“Finish? Y’mean gettin’ the cryshard was just part of it?”
Magpie wiped across her face to hide a scowl. She must be more exhausted than she realized to let that slip.
Skeeter scooted closer. “Why you need this cryshard so bad? What’s it for?”
Magpie grimaced. How much did this presumptuous spitshot deserve to know? What could she reveal to get the girl’s cooperation without giving the whole plan away? She clenched her jaw, memories straying down too many well-worn paths. The words dammed up and then broke forth in a rush.
“I had a partner once. Silvia.”
“Never heard of her.”
“You wouldn’t have. She worked under a different name. She...” Magpie shut her eyes briefly. “She gave me mine. We had bright dreams, all the ways we’d become rich and powerful. We had a plan to steal from the Blooded themselves, but she died before we could ever try.”
“How’d she die?”
“Doesn’t matter. Dead is dead. What does matter is that the cryshard contains the map for a major Blooded vault.”
The girl’s eyebrows bobbed. “Treasure?”
“What else is kept in vaults, hm? The layout details the wardstones, the rooms, and access points. I spent a decade earning enough favors and coin to find it and get into the Spire, and you use a few cheap spells to hop in after me and foul it all up.”
“Hold a grudge much?”
“Before Silvia died, I swore to her I’d see our dream through no matter what.” Magpie held her head up, unashamed of the tears tracking down her weathered, deep-channeled cheeks. “I have to fulfill my promise. It’s the only thing I have left to live for.”
Skeeter’s winced. “What’s with the weepsies? Wasn’t you just talkin’ about being composed?”
“Thanks to your bumbling, they’ll know someone broke into their records last night. They’ll have an idea of what cryshards were targeted and will eventually find the fake I planted. I figure I have a few days at most before they either move the treasure or shift the whole vault to another location. The map will be obsolete and...” She waved at her knobby body. “I hardly have the time or strength to start over.”
Skeeter gnawed on a nail. “Then I ain’t waitin’ until you get back. I go in with you and start learnin’ right away.”
“It’s not a two-person job. Not the way I’ve adapted it.”
“Was once. Is now. I go in with you.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Scrawshit. They say you were gutter-born too before getting a pocketful of shine.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Don’t matter. No one forgets the streets. We’ve both got grime cloggin’ our veins to the last drop. But I’m moving up, whatever it costs me. That’s why I picked you to follow outta the whole pile. You made a path out and I’m going right in your footsteps to the end.” Skeeter struck a defiant pose. “So I’m your second skin startin’ now until you can’t teach me no more. No delays or no deal. No haggle. Besides, with two of us, we can carry out more coin.”
Magpie sighed, too wrung out to argue further. Let the girl damn herself. “Very well. But if you fall behind, you’re left behind. I’ll not coddle you.”
Skeeter beamed. Enthusiasm and energy—the domains of foolish youth. “One last thing.”
“What?”
Skeeter pointed to the bound enchanter. “What say we untie Lopos? I’m gonna need him to cook me up a good handful for the fun.”
It took another day for Magpie to confirm their way in. She’d had her hunches, but the actual layout finalized the details.
The vault sat within the depths of the Tenfold Temple, north of the city center. A monument of living stone, it looked like an enormous six-petaled flower, each petal containing scores of chambers and halls that shifted according to the priests’ whims. The core spire rose like a stamen, filled with Blooded ceremonial chambers.
Cloaked as supplicants, they entered through the main gates, just another pair of commoners among the throngs. Stoneskins stood at every door and hallway entrance, watching the crowds with eyes of every cut and hue. High above, massive chandeliers of gem-studded bones hung from the vaulted ceilings, filling the space between arches and alcoves where Blooded occasionally appeared to bestow blessing or judgment.
“Ready?” Magpie asked Skeeter once they’d mingled and shifted into position.
“Always been.”
“Up we go.”
