Sula gave them a moment, then strode over to join them. Zae greeted her warmly. “Has he been saddled up all day?”
“No, we gave him a rest and a meal, and some playtime with the other dogs.” She grinned at Appleslayer, his tongue lolling out while Zae scratched his ears. “It’s a rough life, I can tell.”
Zae laughed, and the last vestiges of Keren’s frustration fell away upon hearing it. Her gnome was beautiful, and a source of light everywhere she went.
“Would you mind riding him around for me a little?” the houndmaster asked. “I’d like to show you what we’re working on, and I’d like him to practice it with you.”
“I’m happy to!” Zae climbed up into the saddle, and the dog pranced a bit once she was on his back. She had her canvas satchel with its strap slung across her chest; Sula offered to put it somewhere safe for her, but Zae declined. “I’m always wearing it when I ride him. What do you need us to do?”
The trainer explained the maneuver to Zae, who nodded. With Sula’s guidance, they trotted a couple of warm-up circuits around the ring. Sula took a wooden sword off a nearby weapons rack and charged them with a feral cry, ignoring Apple and swinging at Zae with a strike intended to pass over her head and miss. Apple’s gait faltered, but he recovered and heeded Zae’s command to continue on.
The dog’s first instinct was to protect his rider. He knew how to handle attacks aimed at him, but a sword swung over his head, out of his line of sight, put him on edge. Keren recalled the horse she’d seen training that morning, and could see how the idea was similar. A fighting dog could use his own judgment in combat, but a mount needed to trust his rider, follow direction, and predictably get his rider to the requisite position, no matter what was going on around him.
Zae didn’t ride Apple in combat, but she could. If caught unawares while she was already in the saddle, she would have to.
“He’s doing well,” Evandor noted, at Keren’s side. “Soon she’ll move on to throwing fear and other emotions at him, once he’s mastered this.”
Keren imagined how strained things could get for all concerned, if Zae’s mount was hit by a fear spell and started running away with their healer aboard. She didn’t think Apple had ever been in that sort of position, and while she didn’t like thinking about it, she liked knowing that he would be prepared.
They repeated the exercise several times. Once, Appleslayer dodged a wide circle around Sula and her sword. A few times he faltered, startled. But a few times he kept his gait and direction true.
When Sula signaled a halt and Zae confirmed the command, Apple slowed to a happy prance, coming to a stop by the trio of humans. Zae looked flushed, her hair windblown around her delicate face. “That was fun,” she said, breathless. “Can we do it again?”
13
MEDIC, HEAL THYSELF
ZAE
I wasn’t sure if you’d show … or, actually, if you’d charge right in without waiting for me.” Rowan unfolded himself from the shadows beside the door.
“You know I saw you, right?” Zae jogged up the front steps to meet him. She had ridden Apple harder than she was used to, during his training session. It had been exciting, but now her thighs carried the echo of it.
“Maybe. Are you trained to spot people hiding in shadows?”
“Maybe! Are you trained to hide in shadows?”
“Maybe. Well, not the trained part, but the shadow part.”
“Wait, really?”
Rowan shrugged. “I ended up out on the street at an early age. I learned what I had to, wherever I could.”
“Were your parents dead?” Zae thought of Keren’s father.
“Only in a manner of speaking.”
He didn’t offer anything more, so Zae didn’t ask. As they passed through the imposing main arch, her mind churned with all the potential next questions she wasn’t asking.
Rowan gave her a sideways glance, and then laughed. “Go on, then.”
“Go on, what?”
“You’re turning purple. Go on, creature of curiosity. What do you want to know?”
Zae was absolutely sure she wasn’t turning colors, but try as she might, she wasn’t able to take even mild offense at the accusation.
“You’re a sneaking type and a healing type. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s an extremely practical combination. I’m just curious how you went from sneaking around on the street to being in a healing cognate.”
