The Fire Cage

by Scott Hungerford

  “Here,” Verona said excitedly, while trying to catch her breath. “This is it.”

  “This leads into the Archives,” Rajon said, before Davin could even get enough air to ask the question himself. But as he was about to ask another question, Rajon raised up his cane, and held out his other hand in a demanding gesture of silence. Even as the two youngsters acknowledged, in the distance, clattering down a side staircase, they could hear the sound of running feet approaching fast. “Use the whistle to open the door, now. I’ll hold them off while you get inside.”

  Unclenching his hand, Davin looked down at the strange little instrument resting in his palm, then looked up at the door. “The door has a msuical lock, isn’t it?” he asked. “It’s a singing lock, just like in the noble’s houses?”

  “Yes, yes,” Verona replied. “Certain vibrations open certain tumblers, and certain combinations of tones and harmonies will set the latch free. Now don’t be such a ninny and blow the damned whistle.”

  Davin could see shadows of men’s silhouettes coming up one of the hallways leading into the vault, drawn swords plainly visible in their hands. Putting the whistle between his lips, Davin turned, faced the door and blew, creating a haunting, shivering melody of discordant notes that sounded less to him like music, and more like the sound of a calliope organ falling to pieces. As the door unlocked and cracked ajar, Davin heard Rajon pull his sword free of his cane.

  “Verona,” Rajon instructed, as he settled into a high guarding stance. “Take him inside and bar the door. Now!”

  “Come on,” she said to Davin, as she kicked the heavy door open with her foot, then pulled him through the doorway just as the first clash of sword-blades crashed just feet behind him.

  “Don’t let the boy get away!” cried out one of the attackers, even as another screamed and dropped his sword, clearly an early victim of Rajon’s skill with a blade. But as Davin turned and saw a group of men in noble’s clothes facing Rajon with weapons in hand, Verona kicked the door shut and locked, leaving the two of them utterly in darkness, with only the smash and crash of swordplay from beyond the door as their reference.

  “Well, this is a pickle,” Davin said, as he started reaching out, trying to feel along the smooth stone walls for anything recognizable as a lamp or a torch. But when Verona lit her bodice-flinter behind him, gingerly holding the already-hot metal box in her fingertips, Davin saw a lamp sitting on a small table by the door. After she lit the wick, he took the lamp and cast it over his head to get a better view. The vault was a room unlike anything else he’d ever seen. From wall to wall the tomb-like place was filled with aisles of tarnished metal boxes bolted into the stone floor. With each of the boxes being taller than a man and about as wide as a chimney, each of the hundreds of number-marked lockers set boasted its own unique combination of gridded plates and cubbies locked and blocked by bolts, keyholes, and the occasional ether-tubed singing lock.

  “Sweet Viceroy,” she said, as she gazed at the veritable treasure-house surrounding them. “How many boxes are we looking at?”

  “Too many,” Davin said as he looked around, inwardly counting the eight corridors leading out from this central point, measuring the odds in his head on which way might possibly hold his father’s funerary effects, and balancing that number against the odds of Rajon holding an unknown number of attackers outside the door long enough for them to find and recover the goods. But when he saw faded markings on the ground, musical notes marking Celestial 1st to the Celestial 8th before each of the eight passages, Davin knew that he was on the right track if he followed Guiseppe’s code. “This way,” he said, heading for the left-most corridor.

  “Come on,” he said, heading into the maze. Suddenly aware of her violet perfume, Davin tried not to think about the obvious and moved them quickly forward down the first corridor, away from the screams made by another one of Rajon’s gutted assailants. Trying to keep his mind off of the battle just outside the door, he began looking at the rusted metal plates bolted onto the vault boxes along either side of their corridor. He absently noted the drainage grills set into the floor, too small in diameter for even the most determined rat to crawl through.

  “What’s your plan?” Verona asked.

