'Yes.' Augusta nodded. 'In less than an hour, the tide will be too high. I warned you before we came. All your tokens will not save us if we are caught in the passage between the two pools.'
The grating clanged against its upper stops. The two oarsmen rushed to get the skiff back into motion, while Augusta lighted a torch from the cresset. In its flickering light, Jemidon and the others glided deeper into the cave.
Immediately behind the grating, the ceiling and walls receded from view. As if traveling on calm seas under a starless night sky, the small boat slid through the water. Jemidon breathed still and fungal air, the only clue to his true surroundings. He tried to pierce the gloom, but saw nothing to aid in orientation. The rhythmic splash of the paddles wove complicated patterns with the rustle of Augusta's smoking flame. No one spoke. The feeling was oppressive.
After several minutes, the pace of the paddling quickened. Jemidon sensed the tenseness in the oarsman behind. He looked around and saw the walls again coming into view. Like a crumpled funnel, they converged on the skiff, defining a narrow passage where there had been none before.
Jemidon watched the undulating surfaces resolve into distinguishable textures, dry swaths with large crystals of pegmatite, glistening walls of fine-grained granite, areas of gas-smoothed slickness, and jagged fissures that trickled with rainwater seeping from above. Closer and closer converged the walls. Jemidon felt himself breathe deeply to stave off the instinctive fear of confinement. A boat length away and then barely two arm lengths apart, the rock pushed in from either side.
Augusta lowered her torch. Jemidon looked ahead to see the ceiling crushing inward like the walls. The oarsman in front ducked to the side to avoid a low-hanging projection, and it whizzed past Jemidon's ear. Augusta set the base of the torch on the keelboard and experimented with huddling low at its side.
'We probably will have to extinguish our light on the way back,' she said. 'There will be just enough clearance for the skiff itself to squeeze by.'
'How high does the tide rise?' Jemidon asked.
'Above the ceiling at the narrowest point,' Augusta answered. 'The vault is shaped like a carnival man's barbell, with this passage the only connection between two large chambers on either end. And for most of the day, the inner chamber is completely sealed off. There is no way to get through. Only at lowest tides, when the water level is under the red line, can one attempt a passage. And even then, the margin of safety is none too great.' Jemidon copied the others, hunching over and then squirming even lower when a sharp outcrop skittered across the top of his head. He heard the rower behind give up trying to paddle the water. Instead, the oar was pushed against the side of the passage to propel them along. The skiff scraped and splintered against one wall and then bounced off to rub along the other. Jemidon felt the unyielding rock press him still lower and then heard a sickening grating as both sides of the boat caught at once. For a second they stopped, jammed against the walls, but the oarsmen rocked back and forth, and the inflowing tide pushed them free.
Jemidon tensed, waiting for the next constriction, but he felt instead the pressure on his back gradually lessen and then abruptly fall away. He watched Augusta stretch and extend the torch as she had done before. Once again, the walls receded to provide an easy passage.
'We are in the inner chamber,' Augusta said. 'And now to the vault itself. It is a small, separate cavity that took some fifteen years to suck dry, even with pumps of magic. The ledge above it does not provide enough space for the treasures.'
As she pointed out the direction, the skiff sailed across the bowl of water. When they reached the wall, one oarsman secured the boat to some iron rings. The second rower sprang onto a rope ladder suspended from above. Jemidon and the others followed. In a moment, they climbed onto a wide ledge twice the height of a man above the level of the water. Augusta's torch lighted several cressets, and Jemidon blinked at the sudden increase in light.
The shelf cut back into the overhanging rock for a sizable distance, creating a pocket far larger than the size of Augusta's rooms back on shore. Sand and planking made the irregular floor more or less level. A single table supported heavy ledgers, and a collection of scrolls was crammed into the cracks and crevices in the walls. Blooms of mold followed the trickle of water down the sloping surfaces, and Jemidon saw splotches of growth peppering the more exposed parchments. Billowed soot covered one portion of the low-hanging roof where a fire evidently had been tried long ago. Charred stumps mingled with small bones and discarded refuse on the floor. Two spots of blackness led off further into the interior, A heavy cauldron lid covered a jagged hole in the rear from which dank smells rose to taint the air.
