He glanced at Gregor and smiled. The young man and Liara were only one week into their being able to do so, however. To be sure, there were other dragonlinked, other people who were bonded, but their dragon partners were yet too young to carry them. Still, Sharrah and Cheddar, along with Terry and Korrie, would soon enough be joining the ranks of airborne dragonlinked.
“So, we need to think of more ideas, then.” Jessip stood. “If that’s it, can we head to lunch? I’m hungry after my long and extremely boring rail line patrol.”
“Honestly,” Renata said, frowning up at him.
With a smile, he shrugged. “I can’t help it, I’m starving.”
Chuckling along with more than a few others, Willem said, “Yes, that’s it for the meeting. Let’s go eat!”
All through lunch Fillion thought about what other tricks he could suggest.
He hadn’t come up with anything then, nor in the walk to his and Gregor’s rooms, nor the walk to the afternoon lesson.
Sitting in the classroom, however, he remembered something he saw at a dog show that a traveling performer had put on at Cotter’s Grove. The man had trained his dogs to hop from the top of one stool to another through wooden hoops. While that wasn’t so thrilling in and of itself, the excitement would be increased if passing through the hoop was performed at top dragon flight speed.
Whoosh!
He nodded. Yes. And maybe . . . maybe there was a way to make it even more exiting.
“Hey!” Liara’s hissed whisper pulled him from his thoughts.
He looked at her. “Hmm?”
Another whisper. “Pay attention!”
He drew his brows together and glanced to the front of the classroom.
The instructor, an overly serious woman hired directly from the Investigation Craft Guild three weeks ago, stared at him.
Barbs and blades! Fillion sat up and gave her his full attention. “I’m sorry ma’am, did you ask me something?”
She briefly pressed her lips into a thin line. “What is one kind of lock that is impossible to pick?”
“Ah . . .” He thought furiously. Just last night he’d gone over some of this. He glanced down at the closed lesson book, but try as he might he couldn’t remember anything he’d read. Then he recalled a dark, nervous night atop a hill with Guildmaster Millinith, Master Investigator Gella, and a large chest secured with a very heavy padlock.
He looked up at the instructor. “A multi-disk barrier lock. They are impossible to defeat with just picks. But any lock can be defeated given enough time and the tools and knowledge to get past them.”
A sniff and a quick nod. “Just so.” Adept Investigator Olwen looked over the class. “Locks should be thought more of as time-delay mechanisms rather than devices that will secure anything in and of themselves. Anyone using a lock, anyone who knows what they are about anyway, should know this. The complexity of the lock they choose is a balance between owner inconvenience, strength, cost, and whether what is being secured can be accessed via other, simpler, means.”
“A brute force attack,” Liara said.
Fillion recalled how Master Investigator Gella had gotten into the wooden chest—not through the padlock, but via the hinges on the lid.
“That is perhaps the simplest of means, yes.” Adept Olwen walked over to one of the practice locks, a door secured with a bolt lock, one of several to the side of the room in free-standing frames. She suddenly kicked the door open, sending a few wood splinters flying.
Turning back to the surprised class, she said, “Brute force attacks are often-times noisy, however, so the location where the lock is used and its surroundings should also be considered during lock selection. If there are occasional witnesses—passers-by—noisy methods will likely not be favored by anyone attempting to access the secured area, and thus the complexity of the lock bears more heavily than how strong it is at withstanding brute force attacks. Delay an intruder long enough as they quietly try to defeat the lock and a witness of some sort will eventually pass by.
“That is why your picking abilities, whether actually using picks or not, are rated in a measure of time. Your rating is how many seconds it takes you to defeat different types of locks. Lower ratings are better, obviously.”
Back at the front of the class, she said, “None of the locks you will be working on today are unpickable. The padlocks on your tables make use of pin tumbler locks, which are some of the simpler locks available. If you’ll recall, we spoke about them at length last time. Today, each of you will work on defeating them using your picks. Do not stop the first time you succeed. Continue practicing for the time remaining in the lesson. You may begin.” She sat and began leafing through a stack of papers on her desk.
“Pardon me, ma’am?” Liara held up a key. “Why are these here?”
“So that, after failing enough, you can prove to yourself that the padlocks are, in fact, not broken.” With a faint smile, Adept Olwen returned to her reading.
Fillion pulled his test padlock over. Like all the others, it was shackled through a hasp and staple attached to a wood plank that was half a foot square. After lifting the padlock, he stared at the visible portion of the lock on its bottom.
Prove that the padlock actually works? Ha! He wouldn’t have to. He’d pick it instead.
“Feeling confident?” Gregor, sitting to his right, grinned.
“Hells yeah, I am.” Fillion pulled the leather pick case from his backpack and got to work.
Ten minutes later, Gregor—even with one arm still in a sling!—had opened his padlock three times, Liara had opened hers six, and Fillion had yet to open his once.
“Barbs and pissing blades!” He shoved the damned thing away.
A few of the others glanced over from their tables before returning to their own padlocks.
What is wrong?
Nothing, big guy. Just having a little trouble with an assignment.
