by T L Greylock
“Deeper, I’m afraid.” Eska squeezed water from her hair, then twisted it up off her neck once more. She followed Gabriel’s gaze to the lake. “But unlike Pialla Gorge, where we didn’t know where to look, the sunken vault of Lake Delo is so famous, we know exactly where it sits.”
“I suppose that’s something.” Gabriel frowned. “Still, neither of us is one of the famous Taracini free divers. I think we need another plan.”
Eska sighed. “Agreed.”
“Is it true what they say about the creature in Lake Delo?” Perrin came to stand beside Gabriel. The droplets of water forming on his earlobes glittered like gems.
“Why do you think no one has gone after the vault?” Gabriel grinned. “Only the stories seem to differ as to whether the creature has fifty eyes or fifty tentacles.”
Eska laughed. “There are other reasons. For instance, the depth of the lake, the temperature of the water. Delo is always cold, thanks to the elevation. Not to mention the fact that while the stories about the vault differ a great deal, they nearly universally accept the fact that the vault was emptied before it sank, thanks to the heroics of a few swimmers who braved the flaming wreckage of Talarian’s ship. Besides, just because we don’t know some intrepid diver made it down to the vault doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.”
“Still,” Perrin grinned, “I’d like to see this creature.”
“Not up close and personal when you’re down there in the dark depths of its domain.” Gabriel had the uncanny ability to convey both a great deal of skepticism about such tales and a deep-seated superstition. Eska laughed again.
“Before we go conjuring up creatures, we need to figure out how we’re getting down there and how we’ll open the vault without a key. There’s someone I need to see in the city.”
Eska had told Gabriel and Perrin enough—but not all—of what had occurred in her final hours in Toridium for the looks of concern to be immediate.
“Are you sure you ought to be seen, my lady?” Gabriel asked.
“I’ll be discreet. Besides, whomever they send to look for me won’t immediately know where we’ve gone. They’ll likely assume I fled back to Arconia, where I might expect to find some kind of safety. With any luck, that will buy us some time.” Still Gabriel looked unsure. “No one is looking for me in Cancalo.”
“I could go in your stead,” Perrin said. “Tell me what I need to do.”
“I appreciate the offer, Perrin, but the person I need to see is very secretive, very suspicious. If I don’t go myself, we won’t get another chance at finding him.” Eska touched her engineer’s arm. “Look after the equipment.” She pointed to a village a short distance away on the curving shore of the lake. “If we need supplies, send Bastien to get what you can from the village. Then find a suitable place to make camp. I’ll be back soon.”
Eska took the horse Bastien had ridden to catch them after his successful errand into Toridium, slung her satchel over her head, and, with a boost from Gabriel, climbed onto the horse’s bare back. She grimaced as she settled onto the bony spine. It had been years since she’d ridden a horse bare back. They hadn’t forgotten much during their hasty departure, certainly nothing crucial, but she would have paid a great deal for a saddle.
Gabriel saw the look on her face and laughed. “Surely you can buy a saddle in the city.”
It was something Eska had considered and already discarded. “I want to save our coin for more important things,” she said. “And paying a visit to the de Caraval bankers in Cancalo would be rather like waving a flag and announcing my presence here. I will endure.” With a smile, Eska touched her heels to the horse and rode off, turning away from the lake and heading back through the trees to the road that would carry her along the shore to the gates of Cancalo.
***
She found the right alley by chance more than anything.
In her defense, despite visiting Cancalo a great many times, only once had her uncle taken her to see the man he called the Tortoise.
Eska had laughed, the name enormously amusing to her twelve-year-old mind, and said she expected a thief to name himself after something more menacing and, well, faster. She remembered her uncle reminding her that tortoises were long-lived creatures, creatures who survived despite the world changing around them—and that some tortoises had teeth.
This particular tortoise had a burrow in an alley in Cancalo, and Cancalo, a city that had grown up instead of out due to its placement between Lake Delo and the mountains that dominated the landscape to the south, was a maze of alleys and narrow places—rabbit warrens and badger burrows, Valentin liked to say, a fond smile on his face.
This particular alley was lined by rickety buildings stacked on top of each other, ladders and rope pulleys and some things that could possibly be called stairs providing a means of reaching otherwise inaccessible doorways. It was a dim place, lit only when the sun was directly overhead, and there wasn’t much to distinguish it from any other alley in that particular quarter of Cancalo. Except Eska’s roving eye caught sight of a garland of rats lining a doorway some distance above her head as she glanced down the alley. She remembered those rats and the rat catcher behind the door, a memory that raised the hair on her arms. Nevertheless, unless the Tortoise had taken his nest elsewhere, this was the right alley.
She did not remember her uncle knocking on the door with the peeling white paint on a platform three down from the rats, but she was fairly certain her uncle knew the man by the name his parents’ had given him at birth and therefore might be allowed to come and go as he pleased. Eska, on the other hand, knew better than to enter a thief’s den without permission, but her knock sent the door swinging open and Eska decided that was invitation enough.
