by Bell, Hilari
Had he come, as the mayor of Casfell had wanted his baron to come, to complain about how the food trains drained the countryside? I still hadn’t figured out how the food trains could pay two brass roundels and a oct for a bushel of carrots, and sell them in the Tallowsport market for a tin ha’ the bunch.
The baron looked like someone who might have come to quarrel with the local dragon, righteous determination spread over fear.
I heard the big door open below me, and soon the sound of many feet passing my study on the way to the boss’s office.
Interrupting one of the Rose’s meetings might be a bad idea…but I needed to learn something, curse it.
I spent twenty minutes searching through the papers on my desk—ship’s papers, not the Rose’s crooked ledgers—to find something I could plausibly ask him about. Then I left the study and walked down the hall toward the small mob of guards who hung about the Rose’s office.
One of them stepped in front of the door as I approached.
“I need to ask the boss about something,” I told him. “It won’t take long.”
“He’s got a guest,” the guard said. “He isn’t to be disturbed.”
I could hear their muffled voices. But they didn’t seem to be behind the door.
“Well, maybe Wiederman could help me. Is he—”
“He’s in the meeting,” the guard said. “You’ll have to come back later.”
Someone’s voice grew louder for a moment, and I realized the sound came, not through the door, but through the wall to the left. This stranger had been taken into the Rose’s secret office!
“Ah,” I said. “I’ll do that.”
I went back to my study and back to work. But I left my door open.
I was watching as they came back down the hall, Wiederman showing the baron out. He no longer looked grimly determined, but stunned. His collar had been pulled loose, and he was turning his hat in his hands as if he didn’t know what to do with it. But he didn’t look angry or…well, he did look frightened. In fact, he looked terrified, but not as if he’d been browbeaten into submission. This was the feverish exuberant terror of a man about to take some great risk for a great gain—not quite sure it would work, but committed to try.
You never want your mark to look like that. They should look relaxed, trusting, certain the bait you’ve promised will come through.
Which either meant the Rose was a bad scammer…or this wasn’t a scam.
I closed the door and went to the window to watch the baron ride away. He’d put his hat on backward, and didn’t even notice that the plume fell over the brim in front of him.
Whatever had happened at this meeting, it was big…and there was only one way to find out what it was. Somehow, I had to get into that second office.
* * *
The last mark I’d seen come near that state was Herbert Twylinger. Herbert was a nice kid, in an awkward hapless way. If his father had spent more time with him, and less time making a fortune in the fur trade, Herbert might have been more competent…and Jack and I wouldn’t have been scamming him.
As it was, Herbert was pathetically grateful when I slowly struck up a friendship. And he felt honored, truly honored, when I finally confided the secret business that had brought me to his town…that my uncle, a roving prospector, had found the lost Hanged Man’s Mine.
It had been lost because its discoverer, another prospector, who’d never had a fract to spare, had come into town after one of his long excursions in the wilderness and gotten roaring drunk. In that state, he’d killed a man in a bar fight—and debts of blood and death are repaid in the same coin. If the judicars hadn’t been meeting just two days later, he might have had time to think things over and made a different decision—or maybe not. They said his years of lonely wandering had made him odd, secretive and suspicious. But no one knows why he went to the noose without telling anyone why he’d been celebrating so wildly.
It was only after his death that the innkeeper cleared out the room he’d rented for a week—probably hoping to sell the man’s worn out gear for a few copper roundels. It was almost a week later that the maids turned the mattress, and discovered half a dozen tight-stitched bags of gold nuggets stashed under the bed.
That had been almost a century ago, but people were still looking for the Hanged Man’s Mine. Although there’s no way to prove it, my personal belief is that con men have made more money by claiming to have found it, than its unlucky discoverer would have made had he lived to mine out the seam.
Jack played my uncle, a rough, solitary miner much like the hanged man, and he produced a handful of real—and cursed expensive—gold nuggets to back up his story. I was a green clerk, who he’d brought in only because I was family, to buy the land where the mine was located from its oblivious owner…but the owner had demanded far more money than our not-so-wealthy family could pay.
Poor, rich Herbert positively begged us to take him into partnership. And in his defense, Jack’s performance had been brilliant, right down to the dirt—not under this nails, which would have been too obvious—but engrained in the roughened skin of his hands. He told Herbert that he’d fallen from the trail above a mountain ravine, and found the mine as he struggled to escape from the chasm. It might even have convinced me, if I hadn’t known the truth.
It was hours later, behind the locked door of our rented rooms, that Jack brushed back the straggling hair, combed the bushy beard, donned a nice silk dressing gown, and fell out of character and into himself.
“My word but that boy’s credulous. I could have told him an earth sprite led me to that mine, and I think he’d have bought it.”
“He’s not that bad.” My urge to defend Herbert to Jack was stupid, but I felt it anyway. “He wouldn’t have fallen for your story if he hadn’t watched me spend the last two months trying to buy that worthless mountainside. For a while, I was afraid the baron was going to sell it.”
“The land around it’s prime timberland,” Jack said. “We’re offering a bit less than it’s worth, even if it wasn’t in the middle of his estate.”
