Elaine Cunningham - Honor Among Thieves

The last thing Fox saw was the man’s scowl ofrecognition, and the oar he lifted high overhead.

Delgar stood at the mouth of the sea cave and watchedwith grim face and clenched jaw as the fairy, minus the illusion ofarrow wounds and tattered wings, landed lightly on the rocky shoreand ran to him like a child who expected to be caught up andtwirled.

“I have the dagger!” she called, holding the shiningthing overhead.

The dwarf snatched it from her hand and turned to thecave. He stalked toward the tunnel, the fairy trotting at hisheels.

“You’re in a foul mood,” she said.

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

“Two friends?” she said. “Suddenly you like theelf?”

“I admire courage and integrity.” He shot her a darklook. “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 herforehead 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 hereturns to the den.”

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

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

Delgar surveyed the opening. The too-hurried mininghad stressed the stone, and the too-powerful explosion caused thewalls on either side of the opening into the shaft to crumble. Theresulting 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,” Avidansaid.

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

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

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

Delgar joined the song, blending with it until he wasnot certain where his voice ended and the Thorn’s picked up. Neverhad he experienced anything like this joining-terrifying,wonderful, intoxicating.

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

And still the power came.

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

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

But the fortress above remained-the fortress thathad 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 thewarlords who ruled before him . Delgar could bring it down.The song of destruction and renewal sang in his ears like a lustfulmermaid.

In some distant part of his mind he felt Vishni’shand on his shoulder, heard her repeating a tale he’d first heardas a boy. A tale of an ancient evil, and the last remaining dwarfking, and the sons destined to travel the northlands in search ofsecrets that could mean the dwarves survival or ensure theirdestruction.

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

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

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

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

The shadow of a smile touched the dwarf’s lips. “I’mnot that grateful.”

Fox awoke in a bed with a straw-filled mattress andthick woolen blankets. This was, in his opinion, a greatimprovement over a pit filled with metal corpses.

“So you’re not dead.”

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

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

Fox scoured his thoughts for an explanation the manmight believe, but he was too groggy and dazed for anything but thetruth.

“Do you believe in fairies?”

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

Fox nodded.

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

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

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

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

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 outbehind on the deal.”

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

“If you’re gearing up for a thank-you, you might aswell 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.” Theman 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 woodenmug from the table and dipped up some soup from the kettle.

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

The man strode from the cottage, letting the doorslam behind him.

Fox drank the soup and tried standing. After the roomstopped spinning, he headed for the wooden chair near the hearth.His host had draped Fox’s clothes over the chair to dry. They werestill slightly damp. Fox found that reassuring. He couldn’t havebeen 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. Hepaid for passage on the Mule with a stolen coin and rode therope-drawn carriage to the summit of Crystal Mountain. He steppedout 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 couldagree. He didn’t expect to survive his encounter with Rhendish, butat 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 killedthem.

He went straight for the wall that separatedRhendish’s private quarters from the rest of the manor complex. Heclimbed it, ignoring the thorns amid the mixture of ivy androses.