David Chandler - A thief in the night

She turned to go.

“Balint,” Slag moaned. “Tell me… one thing.”

She sighed dramatically, then turned to look at him.

“What will you-ugh-do. With the bloody barrels?”

Balint frowned. “I’ve got my orders. I’ll set them ablaze. Watch them burn, every little bit.”

“But… why? They’re priceless!”

“They’re worth about as much as a whore’s hand-rag to me. They’re history.” She made this last word sound like a profanity far worse than anything she’d used so far. “It’s taken a long time for our people to forget, Urin. To forget what we once were. The king doesn’t want anyone reminded of what we can never be again. Now-you tell me one thing.”

Slag looked up at her.

“What the fuck were you going to do with them?”

Slag managed to chuckle, a little, before his chest seized up and he lost himself in a wheezing cough that made tears squirt from his eyes.

“My plan was to sell them to our king. In exchange for… for

… letting me…” Another half chuckle. “… letting me come home.”

Balint nodded in understanding. Then she shrugged. “It’d take more than that to earn his forgiveness. As far as he’s concerned, you stink worse than a goblin’s codpiece.” She strode toward the door. Just before she stepped out of the room, she turned to look back at the three of them one last time. “Farewell, cock-sniffers,” she said, and then she was gone.

Malden stood there holding Acidtongue for a while, trying not to shout in frustration. Finally, careful not to drip any acid on himself, he sheathed the blade and went to Slag’s side.

“Your countrywoman’s got a nasty streak,” he said.

“Not to mention an uncivil tongue,” Cythera agreed.

“Yes,” Slag whispered. A wistful smile crossed his face, despite the pain. “Wasn’t she magnificent?” His eyes fluttered closed and his breathing grew shallow, if ragged. He had fallen asleep.

Cythera stood up and walked to the door. She placed a hand against it and held up one finger for silence. “I can’t hear them out there. They must be gone.”

“And good riddance,” Malden said.

“No-hark, Malden. I’m relatively sure Balint was bluffing.”

“About what would happen to me if I struck her down? Believe me, I considered that it might be worth it.”

“Not about that. About not having an antidote. Did she strike you as a fool?”

“What? No-not that. Not a fool, at least.”

Cythera nodded. He could see in her eyes that she was thinking hard. “She laid the trap. Coated that dart with poison. The first thing Mother taught me about working with venoms and toxins was that you should never even consider it unless you had an antidote at hand. What if she had accidentally pricked herself while loading the dart into the trap? She must have something that can help Slag.”

“And you want me to steal it from her.”

“Exactly.”

Malden laughed. It would be a pleasure.

“Follow her closely. Even if you can’t get it-or if I’m wrong, and she doesn’t have the antidote-you’ll at least learn where the escape shaft is. But be careful! We’ve already seen she’s a mistress of traps. Whatever her people just installed beyond this door is sure to be deadly.”

“Ah. So you want me to go alone.”

Cythera blushed. “I need to stay here to look after Slag. I know this is dangerous. But it may be Slag’s only chance.”

Malden looked down at the sleeping dwarf. “How could I refuse? But give me a kiss for luck, before I go out there into certain peril.”

She sighed and tried to peck his cheek. He swung his head around in time to steal a kiss, a real kiss, from her lips. She looked slightly shocked.

“I’ll be back before you have a chance to miss me,” he told her, and slipped out of the Hall of Masterpieces before she had time for a clever retort.

Malden stepped carefully outside the door, watching the floor carefully for trip wires or pressure plates before he put a foot down. He had Slag’s makeshift lantern in one hand, the other free to react to whatever he found.

It did not take long to find the trap. Indeed, it had clearly been designed to be seen immediately. That fact made Malden’s heart sink. Clever, easily avoided traps relied on subterfuge-the hidden dart, the covered pit. Traps that drew attention to themselves tended to be far more deadly and far, far more difficult to circumvent.

Balint’s men had filled the entire foundry with this one.

Eyelets had been hammered into the walls, and between them were strung countless lengths of woolly red yarn. They crisscrossed each other from the floor to the ceiling, like the laces of an unbelievably complicated corset. They reminded Malden of a far more delicate version of the chains strung across the entrance to the Vincularium.

Of course, this was a dwarvish trap, which meant the threads would not be cursed. He would not be burned alive if he touched them. Yet they were taut as lute strings and he knew something ugly would happen should he disturb them in any way. Escape could not possibly be so simple as cutting or burning them either.

He sighed and looked for what they might be attached to. In the dim light he could only make out the square lines of a machine erected at the far end of the room. The threads all converged on a lever sticking up from its side. A shim had been jammed into the lever’s pivot so it couldn’t move, but it looked like the slightest motion would knock the shim loose. So if he tugged the threads, they would pull that lever. And then…? He could not say what would happen then. But he was certain it would be lethal.

Looking up, he could see the threads reached all the way to the ceiling. So he couldn’t just climb up there and somehow traverse the room above the threads. No, he was going to have to make his way through them.

It was not impossible. Though when viewed head on the threads seemed to cross every cubic inch of the foundry, in fact they were far enough apart that he could slip between them if he was very deft and very careful. Malden knew he was at least one of those things. Tentatively, convinced he might set the trap off merely by breathing on it, he ducked under one of the threads and stood up on the far side.

The hair on the top of his head brushed a thread and set it vibrating.

Malden ducked low and covered his eyes. When nothing exploded or caught on fire or rained boulders down on his head, he allowed himself to breathe once more.

The next thread ran across the room at ankle height. It was easy to step over it, but he had to lean back to avoid catching another thread with his throat. Twisting at the waist, he passed under that one, then held his left foot still in the air so as not to trod on the thread beyond.

With infinite care he slid his hand and shoulder between two threads, then braced himself against the floor as he lifted his legs carefully through the gap. Directly ahead, three threads crossed the room, close enough together that he could not pass between them. He moved sideways, walking like a crab, watching always what was ahead of and behind him, until he found the place where the three threads crossed each other. There was a gap underneath just big enough for him to roll through. He passed his sword and lantern over, then tucked and rolled forward, coming to an abrupt halt when something touched his face.

Every muscle in his body locked at once. His bones held his tremulous flesh back as he tried, desperately, not to twitch in his fear. He could feel something fuzzy stretched taut against his left cheek. His left eye saw nothing-but his eyelashes felt it.

Moving absolutely nothing but his arm, Malden reached over and picked up the lantern. He lifted it by inches toward his face, taking great pains not to let the candle flame touch a single thread.