Notwen was right. The body stank. Four winter months in the desert sand had not been enough to completely desiccate it or deter the worms and insects drawn to the smell of decaying flesh. By the time Lucy reached the last layer of foul cotton next to the corpse, everyone in the room wished the dead man had been left outside.
Lucy’s full lips curved in a grimace of disgust. Ulin scarcely breathed.
“Look at that!” Notwen said brightly. “The worms burrowed into his eye sockets, but what’s left of the face is intact.”
Challie appeared at Lucy’s side and thrust a mug in her hand. Lucy caught the smell of wine, rich and red, and she took the mug gratefully and downed the contents in one long swallow, hoping the wine would soothe her stomach before she embarrassed herself in front of the townspeople. She took a firm grip on her resolve and looked carefully at the sunken face of the corpse.
The spectators held a collective breath.
Ulin held himself very still as he watched Lucy pull away the shroud from the shoulders, arms, and torso of the body. From what little Ulin knew or guessed about Kethril Torkay, the corpse appeared to be a close match. It was a human male, white-skinned, about six feet in height, with light brown hair liberally sprinkled with gray, and a creased face with a close-cropped beard. The explosion that had killed the man had apparently blown behind him, for the back of his skull was crushed and flattened. The nose and much of the flesh on the forehead, cheekbones, and chin was eaten or burned away, and the man’s clothes showed tears and scorch marks. Would it be enough?
Ulin could see the intense concentration on Lucy’s pale, battered face, and he recognized a momentary flash of indecision. He wondered what would she say. Was this her father? Did she know for sure? He knew she would not lie, even for the inheritance. Lucy had more integrity than most people, but could she be certain one way or another? Gripping his hands behind his back, he looked on while she lifted the body’s arms and studied each hand. She carefully laid the limbs back in place, covered the corpse again, and moved away. He accompanied her, with Challie and Notwen, as she approached the city council.
“That is not my father. I don’t know who you have or why you thought it was Kethril, but it is not he.” Her words were strong and clear, and to Ulin, sounded slightly relieved.
The hall erupted with dozens of voices talking and shouting all at once.
“Are you certain?” Mayor Efrim asked over the noise.
“Very. I know my father was born with a stunted forefinger on his left hand. He always wore gloves to disguise it, but his family knew. That body has normal finger bones.”
The old mayor sighed deeply and collapsed into a chair. Aylesworthy turned pale under his tan, and even Challie and Notwen shared expressions of concern and dismay. Saorsha sat beside the mayor, her face buried in her hands.
Lucy and Ulin glanced at each other in surprise. They expected disappointment, but the loud, angry voices from the crowd and the obvious despair on the faces of the council went beyond mere thwarted desire for a dead man’s estate.
“What is going on?” Ulin demanded. “This is more than an accidental death by fire and an unclaimed inheritance. What are you people trying to do?”
Noise from the onlookers subsided as the townspeople waited for their council to respond. For once Notwen was quiet, and it was Challie who finally explained the truth.
“We really did not know if that was Kethril Torkay. We only know him by reputation around here. Even now, I don’t know if we should be pleased or frightened out of our wits that this is not he.” The magistrate stood before them, her arms crossed, her face stonily professional. “The accident happened last winter during an attempted robbery. We don’t know exactly who was involved besides Kethril, but we do know they managed to steal most of the contents of our city treasury before the mishap.”
Lucy’s face paled then grew hot. She knew her father was underhanded and self-centered, but she never thought he would stoop to robbing an entire town.
“How do you know he was involved?” she asked.
“One of his cohorts identified him as the ringleader. Unfortunately, that thief died from his injuries sustained in the fire.” Challie crossed her arms and added, “The explosion was not intentional.”
Ulin cleared his throat. “I understand,” he said, “Your anger and concern with the robbery and your desire to identify this body. But surely there are people in that town you mentioned—Dead Pirate’s Cove—who could have known Torkay missed part of his finger. Why did you have to bring us all the way from Solace?”