Skeeter crushed a pebble in one hand while lobbing another over the crowd, as far as possible. Flames and smoke erupted, harmless in its flash, but plenty to send people screaming and running in all directions. Stoneskins headed that way, eerily fluid in their movements.
Magpie entered the breathspace and jumped. She flew above the distracted crowd until she reached and grabbed one of the chandeliers. It swayed beneath her restored weight, but held. She glanced over to Skeeter, who’d dashed up a column and now clung to the capstone with a skitterspell, the same she’d used to escape the Registrant Spire. Magpie nodded at a near alcove. A breath let her leap the distance, while Skeeter dashed upside-down across the curved ceiling and then sideways along the wall. They met within the opening. Skeeter peered down the hall beyond while Magpie braced a hand against the floor until her arms and legs stopped shaking.
They turned their cloaks inside out, revealing a grey-green pattern made to match priesthood apprentice robes. So disguised, they wound their way into the temple depths.
Even with the map Magpie had memorized, it took them another candleburn to reach the vault. They passed dozens of priests and other apprentices going about temple business, plus the occasional Blooded in yellow and crimson robes, their skin grey and smooth. Magpie had to quell a shudder at the nearness of the city masters, those who fed the living stone their own fluids in exchange for inhuman power.
They found the hall leading to the vault. Pairs of blade-wielding priests stood on either side of the twelve-foot high door—which stood open. Several Blooded clustered before the arch, with more muttering grating prayers off to the side. Golden falelights glowed in the vault’s recesses, creating a false day that blanched the stone.
“What’re they doin’?” Skeeter whispered.
“Looks like they’re preparing to shift the vault,” Magpie said. “Like I suspected. If we’d come a day later, it might not have been here at all.”
She sprang up into the arched heights, taking quick, gulping breaths so she didn’t regain much true weight as she flitted across the friezes. She shed her cloak and tucked it out of sight atop another chandelier. Skeeter climbed a pillar and followed suit. The both of them then slipped along the upper portion of the hall until they crouch above the priests’ heads.
Magpie hung from a metal sconce for a few moments, gathering focus. Sucking as deep a breath as she could, she locked her lungs in place and dropped head-first. She grabbed the top lip of the doorway and flipped under it, planting feet on the opposite side and kicking off toward the rightmost passage.
She flew twenty feet before she touched down. By then, her pulse throbbed and her vision flickered with silvery spots. Her diaphragm cramped, trying to force a gasp out of her. She came into a crouch and peeled her lips apart slowly, letting the air out in controlled whoosh. Her limbs quivered, throat clenching, but she contained herself through sheer willpower as her body evened out.
Skeeter crawled down the wall and watched back the way they’d come, but none of the guards or Blooded appeared. Magpie rose and led the way on shaky legs.
The vault looked like expansive catacombs, a fitting comparison in Magpie’s mind, considering what it held. Intersecting halls shot off into the distant dark, walls broken up by tall, thin arches. The cylindrical chambers beyond each arch held deep cubbies carved into the earth, and each space held twenty crimson gems in chiseled slots, all the size of Magpie’s thumbnail.
After they passed the tent such set of chambers, Skeeter paused. “
Why’s it all the same? Don’t they got nothin’ but rubies?”
“They’re not rubies,” said Magpie. “They’re bondstones.”
“Bondstones? Blooded soul-magic muckery?” At Magpie’s nod, she scowled. “You...you said there was treasure here.”
“Priceless treasure.”
“Whatcha squawkin’? Can’t sell bondstones for spit. Stoneskins would find anyone who held ’em. What’s the steal here?”
Magpie sighed and let her head hang. “Silvia didn’t die, like I said. She was captured. Her soul was trapped in a bondstone and used to animate a Stoneskin, just like all other criminals the Blooded get their hands on. I’m here to find her bondstone, destroy it, and free her.”
Skeeter grabbed her arm. “Y’tricked me!”
“Lesson three. The best lies are ones that have elements of truth to them.” She shook the girl’s grip loose and headed deeper in. “Feel free to sit and sulk, or take your chances and go back the way we came.”