  “There has to be a logical order to the number series that Guiseppe told me,” Davin said. Letting go of her hand, he went up to one of the vaults along the right hand side. With his sleeve, he wiped away dust and cobwebs from a metal tab sealed onto the front of the device. “This is corridor 1, and this box is labeled with a 1-5-1. What we’re looking for should be just up ahead, provided the priest remembered the number correctly.”

  By the time that he had figured out the pattern, they had gone too far and were now in the 1-7-8’s. Turning about, they started to make their way back down the hallway.

  “Do you hear that?” Verona said, stopping in her tracks.

  “I don’t hear anything,” Davin replied.

  “Exactly,” she said. “The swordplay’s done. Rajon has either won or lost, and either way, we’re both on the wrong side of the door.”

  “Do we go for him?” Davin asked.

  “No,” Verona said bravely. “He can take care of himself. Either way, he’d want us to do what we’re here to do. Claim the prize, and keep it from the men that killed your mother and your friend. Now, where is it?”

  “It should be…” Davin said, as he paced off the last few steps, before lighting and holding the lamp up high enough so he could easily read the numbers, “right here. This column here is the one we’re looking for.” He stopped at the proper vault, labeled with a stamped 1-6-1-8-0-3-4 seal. “Now to open it.”

  “It might not be that easy,” Verona said, noting the ether tube sitting next to the box. It was a singing lock, likely installed the year his father died.

  Setting the lamp down on the floor, he gave the cubby’s handle a good strong tug, but only succeeded in shaking the row of bolted vaults a miniscule fraction. “Damn,” he said. Raising Guiseppe’s whistle to his lips, he got real close to the vault box, close enough that his tune hopefully wouldn’t open the door a hundred paces away. He gave a quick, hesitant blow — but nothing happened. “Double damn.”

  “It seems logical enough,” Verona said. “The number corresponds to notes, and you sing the notes to open the box.”

  Davin blinked. “I can’t sing a note. I don’t have the ear for it. I never have.”

  Verona goggled at him. “You’re kidding me.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Verona blushed in the fading light. “Well, then,” she said. Looking up at the numbers on the box, she mouthed them silently, repeating them over and over again, as if committing them to memory.

  “What are you going to do?” Davin asked, just as the girl began to sing a string of perfectly clear, immaculate notes, one after the other, like a sweet angel flown down from the skies to serenade him within the cavernous, darkened tomb. The chain of notes, sung together with the echoes as would a practiced choir, was one of the most beautiful things Davin had ever heard in all his life.

  Rendered speechless by her performance, Davin didn’t even move a muscle when he heard the door to his father’s funerary box click open. After trying to take a moment to find something to say, to find something to tell Verona that wouldn’t make him sound stupid, he couldn’t think of anything at all appropriate after her incredible feat. Instead, he bit his tongue and reached inside the cubby, to where he could feel a bundle of clothing wrapped in plain paper and tied with a parcel string. Pulling it out, tucking it under his arm, he felt around the box for good measure with his bare palm, but could feel nothing else within.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” he finally asked. “Are you a diva?”

  “No,” she said, quite honestly. “I’m a thief. I can sing my way into rich people’s houses and out again without them ever knowing I was there.”

  He gaped at her, astonished. “But... with a voice like that, but you coul
d sing on any stage in the world.”

  “It’s not my place,” she stated. “I’m a thief, and a commoner and have all manner of bad habits. Let one of the perfumed fat ladies sing the Emperor his score. For me, I’m comfortable with my life skulking from rooftop to rooftop, and with nobody telling me what to do.”

  “As you wish,” Davin said, not knowing what else to say.

  “Now to get out,” she said, turning back the way they came. But Davin stepped forward and stopped her by the arm before she could take a single step.

  “What?” she murmured, quietly.

  “Listen...” Davin said. For a moment there was only silence, oppressive within the tomb. But then they both heard the sound of something else in the room with them, like a metal coil being dragged over a twisted harpsichord string, setting off a tortured scaly sound that shivered up and down their spines.

  “An assassin?” Verona whispered, as she listened to the thing moving around in the dark.

