The Prophecy Con (Rogues of the Republic) (8 page)

Loch opened the brochure the official had given her. “You think they’re excited about going to see a new elven manuscript?”

“The riverbeds through which their thoughts flow are not shaped in such ways, Little One.” Ululenia thought, her horn pulsing with a little flare of light. “It is not the spoil of a hunt or the rush of coupling madly in the grass while a summer storm pounds skin lit only by flashes of lightning.”

“Still haven’t found another virgin, huh?” Tern asked.

“I am still unclear as to what happened to young Dairy,” Icy said.

Ululenia pulled herself upright, and her horn flared again, then went still. “Dairy is
fine
.” She turned back to Loch. “As I was saying, they think only that the museum would be a good place to gain knowledge of the strange other races, and they have heard that there are new displays.”

It wasn’t the strongest lead Loch had ever heard, but it was a starting place.

“All right, everyone. Let’s go visit the museum.”

Five

I
RKE
’
DESAR
,
THE
B
OUNTY
of the Past, was a multi-story
building constructed, like many of the larger buildings in Ajeveth, so that it ran up the gentle slope at the base of the mountain. It gave the city an odd look, like a giant had gone stomping through it and knocked over most of the major structures.

Loch had spent the last few months on Heaven’s Spire, floating high over the rest of the Republic. She’d gotten used to the artificial cleanliness of the Spire, and to the fake stone that sounded wrong beneath a good pair of boots. Ajeveth wasn’t false like Heaven’s Spire, but it wasn’t quite human, either.

“Still a bit strange, huh, Captain?” Kail asked, noticing as she kicked the ground while waiting for a wagon filled with cabbages to pass.

“The air smells better than Heaven’s Spire,” she said, “and at least it’s real stone.”

“Still no garbage in the street, though.” Kail gestured at a market square up ahead. “And no beggars. How are you supposed to figure out what part of the city is what, if you can’t smell the garbage? And how are you supposed to get information if you can’t just pass a few coins to buy some kid a meal?”

Tern cleared her throat. “The dwarves have a strong sanitation system, and they’re good about helping other dwarves find a way to make a living.”

“Well, that’s great for the ones who want to.” Kail shot her a grin. “What about the ones who come back from a war, or a battle with things in the mountains, or . . . what do they have instead of wars?”

“Trolls and cave-ins,” Tern said, nodding and smiling to a group of passing dwarves who looked at them curiously.

“Okay, trolls and cave-ins,” said Kail. “You can’t just say that there’s work for those who want it. There have to be some dwarves that come back from trolls and cave-ins not quite right. Where are
those
people? Do the dwarves kill them, or drive them out of the city or . . .”

“They
help
them,” Tern said, looking a little sad. “Why is this so important to you, Kail?”

“Because it means it doesn’t have to be the way it is in the Republic,” Loch murmured.

“And thank the gods for that,” Tern said. “Come on. If we just hang out here, someone
will
come try to give us directions, and then we’ll have a half-hour of listening to civic details and answering questions about what attractions we might want to see, and trust me, you really need to work up to that level of politely directed socialization.”

They started walking again, boots clopping on clean, evenly cut city streets.

“I always felt good when I passed the little kids a coin,” Kail muttered.

“You’ll live,” Tern said.

The museum had a small fee for admission. It was far less than what a human noble would have charged peasants to look at his private collection. They all paid and went inside.

The museum’s rooms had six walls instead of four. The interior walls were stone instead of plaster, and rather than paint, the overlapping stones were laid out with their grains alternating directions, forming a natural tile pattern. Doorways were set with silver runes and crystals that glowed with steady blue light, and small, regularly spaced crystals in the ceiling lit the room with a gentle ambience.

“Shall we find the manuscript?” Ululenia asked, looking at the walls with faint distaste.

“Not yet,” said Tern.

“It would seem suspicious to ignore the other displays and head directly to the elven area,” added Icy.

“Plus, we want to check the overall security, which means seeing what it’s like throughout the place,” said Kail.

“I see.” Ululenia plucked a brochure from a box on the wall and opened it with mild disdain. “Then let us explore this rocky honeycomb.”

The dwarves had collected items from every race Loch had heard of, and some that she hadn’t. It was all meticulously organized, as Loch was now starting to suspect would be the norm everywhere in the dwarven city. Each race or culture branched off in their own direction, and smaller rooms branched off from that main hexagonal chamber.

In the dwarven chamber, Loch saw axes whose heads were carved from magnetic ores.
Although impractical against armored opponents,
read a plaque near the display,
these weapons—given to the dwarves by the ancients themselves—enabled dwarven warriors to fight invading abominations who were formed from magic itself.

“Glimmering Folk, you think?” Tern asked, looking at the axes. They were set behind protective glass.

Loch frowned. “Could have been.”

“Magnetism. Good note if we ever run into Bi’ul again. Always seemed like
yvkefer
should have worked on the bastard.” Tern leaned in and squinted through the glass. “Not glass. Crystal, cut thin. You can tell by how the light goes through it. It’s been planed so that just trying to cut through will make the whole thing shatter and set off weight-specific alarms.”

“Wonderful.”

In a side room, Loch found Kail looking at a statue of what was almost a dwarf, but not quite. It was massive, taller than Loch, dressed in fur and leather, and its face was set with a kind of snarling smile. In a display beside it sat a huge pair of boots and a great sword with a hilt of leather-wrapped wood.

“Says they used to be taller,” Kail said, “going by what they’ve found from the time they, uh . . .” He looked at a plaque.
“Journeyed to this land to help the ancients find crystals in the mountains. The wood from surviving tools suggests we came from across the sea.”

“Suggests? They’re organized about everything else, but for their history, they only have suggestions?”

