chapter TWENTY-FIVE
“I’d like to slap you,” Corin said. “You and Kellen both. Keep calm and keep quiet. Isn’t that what you told Kellen?”
Avery shook his head. “That was before.”
“Before what? What have you seen?”
“Heard,” Avery corrected. “I found Ephitel.”
“Down here?”
“Indeed. And he has the dwarves.”
“That’s good,” Corin said. “They’ll keep him busy while we—”
“You don’t understand. He has the dwarves. They’ve already made a deal. He gets all the powder his wretched heart desires. The sneaking gnomes are even making him his hand cannons.”
“Guns,” Corin said, but Avery shook his head.
“That name isn’t large enough. I heard how Ephitel spoke of them. I saw Ephitel smile.”
The gentleman shook his head in tired melancholy, all the fight gone out of him. Corin sighed and stepped closer. “So?”
“So we are lost.”
“And that’s the end of it? Do you really want to die down here?”
Avery shrugged his shoulders.
Corin crowded closer still. “Do you want Maurelle to die? Because that is what comes next. A battle in the city streets.”
Avery narrowed his eyes. “Of course I don’t.”
Corin jabbed a finger in his chest. “Do you want Ephitel to win?”
“No!” Avery snapped. “I want him dead!”
“Good. Then we have work to do.”
Avery nodded, a spark finally catching in his eyes. “Of course! You’ve found the sword. That’s why you were waiting here.”
Corin had to sigh. “Alas. I haven’t found it yet. This is…just a storeroom.”
“Perhaps he’s wearing it. We could go and check.”
“You saw him?”
“From a distance, yes. He has another room like this, but wide as Oberon’s throne room. He’s meeting with the dwarves there.”
Corin frowned. “A room that large for Ephitel and three dwarves?”
Avery swallowed hard. “No. You must come and see.”
Now that he was in control, the elven thief showed an uncanny sense of direction in the gloomy maze. Corin tried to track the turns, but Avery moved as if on instinct. He picked a path deep into the cellars, until Corin felt confident they must be out beneath the lawn by now. Perhaps beneath the teeming plaza, though Corin had no guess which direction they’d traveled. What was west of Ephitel’s estate? Or north? The edge of the city?
He was pondering these things when Avery abruptly stopped. The gentleman’s voice shook a little as he said, “It’s just ahead. Around that corner. Move with care.”
Corin eased forward, and his straining ears picked up the sound of distant voices, blurred to a murmur by the earthy echo. He slipped around the corner and into a corridor that ended at an open iron door much like the ones Corin had picked before. This was another storage room, like all the rest, but the far wall had been torn down. The work had been done recently, for crumbled mortar and broken stone still littered the floor. Corin stepped past it, his attention drawn to the gallery beyond.
Despite what Avery had said, this room was nothing like the other vaults. It was an artificial cavern, wide and low, its unfinished walls of dirt, not masoned stone. Pillars every ten paces propped up a latticed ceiling of heavy wooden beams. Attached to every fourth or fifth pillar was one of the small barrels Corin had found in another vault. Black powder. Terror froze Corin in his tracks while his eyes picked out dozens of the little barrels, reaching deep into the distant gloom.
“He’s undermined the city,” Corin breathed.
“The Piazza Autunno,” Avery answered. “All the way to Marvolo’s, I think. And to Green on the west. And nearly to the palace bridge.”
“But how?”
Avery nodded toward the distant sound of voices. “As I said, he has the dwarves.”
Corin moved in that direction, flitting from pillar to pillar but avoiding any with a barrel at its top. As he moved toward the sound of chatter, he also found more and more light, not from the eerie magic flames, but from lanterns. Dozens of lanterns. Hundreds. Thousands. Corin pressed himself against a heavy pillar, showing the narrowest sliver of his face as he looked out on an army of dwarven miners, hacking away at the city’s bedrock. Ephitel and the three dwarves from the carriage stood watching them work.
“How can you claim this is not enough?” one of the dwarves demanded. “All seven of the Dehtzlan mines are sitting idle while we work for you. Three of our clans will starve if you do not deliver!”
“It is not your work that I find wanting,” Ephitel replied with the aggravated air of a man repeating himself yet again. “I need more powder!”
The dwarf rolled his eyes like a panicked horse. “How can you need more?” He sounded desperate. Terrified. “We have stocked this mine. We have stocked your troops, and more waits in your cellars. You must have enough by now!”
Ephitel’s lip curled as he looked down on the wretched dwarf. “For today, perhaps,” he said coldly. “But when I show my force, consider who will come against me. I need more for tomorrow.”
“Ask the heavens for more stars! Ask the seas to make more waves. We have buried you in powder—”
“There must be more. Find me more. Everything depends on powder.”
The dwarf scrubbed his hands over his face. “We have stripped the world of it. We have gained the suspicion of every clan by buying out their stores. Our alchemists work day and night—”
“And yet some filthy manling walks into my city with half a pound of the stuff in a leather bag.”