  “Whatever it is,” Davin replied as he blew out the lamp, “we’re not alone.”

  Retracing their footsteps back towards the Archive door, they kept an ear out for any other signs of the intruder. Doing his best to keep the paper bag from crinkling, he led Verona row by row towards their escape, hoping that they would not be cut off by the strange assailant.

  But when they reached the front part of the vault, they both stopped in their tracks, shocked by what they were seeing. A pair of fiery, glowing red eyes shone in the darkness just a few dozen steps ahead of them, turning this way, then that, as if searching the gloom for something to attack. When it turned its fiery gaze to look at the vault door behind it, Davin could see from its silhouette that it was not a person, or even an animal, but some kind of serpent. When it turned its body to look in another direction, the same glow that came from its eyes could be seen luminescing from within, giving its segmented form a rippling, heater-coil effect when it turned itself just the right way.

  Davin had few doubts that the snake could close the gap on them in seconds. Within the vault room, there was absolutely nowhere to hide.

  “What do we do?” Verona whispered — only to have the serpent’s eyes suddenly whip its head around, staring with lethal intent down their hallway. The girl let out a barely audible noise, and let Davin carefully start to guide her backwards, away from the creature, so they could get far enough away from the thing to plan and think.

  But it heard them and started slowly side-winding its way towards the mouth of their hallway, its eyes shifting this way and that, searching the dark. Davin stopped, squeezing Verona’s hand, faintly feeling the way her entire body trembled.

  They watched as it advanced a few more slithers, its hard metal coils scraping lightly over irregularities in the stone face. Then it stopped, cold and silent, blocking their passage.

  Davin waited, trying to resist the urge to hold his breath, but just to breathe shallowly, slowly, keeping an eye on the hypnotic movements of the predator. But the creature seemed to be staying put, waiting for the next clue, the next sign of their whereabouts. Davin realized he was stuck, as the machine could outwait them until doomsday, or longer if it wanted to.

  Without any weapon, and only his bare hands to face the thing, he knew that he only had one other option. Carefully placing the package on the floor, slowly lowering it down inch by inch so it didn’t make even as a rustle, he then quietly took off the uncomfortable shoes he’d purchased from the tanner and knotted the laces together. Now standing in his bare feet, just like Verona, he gave the shoes a couple of swings and tossed them over the nearest row of vaults. When they banged off a cabinet door in the second row, the mechanical serpent went after them like a crossbow bolt.

  After counting one, counting two, Davin ran with Verona on three with Guiseppe’s whistle already clenched between his lips. Too late, he heard the snake-creature make a peculiar steam-hissing sound, and he could imagine it turning back towards them at speed. Blowing Guiseppe’s whistle, he heard the Archive door latch click open. Banging it open, knowing well that he could be taking Verona into yet more mortal danger, he pulled her through, then spun to slam the door shut, hoping to lock the snake securely on the other side.

  He nearly didn’t make it, as the coiling thing was nearly to the door when he banged it home. As he stumbled backwards, away from the thing beating on the other side of the locked door, he could hear it striking again and again through the thick metal, a sound that chilled him to the bone.

  Turning, Davin was expecting to see a horde of ruffians standing guard for him. But instead, it was only Rajon, looking a little frayed around the edges, sitting atop a very suspicious row of storehouse barrels. Verona leaped up and gave him a hug he clearly didn’t want.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Rajon said, as he eyed the package beneath Davin’s arm. “I’ve even had time to dispose of our friends, and to clean up a bit.”

  Davin looked down, realizing that he was standing on wet paving stones. Look to the side, he noted that the gambler had used a tun of water from the church reserves to wash the blood from the battle down a small metal drain. “Cleaning up...” he said with horror in his voice. “The drains. That’s how it got in...”

  Verona looked down at the small round grate right by her feet, then looked up at Davin, the look of shock plain on her face. As if in answer to Davin’s statement, they could all hear something snake-like scurrying through the wrist-sized drain at high speed, coming closer to egress with every second.