He laughed again. “I’m clergy, if you want to call it that, but I’d rather make healing devices than do healing. Have you seen what potions cost? I’d like every adventurer who sets out alone, and every backstreet orphan, to be able to heal themselves, whether they can use magic or not.”
“Wow. That’s—”
“Insane?”
“I was going to say noble, actually. Hey! Wait up…”
Rowan had turned down the first corridor on the right. Zae glanced left to see that the opposite archway was blocked by its iron gear, and skipped a few steps to catch up. He didn’t wait for her, but he didn’t rush ahead of her, either.
“Okay,” he said once he’d slowed to a leisurely walk. “Now we just roam around, listening for moaning or explosions or calls for help. There probably won’t be any, especially if people are injured behind closed doors, but it’s good to have healers around just in case. So, how about you? What made you decide to heal stuff?”
Zae shrugged. “My family … group … unit … thing was a traveling caravan of clockwork and construct makers. I got the tinkering urge from them. The calling to heal, from Brigh, came after I saw enough family lose blood, limbs, and bits to the creative process.”
“So you grew up on the road?”
“Yes. And you grew up…?”
“On the streets, like I said, here in Absalom. When I parted ways with my parents, I lived down near the docks for a while, hiding from the slave traders and learning to be a thief. After a close call too many, I ended up throwing myself on Desna’s mercy. The dream goddess took me in, and I learned healing arts so that I could earn my keep and repay the kindness. Wait. Did you hear that?”
From far down the corridor came the sound of a door squeaking on its hinges. It was followed by a weak whimper. Rowan and Zae exchanged a glance. The gnome hitched her satchel more securely on her shoulder and took off after her companion.
It turned out to be nothing but a Thumper cleaning up scraps of metal and piles of sawdust. Hinges opened on its top, providing a bin for disposal and producing the squeaking sound they had heard. She smiled brightly at it and patted it on the head to cover her disappointment. Again, she imagined the fun Appleslayer would have playing with one of these, after the thorough mess he’d made of the construct that delivered her acceptance. She wondered if she could set him on one accidentally-on-purpose in order to have an excuse to take it apart and put it back together.
They continued their patrol of the building, corridor by corridor. The gear that had rotated out of the way on Zae’s first visit was still at the top of its arc, poised like a raised portcullis. All was silent within, and spotless without, but in her mind’s eye she could still see the exhausted, paranoid cognate staggering out when the gear moved aside and granted them their freedom.
“Let’s go down this way,” Zae said.
Rowan’s brow furrowed. “Why? What’s down here? Do you hear something?”
“I just have a weird feeling. This is where those students stumbled out yesterday. Maybe someone was too exhausted to leave. We should check.” She started off toward the arch and Rowan followed without objection.
One room of the vacant wing had been set up as living quarters, with bedrolls still open on the floor, while the rest were labs and workshops. None contained the detritus Zae would have expected, from the appearance of the wing’s refugees. “Have the Thumpers already cleaned up? There isn’t even a smell in here.”
“The Thumpers can go in and out of individual rooms even if the doors are locked.”
<
br /> “Wait, they can bypass the gears?”
“No, I didn’t say that. Nothing can bypass the gears. But there are usually some constructs that get stuck in the hallways when the gears seal them off, and they keep doing their thing. And look…” He knelt by one of the doors. When he traced the outline, she could see it: a smaller door set into the larger one, without any apparent handle or lock. “A normal door doesn’t stop them.”
Now Zae wanted to dissect a Thumper even more. “Something in them gets recognized by a lock at a certain proximity? Clever.”
“And thorough. That makes me think that the lack of hospitality toward the living in this place isn’t an oversight, it’s part of the grand design. You can’t lock your food and water in and expect it to be there when you get back.”
All the rooms were empty of students, but that only facilitated Zae’s search and fired up her curiosity. She tried the latch on the last door at the end of the hall, but it didn’t move at her touch. “Locked. Who gets the keys to these doors?”
“I don’t know. I presume the cognate leaders have them. Let’s move on.”