“You could always use the key to verify it works.” Gregor slid the key closer to him.
Fillion scowled. “If you don’t want to sleep on the floor tonight . . .”
Gregor chuckled. “I was just kidding. You’re putting too much pressure on the tension wrench. You can’t move the pins with the rake if you’re pressing them too tightly against the casing. Look at how I’m doing it.”
Gregor slid a tension wrench in the plug of his padlock. Then, a little awkwardly, he pressed against the top of the wrench with the fingers of his left hand, pushing it slightly to the right. “See? Like this. Easy does it.”
“A light touch is best,” Liara said. “You may also find that increasing the pressure a bit, then releasing it slightly, over and over, helps. Keep in mind that there always needs to be at least some pressure on it, though.” She pressed her wrench, spun it around, and her padlock popped open for the seventh time.
Fillion grunted. “A light touch, huh?” Gregor did have gentle hands, likely from his Healing Craft background.
After taking a breath and releasing it, Fillion tried again. He slid the tension wrench in and gently pressed the top to the side.
“That’s the way,” Gregor said.
“Now slide in the rake.” Liara watched from his left.
Fillion slipped the thin tool into the plug all the way to the back and, keeping slight pressure on the wrench, started raking it in and out.
He felt and heard a very faint click. “Oh. You can actually feel when a pin locks in place.”
Gregor smiled. “Exactly.”
Not five seconds later, Fillion spun the wrench, and the padlock popped open. “Golden!”
“I knew you could do it.” Gregor nodded at him.
“Now, do it again.” Liara winked and turned back to her own padlock.
Chuckling, Fillion snapped the padlock closed through the hasp.
He opened it ten times before the lesson was over.
After sliding the picks back into their thin leather case, he replaced it in his pack. “That was pretty e
asy.”
“It kind of scares me a little, though.” Gregor slung his backpack over his shoulder.
“What do you mean?” Fillion grabbed his satchel and followed Gregor to the door.
“Those kinds of locks are used on so many things. Doors, padlocks, cabinets, desks, just so many things.” Gregor frowned.
“And look how easy they are to defeat.” Liara’s voice came from behind.
Fillion glanced at her then back at the door as he thought on that. People assumed locks were full protection against theft, when, as Adept Olwen pointed out, they were actually only delay mechanisms. There definitely needed to be more thought put into how one secured one’s belongings.
They followed Jemma and Kristina out the door. Official lessons for Investigation Craft had started just two weeks ago, so people from all the classes attended them. The two girls were friends of Aeron’s and had joined the moment open applications were announced. Actually, quite a few had joined, including all those who’d been provisionally approved several weeks ago as candidates for bonding.
A message runner stood just outside the door, watching as people left the room. “Dragonlinked Fillion?”
Fillion narrowed his eyes. “Yes?”
“The Guildmaster would like a word with you. If you could come with me?”
“Of course, but I need a moment.” He turned to Gregor. “I’ll see you at dinner if I’m able. I’ll have Coatl tell Kisa otherwise, if not.”
Gregor nodded. “I’ll see you then.”
Liara waved and the two of them headed off.
Fillion turned back to the runner. “After you.”
As they walked through the hallways, he wondered what the Guildmaster wanted him for. It couldn’t be that she needed to be flown somewhere. She had Itzel for that, now. The two of them had flown often since they’d bonded.
Once they were outside her offices, the young man nodded once and left.
Renata wasn’t there and the door was open, so Fillion walked into the back office.
He cleared his throat. “Excuse me, ma’am. You wanted to speak with me?”
Guildmaster Millinith looked up from a stack of papers on her desk and nodded. “Yes. Master Gella wondered if you could meet her in Delcimaar and fly her to Stronghold.”
Fillion’s heart beat a little faster. Was the woman investigating something? He enjoyed helping out the Investigation Craft master and it had been far too long since he’d done so.
You are very happy.
Master Gella wants us to fly her to Stronghold.
A little excitement surged through the link. Will we be helping her investigate something?
I’m not sure. He glanced at Guildmaster Millinith. “Did she say why?”
She chuckled. “Come now, you know how circumspect she is. She included very little in her request.” She glanced over at the ’writer. “She merely says that she needs a lift.”
He frowned. Still, the request wouldn’t have been made if she weren’t pressed for time, would it? Perhaps there was something important afoot. “Right. I’ll go get ready.”
As Fillion walked to his rooms, he wondered how the National Transportation trials were going. That was the last big investigation Master Gella had been involved with. Well, at least as far as he knew.
To be hung from the neck until dead.
That was the punishment, the sentence, that Master Gella had sought for Pivin. He was the right-hand man of the owner of National Transportation, Tiberius, and her investigation had led to the company being forced into dissolution. Piven had been in charge of all the killings in the desert. He’d also been the one who’d killed one of Master Gella’s investigators. Though, from what she’d said once, there had been more between her and the murdered investigator than just their jobs.
A thought nearly brought him up short. What if something were to happen to him while working on a case? What if he were injured, or worse, killed, while helping Master Gella? How would that affect Coatl? How would it affect Gregor?
