Devorast smiled, even laughed a little, and said, “Your Common improves by the day, and if ‘bad business’ is all I’m ever accused of, I’ll die a happy man.”
Ran Ai Yu could only shake her head.
They stood in silence for a long while, watching the last of Devorast’s shipwrights climb into a dinghy. Hrothgar was the last in, and the dwarf made no mistake about his discomfort on the little boat.
“Coming, then?” Hrothgar called to Devorast. “I can’t swim, you know.”
Ran Ai Yu spared the dwarf the indignity of the laugh she felt bubbling up in her throat. Then she had to hold back a tear when Devorast stepped away from her, turned, and held out his hand.
“Miss Ran Ai Yu,” he said, “I wish you safe journey.”
She took his hand, but when he tried to let go, she wouldn’t let him.
“I wish I could return sooner,” she said. “I have found our work together here rewarding, if not dangerous.”
Devorast nodded but didn’t seem to know what to say. There had been more than the one attack, no shortage of sabotage attempts, and in those months they still didn’t know precisely who had tried to have them killed and the tiled cog destroyed. Ran Ai Yu had suspected at least one, maybe two of the wizards who had offered to transport her and her crew magically back to Shou Lung, but nothing could be proved.
“Still,” she said, “I will avoid the portals through the Weave.”
That made Devorast smile.
“You will have a safe journey,” he said. “I built her well.”
Finally letting go of his hand, Ran Ai Yu said, “There should be a canal.”
Devorast turned to go then stopped.
“I’m sorry?” he said, turning back to face her.
“Today!” the dwarf bellowed from the listing dinghy. “We’re taking on water here for Moradin’s sake.”
“Did you say a canal?” Devorast asked.
“A… what is the word…” she said. “Xiao hud? Joke? That there should be a canal to connect Innarlith with my home in faraway Shou Lung.”
She couldn’t quite fathom the look that Devorast gave her then, and she was distracted by a ruckus on the dinghy. The dwarf argued with the shipwrights and threats flew.
“You have these?” Devorast asked her. “In Shou Lung? Canals, I mean.”
“We do,” she replied with a shrug. “I have sailed the Grand Canal of the Second Emperor myself from my home province of Tierte in the north, south through the hills to Wang Kuo. A canal from here to Shou Lung would be impossible. I think if even the gods were capable of it there would already be a river, no?”
Devorast nodded and sighed.
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Ivar!” Hrothgar bellowed.
With a distracted smile Devorast said to Ran Ai Yu, “Thank you, Miss, for more than you might imagine.”
Ran Ai Yu bowed deeply, as she would to a person of great power and importanceas she would to a king.
“Ivar,” the dwarf growled, “get in the gods bedamned boat!”
Devorast climbed down into the dinghy, and Ran Ai Yu’s crew set sail.
“Jie Zud,”she said, finally giving her new ship a name. In Devorast’s Common Tongue: Masterpiece.
37
12 Hammer, the Year of the Wyvern (1363 DR) Second Quarter, Innarlith
Phyrea liked the way the leather felt against her skin. It wrapped her in a second layer of flesh, a barrier against the very air of the world she had no use for. “Pretty,” a voice said.
It was a man, his voice echoing in the high-ceilinged chamber. She didn’t turn around but heard him cock the crossbow. Her eyes settled on the egg. It sat on a piece of soft furprobably minkin a silver bowl. The bowl was in the little wall safe she’d found hidden behind the picture just where Wenefir told her it would be.
“So,” she said, still not turning around, “you can hear.”
She’d overstated her ability to open complex dwarven locksif she hadn’t Wenefir wouldn’t have let her come- but when she grew bored with trying to pick it, there was always the magical oil that blew things up. It didn’t take much of the stuff to blow the door off the safe.
“Step back,” the man said. “Take one step back from the egg and turn around slowly. Do anything else and you get a quarrel in the arse, and it would be a shame to hurt that arse.”
The side of Phyrea’s mouth curved gently up into a half smile, and she didn’t step back or turn around. She looked at the egg.
It was a real eggjust a common chicken eggbut it had been pierced with a needle and the contents blown out.
Then the delicate, intact shell had been decorated with gems and gold. The emeralds alone were worth a fortune, and still there were rubies, sapphires, and one diamond after another. The gems could buy a seat on the senate, but the eggthe craftsmanship, the delicate beauty, the raritywas priceless. When she looked closely, she could see the man reflected in hundreds of little gemstones. He was a big man, and he had a big crossbow, but he was looking at the wrong part of her.
“You heard me, beautiful,” he said, taking a step closer to her, but still looking at her shapely behind. “Step back and”
She tossed the vial over her shoulder. It tumbled through the air, reflected a thousandfold in the facets of the gems. He never looked up and never saw it. Phyrea closed her eyes just before it hit him on the forehead. The vial broke and the oil did what the oil was made to do. The sound was a dull thump that rebounded from wall to wall in the candlelit confines of the hall. It hurt her ears but not too badly.
She turned, and her smile became a grimace.
The headless man was still standing. His body quivered, blood rained around his feet, and his arm jerked.
And the crossbow fired.
Phyrea leaned back and watched the quarrel rip through the air an inch from the tip of her nose. Bent so far back that her shoulders nearly touched the floor, all she had to do was tip her head back to watch the crossbow bolt smash into the silver bowl.
She hissed a curse no girl her age should ever have heard, let alone said, and went into a fast, dizzying backward somersault, spinning and landing on her knees just in time to catch the delicate egg a handspan from hitting the floor.
Phyrea breathed a sigh of relief and stood, just as running footsteps began to echo from farther down the hall. More guards.
She took the swatch of fur and wrapped the egg in it then stuffed it into her little shoulder bag. The footsteps grew louder and louder. She drew the short sword from its scabbard at her belt and whirled it through her fingers. The magically enhanced balance of it always made her feel goodpowerful, in control, safe.
The guards practically fell over each other coming around the corner, all trying to stop the second they saw her.
Her long, soft, black hair fell playfully over one side of her face in the way she knew men liked. She smiled at them in the way she knew they couldn’t resist. Then she bent one knee and extended her other leg straight out in front of her, lifting the short sword over her head with her right hand and motioning them to her with one finger of her left hand in a way she knew they would find mesmerizing.
To a man their jaws went slack, and their weapons hung limp at their sides.
“Good boys,” she said.
Before they could snap out of itif they ever did snap out of itshe skipped into a run, one step then two, and she was out the window to her right, a window she’d only just noticed was there.
