chapter TWENTY-EIGHT
The dwarf leader came into the vault. He stood for a moment, looking around the room. He took note of the fallen house guards and all the abandoned weapons. He went forward to retrieve the fallen pistol, then turned to consider all the spattered blood—from Ephitel in the center of the room, and from Kellen on two different walls. Then he lowered his gaze to Corin and the dying yeoman.
“My name is Ogden Strunk, and I am chieftain of the Dehtzwood clan.”
“Corin Hugh, and I am captain of the Diavahl. Or…I was. I will be.”
The dwarf gave a heavy sigh. “Toplanders are too soft. The percussion from the powder stirs your brain stuff. I’ve always said as much.”
Corin frowned. “Strunk? You said Strunk. I think I know your grandson.”
The chieftain shook his head. “I have no grandson.”
“Benjamin, he’s called. He said his granda was the last of the respectable Strunks, because his father was a loser.”
The chieftain’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. “My mewling baby’s name is Benjamin.”
“Ah,” Corin said, as the spinning in his head began to settle. “I guess it was the Ephitel business that brought you down.”
Ogden frowned. “I think I should be offended.” Then he hung his head. “But then, you have a point at that. You have a strange way of making it, but it’s a fair point all the same. Ehrin, Durhl, come see what you can do for this poor sod. Biffin, cut the slick one loose.”
One of the others who had come with Ogden in the coach bustled forward and grabbed his chieftain’s coat. “What are you doing?”
“What we should have done a week ago. Or from the very start.”
“But Oberon will have our heads!”
“He’ll have ’em all the same,” Ogden said. “Or Ephitel, if he wins out. You heard how he talked of the jailers, and they’re his men. They’re his own kind. He wouldn’t treat us well once his need is done.”
“You’re right at that,” Corin said. “I have seen it more than once.”
“But the payment!” the other dwarf cried.
Ogden shook his head. “It was never worth the price. And now he’s demanding more than we could ever give.”
The other dwarf licked his lips and avoided glancing Corin’s way. “Perhaps…in exchange for these prisoners…”
“I thought the same when we caught the slinking Violet,” Ogden said. “But you saw how this yeoman stood against the prince. You saw how he took a bullet even when he knew the price. There isn’t food enough within the world to buy that kind of valor. It isn’t ours to sell.”
“Then you will let us go?” Corin asked.
Ogden nodded. “Aye.”
“With the sword,” Corin pressed. “We have to have the sword.”
“That, I think, we’ll keep,” the chieftain said. “It’s the only piece we’ll have to barter our salvation.”
“That sword has valor of its own,” Corin said, playing to the dwarf’s strange sense of honor, but Ogden cut him off before he could say more.
“I know well this blade’s pedigree. And the purpose to which the prince had hoped to put it.”
Corin sighed. “Then you know why you must—”
“Relent there, manling. You’ll need your strength to get away alive. Don’t waste it on a haggle you can’t win.”
Avery came forward then, freed from his bonds. He clapped Corin on the back by way of greeting. “Listen to the dwarf. I’ve tried to talk them round before. It never happens.”
Corin rounded on Avery. “We cannot go before Oberon empty-handed.” He turned back to the chieftain. “But if we have that sword, he will listen to us. Give it to me now, and I will tell him how you served us at the last. Then he will conquer Ephitel, and I will see that he is not unkind to you.”
“Ooh, I like that!” Avery said. “You may trade it for redemption here and now.”
When the chieftain appeared to consider the offer, his second grabbed his coat again. “Don’t do it, Ogden. Would you put us at their mercy?”
“Not theirs,” the chieftain said, but then he pointed down at Kellen. “But at his I would. If we can raise him, if he will give his word, then I will yield the blade to you and call it done.”
“I appreciate your consideration,” Corin said. “But time is short. Ephitel could return at any moment with a regiment behind him.”
Ogden shrugged. “Then we will leave by the other tunnels.”
Corin brightened. “You have other tunnels?”
“Aye. What, did you think we brought three clans down here one carriage at a time?”
“I had not considered it.”
“We have,” Ogden said. “And we’ve considered more than once what a twisting viper Ephitel can be. We have our plans for terminating this arrangement.”
“Do they involve a pile of those powder kegs in a vault beneath his mansion? And a very long fuse?”
Ogden gave a low whistle. “They hadn’t until now. I like your style, manling.”
“Call me Corin.”
“Would you know where to find this vault?”
Corin blinked. “I didn’t really…” His eyes fell on Kellen, breathing slowly now but still unconscious. Still far too pale. Corin nodded. “Yes. I think I know the way. And I left the door unlocked.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ogden said. “Biffin here can run the fuse, but once he lights it, run.”
Corin shook his head. “There will be others in the house. Cooks and servants. Decent guards.”
“We’ll set off a couple warning blasts before, then. Give them time to all clear out, then bring the sinkhole down.”
“You’re serious,” Corin said.
“We’re double-crossing Ephitel. We have to be.”