Kail squinted. “It says the ancients gave them culture and helped them learn the ways of the mountains. Might not have been very dwarfy before that,” he added with a look at the savage statue.

“I suppose not.”

“Weight-sensitive plates near base, by the way,” he said in a quieter voice. “I’d need Tern to take a look at the doors, but my gut tells me that during off hours, those crystals set in the frame sound an alarm if they detect motion.”

“I’ll pass it on.”

She left the dwarves and headed up a wide set of stairs that climbed to the next floor. It turned out to be dedicated to humans.

Icy stood before a golden dragon that rested on a podium draped with rich green silk. “According to the dwarves, my people came to what is now the Empire thousands of years ago, likely moving to find better cropland after changes to the world’s weather patterns.” He nodded politely to a dwarf in a craftsman’s leathers who may have thought that Icy was part of the display. When the dwarf moved on, Icy added, softly, “Most of the stands appear to have traces of
yvkefer
in their construction. It would make it difficult to steal anything and leave an illusion behind.”

“Moot point, since we don’t have Hessler at the moment.” Loch turned to one of the side rooms.

“Did Justicar Pyvic send any further word?” Icy asked, his voice odd.

“Not since giving us Ajeveth.” Loch headed for the side room.

“Loch . . .” Icy’s voice was still off, somehow, and then Loch remembered that he couldn’t lie worth a damn. “That room contains the history of your people.”

Loch paused, then looked back and gave him a nod and a small smile. “Well, we paid for admission.” Then she turned back to the doorway and stepped through.

There were paintings and small dioramas carved from stone and meticulously painted.

. . . Likely came from some other part of the world to help the ancients cultivate an untamed land, as their different skin color suggests they were not native to the area . . .

There were paper sketches and woodcuts.

. . .
When the ancients left, the Urujar society was peaceful and agrarian until the arrival of colonists from the Old Kingdom . . .

There were shackles and whips, and metal collars fitted with crystals.

. . . Barbaric conditions for centuries, until persistent revolts forced the Republic to grant the Urujar freedom in order to avoid fighting a civil war as well as the first of many conflicts with the Empire . . .

Loch walked back out. She kept her shoulders straight and nodded at Icy. “The windows are too large for me to get through, but I bet you could do it.” She unclenched her fists. “Didn’t see anything else helpful.”

Icy nodded. “I can take more time in the rest of the human displays, if you like.”

“Thanks.” Loch headed up the next set of stairs and didn’t look back.

The third floor looked to be a general collection of magical creatures, which the dwarves had lumped in all together. The main room had artifacts from different human cultures, all related to the fairy creatures and protected with obvious wards that looked like they were as much to keep old, unstable magic
in
as to keep people
out.

Loch found Ululenia in a side room, along with several dwarves who were chuckling while they looked at a small stone diorama of satyrs prancing through a field.

“
These simple, playful creatures sprang from the leftover magic of the ancients,”
Ululenia’s voice snapped in Loch’s mind,
“with their nature dependent upon the type of energy released. Scholars and philosophers debate whether they are truly alive, or intelligent constructs like some of the artifacts of the ancients, which can speak and even effect . . .”

This is
very
offensive, Little One.

“Should’ve seen the Urujar room,” Loch murmured.

To work any magic of nature in these halls would be as making roses bloom in solid rock,
she added.

“Good to know.” Loch nodded, realizing too late that she probably looked a little odd nodding to a voice speaking in her head.

“While some few fairy creatures are troublesome, most are charming wisps more inclined to frolic than to deal with mortals at all . . .” If they had simply
spoken
with any fairy creatures, half of these questions could have been answered!

Loch left Ululenia to her righteous rage and found another room.

It was the elven room, finally. Tern and Kail were already there.

So was an elf.

Loch had only seen elves a handful of times. It was said that they were shy, reclusive creatures. This one was a little taller than she was, and slender, his features narrow. His ears tapered back to fine, wiry points, and his skin was a pale green.

The elf wore a loose shirt and breeches that would have suited a prosperous merchant or a minor noble, and crystals glowed at his brow and cheeks, casting light across golden cat’s eyes.

The elf did not seem to notice her arrival at all, because he was engaged in either a passionate debate or a polite argument with a dwarf standing by a podium where an elven book sat propped up proudly on a red satin cushion.

The Love Song of Eillenfiniel
had been cleaned up since Loch had last seen it, the leather restored and the runes upon the cover buffed to a healthy shine. The crystals in the ceiling had been set to shine more brightly upon the book, and under the protective glass, the book caught the light and shimmered like the sun on a stallion’s flank.

It took her a moment to catch what the elf was actually saying.

“—interference with harmonic equilibrium,” he snapped, “of unacceptable degree relevant to generosity of donation!”

“Now, then,” said the dwarf who, unlike the other dwarves Loch had seen in the museum, was wearing a long leather coat reinforced with protective bands of metal, as well as a thin vest of shimmering ringmail underneath, “there’s no call for fuss. If ye believe that the donated book—”

“
The Love Song of Eillenfiniel,”
the elf corrected. “Nomenclature vital as unique work, replication impossible without altering core experience.”

“If ye believe
The Love Song of Eillenfiniel
,” the dwarf corrected, “is being shown in a manner that is inaccurate or disrespectful to yer cultural heritage, ye kin certainly speak with the curators. We’ll be happy to take yer values into consideration with changes to the display, provided they dinnae compromise the security of the piece.”

“Security precautions simultaneously inadequate and contraindicative for experiential quality!” The elf paused and clasped his hands, clearly trying to control his temper. “It is already too much,” he said slowly and deliberately, “and not enough. A trained thief could climb along the walls to avoid the pressure plates on the floor, melt the display crystal with an appropriate reagent, and replace the manuscript with an item of equal weight.”