Saorsha sighed deeply and, with an effort, pushed herself to her feet. She straightened her back and faced Lucy and Ulin. “There probably are people there who know Kethril that well, but we need more than someone to identify him. We need help.”
Ulin did not like the sound of that. There were too many nuances, too many possible things that could go wrong in those three simple words. His gold eyes darkened under his lowered brows.
Challie read his expression correctly and took up the tale in her cool, unemotional tone. “The money stolen was the collected taxes and tribute due to our overlord, Malys, money that will soon be collected by her tax collector, the red dragon known as Fyremantle.”
Ulin’s brows dropped into a deep frown. “Another red dragon.”
“Unfortunately, yes,” Challie confirmed. “He is one of Malys’s underlings. If he doesn’t destroy the town, Malys will—unless we pay the tribute.”
“When are the taxes due?” Lucy wanted to know.
“In three weeks. On—”
The date clicked into place in the puzzle of the conversation Lucy had had with the Committee two nights before. “On Visiting Day,” she said, cutting off the dwarf.
“Yes,” Saorsha sighed. “That is our annual tax day.”
Ulin felt the spectre of disaster looming over his shoulder. He thought he had a very good idea where this conversation was leading and it made his stomach crawl. “Do you have the amount due?” he asked quietly.
Saorsha said, “Of course not. Oh, we have the taxes from the last four months but it is not nearly enough to make up for the missing funds. This is not a prosperous town. We scrimped and saved for eight months just to put together the amount demanded by the Overlord.”
Lucy looked horrified. “That’s why you wanted me to be sheriff? To face Malys and tell her you don’t have the taxes?”
“Oh, the gods forbid, no, Miss Lucy!” Mayor Efrim climbed to his feet. “As Saorsha said, we really do need help. We just thought … we hoped … if this wasn’t your father, maybe you would be decent enough to help us find him. We still have three weeks. If we could find him or the stolen funds, we could still make our deadline.”
“How do you know if the daughter of Kethril Torkay is decent enough? How do you know I might be willing, or even capable enough, to help you? How did you know he even has a family?” Lucy demanded, her voice rising. Her good eye turned that stormy shade of green Ulin had learned to respect.
The council members looked at one another in resignation. “When we heard from a good friend of Kethril’s that he had a grown daughter in the Academy of Sorcery, we had Challie check into it,” Mayor Efrim replied. “We are desperate, Miss Lucy. We are willing to go to any lengths to save this town.”
A silence settled over the group. Lucy stood too stunned to say more. No one moved. Only Notwen shifted from foot to foot and watched the scene with fascinated eyes.
Lucy finally wavered and dropped into another empty chair. “Ulin,” she said wearily, “what do we do now?”
I’m happy you asked me,” Notwen said, beaming up at the tall, lanky man.
Ulin didn’t feel he should say there wasn’t anything else better to do, so he returned a cooler version of the gnome’s smile and replied, “Saorsha told me you could show me the treasury.”
The gnome, mindful of Mayor Efrim’s constant reprimands, tried to speak his words slowly and deliberately so the human
could understand. “There really isn’t much left of it, but I’d be happy to show you the ruins.”
They had met at the foot of the Rock near the wharves at noon. It was another cloudless, sunny, hot day in Flotsam, and Ulin was out of sorts. He and Lucy had argued quietly and at length since they left the city hall the day before. Lucy refused to leave without some due thought to her father’s alleged villainy and Flotsam’s predicament. Ulin just wanted to pack and go before things got worse. If he could have firmly believed the city council was telling them the truth and if he had been alone, he would have given serious thought to offering help. But Lucy was with him, and he had a bad feeling about all of this. Two dragons, missing taxes, robbery, death, and citizens who couldn’t seem to keep their story straight. He had a hard time believing they’d send someone all the way to Solace just to look for a relative of the thief on the vague chance that person might help out of a sense of second-hand guilt.
