door in, and if any guards were around they would be there.

We rattled around the ground floor rooms for a bit, like noisy shadows, until we found a wide staircase leading up. A lone werelight turned low glowed from the top of the stairs. I headed toward it.

I got to the top step and paused; the guards and Rowan and Argent waited on the stairs behind me. At the top of the stairs was a wide landing. The werelight lantern hung from a hook beside a door, casting a small circle of greenish, wavery light onto the floor. Everything else was dark.

The door led to Jaggus’s workroom, sure as sure. He couldn’t have left it unguarded. It’d be locked, anyway. I felt in my pocket for my lockpick wires.

“Wait here,” I said over my shoulder.

Leaving Rowan, Kerrn, Argent, and the guards at the top of the stairs, I bare-footed across the landing to the door.

I crouched down to have a look at the lock, putting my sheathed sword on the floor next to me. Taking out a wire, I probed inside to see what I was dealing with.
Steady hands
, and then a faint, oily click.

Drats. Quickly I pulled out the wire. A fretlock. It had a set mechanism inside, and if I tripped it, the lock would realign itself and I’d have to start over again. This would take some time.

I glanced back toward the stairs. I couldn’t see the others. Outside my circle of greenish light, shadows flowed. A finger of clammy, dusty air
stroked across the back of my neck. “
Shadows!
” I whispered. I caught a glimpse of a purple-black eye and boiling black shadows.

I heard the sound of bootsteps rushing up the stairs and the hiss of a blade being drawn from a sheath. “On your guard!” Kerrn shouted.

I shoved the lockpicks into my pocket, grabbed up my sword from the floor, and leaped to my feet. Three Shadows gathered at the edge of the light, reaching toward me with long tendrils of darkness.

I fell back against the door and wrestled the sword out of the sheath and swung it one-handed ’round at the Shadows. The blade sliced through one of them, and it dissolved into black rags of shadow that swirled, then re-formed around the pulsing eye.

From the stairs, I heard more footsteps rushing up, and shouting—Half-finger and his men had snuck up on the others from behind. Another werelight flared. In the faint greenish light, the
landing was full of swooping Shadows, and a swarm of fortress guards with swords, fighting with the Wellmet guards.

“Conn!” Rowan shouted. She was in the middle of the fighting. Her sword flashed in the dim light as she parried a thrust by a fortress guard. With her other hand, she reached out and yanked his head scarf over his eyes, then reversed her sword and clubbed him across the back of the head. He crumpled to the floor. Another fortress guard lunged at her and she whirled to catch his blade on her blade.

Yet another guard attacked her, and Argent leaped to her side, his blade slashing across the man’s chest, spattering the floor with blood. The guard groaned and fell backward. Two more fortress guards attacked them.

I couldn’t hide in my bit of light while Rowan and Argent did all the fighting.

With a quick lunge, like Kerrn had taught me, I poked my sword into one of the Shadows.
The blade went right in, then I pulled it out with a
pop
. Dust crumbled along the sharp edge. The Shadow swooped down on me again, and this time, when I swung the blade around, it sliced through its darkness, hitting the darksilver eye with a
clang
that vibrated up my arm. The Shadow exploded into black dust, and darksilver rained down around me, burning where it touched my skin.

Brushing off the steaming drops of darksilver, my bare feet sliding over dust, I stepped out of the circle of light, heading for Rowan and Argent, where the fighting was thickest. They stood back-to-back, their swords flashing, defending themselves from three fortress guards.

Keep your guard up, I told myself. I gripped my sword and plunged into the fight. A guard swung his blade at me, and I ducked out of the way and swiped back at him, but missed. Rowan caught my eye and nodded, then said something over her shoulder to Argent, who glanced my way.

A swathe of shadow reached from behind me and tightened around my neck. I spun around, slashing with my sword, but it cut right through the shadows. The numb-stone feeling spread. I gasped for breath. Then a sword plunged past me and straight into the Shadow’s staring eye.

The Shadow blew apart into a cloud of dust, releasing me.

I whirled back and caught Argent’s nod as he brought his blade back around to block a thrust from a fortress guard.

Another guard came at me, his blade feinting and glinting in the dim light. I flailed out with my sword, just missing Argent. “Careful!” he shouted, blocking my wild swing.

“Sorry,” I gasped.

The fortress guard came at me again. I ducked to the side, and then somehow his blade cut around, slashing toward my head.

I brought my own blade up in a desperate parry. The guard ducked as I swung wide; then my sword
slipped from my grip, spinning ’round until its tip sliced across my arm, right below the elbow, tearing a ragged gash through the cloth of my shirt. The sword clattered to the stone floor and spun away. I scrambled after it, ducking another blow from the fortress guard.

“Get out of the way!” Argent shouted, doing some fancy footwork to keep from tripping over me.

He was right; I wasn’t any use to them. I needed to get back to the door. I grabbed up my sword and tried to get my bearings.

“Conn!” Rowan shouted. She kept her eye on two Shadows, hovering just out of reach of her blade.

“Here!” I answered, from behind her.

She spun around and grabbed my arm, right where my own blade had cut me. Ow. It hadn’t hurt right away, but I could feel it now, a nasty gash cutting deep into the muscle.

“To the door!” She dragged me away from
the fighting and over to the circle of light by the door. “Do what you have to do,” she ordered, and let me go. Her hand came away covered with blood. She looked at her hand, then at me, with wide eyes.

“I’m all right,” I said, and went to crouch by the door. I dropped my sword onto the floor and pulled out my lockpick wires.

I closed my eyes, feeling my way into the fretlock. The sharp end of the wire brushed over the set mechanism. Two tumble-bolts, I thought, and a spring-set puzzle ratchet, and in front of it, the fretwork. Right.

Closing my ears to the sounds of fighting, I took the other wire from my mouth and probed into the lock, listening for the snick of the set. There.
Steady hands
, and I flicked the other wire into place.