'The two side tunnels lead back to smaller caverns,' Augusta explained to Jemidon. 'And the lid covers a shaft that leads down to the vault itself. All of it is natural; the magic pumps and the lock on the entrance grating are the only indebtedness to the guilds.'
An oarsman pushed the lid aside and threw another ladder down the tube. Looking over the edge before he placed his foot in the opening, Jemidon saw a narrow vertical tunnel, knobby and twisted, about five times the height of a man. The shuffle of hands and feet echoed along the shaft, making conversation impossible as Jemidon descended; but as he went lower, he heard the drips and gurgles of running water and then the suck and push of throbbing pumps.
Jemidon's foot hit bottom, splashing in a small, stagnant pool. A glow of imp light caught his attention on the right. From bottles fastened to a semicircular wall, the dim, blue glow bathed lumbering complexes of wheels and levers that pushed water up a tube and out of sight. Behind them was an array of chests, neatly ordered in precise rows and columns into a great square. Splashes of soft greens and yellows covered the tops and side plankings. Long tendrils of oozing growth stretched to the wet and rocky floor. The far walls could barely be seen. The volume was larger than the hold of Arcadia's biggest grainship. Jemidon calculated how much he had climbed and descended as he made room for the others following. Yes, bigger than a galleon's hold and three man heights beneath the level of the sea.
'What miserable storage,' Trocolar sneered as he followed Augusta back to the chests. 'Look at this dampness, the cracks in the walls. Even a gentle shift in the earth, and the trickle would become a flood. It is worth the fee to have my tokens reside in a dry, clean vault, rather than in this slimy mess.'
'The cloth and oak may rot,' Augusta said, 'but for tokens, it does not matter. Never will they alter.'
'Nonetheless, mine will be gone,' Trocolar said. Jemidon saw the trader's eyes glisten as a chest lid was flung back and the subtle glow of the tokens added to the imp light. Trocolar turned to Augusta and pulled his jowls into a slight smile.
'And do not profess that it is of no concern,' he said. 'The loss of my fees just before the election will give you a smaller vote. I plan to persuade other traders to withdraw their holdings as well. Altogether, it will make a considerable difference.'
'The issue is in doubt.' Augusta shrugged. 'Neither your faction nor mine has sufficient wealth to win on the first round.'
'But there will be the subsequent ones,' Trocolar said. 'And, in a contest between the vaultholders and the traders, what do you think the outcome will be?'
'The vaultholders have governed Pluton fair and well for two decades,' Augusta replied. 'Indeed, your trading has never prospered better.'
'But not as well as it might,' Trocoiar snapped as he waved his arm over the chests. 'I have not forgotten the innocent-faced girl who charmed a debtholding from me all those years ago.'
'I paid you a premium for the writ,' Augusta said. 'You received more than you were due and a year early besides. You have no cause for complaint.'
'No, no cause for complaint,' Trocolar spat out. 'No cause for complaint. I am reminded of it each time the others ask me again to tell the tale. No cause for complaint, because I did not ask why you wanted the writ. This vault should have been mine, Augusta, not the prize of some barefoot mainland girl who chanced upon it first!'
'You were greedy enough for immediate gain,' Augusta shot back. 'I took the gamble that months later the vaultholders would not be able to pay. And we have been over the same story many times before. You keep your treasures here for the same reasons as the others. Despite how you feel about who earns the fees, you are eager enough to take advantage of the fact that they are less.'
'This time there is a difference,' Trocolar said. 'This time I am close enough that my faction may win.' The trader stopped and grabbed Augusta by the shoulders. 'I have paid the divulgents, and they have told me what I