The place was dark and Eska let her eyes adjust for a moment. As they did, she saw a table on its side, a lantern smashed on the ground, the oil spilling out to darken the floorboards, papers scattered as though by wind—a violent and angry wind. Eska hesitated, wondering what she had stumbled into, and then her gaze fell onto another substance staining the wood. Blood.
Eska knelt by the droplets, then followed them along the floor to a larger smear. They ended abruptly in the middle of the floor. Frowning, she dipped her finger in the blood and brought it to her nose. And then she smiled.
“Maridell and grove tuber?” Eska said, calling out to the empty room. “It’s good, but grove tuber has a very distinct scent, you know. And the placement of this stain would suggest your body evaporated into thin air, which I find quite unlikely.”
For a moment she thought she might have it wrong. Either that or the man whose bluff she was calling might be contemplating spilling some actual blood. But then there was a click and a noise like a door opening, and Eska stood as a bookcase swung open and a man stepped out from a hiding place in the wall.
He held a knife and his large, red-rimmed eyes, set in a pale face, gleamed with distrust. “Who are you?”
Eska folded her arms across her chest. “I’ll tell you when you put that blade away.”
The man snorted out a sound that was half bitter laugh, half gulping fear and Eska realized he was truly afraid. “So now they’re sending pretty women to do their dirty work. Bane’s bagged balls, I should have known.” His fingers tightened around the knife and he shifted his weight as though to spring.
“They? I work for no one.” Eska lifted her hands, palms facing out, and held the man’s gaze. “We’ve met before, you and I. I was a child, with my uncle. Valentin de Caraval.”
Her uncle’s name brought a flicker of something to the man’s eyes, but he didn’t lower the knife. “Are you armed?” he asked. And then, with more fierceness and more fear: “Or are you a thrice-damned Carrier?”
“Neither. My name is Eska de Caraval. You are called the Tortoise. We met in this very room when I was twelve years old.”
Still he held the knife at arm’s length and Eska began to wonder if she’d made a mistake.
“I’ve come
to you about the vault.”
The man lowered the blade at last but said nothing, and his eyes did not leave her face.
“Why did you fake an attack on your home? On yourself?”
That seemed to stir him a bit and he glanced at the door, still ajar, behind Eska.
“Not here. They’ll be coming.” He turned and walked into the next room. “You want to talk, you follow me now. Or you’ll never see me again. You stay here, they’ll kill you before they ask questions,” he called over his shoulder. Eska hurried after him, slipping through one narrow, odd-angled room, catching glimpses of a cobbled-together home—was that a ship’s porthole?—then a second room, as piecemeal as the first, and into a third, just in time to see him disappear through a trapdoor in the floor.
They emerged into a tunnel, dirt-bottomed but dry. The man called the Tortoise was already fifteen paces ahead of her. He had grabbed a canvas bag and a lantern somewhere along his dash to the trapdoor, but his hands shook too much to light the lantern. Eska caught up.
“Let me.” With a steady hand, she struck a match and held it to the wick. It flared to life, bringing light to the way ahead.
“Smuggler’s route,” he said in response to the question she hadn’t asked. And that was it. Not another word passed his lips as they traversed a maze of passages. Eska wondered if her uncle had ever been below the city, for this was the true rabbit’s warren.
It also occurred to Eska that it was a very bad place to lose one’s way, especially if one’s guide was a nervous, untrusting sort, who had been brandishing a knife not very long before. She soon lost all sense of how much distance they might have covered, and she certainly could not have guessed the general direction they were going. She made certain to walk three paces behind the man, no closer, and kept an eye on his free hand.
They came to the end of their journey abruptly at another trap door, this one smaller than the first and held shut by a latch that looked like it had been recently replaced. After inserting an old key and turning it—with some effort—in the lock, the man pried at the latch with his fingers to no avail, then took his small blade to it.
Eska watched him struggle for a moment, then swung her satchel around to her front and withdrew her own knife, larger, sharper, and stronger than his. Without a word, she reached up and, with a single try, freed the stubborn latch.
The man looked from the trap door to Eska’s face and then to the knife in her hand. He glared.
“I thought you said you weren’t armed.”
Eska shrugged. “Seemed prudent at the time.”
They emerged into a cellar that looked like it had been out of use for some time.
“Smuggler’s hold,” the man said.
Eska raised an eyebrow. “Business is good, I take it.”
“Raid last year scared the upstairs neighbor. Keeping things quiet for a time.”
“Is that code for the owner of this cellar threatened to expose your business?”
The man grumbled. “Owner is the sort worth keeping happy.”
He wasn’t, as it turned out, wrong.
***
“You might have mentioned you had a business relationship with the Regatta Master of Lake Delo.”
“I might have,” the man called the Tortoise said, “but that would imply we’re friends, and we aren’t friends.”
They stood in a sumptuous courtyard that was, fittingly, given the owner of the courtyard, more fountain than anything else. A pool shaped like a ring encircled them, but for the narrow opening they had passed through to reach that spot. Jets of water arced gracefully above them, propelled by enough force that Eska was rained on only a little. Above them and climbing the walls and balconies surrounding the courtyard, was an intricate network of tiny water chutes and Eska could just make out, if she craned her neck to look, the sails of miniature boats riding the course.