“But Herbert has no way of knowing that.”
“He could, if he asked around,” Jack said. “He’s an idiot.”
“He’s trusting his friend.” I kept my voice fairly neutral, considering that I was the friend who’d won his trust.
“Which proves he’s an idiot. You should never—”
“—never trust anyone,” I chimed in, finishing the familiar sentence.
Jack laughed, the rich rare laugh he never offered anyone but me. Warmth, friendship, and yes, trust, washed away the shame of what I was doing to a lonely clumsy kid, who thought I was his friend.
I already had a friend, partner, and teacher, all rolled into one. Still grinning, he lifted his glass in a toast to all the money Herbert was about to steal from his father’s vault—money that would not go to buy land, that had no mine on it, anyway.
I can’t say Jack didn’t warn me.
* * *
It was several days later, and Jack was “holding” the first third of our land payment. This was all Herbert could raise by raiding his own accounts, and selling an heirloom ring for which his mother would never forgive him. In a rare rush of caution, he asked to see the mine before he broke into his father’s vault—trying to be sensible and adult about the big deal that would finally make his father proud of him.
I’d pointed out to Jack that the money Herbert had scraped up was already a decent haul. But Jack said that while I was drinking and riding out with Herbert, he’d been digging that accursed hole, and he wasn’t about to let his work go to waste. He gave me good enough directions that we might even find it on the first try.
I was actually enjoying the ride, into the mountains on a sunny summer day, and ignoring most of Herbert’s excited babbling, till he spoke the fatal words.
“…and then we’ll buy the land, as soon as my father’s assessor signs off on the mine. He’ll be impressed that I
checked before I—”
“Wait, whose assessor? I thought you weren’t going to tell your father anything till the deal was done. To surprise him.”
“Yes, but part of the surprise will be the mine assessor’s report!” Herbert’s face brightened, imagining the glorious moment. “That way he’ll know that for once I got it right! He’ll be so—”
“Where is this assessor now?” I demanded.
Jack had salted the empty hole he’d dug to fool an ignorant rich boy—not a mining geologist.
“He’s meeting us at the mine,” Herbert said. “Didn’t your uncle tell you? He said I was smart to think of it, and he was glad his new partner wasn’t a fool. He even wrote down the directions, so the assessor could find it…”
The next time we stopped at a stream, I told Herbert I had to relieve myself and that I might be a while. Walking over the mountains into the next fief took four days, but while Herbert Twylinger was a nice, credulous kid, his father Bertram was the kind of man who might bribe judicars to flog a thief—even one who hadn’t succeeded in robbing him.
I had plenty of time to think about that, as I tramped up to a ridgeline and down into the next valley, over and over again. My riding boots weren’t designed for walking, and my blisters broke, bled, and then just went on bleeding. I ate every berry I found, hoping like crazy they weren’t poisonous, but too hungry to care. At least it was summer—if it hadn’t been, I’d probably be dead.
But what I thought about wasn’t my survival—no matter how painful it may be, walking a long distance is mostly boring—I thought about the fact that any pursuers would have my description. Jack had been well-disguised the few times he’d been in town, and Herbert was the only one who’d spoken with him for more than a few moments. I had lived in that town for months, and there were dozens of people who could identify me. Some of them might even be able to draw.
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out whether Jack had intended to run from the start, leaving me to bear the brunt of Bertram Twylinger’s anger. (In fact, the man put a bounty hunter on my trail, and it took the better part of three months to lose him.) Or had Jack stayed so carefully in the background—spending weeks digging a mine, of all things—just as a precaution? A backup plan, in case of need…and then he’d needed it.
Or maybe he’d just suddenly learned that the jig was up, and realized that it would be safer for him if the pursuit went after me.
Whether he’d planned it or not, when everything came crashing down he’d fled—without me. If Herbert hadn’t mentioned it, I’d have walked right into the assessor’s arms. An assessor who would probably have known this was a scam before we even reached the mine. Who’d have been ready for me, when I wasn’t ready for him.
I should have noticed that this time Jack was holding the loot.
In the end, the thing that bothered me most wasn’t that Jack had abandoned me to take the fall, or that he’d lied to me. It was that, thinking I knew him through and through, I hadn’t been able to tell that he was lying.
So maybe I ought to test his claim that this magica lock couldn’t be picked.
* * *
Since I had no excuse to put it off, I waited for two hours after the servants went to bed, pulled my backup picks from their hiding place, and then slipped out of my room and down the stairs to Tony Rose’s office.
The lock on the outer door was good enough it took me fifteen minutes to get through it. I’d begun to wonder if I could, when the hook snagged on the last pin and tugged it over. The door swung open with oiled ease.
The curtains were open and moonlight poured through the window—unnecessary, because picking locks is mostly done by feel. I locked the outer door behind me, ensuring privacy, and went to kneel in front of the door that mattered.
I have no Gifts at all, no way to sense the presence of magic. To me this looked like a perfectly ordinary lock, the metal of its faceplate cool and smooth under my fingers.