“I understand that,” Corin said. “But the risk—”
“It will stop him coming after us,” Avery said. “It will bury whatever cannons he has down here—”
“Alas, but most of those are with his troops,” Ogden said. “I saw to the deliveries myself.”
“What troops?” Corin asked.
“A regiment in Ephitel’s colors,” Ogden said. “Camped with all the others outside the city.”
“That’s where he’ll go,” Corin said. “If we cut off this venue, if we bring down his house, the only move he will have left is to get to that regiment and bring them into the city. He’ll march on the palace.”
Avery nodded. “He might be heading there already.”
“How long will that take?”
“It depends upon the traffic in the city, but knowing Ephitel…two hours? Three at most.”
“We have to stop him. He’ll use those guns against the citizens.”
Ogden gaped. “That seems too much, even for him.”
Corin raised his eyebrows. He pointed out into the cavern to one of the powder kegs mounted on a supporting pillar. “What do you think he intended for those?”
“A last resort, in case we were discovered.”
Avery snorted. “This is the ground beneath the Via Autunno, right to the palace bridge.”
Corin nodded. “He meant to move against the king, then sink the plaza and cut off any aid across the river.”
Ogden cursed. Even his second swore an oath. “I never meant to aid in this.”
“No,” the dwarven chieftain said. “We’ll have no part in it. Take down the powder kegs. Brick up the wall and earth it in. We’ll take the prisoners to topsides and be done with them.”
“And the sword?” Corin asked.
“That still depends,” Ogden said, “on if your valor lives or dies.”
That meant Kellen. The dwarves moved Kellen, Corin, and Avery out into the cavern, and then they set to work. For half an hour Corin divided his attention between their construction and the fate of the wounded soldier.
He watched a wall go up in an amazing time. Stones were carved and shaped and slotted into the demolished wall without a seam. When the work was done, Corin could not have guessed which bricks were new and which were old. It looked as though the ancient wall had never been torn down.
But the dwarves did not stop there. They brought barrowloads of dirt from elsewhere in the excavation, dumping, piling, shoring up, until the wall was buried behind a dozen paces of earth. A cannon could not have cleared a way into the cavern from the cellars. The mansion was sealed off.
But as rewarding as that process was to watch, Corin spent far more attention on the other. He watched the dwarven medics as they probed the yeoman’s wounds. They extracted both lead shots—horribly deformed from their brief flights—and bandaged all his wounds. They applied unguents from small clay pots and chanted prayers to pagan spirits of the dark. They spent every bit as much in toil and energy as their brothers moving earth or breaking rock, but with half an hour spent, they had nothing to show for it. Kellen still breathed—if irregularly and only in panting wheezes—but he hadn’t stirred. His pulse was feeble and his skin burned to the touch.
When Corin judged that half an hour had burned away, he dragged Avery to hunt down the dwarven chieftain. Ogden brightened as the two approached. “Has your valor wakened?”
“Age of reason!” Avery grumbled. “I have the better part of valor!”
Corin shushed him with a gesture and answered the dwarf. “He hasn’t stirred. He makes no sign of progress.”
“Oh, well,” Ogden said with a forced cheerfulness, “these things take time. We’ll know more by tomorrow.”
“We don’t have until tomorrow!” Corin said.
The chieftain shrugged. “I understand you’re worried, but you must consider my position. I have a thousand lives looking to me—”
Corin waved him down impatiently. “I know, I know. I understand your requirements, and I will stay here until Kellen wakes. I only ask that you take Avery on ahead. Have someone show him to the surface so he can take a warning to the king.”
“Why me?” Avery demanded. “You should go. I’ll stay here with Kellen. I’m just as concerned for him as you are.”
Corin rolled his eyes. “No, you’re not!”
“No?” Avery threw a look back toward the wounded soldier, then he turned back to Corin. “Even so. Even so. I do want the sword as much as you do.”
“Not even close,” Corin said.
“I’ll argue with you there. I have every reason to hate Ephitel for what he’s done in the last year.”
“One year?” Corin asked. “Talk to me again when you can claim a thousand.”
Avery stepped back, his jaw hanging. “Honestly?”
“Aye. Maybe more. And all of it a tyranny that I would see undone.”
The gentleman dropped his head and shrugged pathetically. “I won’t contest you then. But even so, the king will not see me.”
“With the news you have, I think he will.”
“Ah, but there’s the catch—until he sees me, he won’t know what news I have.”
“Avery, we don’t have time for this.”
“Then we don’t have time to waste on foolish errands.”
Corin shook his head. “I suspect your sister will already be there. I just need you to take the latest news.”
“But if she’s not…”
Corin caught Avery by the shoulders and turned the thief to face him. He recognized the fear in the other man’s eyes. Avery was out of his element, baffled by the unrecognizable mess his world had become within a few short hours.
Corin remembered that feeling well, and he remembered how he’d overcome it. “Remember who you are. You’re Avery of Jesalich, legendary founder of the Nimble Fingers.”
“Yes, but—”
Corin cut him off. “You want an audience with Oberon? Go and steal one.”