Muttering, Skeeter trudged after her. Magpie brushed any grains of guilt out of her heart. She’d warned the girl, after all, and she would’ve told a thousand lies more to ensure she reached this place.
She quickly lost count of how many bondstones they passed. Hundreds of thousands. Perhaps millions. The city had been settled for at least a millennia, after all, and there’d never been a shortage of those the Blooded punished.
The only mercy came in their being stored chronologically. Magpie eyed the glyphs above each arch, denoting various years and months. She discerned the descending pattern and headed that direction. The oldest bondstones were stored closest to the entrance, which made sense as the priests could dig out new chambers and expand the vault as needed.
It took them almost half a candleburn to reach the right storage slot.
“She should be in here.” Magpie pointed to an alcove. “Keep watch.”
Skeeter glowered but pressed her back to the wall where she could eye both directions. Magpie shuffled into the chamber and studied the bondstones. The gleaming crystals bathed the tiny chamber in a crimson glow.
She fixed an image of Silvia in her mind—not just her cinnamon-brown hair and willowy body, but also the sensation of her touch, her smoky scent, the way her leaf-green eyes lidded in thought as they worked up a new scheme.
She ran fingers over each bondstone in turn, projecting the gestalt of Silvia into each one, seeking an echo.
Silvia? she asked. The first hundred remained inactive. The second hundred denied her as well. She gave each a second or two before moving on. Three hundred. Four. Magpie fought off despair, fearing she’d read the cataloguing wrong. The vault would be sealed within another candleburn and they’d be entombed as surely as the rest of the souls. Should she tell Skeeter to get out while she could? Would the girl even listen to reason?
Mariah?
Magpie froze, her finger on the four-hundred and fifty-third bondstone. She blinked against blurring tears.
You shouldn’t have come, Silvia said.
I’m here to free you.
But I’m still their slave. The instant you contacted me, I was forced to alert my masters that you’ve breached the vault. They’re coming for you.
Magpie drew a tiny iron hammer from an inner pocket. So long as they no longer have you, my fate doesn’t matter.
Sensations flickered through Magpie’s mind, the faintest echo of memory. A press of flesh. A giddy laugh. A sob.
Mariah?
Yes?
I always knew you’d come for me.
Magpie kissed the bondstone and then set it on the edge of the cubby and swung hard. The gem shattered and the light at its core winked out.
No masters anymore, she thought. Be free, beloved.
She wiped her eyes clear as she emerged.
Skeeter curled her upper lip. “Y’get your precious treasure all sorted?”
“Job’s done. Time for you to go.”
The girl frowned. “Me? What about you?”
“The Blooded are coming. Stoneskins too.” Magpie studied the walls, expecting an emergence any second. “My destroying the bondstone warned them.”
“Did you know it’d do that?”
“I guessed it might. They know I’m here, but not you. That gives you a slim chance to get out about before the whole place is sealed off.”
Skeeter’s eyes narrowed further. “So you was never gonna come back from this job to teach me. You planned to die here. That’s another lie told and another y’owe me.”
“I owe you nothing.”
“What about thieves honor, huh?”
Magpie scoffed. “Keep swallowing that sort of dribble and you’ll choke on it. Don’t you get it? I’m done. This was my last job. I’m finally going to be free of this prison.”
“What prison?”
“All of this! The whole damn city.” Magpie swept her arms out and then struck her chest with a fist. “Everything here is just a chain that drags you down sooner or later. My bones might as well be the bars of an iron cell. Silvia should’ve been released from this cage years ago, but she wasn’t even given that mercy. And you? The gutter’s going to cling tight the rest of your life no matter how much you try to escape. I’m done with it all.”
Skeeter thrust a finger so close the nail almost gouged Magpie’s cheek. “So you’re a liar and coward? Think you can wriggle out of our deal? Nothing doin’. We’re out of here, both of us.”