“Well, wait. The Thumpers can get into the rooms, but would they remove a person? Would they call for help? What if someone’s in here?” Zae knew the odds of this were unlikely, but the people who’d left this hall had been so secretive and suspicious, and so far there had been nothing to see that bore any need of it. True, they’d had a full day since then to remove everything, but that only made it more likely that whatever they were working on was all behind this one door.
“Fine. Hold on…” Rowan drew a small leather roll from a hidden pocket and opened it to reveal a set of lockpicks.
While he got to work on the keyhole, Zae found she almost felt guilty for having preyed on his better nature so easily. She didn’t for a moment think that there might be an injured person inside this room; she just really wanted to peek into it because it was locked. That was a sentiment a halfling might understand, but she didn’t want to take the chance that his adherence to the Clockwork Cathedral’s rules might cloud his judgment.
She watched, standing back out of his way, while he worked his deft touch on the lock, and she managed not to rush forward when the tumblers clicked their release.
“Whoa … Looks like they’re building some kind of big construct in here.” Zae’s instincts had been right; the door swung open on a sight that matched the rumors she’d agreed to investigate for Keren’s order. A step at a time, as if in awe of the massive machine, Zae moved forward into the workroom.
“We’ve checked for people. Now we should go,” Rowan said, but didn’t stop her.
He hovered in the doorway, ready to leave, but the moment Zae said, “Wow, look at this!” the halfling was right by her side.
The mechanical head alone was taller than Zae’s entire threefoot-three frame; she knew this with certainty because its dented, unpolished chin rested on the floor and its vacant eye sockets gazed out over her forehead.
“People make a lot of constructs here,” Rowan said. He sounded unimpressed, but his wide eyes showed all the curiosity she felt. He rapped on the bronze with his knuckles, canting his head to listen to its hollow echoes. “Not much inside it yet. Finishing the shell before the insides is a bold choice, and by bold I mean foolish. I hope all the guts fit.”
At the thick marble-topped worktable nearest the giant head, schematics scrawled on parchment had been left behind in haste. Zae hopped up on a chair to have a look. “For as secretive as they acted, they don’t seem to be discouraging curiosity,” Zae said.
“Right. That locked door? That said ‘come right in and poke around,’” Rowan quipped. “Don’t touch the pages. They might be warded or trapped. What can you see without moving them?”
“Just typical construct stuff,” Zae said, but it wasn’t the truth. Studying them as closely as she could without touching them, she saw a chest cavity and a power source, and that source looked very much like a cylinder. Or a jar. And beside the drawing, the specifications of the jar. To her disappointment, there was nothing magical about it or its contents; the jar was only a housing for simple alchemical reactions—unless that was just what its builders wanted any wandering eyes to think. While Zae tried to make sense of the notes, Rowan took a tour around the perimeter of the room, and then around the giant metal head. “There isn’t any magic coming from the pages,” she reported.
“There wouldn’t have to be. Devices can be of all shapes and sizes, and most of us have other tricks, too. Renwick is an alchemist—you should see the things he’s come up with. But here? Let’s see … The paper itself could be treated, or something that’s light-sensitive could come out of a hole in the table beneath it if it’s moved…”
Zae considered this. “I’m used to only thinking like an engineer when I’m actively engineer. I can see that I’m going to have to get used to thinking like one all the time.”
Rowan gave a little boy’s smug lift of his shoulders, which again made Zae wonder if he could be as young as he sometimes seemed. He leaned back against the table and crossed his arms. “I don’t know if it’ll do you any good. I mean, would an engineer notice the hidden panel in this table?”
There were two options available to Zae: she could concede that Rowan was better than she was at finding hidden things. Or, she could feign nonchalance as she had when he’d startled her at the front door—she was too proud to admit that she hadn’t actually seen him in the shadows. Ultimately, her curiosity won out over her interest in playing games.
“Hidden panel? Where?”