Akkar-bin offered them a place in the caravan returning to Khuri-Khan, but, to Ulin’s disgust, Lucy turned him down. The Khurish caravan left that morning, and Ulin had watched it go, his thoughts worried and unhappy. Their one sure mode of transportation and armed escort had moved on without them, and no one in this forsaken dump of a town seemed to know when the next caravan would arrive.
Feeling surly, Ulin walked around the streets of Flotsam for hours until a short, white-haired figure wandered into his path. Saorsha’s comment came to mind. Hot, tired, and bored, Ulin decided to ask the gnome about the burned treasury.
Notwen turned toward the docks and took Ulin around the harbor road toward the barracks. Ulin was startled then dubious when Notwen led him though the large double doors of the city hall and into the main corridor. No one had mentioned the treasury was in this building. But the gnome kept walking past the office of the mayor, down the corridor, through the great hall, and out a back hallway to a walled courtyard.
“This is the old prison and work yard,” Notwen explained as he trotted into the hot sun. “It was built by the dragonarmy years ago. It’s only accessible through the barracks.”
Ulin looked around. The prison was a one-story stone building with barred windows and a single entrance. There were no prisoners inhabiting the damp, cramped cells—only spiders and cockroaches the size of rats. The only impressive aspect of the building was the fact it was still standing.
“The treasury is, uh, was over here.” The gnome showed Ulin to the corner of the courtyard opposite the prison. The damage quickly became apparent. What looked like a shadowed doorway into the building under the wall walk proved to be a doorless entrance into a gutted room, scorched and scored by a powerful blast. The floor had collapsed into a deep pit eight to ten feet deep, and the inner dividing walls had been burned away, destroying part of the old kennels and a bake house.
The smell of burned wood and stone permeated the narrow room, as well as an odd smell that reminded Ulin of something he couldn’t place. A thin chill crept up his back. This blackened room reminded him too much of the ruins of the Academy of Sorcery after the attack of Beryl’s minions. He shoved that thought aside and stepped into the room. He was both impressed by the thieves’ audacity and puzzled by their methods. He studied the room carefully from blackened ceiling to collapsed floor, while Notwen moved cautiously around the edge of the pit and examined the walls from behind his large spectacles.
“This doesn’t make sense,” Ulin said. “If thieves did this, why is Lysandros so eager to help the council? Why does he want a sorceress like Lucy to be sheriff?”
“Because the Thieves’ Guild had nothing to do with this,” Notwen replied. “It was an outside job, and the captain is furious. He would split Kethril in half with that sword of his if he could find him.”
“Why? For horning into his territory?”
“No! For putting the town into such a crisis! The Thieves’ Guild here may be sticky-fingered and greedy, but they would never do something to endanger the entire town. They live here, too.”
“Hmm …” Ulin squatted in the doorway and tossed a pebble into the dark pit where the floor had been. “How did they pull this off? In the city hall of all places. Weren’t there guards?”
“Of course, we posted guards outside. They never saw a thing until the room blew up in their faces.” Notwen pushed his spectacles back on his nose, leaving a smear of soot from his grimy fingers. “As for the theft, I can’t say for certain how they did it. I can only go by the clues. Take the pit, for example. There is no lower level beneath this section of the barracks, so I have surmised Kethril and his cohorts dug a tunnel beneath this room and removed the contents a little at a time. The tunnel apparently collapsed in the explosion.”
Ulin lifted a single eyebrow. Whether he liked it or not, he found himself intrigued by the gnome’s interpretation of the theft. It was a heinous deed, but the machinations behind it were interesting. “What was in here? Ingots? Loose coins?”
The gnome peered down into the pit. “Mostly loose coins and odds and ends like jewelry, plate armor, swords, a few fine daggers, things like that. This town has to scrape up every bit just to meet Malys’s demands. My guess is Kethril only had a few men to help and it took several nights to remove the pile. I think, in order to keep us fooled, they replaced the valuables with fakes.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Someone on the council came in here every day to add deposits or check the inventory.” Notwen patted the wall beside him. “I noticed these walls are spattered with bits of fool’s gold and lead,” then he pointed down at the hole. “If you look carefully you can see broken glass and bits of cheap twisted metal in the rubble.”
