David Chandler - A thief in the night

He could find no clue at all to their disappearance.

There was no sign of a struggle. No blood on the floor. Nothing knocked over or moved out of place. Malden frowned. He very much wished he knew what was going on. Or what to do next.

He slipped back out of the hall, intent on finding his friends. Yet when he looked across the foundry level toward the lift shaft, a new terror crossed his soul.

He could see light there. It wasn’t the flicker of candlelight but the great guttering flare of torchlight, and there was a lot of it. He could hear footsteps, and thought there might be as many as a score of revenants coming for him, from elsewhere on the foundry level. He imagined they must have followed him up from the dormitory level, using a flight of stairs he had not seen. They didn’t need the lift after all, and jamming it had only slowed them down.

Wherever they came from, though, didn’t matter at all-what did was that they were coming closer. Coming right for him.

Malden had a magic sword on his belt, and one good arm to swing it with. He had never trained as a swordsman, though, and lacked any manner of killer instinct. He knew he would be no match for even one persistent revenant, much less twenty of them. He had trained as a thief-and so he did what a thief would do in that circumstance.

He hid.

The foundry offered a hundred good places to conceal Malden. He considered hiding inside the great furnace. Perhaps up in the smelting ladle-but no, he would be trapped up there. If the revenants spotted him, he would have nowhere else to go. The same difficulty eliminated the Hall of Masterpieces as a refuge: again, there would be no way to escape once he was inside. If his pursuers found him there, he would be cornered.

In the end he chose a hiding place out in the open-a place, perhaps, that would be overlooked in the abundance of more secluded spots. Moving aside some of the pieces of scrap, he buried himself as best he could inside the small mountain of copper heaped up against one wall. He chose the copper because its color was obvious-he had no desire to accidentally bury himself in arsenic, or something else poisonous that he didn’t recognize. Once he was concealed, he put out his light, then pulled more pieces of copper on top of himself. He left just a bit of his face exposed, enough that he could breathe, and see.

Then he settled in and tried to make himself as quiet as possible.

He did not have to wait long. Torchlight filled the foundry, and he heard footfalls coming toward him. Many footfalls.

He didn’t dare raise his head to see the revenants coming for him. He would have to wait until they came closer.

He was not prepared at all to hear Cythera’s voice.

“He’s not here, you see?” she insisted. She sounded very tired, and even more frightened than she had been before. It sounded like she was over by the lift room. “I told you. He’s a thief. A scoundrel! At the first sign of trouble, I’m sure he fled this place entirely. He’s probably running for Helstrow, as fast as his legs can carry him.”

Malden almost climbed out of his hiding place then, intending to tell her she was wrong. That he would never desert her. That he had the antidote.

But then another voice spoke.

It was a sneering voice, high-pitched but distinctly male. It dripped with sarcasm and had an accent Malden couldn’t place, so thick he could barely make out the words. He’d never heard that accent before, he was sure of it.

“I’m certain you wouldn’t lie to me. Humans are known far and wide for their scruples, after all. But I think we’ll have a look anyway.”

He heard many people moving around, and then the jingling of the lift chain. “What’s this? Look! A piece of iron has jammed itself in the chain, all of its own accord. Fascinating. Pull that free.” The iron rod was removed from the lift chain and fell to the floor with a noise like a church bell ringing out an alarm. Malden’s body tensed as his ears thrummed with the noise. They’d found his clever ruse, it seemed. Silently he cursed his luck. There would be no doubt that he had been in the foundry, then, and recently.

“You three-search this area completely. Find him and bring him to me. Don’t be gentle about it either.”

Malden tried not to even wince.

He was deeply confused now. The revenants they’d seen on the top level did not speak. Even if they could, he doubted they would sound so jaded or so bored. Who was taunting Cythera? Had some other group of explorers entered the Vincularium? Between Morget’s demon-hunting party, Balint’s dwarves, and the revenants, it seemed the deserted tomb of the elves was experiencing a population explosion. But who were these new people, and what had they come for? The mystery was solved quickly enough. His pursuers came into the dark part of the foundry, carrying torches to light their way, and he saw they weren’t revenants at all.

They wore the same bronze armor he’d seen before, battle scarred and falling apart, held together with patches and bits of string. They were as gaunt as the revenants, and as pale. And yet-they were beautiful. They were graceful. And they were decidedly alive.

The three soldiers who hunted him had long angular faces, their features sharp and elegant. Their eyes were cruel but sparkling, their lips thin but red. Their hair fell around their shoulders but could not conceal their delicate pointed ears. Their skin had little color to it, true. Like dwarves, they were so pale that they might have been albinos if not for their dark hair. Yet if a dwarf’s skin was like marble, cold white veined with blue, the soldiers’ complexions had the warmth and subtlety of fine alabaster.

They were elves. Living elves, in this place-living, surviving, after eight hundred years in the long shadows underground.

Malden nearly gasped in astonishment.

The elves searched the foundry as if it was beneath them. They poked their bronze swords into various piles of scrap. They picked at the lengths of red string that crisscrossed the floor, the remains of Balint’s trap. They seemed wise enough to avoid disturbing the pile of arsenic. When they reached the door to the Hall of Masterpieces, one of them sighed in distaste.

“I suppose we’ll have to open it,” he said. He looked to the others and rolled his eyes. One of them snorted out a laugh. The three of them found a bar and started to pry open the door.

Malden knew how much resistance it would give them. They could not be as strong as humans, not with those stick-thin arms, so they would have to struggle with the door. He waited until they were wholly occupied with this task, their weapons stowed securely on their belts and away from their hands.

Then he jumped out of the pile of copper scrap and ran as fast as he could toward the lift shaft.

A cry went up immediately, and someone shouted, “He has a sword!” but Malden paid no attention to the clamor. He reached inside his tunic with his good hand and skidded to a stop as he came before the great furnace.

More elves waited there. More heavily armed elves, and while some of them slouched against the walls, he knew he would never make it past them all and reach the lift unmolested. But that had never been his plan.

Cythera was there as well, all but carrying Slag. The dwarf looked as if he had only minutes to live. Just one guard stood near the two of them, and he looked more confused than vigilant. Malden shifted the antidote to his bad hand-he could barely close his fist around it-and yanked Acidtongue from its scabbard. As he leapt toward the guard, he shouted, “Only one drop!” and threw the vial of antidote toward Cythera’s outstretched hand.