Honor Bound (4 page)

Deep, thunderous rumbling shivered
through the cliff. A jagged crack shot past Fox like lightning in
reverse. It split, and one of the branches flashed toward the piton
the crossbowman was holding.

The metal wedge slipped from the
widened crevice, and suddenly the crossbowman was falling. Fox
leaned aside, but one of the man's flailing arms clipped him and
knocked him from his perch.

Fortunately, he hadn't climbed high
enough for the fall to do him much harm, even without the cushion
provided by the imposter.

"Nice of the other Fox to break your
fall," Vishni said.

The thief sent her a filthy glare as
he hauled himself to his feet. He glanced up. The other two men had
scaled the cliff. One of them gave him a mocking little
wave.

Their less fortunate comrade
groaned, twitched, and went limp. Avidan knelt beside the man and
untied the strings tying a bag to his belt. He removed from it a
small, round disk, about the size of a biscuit. His face darkened
as he studied it.

"What is it?" Fox asked.

The alchemist looked up. "Something
I have not seen for many years. Something I had hoped never to see
again."

He twisted the little disk to reveal
the gears within. "Every clockwork device follows certain patterns.
Some are as simple as a clock chiming the hour. Others allow
human-shaped servants to follow a series of commands. To explain
how this device works would require years of instruction, but for
the sake of simplicity, imagine a parchment scraped clean so that
new words can be written upon it."

"So that pocketful of scrap metal is
the parchment knife."

"
And
the new instructions," Avidan said. "And before
you ask what they are, please observe that this device is not
scroll, to be read at a glance."

Fox shifted impatiently. "Fine.
What's your best guess?"

"If I had to guess, which under
ordinary circumstances I avoid most assiduously, I would say that
this device was intended to turn one of Tymion's clockwork guards
into an assassin."

One adept down, six more to
go.

The words of an angry fisherman,
spoken the day after Muldonny's death, rang through Fox's mind like
a death knell.

"Not today," Fox said. "Who's with
me?"

Pink wings, bright as sunrise, burst
from Vishni's shoulders. Before anyone could stop her, she snatched
up the crossbow and leaped into flight. She disappeared from view
and a moment later, a length of rope slithered down the
cliff.

Avidan removed a glass orb from a
padded bag at his belt and handed it to Fox. "This contains some of
Muldonny's metal solvent. I suspect you'll find a use for
it."

"Thanks." Fox dropped it into his
bag and reached for the rope.

Delgar waved him back. He spat in
his hands and seized the rope. After giving it a couple of hard
tugs, he began to haul himself up hand over hand, moving so easily
that he brought to mind a stout gray spider.

Fox followed, ignoring the pain in
his bruised ribs. Vishni beckoned him up, her face bright with
excitement. She grabbed a fistful of his tunic and helped him crawl
onto the ledge. Delgar was already deep into a stoneshifting chant,
feet spread wide and hands planted on the wall of the
keep.

Fox looked for the imposters. They
were edging along the ever-narrowing ledge with shuffling, sideways
steps, arms spread wide as they hugged the wall. Below them the sea
lapped against the cliff. Ahead, a balcony jutted out over the
water.

"He's singing." Vishni spun the
words out, gave them a sibilant little caress. "Oh, yes.
Stoneshifters know the best songs."

Something in the fairy's tone raised
the hair on the back of Fox's neck. He glanced her way. An
expression of bliss suffused her face, and she swayed in time to
the dwarf's chant.

Fox had no idea what this meant, but
he was fairly certain it would lead nowhere good.

"Nice tune, Delgar. Think you can
pick up the tempo?"

This brought a frown to the fairy's
face. "Everyone," she said darkly, "is a critic."

She raised the crossbow, pointed it
at the nearest man, and pulled the trigger.

The loosed string sang a single
sharp note. The bolt struck the stone inches from the man's hand.
He jolted, lost his balance, and fell back, arms churning. He
dropped into the sea with a splash.

Delgar stopped his chanting long
enough for an exasperated sigh.

The final assassin reached the
balcony and flung himself over the rail. A door opened and clicked
shut behind him.

A scowl swept across the dwarf's
face. After a moment of indecision, he drew the Thorn from his belt
and murmured a few deep notes.

Six feet of stone wall swung inward
on silent hinges, a door where none had been before. The three
friends hurried inside. Behind them, the massive door closed and
sealed silently.

The interior of the ancient keep was
a single circular room, empty but for a series of stout stone
pillars and a tightly spiraled stair. Open doors revealed long
hallways leading to the more modern wings of the adept's
keep.

In the room overhead, a table
overturned with a crash, followed by the clang of metal.

"Ha! I have you now!" howled a
resonant baritone. The table crashed again. "Wait, no I don't!
Hold, you blackguard! Hold, I say!"