“I have told you, that would not have been our work. No one has sold powder to a manling.”
“Then he stole it. Where are there still stores to steal? I’ll send thieves of my own—”
“There are no stores. I swear by sand and stone. Search everywhere within this world, and you will not find another grain.”
Ephitel stood for a long moment glaring down at his confederates. He growled low and animal. “Make me more. Find me more. And do it quickly, or I will see that more than three clans starve.”
The dwarf went pale at that, and stammered, “No. No, my lord. Give us time. We will…we will find some way.”
“There is not much time to give. You have your orders.”
The exchange was quickly coming to a close. Corin pulled away, slipping far enough into the shadows to hide from sight, but still close enough to keep an eye on Ephitel.
Avery rejoined him, silent as a shadow by Corin’s shoulder until he whispered, “You see? What are we to do?”
“We must warn Oberon,” Corin said. “We shouldn’t even have come to see this. We must warn the king and quickly.”
“Warn him of what? What do you understand?”
“I understand that Ephitel has guns. He has the banned black powder—barrels and barrels of the stuff—and he’s asking the dwarves for more. The only thing I do not understand…” He trailed off, his gaze drifting up a nearby column to the powder keg bound up against the ceiling joist. “What does he have planned for those?”
Avery sighed, distraught. “I have been considering that. As I said, this cavern reaches nearly to the river bridge, and that’s the direction the dwarves are extending it. When the lord protector’s troops are ready, he’ll gather them here, explode the powder, and bring down the ceiling, opening a path straight to the palace.”
“Oh, no,” Corin said slowly, a new horror sinking into his heart. “No, that’s not his plan. He is the lord protector. He doesn’t need a secret tunnel through the city. He could march right in.”
“Not with ten thousand men.”
“Perhaps,” Corin said, thinking of the narrow doorway from the catacombs into this chamber. “But he could not bring that many men through here, either. And he doesn’t need that many men when he has guns.”
“Then why all this? It was no easy task to tame so many dwarves.”
“He means to bring it down,” Corin said. “He will collapse the plaza and everything up to the bridge. After his riflemen are in the palace. The regiments won’t be able to come to Oberon’s aid. No one will be able to reach the palace for hours. Maybe days.”
Corin thought of the crushing press of bodies in the plaza, the always-busy streets of the city, and a fire kindled somewhere in his belly. “He will kill how many thousand innocent people in the process? Gods’ blood, this will not end well.”
“I told you,” Avery said, his voice edging toward melancholy again.
Corin made no effort to soothe him this time. His eyes were on the imposing figure of the prince, moving now. The ruby on Godslayer’s pommel flashed and burned within the gloom. Corin watched the dancing flame cross the wide cavern, leaving all the dwarves behind. The pirate let Ephitel gain an easy lead, then dragged Avery after him.
“Aye,” Corin said. “You told me right. We are all going to die.”
“Then why are you smiling? What do you intend?”
“I intend to take that sword.”
“We don’t have time. Believe me, Oberon will grant an audience—”
“I need more than an audience. I need that sword. It’s the only way I can escape the madness that is coming.”
Avery stopped, stunned. “You think taking that sword may let you save Oberon’s life?”
That hadn’t been his meaning at all. Corin had no more hopes of thwarting Ephitel. But if he caught the prince off guard, if he could just wrest that sword away and run, he might yet leave this place before the waves came crashing down.
He could hardly say as much to Avery, though. Instead he nodded and said, “Aye. I think it is the key.”
“Then we must find a way to take it from him.”
Corin stalked after the distant shadow of the prince. He drew his stolen sword, which brought a startled hiss from Avery. “Not here! Not now!”
Corin didn’t even answer. He quickened his pace. The sound of dwarves at work was distant now, but still enough to provide some muffled cover for the sound of Corin’s footsteps. Fear burned in Corin’s belly, and he stoked it till it glowed, gripping the rapier’s hilt so hard his hand began to ache. He fell into an easy jog and then a trot as Ephitel neared the cavern’s entrance.
Thirty paces still, maybe forty, but Corin felt close enough to lunge. Avery hissed some desperate caution, but Corin ignored him. He hoped to slash the sword belt with one clean cut, then bowl the lord protector over from behind and scamper down the hall while Ephitel was sprawling. He only hoped the gentleman could follow his lead. Corin raised his sword and burst into a silent sprint just as Ephitel emerged into the catacombs. The pirate followed, not five paces behind him now, and noticed only as he ran into the vault that the iron door was closed. The room was brighter than he’d left it, too.
And crowded. Half a dozen of the house guard were packed into the room, waiting for their master. Corin had a single instant to recognize Kellen—badly bruised but still alive, tied up in a wooden chair off in one corner.
All these things unfolded over Corin in an instant. This, he thought, is why the Nimble Fingers have rules at all.
Then he crashed into Ephitel, and both men went sprawling.