A chilly line settled on Magpie’s forearm. She jerked back. Skeeter had wrapped the stonecord from the archpath around each of their wrists, sealing the tips back onto itself to bind the women together.
“Crooked Scales, you are a stupid fool after all. You’ll die with me for sure.”
“Quit moanin’. You think I didn’t notice you only plotted the way in and not out? Fortunately, I got brights enough for two.”
The young thief hauled her into motion with surprising strength. Magpie stumbled after, feeling like a child trailing its mother. Skeeter took turns without hesitation. They ducked into chambers a couple times as priests raced by, blades drawn. They double-backed from a few halls where Stoneskins stood as sentries. Magpie considered making a noise to draw their attention and end the futile escape attempt.
Ten years spent planning for this one night. She’d never thought beyond it, expecting to die in the effort even if she succeeded. With it done, all focus and purpose fled. Only her ailing body kept her soul from drifting up and out of existence, and the guards would make short work of that.
Yet she held back, uncertain, without a plan to follow or trick to pull. Skeeter’s determination snagged something deep inside and hooked her along. To have such a zeal to live...to defy the odds...had she so thoroughly forgotten what it was like?
Magpie tried to track their position and had a vague sense of being near the southern corner by the time Skeeter stopped and tapped on the wall.
“Vault’s thinner here. Not much. Just a foot or two, but should be enough.”
“So you’ve a spell to walk through stone?”
Skeeter smirked. “Sorta.” She produced a pebble and cracked it against the wall. Fiery veins shot out and the stone began to melt, weeping black and grey toward their feet as the pebble sizzled deeper into the wall, glowing white-hot. Skeeter tilted her head.
“Huh. Bit brighter than usual.”
Magpie spotted a crack threading across the pebble. “Is it supposed to—”
A larger fissure formed just before the wall exploded. Shards pelted Magpie, but she’d flung up an arm in time and most bounced off.
A big fragment struck Skeeter in the side of the head. The girl slumped and became dead weight on the floor. Magpie bent over to keep her wrist from being snapped. She peered through the smoke. The explosion had blown a hole in the wall large enough for her to squeeze through, but the edges already grew inward. It’d close in less than a minute.
Hardly knowing why she did, Magpie dragged Skeeter closer, shoulders a
nd hips feeling ready to pop from their sockets. Just as she reached the opening, the wall swirled and a Stoneskin stepped out, blocking the way.
Magpie cringed back. “Please, kill me but let the girl go. She’s done nothing wrong.”
The Stoneskin studied her with emerald eyes for several heartbeats. Then the construct reached down and scooped Skeeter up. It ducked through the hole and the stonecord forced Magpie to follow right behind. Once in the hall beyond, the Stoneskin deposited the girl in Magpie’s arms. The young thief barely weighed anything, all rangy muscle corded over thin bones.
Magpie eyed the Stoneskin in disbelief. Why would it help them?
The Stoneskin laid a hand on her cheek and held it there a moment. Despite the inhuman hands, the touch was impossibly intimate. And were those emerald eyes an oddly leafy hue?
One breath to the next, the Stoneskin crumbled into a pile of rubble. Magpie got the clear sense that the soul animating it had departed rather than been subsumed by the city—which was only possible if the associated bondstone had been destroyed, allowing the previously enslaved individual to act of their own free will.
Magpie wavered at this thought, but kept herself from stumbling and dropping Skeeter. Distant shouts spurred her to take one step. Then another.
She didn’t recognize this portion of the temple but kept to the shadows and poorer-lit paths, steering away whenever voices or steps sounded ahead. In this manner, she wove through the structure until she discovered a series of empty side rooms. One held an open balcony overlooking an inner court. All the opening she needed.
As she balanced on the ledge, Skeeter moaned in her arms. Magpie glared down at her.
“Damn you for making me live. I’ll never forgive you for this.”
She breathed in. As she soared toward freedom, a whisper tickled her ear.
Parallel Worlds- the Heroes Within Page 38
