stuff, but seared meat got top billing?
The goblins locked in that cell obviously knew what we’d just discovered. Sarad Nukpana had probably told them himself just for giggles.
If your rescuer has magic, you all die.
The guards had seen my face on the wanted posters around town. I wondered if the goblins in that cell knew who I was. Judging from the frantic way they’d initially waved me back, they knew full well about me and my pet rock. Those had been the faces of people who knew they had only seconds to live. Now they were confused.
I was confused right along with them. My nose told me there had been Level Twelve wards down here, and they hadn’t been disabled for long. I could still smell the burnt sulfur stench left behind when they’d been deactivated. Granted, something that strong tended to linger awhile, but this had to have been in the past hour— after Chigaru had escaped.
And after we had escaped Tam’s house.
Suddenly this whole setup smelled like a trap made just for me. A mage couldn’t get near it, but I wasn’t a mage right now, and thanks to Carnades, Sarad Nukpana knew it. We were here; there was no backing out now. We had to get this cell door open, and I was the only one who could do it. The guards upstairs had fought, but it had been a little too easy. Nukpana wanted me right where I was.
I could almost hear his sadistically silky voice. “Demoralizing, isn’t it, Seeker?”
He was probably watching right now with scrying crystals hidden in the wall cracks. And if he was watching, he and about a hundred of his Khrynsani goons might be on their way here right now. In fact, I couldn’t imagine Nukpana sitting this one out regardless of who was next on his sacrifice list.
As of now, that could be me. Or maybe he’d want me chained to the side of the altar while he sacrificed life after life to the stone; their souls pulled screaming through me before being dragged into the Saghred. Their life forces being used to take more souls, more lives, more kingdoms, until—
Time to earn my keep. I lifted the box out and opened it.
It made magic, something only a gifted sentient being should have been able to do, but this was just a box with nothing inside but gears and levers. I had no idea how it could create a ward and sustain or take the air in a stone-walled room. How it did those things didn’t matter. How I could stop it did.
The workings of the device reminded me of the locking mechanism on a Caesolian nobleman’s vault. Emptying that vault hadn’t been my idea; that had been Phaelan. He’d tricked me into coming along because he knew I was better with mechanical gadgets than he was. I hadn’t known that a heavily guarded and warded vault was Phaelan’s planned after-dinner activity. Note to the wise: if my cousin asked you to dinner, enjoy the meal and get out. Sticking around for cognac and cigars would be a mistake.
It stood to reason that if the gears stopped, the ward and air sucking would stop, too. Or maybe stopping it would simply take the air out of the cell faster. The only way to know was to stop the thing. I was lying flat on the floor, my face inches away from one of Sarad Nukpana’s sadistic toys, picklocks out, and tinkering with the insides.
I’d had to do some quick work on that vault in Caesolia, too. The guards that nobleman employed carried what were basically meat hooks on a stick. That the hooks were silver and the pikes inlaid with gold didn’t mean that it would feel any fancier sliding through your guts. I was motivated then and I was motivated now.
I couldn’t see Sarad Nukpana trusting a prison guard not to screw up his trap and suffocate his valuable sacrifices. There had to be an easy way to do—
A key.
Or at least a slot for one. There was a thin slot, on the outside of the box, concealed among the fancy filigree some royal metalworker covered the box in to try to impress Sarad Nukpana or the late king. Knowing Nukpana, he was the picture of politeness and thanked the man for his artistry right before he had him killed so he couldn’t make the same thing for someone else. Probably took the gold right out of his dead hands.
Locks, I could do. I didn’t have time to hope that Nukpana’s gadget maker had enabled the machine to recognize when someone used picklocks rather than the key. I had to trust that he didn’t. There’d be no surer way to get your throat slit than to make a gadget fatal for the man who had paid you to make it.
There was a click.
The gears turned faster.
Oh shit.
I looked into the cell. Torches burning. Prisoners still breathing.
The box’s gears clicked and whirled and…
…and stopped.
A click came from above my head and the cell lock released.
Yes!
I started to pull out the picklock and the gears started whirling again.
In a fumbling panic, I got the picklock back where it was and the whirling stopped. Looked like I’d be holding this thing until everyone was out.
Jash pushed the door and Tam was pulling. It was heavy, but they got it open in short order, and the goblin prisoners quickly got out.
Kesyn came charging down the stairs with shouting and pounding boots entirely too close behind him.
“You got that Plan B ready to go, boy?” he yelled to Tam.
Tam had a string of curses ready. I hoped a brilliant alternate escape plan would come next.
The old goblin stopped next to me. I was crouching on the floor, picklock still in the keyhole.
It was past time to go. I pulled out the picklock.
There was a loud click, the floor opened up, and Kesyn and I fell into darkness.
Chapter 17
“Dammit, girl,” Kesyn wheezed, “you could kill a man with that bony ass of yours. Ever think about eating?”
I half rolled, but mostly fell off of Kesyn and onto what should have been a floor. However, any floor I’d ever walked, landed, or fell on hadn’t been spongy.
I was panting and shaking. I swallowed and panted some more. “What the hell was that?”
Kesyn heaved himself to his feet. “Other than a trapdoor, it’s proof Sarad was expecting us.”
I scrabbled to stand up, falling twice before I could get my feet steady on the whatever-it-was we’d landed on. It wasn’t breathing; at least I didn’t think it was. Wherever we were was dark and damp, and from the way our voices bounced off the walls I couldn’t see, we were in a room only marginally larger than a closet. Frantically I looked up. No seam of light showed where that trapdoor was, and no sound came from beyond it.
“Can you see anything?” I asked Kesyn.
“Enough to see that no one else is going to be coming down the way we did. I heard the snap after I fell in.”
What the hell was he talking about? “Snap?”
“Trapdoor like that has to be reset before it’ll open again. I don’t know who Sarad was fishing for, but I think the boy will be tickled pink when he sees what he got on the end of his hook.”
Us. I didn’t want to ponder the image that Sarad Nukpana catching us on a hook conjured. Nor was tickled an emotion I could imagine Sarad Nukpana having. Though if he saw me, he might come close.
I desperately wanted to call out to Mychael, to let him know I was down here.
“Those prisoners just set foot out of that cell only to get captured again,” I muttered.