The Tortoise had assured Eska no one was at home, that he did, in fact, have permission to come and go at will, and that the courtyard was the safest place to speak, due to the noise of the fountains.
Eska pointed up at the little boats and their endless circuit. “No one at home?”
“Don’t mind the boats, they’re always racing. He insists. Now, why don’t you tell me how you knew I was hiding and not dead.” Now that they were out in the light, Eska realized the man was older than she had thought. His eyes were crinkled at the corners with deep creases and his hair was greyer than the dim light of his home and the tunnels had revealed. But more than that, he had a tired look about him.
“A tortoise likes to withdraw into its shell when threatened, right?” Eska cocked her head. “Play dead?” Her answer earned her a glowering look. “But that performance wasn’t for me. Who were you expecting?”
The glower intensified. “Didn’t your uncle teach you not to stick your nose where it doesn’t belong?”
“Actually, he didn’t. Rather the opposite, I’m afraid.”
“I thought I was the one asking the questions.”
Eska rolled her eyes. “Are you always this miserable?” She threw up her hands. “I’m here because I need to know everything you know about the vault at the bottom of the lake. How’s that?”
He laughed then, his face breaking from its normal grim expression for the first time. “You’re as mad as a drakspur in mating season. The vault? At the bottom of the lake? Blind batriks, what a polished turd of an idea.”
“You can keep your opinion to yourself. My uncle told me you were the best thief in all of Cancalo, maybe in all the Seven Cities. Surely you know something about the locks on a vault that once belonged to the Alescuan kings and queens. And if you say you don’t know anything, I won’t believe you, because the best,” Eska leaned close and jabbed a finger at the man’s lapel, “the best always want to know everything about the one thing that might be better.”
The Tortoise backed away and shook his head. “Oh, I know a thing or two about that vault all right. I know there’s a reason why it’s been sitting there untouched for more than three hundred years.”
“Please don’t say the creature.”
“You’re thrice-damned right the creature! That thing has got fangs as long as my arm and a mouth the size of the gates to this city.”
Eska turned away and began to pace around the interior of the ringed fountain.
“I’m not asking you to go anywhere near the lake, just tell me about the vault, the locks.”
The man had apparently found some kind of backbone he was lacking at the moment of their first meeting. His head wagged adamantly back and forth. “Never. I won’t help Valentin de Caraval’s niece get herself killed because of some fool-brained scheme. He’s been too good to me to repay him that way. Besides, I don’t do that kind of work anymore.” He was muttering by now. “Just small stuff, easy stuff. The kinds of things that aren’t likely to get me killed.”
Eska came to a stop and stared across at the man she had pinned a great deal of her hope on. “Please,” she said, taking care to lower her voice, to take the edge off it. “This is more important than I can possibly even begin to say. Please help me. Tell me what you know.”
She got the answer she wanted, but not from the person she was asking.
“I’ll do it.”
The voice came from above and Eska turned sharply and looked up at the balcony behind her. A man stood there, wrapped in a thin, nearly sheer dressing gown. It was belted lazily, leaving the intricate silver tattoos on his chest exposed down to his navel.
“I happen to know a thing or two about how to open a lock when one has,” he paused and showed his teeth, “misplaced the key.”
Eska tore her gaze away and looked back at the old thief across from her, who had the grace to look embarrassed. “You might have also mentioned that the Regatta Master of Lake Delo, who is not at home,” Eska hissed, “is also a thief.”
It was the Tortoise’s turn to shrug.
Chapter Nineteen
“Tell
Victor I know everything.”
“I’m afraid the prisoner is at rest.”
The warden did not so much as look up, not when Manon approached the desk he was enthroned behind, not when the guard escorting her whispered her request into the folds of his massive neck and the ear that rested upon them. His pudgy fingers flicked in Manon’s direction as he spoke, in what might have been a gesture of dismissal.
“At rest,” Manon repeated.
Silence. Then the warden deigned to raise his chin from his chest and his gaze from the papers he was pretending to bother with. He began to fix Manon with a stare that was surely meant to frighten unfortunate petitioners, but stopped short, leaving his lip unnaturally curled and his brow caught somewhere between furrowed and surprised. Suppressing a grunt, the warden attempted a smile.
“You are far too beautiful a creature to bother with any of my residents, surely.” The warden smoothed back the scant hair that remained on his head, passing a greasy palm over greasier strands.
“At rest,” Manon said again.
The hand gave an apologetic wave. “Medicinal rest. That’s all.”
“Medicinal.” Manon worked to unclench her teeth.
“The latest standard,” the warden went on, far too occupied with attempting to suck in his bulging gut behind straining buttons to notice Manon’s rising anger. “It keeps my residents calm. You can come back in a week.”
“A week.” Manon was getting tired of repeating the warden and she plucked at the spark in her ribs. “I can’t wait a week.” It was true, and not just because the Archduke had impressed upon her the notion that she ought to work swiftly. Her desperate need to get this done and get it done immediately stemmed from the realization that if she didn’t, she might never work up the courage to try again, to face her father at last.