I took a settling breath and slipped the L wrench in. I half-expected a bolt of lightning to flash out and scorch my hands, but nothing happened. After a bit of probing I found the plug, applying just enough pressure that the pins would stay turned once I flipped them.
I chose a simple hook pick—my favorite for testing an unknown lock—and started feeling for the pins…and I couldn’t find them. Or I would find them, turn them, and they promptly turned back. Or maybe I just imagined that they’d turned in the first place, because if you keep torsion on the L wrench they can’t shift back again. But somehow, they did.
It was like trying to work with, not a metal mechanism, but some living thing that squirmed in resistance to my probing—although nothing about it was soft or living, and I could have sworn that I both heard and felt those pins click over.
My knees were aching on the hard floor, sweat rolling down my spine, when I finally sat back and rubbed my cramping hands.
Since I was alone in the outer office and might never get another chance, I searched it. With guards patrolling the grounds around the house I didn’t dare strike a light without pulling the curtains, and I didn’t want to pull the curtains in case they noticed. That meant I had to take every ledger, every piece of paper, over to the window. After a while, even reading by the light of two moons, my eyes were as tired as my hands.
All for nothing, too. Except for the ledgers I’d been working on, all the paperwork in this office related to the legitimate business of a legitimately wealthy merchant. A man with influence in the city, maybe a few councilmen who regarded him favorably, but nothing worse.
I wondered if all this legitimacy resulted from the fact that Roseman only worked on honest business in this room, or if this office was deliberately set up to take an audit from a Liege judicar on a moment’s notice. Because except for my ledgers, it would have passed one.
And that other office was locked tighter than most bank vaults.
How like Jack, to have told the complete truth the one time I wanted him to be lying. The only way into Tony Rose’s secret room was with the magica key that belonged to that lock…or the spare key, that he probably kept in his country house.
It was up to Michael, now.
As soon as Roseman and Jack departed, I asked Lianna to try to use her finding Gift to locate the magica key Fisk wanted. I’d little hope she would succeed. ’Tis one thing to locate a missing earring or a lost dog, which is what most female finders I’ve known do with their Gift. The men, at least those who aren’t born to run some estate, are in great demand to locate buried veins of gold, iron, or tin. They soon become attuned to those metals, and know what they’re looking for.
But once I’d told her what I knew of the key, Lianna simply closed her eyes for several long moments and then started walking. She had to open her eyes to see where she was going, but they seemed unfocused. Sometimes she would stop and close them, hesitating a few seconds before moving on. To my surprise, she passed the door of Roseman’s office. The room was locked in his absence, but I thought I might be able to open the window latch with a thin blade. However, Lianna ended in a room some way beyond the office, staring up at the ceiling. We had to retrace our steps and climb the staircase to the second floor, whereupon she led me straight to Roseman’s bedroom. This door wasn’t locked, and since there was no one in the corridor we went in. Lianna crossed the room to the right side of the dressing table and laid her hand on a section of the intricately paneled wall.
“It’s here,” she said, with a simplicity that left no room for doubt.
’Twas the work of moments to discover three carved rosettes near that spot, which pulled off to reveal three dials numbered one through thirty…but there I stuck.
There was obviously some safe or compartment behind the panel, and the dials would each have to register the correct number to open it. Had I dared spend the better part of…how many hours? days? standing in Roseman’s bedroom methodically trying all the possible combinations, I might eventually find it.
/> Fisk could probably have opened it in minutes.
But Fisk was gone, and one maid coming in to dust could destroy all hope of bringing down the Rose.
I would have to discover the combination the hard way.
* * *
Now that I needed his presence, Roseman didn’t return to Rose Manor until two days before the race. The servants were preparing for several days before they came, and Roseman himself arrived a day before his guests, to make sure all was in readiness. He brought Jack with him, leaving Wiederman behind. Did that mean Wiederman was more important to the running of his criminal empire? The race was evidently cause for a real house party, instead of a business meeting in disguise.
Having no reason to watch the man arrive, I made a point of not being in the entrance hall. Her husband wouldn’t be with him, so Lianna was avoiding Roseman too. But he sent for both of us to come to his study, soon after he came in.
“I’m having guests here for the next few days,” he announced as we entered. “Mistress Dalton knows to avoid being seen, and I’ll expect you to do the same, Sevenson. Though you may both come to dinner tonight.”
That “may” was pure formality, and I nodded acquiescence to his orders.
“That’s all.” Roseman reached for the stack of papers on his desk, dismissing us from his thoughts as well as his presence. He clearly thought us helpless, and with good reason. Even if I got the key, and figured out some way to break the hold of our collars, ’twould still not bring the man down. How we could manage that I still had no idea, but I did know what to do next—Roseman’s dinner with his guests would give me a chance to try for the key. And after I laid hands on it, I still had to get it delivered.
“So, how do you become invisible for days at a stretch?” I asked Lianna, as we departed the presence.
She grimaced, looking more relaxed away from the man she so hated. “Mostly I stay in my room. You’d better pick up a stack of books tonight, or you’ll be horribly bored. When I do go out, I dress myself as one of the lesser maids. The servants know who I am, of course, but they understand. And he’s usually only here a short time.”