“Fool’s gold … good gods,” Ulin muttered. He didn’t have to ask what would have happened if the theft had gone unnoticed until the city council presented the false coin to Malys’s collector, Fyremantle. Red dragons were anything but understanding. A slow anger began to simmer in Ulin’s gut. What kind of a man could put his own greed before the safety of an entire town?
“Is there any chance this Kethril got caught in his own explosion?” Ulin suggested.
Notwen scratched his head. “I don’t think so. We looked through the debris, and we only found the bodies of the guards and two thieves. There was no trace of anyone else.”
The young man stared deep into the darkness of the hole. “What if Kethril set off the explosion to kill his cohorts and mask his escape with the treasure?”
“We thought of that,” Notwen sighed. “I just don’t know. The explosion happened down there in the tunnel, and its blast started the fire, but I haven’t discovered yet what set it off or why.” The words were barely out of his mouth when his face suddenly brightened. “I’ve taken some samples to my laboratory. Would you like to see?”
Ulin hesitated. He was hot, tired, still feeling out of sorts, and most gnome labs usually involved noxious smells, clouds of odd gases, and the imminent danger of an explosion. And yet … the puzzle of the treasury piqued his interest. He had studied the effects of explosives at one time, and his interests leaned toward alchemy these days. Why not take a quick look at Notwen’s samples? Solving that puzzle could prove useful in the future if Lucy decided to stay. Besides, if the lab proved too dangerous, he could always leave.
“All right, thank you,” he replied.
“It’s this way,” Notwen said. He led the way out of the barracks, skirted the docks, and trotted up the path that climbed the slope of the promontory called the Rock.
The road was wide enough for handcarts, donkeys, and pedestrians, though it was little used any more by anyone other than the Vigilance Force, who maintained a constant watch from its height. After the first time Malys leveled the buildings on its top, a few stubborn people tried to rebuild the Saltbreeze Inn and the lord of Flotsam’s manor, only to see their efforts destroyed in seconds during another of Malys’s visits. Since then the Rock had remained bare in deference to the Overlord’s opinion. Even the Force’s lo
okouts stayed concealed behind a camouflaged observation post.
Ulin remembered the stripped and wind-blown surface of the Rock from his previous visit, and he wondered where Notwen could possibly hide an entire laboratory.
The little gnome led him past the crest of the path and to the side of the headland where the rock bulged out like the belly of a pregnant woman. A level, bare space and some stones were all that marked the foundations of Toede’s old manor and its walls.
Ulin stopped and stared around, his arms crossed. A sea breeze stirred his chestnut hair. “Now what?” he asked, too curious to be annoyed.
“OverhereUlinIfoundthisayearafterToededied.”
Ulin held up a finger. “Wait. Wait, slow down again.”
“Oh, sorry. Sorry. I do that when I get excited.” Notwen’s blue eyes were vivid against his golden-brown skin. He waved a small hand and headed to the edge of the ruined building where a few shattered blocks of stone were scattered over a layer of dirt and sand. “Stand back,” the gnome warned, and he pushed one stone about a hand span to the left to reveal a weathered bronze lock. Pulling a key from his pocket, he inserted it and turned.
A loud rumbling, grating noise erupted from the ground at Ulin’s feet, and he leaped back in alarm. Dust rose in clouds around him. The sound grew to a roar, and suddenly a huge block of stone lifted out of the dirt.
Notwen watched proudly. More rumbling, creaking, and grinding of stone on metal thundered around them. Slowly and noisily, the block of stone lifted straight up until it was clear of the old floor. Still the noises went on, louder than before. The huge slab lifted ever higher until a three-foot gap yawned underneath the massive weight of the stone. The sounds ground to silence, the stone halted in place, and the dust settled slowly around the hole.
Ulin stared, amazed. The slab, nearly one-foot thick, had been lifted horizontally out of the foundations by what looked like four columns, one at each corner of the slab. He glanced at Notwen questioningly.
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