Rowan led her around to the back side of the table, and specifically to a spot that looked, to her untrained eye, exactly like the rest of the side edge of the tabletop. The work surface was about six inches of solid marble, as far as she could tell.
“How do you even know?” she asked.
“The sound is different in this room than the others, and by turning my head while you spoke, I could feel a shift in the acoustics.”
Zae was aware of staring at him as if he’d grown a second head, but she couldn’t stop herself from doing it, all the same. “You, sir, are messing with me.”
He laughed. “Honestly? I used a spell to search for hidden things while you were checking out our giant friend’s insides.”
Zae smirked. “Okay. So, the panel. Are we going to open it, or are you waiting for me to say please?”
Rowan beamed, winked, and flourished one of his slender picks. “I thought you’d never ask. So, what do you think we’ll find?” He finessed the sharp tip along an invisible seam in the marble. Even knowing where it was, Zae could only see the variations of natural veining that hid the opening. “Money? Secret plans?”
“Maybe whatever they plan to put into that thing as a power source.” Zae was thinking of the Bloodstone, but she picked her words carefully. “Could be diamonds, or other rare things that are too precious to leave scattered around.”
“Care to wager on that?”
Zae pursed her lips. “Sure. I bet you half the diamonds we find that it’ll be diamonds.”
“And they say I’m trouble.” Rowan turned back to the hidden panel as if his profile could hide his grin. He worked at it slowly, testing the seams, tapping lightly and listening, and doing all sorts of careful things that looked impressive but hopefully had purpose, too. “Ready?”
“Ready.”
Rowan straightened, brushing his hands on his thighs and shaking out his wrists. “Okay. You never want to be at eye level with something like this when you open it, because you never know what might come out. You can try your hardest to check for traps, but you never know if there are really no traps, or if you just haven’t found them.” He inserted the pick into one side edge, twisted it slowly, and used it as a pry bar to slide one side of the panel outward.
He gasped, a sharp almost-pitched rush of breath, as if his vocal cords hadn’t quite had time to move out of the way of his breathing. “I’m all right,�
�� he said, and Zae was set to laugh, and to ask him how big her share of the diamonds was.
Then he turned, and Zae saw how apt her analogy had been. A dart was lodged deep into his leather vest, roughly over his heart. Like his vocal cords, he hadn’t quite had time to move out of the way, either.
She was at his side in an instant, ready to treat the wound. Shock slowed Rowan’s movements, but he batted at Zae’s hands, pushing her away each time she tried to reach for the buttons on his vest. “Come here,” she demanded. “Would you stop wriggling? Are you a halfling or a fish?”
“No, no, I’ll see to it. Stop. Please stop!”
There were tears in his eyes, stuck in his long black lashes, and his voice was raw and full of panic. She raised her hands and stopped. An entreaty to Brigh told her there was no poison on the projectile; he wasn’t suddenly hallucinating and seeing her as a multi-tentacled thing, or awash with chemically induced paranoia. He just didn’t want her to open his shirt, and that was a thing she could respect.
“I’m sorry, Rowan. You’re a healer, too. Can you handle it? Can I offer you a potion?”
“I can handle it.” He blinked and the tears fell. “I’m sorry, too. I’m just … touchy about being stripped.”
“That’s a completely reasonable thing to be touchy about. Personally, I’m touchy about people standing around with sharp things stuck through them. Think we can respect both those things at the same time?” Zae turned to give him her back, staring off resolutely past the open compartment. She’d lost her thrill for whatever the contents might be. “For whatever it’s worth, whatever you’ve got in your shirt is nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Behind Zae, buttons opened with little pops, a quiet gasp caught in the halfling’s throat, and then she heard the awl-punch sound of a sharp-tipped instrument pulling out of leather. “That may be. I still appreciate you respecting my space.”
Without the halfling’s appearance to temper it, his voice seemed even more dulcet, despite his pain. “Do you sing?” She asked suddenly.
Pathfinder Tales--Gears of Faith Page 12