“You look a little pale. What did the Guildmaster want?”
Fillion was surprised to find Gregor in their rooms, but then again, dinner was still half an hour away. The meeting with Guildmaster Millinith had been quick. “Oh, she was just relaying a request from Master Gella. The master investigator needs a lift to Stronghold.”
Was that a flicker of annoyance on Gregor’s face?
“Well, if you hurry, you can make it back in time for dinner.” Gregor’s smile made Fillion wonder if he’d been mistaken about what he thought he’d seen.
It must have been a trick of the light. Gregor had always been fully supportive of his interest in Investigation Craft. “That’s true.” Fillion smiled. “Help me get Coatl saddled?”
Gregor lifted his arm in the sling. “As much as I can, sure.”
Fillion frowned. The strange expression he thought he saw had flustered him, and he’d briefly forgotten about the broken arm Gregor got in the fight they all had with a number of the Order’s manis guards at Bataan-Mok. “Right. Well, you can watch and make sure I don’t miss anything.”
Gregor chuckled. “Sure.”
Fillion grabbed the saddle and set it atop Coatl. What was Master Gella investigating now?
Chapter 2
Therday, Quartus 10, 1875.
Evening.
The low sun spread ruddy light across Delcimaar, burnishing the tops of its tall buildings in gold and casting deep shadows across its side-streets. Because of the distance involved, there was about an hour before sunset here, while back at the Guildhall, there were perhaps ten minutes left before night fell.
As a dragonlinked, Fillion completely understood this. With the unique ability to travel across the entire continent of Muirgen in mere moments, dragonlinked saw as a matter of course that the things most people used to judge time—the sun, the stars, or the moons—were not in the same place in the sky, at the same moment, everywhere, and thus could not be used as a basis for organized time across the continent. Dividing Muirgen into time zones made more sense.
Before time zones, there were some places where each town or village used slightly different times even if they were only a few miles apart. The mail delivery companies and the shipping companies, including rail companies, had for years sought some kind of ‘time order.’ It had been incredibly difficult to organize schedules and deliveries across the continent prior to that.
For Fillion, however, time zones were a headache. All the adding and subtracting hours to figure out what the local time was in whatever place you had taken a portal to was a pain in his backside.
He unsnapped the leather wrist flap on his riding glove and glanced at the wrist-watch. They were right on time, if his math was correct. It was six at the Guildhall, so that meant it was five here in Delcimaar. Yet, there was no sign below of—
She comes.
A carriage approached the gates and made its way into the plaza behind the Bureau of Guilds.
Let’s get down there.
Coatl rumbled and banked down for a landing. After setting down, he furled his large wings.
Fillion hopped to the ground and, while he waited, thought about what the master investigator needed to do in Stronghold, Delcimaar’s sister city on the other side of the continent. He’d not heard of anything happening in the far metropolis, but news was slow to reach the Guildhall, situated as it was up in the Northern Wilds.
Master Gella shared some words with the driver and then the carriage left, horseshoes and metal-shod wheels clacking on the pavers.
The steps she took as she walked over to them were short and quick. “It’s good to see you both again.”
Coatl chirped and gave a quick bow of his head. Master Gella.
She smiled and returned his bow. “Coatl.” Turning, she said, “Fillion, thank you for once again assisting me.”
He nodded. “Of course. I figured it must be important if you wanted us to get you to Stronghold. You must be in a hur
ry.”
“It could be important. When there are rail lines fully across the continent, the week or so to get to Stronghold via train won’t be too much of a hardship. But, yes, I am in a hurry, and right now it would take almost a month to get there using traditional transportation.”
“Then let’s not waste time.” Fillion handed her a riding belt. “Incidentally, how did the National Transportation trial work out?”
She buckled it on. “As we hoped it would. Most of the guilty are on their way to prison, while Tiberius and Piven were executed earlier today on several counts of murder.”
The matter-of-fact way she said it was a bit shocking to Fillion.
She must have seen that on his face. “Killing someone, for that is exactly what we as a nation did, should never be taken lightly. But those two men . . .” She frowned. “They had complete and utter disregard for people’s lives. You weren’t privy to everything they did, nor in the detail. It was all presented in court over the course of the trial. In the sentencing hearing, the jurors unanimously agreed on the punishment.”
That man was strange. He did not think of people the same way we do. He did not . . . feel.
Fillion glanced at Coatl. Feel? Did he mean Piven had no empathy? Had Piven looked at people the same way Fillion looked at, say, dolls, or marbles? Someone without empathy might feel upset that they lost something they owned, maybe some prized property, but would they feel the loss of something that had been alive? Would they feel heartbroken that a living being was no more?
Fillion shivered. What an alien, terrible way to live. He climbed up into the saddle.
Master Gella climbed behind and strapped in. “Let’s go.”
Once through the portal, stars twinkled in the night sky far above where they hovered. Ahead of them, Stronghold actually looked a bit like a sea of stars itself, street lamps, smaller lightglobes, and braziers all sparkling in their own ways.
Of Gods, Trees, and a Sapling: Dragonlinked Chronicles Volume 4 Page 5
