Princeps

He’d have to think about that. He turned his attention to the ranker with the sledge. With the first crack in the lathing, a slight puff of warm air pushed the dust outward, but subsequent blows didn’t bring more hot air, nor did the air seem sour.

That suggested to Quaeryt that the air inside wasn’t too hot. You hope.

While they were enlarging the hole, Quaeryt walked back to where Vaelora waited under the hazy sky and took several long swallows of watered ale.

“Do you know where the strong room is?” she asked.

“The clerk said that it’s in the middle of the lowest level-underground, I think. He said that only the princeps and the governor had the keys.”

Another half glass passed before the sweating rankers had a hole big enough for men to enter. Quaeryt let one of them lead, bearing a small lantern, and then followed them over the charred remnants of file chests that had only partly filled the corner storage room. Quaeryt tried to open one of the chests, but the top gave way, and when he tried to extract a sheet, it crumbled under his fingers. The door to the corridor opened, if grudgingly against the ash in the corridor beyond that was ankle deep. The corridor walls that had likely once been white plaster above oak or goldenwood paneling were closer to a dark brown, and the wood was blackened and cracked. Still, the ash wasn’t that deep.

Quaeryt’s feeling of optimism died abruptly when he reached the stairs down to the street level. Halfway down, the ash covered everything.

“We’ll need to shovel this up. You can put it in the hall that goes that way. We’ll need to go back and get men and picks and shovels and buckets.”

Quaeryt turned and retraced his steps and climbed back into the early afternoon that was probably almost chill at the post to the south of the city, but which felt almost muggy outside the governor’s building.

Eleryt was waiting. “Sir?”

“The upper hall is clear, but the stairs are partly filled with ash. I’ll need to have them cleared. They need to rotate. No more than two quints for each man at a time.”

“Yes, sir.”

Another glass passed before Eleryt reported to Quaeryt, who had spent the time drinking from his and Vaelora’s water bottles and eating hard biscuits to regain his strength-and just waiting.

“Sir, there’s a door blocking the steps below, and it’s got a massive lock on it, sir.”

“That might be good,” said Quaeryt. “It might have kept the ash from filling the lowest level. I’ll have to take a look. Oh … and bring one of the sledges.”

“There’s one inside, sir.”

“Good.”

Quaeryt made his way inside once more, down the corridor and down the ash-cleared steps to the solid, ironbound door and the massive lock.

“If I could have the sledge…”

One of the rankers handed it to him.

He’d already decided how to approach the situation. He took a solid swing at the lock, and as he expected, the sledge had no effect. He took another swing, moving so his body shielded the others’ view of the lock, and after the heavy sledge rebounded, he imaged out two chunks of steel from the bottom of the lock hasp, but the lock remained frozen. He took a third swing, and the lock separated, the bottom dropping onto the stone and ash.

“I thought the heat might have made the lock more brittle. We were lucky in that.”

“… tried that…” murmured someone.

Quaeryt wasn’t surprised that they’d tried without telling him, but he just stepped forward and slid the hasp out of the iron loop and lifted and slid the strap free. Even so, the door had warped, and it took two men with pry bars to wedge it free of the jamb. The stairs below were apparently clear, but totally dark.

“Who has the lantern?”

“Here, sir.”

“Go ahead.”

Quaeryt followed the ranker down the steps. The strong room was in the middle of the building, to the left of the bottom of the stairs, with an iron door and another iron lock.

Quaeryt shook his head. The sledge trick wouldn’t work again.

“Sir?”

He turned to the nearest ranker behind him. “Would you inquire of the Lady Vaelora if she might happen to have a key or a straight piece of metal small enough to fit into a lock? Not too small a lock.”

Although a puzzled expression crossed the man’s face, he replied, “Yes, sir.”

While he waited for the ranker to return Quaeryt studied the lock. The keyhole was smaller than that of the upper level doorlock, and the metalwork was finer, but the hasp was every bit as thick, as were the iron loop and strap that the lock secured.

Before that long, the ranker returned, breathing heavily, and extended a brass key.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure, sir.”

Quaeryt turned to the lock. The key Vaelora had provided was far smaller than that required by the lock, but that mattered little, since he was counterfeiting picking the lock. While he manipulated the key, Quaeryt tried to image away the insides of the lock … and he found that far harder than imaging away the bits of iron from the lock on the upper door, so much so that when he finally managed to open the lock-gutted of all interior workings-his head throbbed and his eyes watered.

Why now? You didn’t have that trouble before.

He removed the lock and stepped back, then swung the door open-only to find a narrow vestibule with a second locked door.

He couldn’t help but sigh. Then he took a deep breath. “We’ll have to see what we can do with this lock.”

Before he tried any more imaging, he tried to think about what had been different about what he’d done with the second lock, as opposed to the first. Both had been made of iron, and he’d imaged away parts of each. But why was the second so much harder…? Because you’re farther away from all the heat of the cooling lava?

Belatedly, he realized that up the stairs he’d reached out for the heat. Down on the lower level, he hadn’t.

Will that work down here?

He had to try.

As he manipulated the key, he concentrated on reaching out to the heat of the lava. While the imaging was easier than in the case of the previous lock, it was still far harder than it had been with the first lock, and light flashes blurred his vision when he stepped back to let others open the door.

… hope there’s not another lock …

There wasn’t … not exactly. But there were five locked chests in the strong room and a much smaller unlocked casket. Quaeryt lifted the lid of the casket and found it half filled with silvers. He closed it quickly, but held on to it.

“We’ll need to carry these up to the wagon and cart.” He offered a grin. “Be careful of them. Your pay’s likely to come from there.”

The squad leader swallowed, and Quaeryt judged that he’d never been in the presence of so much coin.

Eleryt was waiting outside the structure when Quaeryt emerged.

“We got the strong room open. They’re bringing up the chests. They’re all locked. There are five of them, and they’re heavy. I took a quick look at the other rooms that weren’t filled with ash, but there’s nothing there but file chests and no sign of other valuables.” That doesn’t mean there couldn’t be some elsewhere in the building, but any looter will have to dig through a lot of ash on the main floor.

The captain stiffened.

“Call it payroll and supply duty, Captain,” Quaeryt said with an ironic smile. “We’ll need every coin in it for supplies and pay.”

“Yes, sir.”