  “How what got in?” Rajon asked.

  “Quick!” Davin said, reaching for a large barrel of dried herring. “Put something on top of the drain! We need to put something on top of all the drains, or it will be upon us faster than we can run!”

  With Rajon’s help, Davin managed to roll a barrel of herring into place, just as the serpent in the pipe impacted with the bottom of the container with a sickening thud. For a moment the creature struggled against the weight, striking again and again in attempt to dislodge the obstacle, then turned and whisked away back into the pipes below.

  “There must be other drains,” Verona said, as she scurried out along the hallways, looking for more points where it could make its way into the room.

  “It’s some kind of snake,” Davin told Rajon, before he could ask the obvious question. “Something mechanical, with glowing red eyes.”

  “Then we can’t let it get free,” Rajon replied, even as Verona announced she’d found a second drain, and a third. Moving quickly, they worked as a team to block up five other drains within the next few minutes, shoving heavy boxes and barrels over the grates to block the serpent’s egress.

  “This is the last drain,” Verona said, winded, even as they listened to the sound of the creature navigating the pipes beneath their feet, clinking and rasping its way closer and closer with every second. “We block this one and we should be safe.”

  “Then this is where we make our stand,” Rajon replied, much to Davin’s shock. “I’ll draw its attention,” he said, pulling his sword free so he held the weapon in one hand and the sheath in the other, ready to catch and pin the thing. “You, Davin, you climb on that stack of barrels above it and find something heavy to smash it with when it comes out of its hole. Verona, I want you up as high as you can go, and have something in hand in case this goes terribly wrong.”

  “You’re not serious?” Verona said. “We could be safely out of here in moments but you want to stay and kill the thing?”

  “Better here than in our beds some night to come.”

  Davin nodded, agreeing with the man’s plan. Scurrying up a pile of barrels, he soon found a thick clay jar filled with salt that was about as heavy as he could lift. Verona, pulled a bronzed rod from within a box of mechanical parts. Having no choice but to trust her, Davin handed over his father’s packet for her to keep safe, then wrestled the heavy clay jar into position.

  As they settled in, preparing their trap, t
hey could hear the sound of the creature coming closer still. When Davin could see a red glow beginning to emanate from the drain, he raised his canister, hoping it contained enough weight to crush the beast in a single blow. Rajon held his sword and sheath ready, prepared to fend off whatever attacks the serpentine automaton would make upon him.

  When it reared out of the hole, hissing like a mad thing, its fanged head and glowing red eyes rising up some three feet off the floor, Davin nearly fell over backwards from the shock of seeing the creature jack-rabbit itself out of the drain. But when Rajon came upon it, sword and sheath crossed at the haft, he drew the creature’s full attention, stepping this way and that in order to keep the creature’s focus upon him.

  Davin aimed once, then twice, then dropped the canister right where he hoped he should, and watched with pleasure as the heavy load smashed down right where the snake was coming up and out of its hole. Its back broke, scattering a scree of metal rivets, screws, and metal bits scattering across the stone. Instantly, the fire went out in the automaton’s eyes, and the thing collapsed to the ground, unmoving, all animation gone from its coils.

  “Is it dead?” Verona asked after a moment of fearful observation.

  “I think so,” Rajon said. “Nice aim, Davin. Another second or two and I think it would have had me.”

  Davin hopped off his perch and came down next to the unmoving thing, giving it a quick study. “This is an amazing creation,” he said, as he observed the creature up close. With its dead, lifeless eyes it looked no more dangerous than a child’s toy. But only moments before, Davin had seen it in its full movement, and knew that he had gotten lucky with his throw.

  “No time for that now,” Rajon replied. “Find something that we can port the remains in. We should get out of here before any other fiends arrive and discover that I’ve deposited their friends in pickle-vats. Now that we have your inheritance, their dead serpent, and our skins intact, and I suspect they’re going to be unhappy about us getting such a devilishly good draw off the deck.”