Fox pulled the acid-filled globe
from his bag and raced up the stairs. Delgar followed closely,
stomping upon his shadow with every step.

They burst into the glass-roofed
observatory to see a portly man dressed in sapphire blue dueling a
clockwork soldier. And by dueling, Fox meant dodging one vicious
sword stroke after another.

Judging from the color of his
clothes and the silver ear dangling from a chain around his neck
like a bizarre pendant, the swordsman could only be the adept
Tymion. His metal opponent wore a disk identical to the one Avidan
had found. It had been stuck to one side of the construct's head,
like a single ear. The assassin, whoever he was, had a peculiar
sense of humor.

Father Tyme did not attempt to
return the metal warrior's attacks, and he blocked with glancing
parries that forced sword to slide against sword, giving him a
moment to dance aside.

Fox assessed the situation. He had
one acid globe. Melting the device on the guard's neck would stop
the attack, but a head shot was risky. If he missed, he'd be found
standing over yet another dead adept.

To complicate matters, Tymion stood
between Fox and the metal assassin. Fox glanced at Delgar and
hauled back the globe for the throw.

"On three."

Delgar seized the back of Tymion's
collar and jerked him out of the way. The glass ball flew past and
shattered against the assassin's chest. Metal hissed and bubbled.
The clockwork guard dropped to its knees and fell facedown to the
floor, lifeless as a ship's anchor.

Tymion struggled to his feet, sword
still in hand. His jaw dropped when he beheld the young
thief.

"My stars! And I do mean
mine,
" he said as he
waved one arm in an expansive gesture that encompassed the
observatory and its jumble of lenses and astrolabes. "Welcome,
welcome! I must say, you've an excellent arm, for a dead
man."

"Um," Fox said. "Thanks. I
suppose."

The adept slid his sword back into
its scabbard. "To what do I owe this most timely
haunting?"

Fox reached down into the scrap
metal and pried the disk from the construct's head. He scraped off
some of the adhesive—pine sap, by the smell of it—and handed it to
Tymion.

The adept sucked air through
clenched teeth. "Rhendish," he said darkly. He glanced at Fox.
"Unless, of course, some enterprising thief stole this from
him?"

That possibility had never occurred
to Fox. "I doubt it," he said slowly. "Thieves have territory, just
like cats. Anyone who steals from Rhendish knows he'll have me to
deal with."

"A fearsome prospect, to be sure,"
the astronomer said somberly.

Fox didn't take insult from the
twinkle in Tymion's eye. Considering that he'd just claimed to be a
bigger threat than Heartstone's adept, he figured he had a bit of
mockery coming his way.

The humor faded from Tymion's face.
"A shame about Muldonny, though. I rather liked the
man."

"For what it's worth, so did
I."

The adept nodded as if he'd expected
to hear this. "You deliver that line well. Just the right amount of
regret, a bit of a growl to lend an ominous edge. Nicely done. Most
impressive. Most ghosts merely groan and wail. Very tiresome,
wailing."

Fox slid a quick glance at Delgar.
The dwarf shrugged.

"There might be other attacks," Fox
said. "We saw at least twenty red-haired men by the southern
dock."

Tymion looked impressed. "That many?
Some herbalist is doing a brisk business in red charil
dye."

He held up a hand to forestall Fox's
next comment. "My dear ghost, I thank you for your warning and
assure you that I do not take it lightly. I shall have my men round
up the reds, as they say."

Delgar cleared his throat. "We'll
just be going, then."

"Hmm? Oh yes, I suppose so. Back to
your watery grave, and so on."

Fox was beginning to suspect that
the stories of the adept's eccentricities erred on the side of
understatement. "I'm not a ghost."

"Of course you're not." Tymion
leaned in confidingly. "But you must admit that it makes for a
better story."

"He could sprout big pink butterfly
wings right now and I wouldn't be a bit surprised," Delgar
muttered.

Shouts rose from the hall below.
Tymion cast his eyes skyward. "My guards. They might not be quick,
but they're loud."

He waved one pudgy hand toward an
open window. "There's a ladder beyond that leads down to the
balcony. In case of fire, you know. Very practical, ladders. I
suggest you imagine a sudden blaze engulfing the room and respond
with appropriate haste. And Fox?"

The young thief paused at the open
window and glanced back inquiringly.

"Leave Rhendish to me," Tymion said
flatly.

"I can't do that."

The adept sighed and shook his head.
"Then, young man, you truly are a ghost."

Tymion watched the two young men
climb through the window and listened to the creak of the ladder as
he waited for his guards to arrive.

And waited.

The shouts in the great hall below
had died away. The only sound came from the sea winds whistling
around the old stone keep.

Something was amiss. Tymion fixed
his silver ear back into place, drew his sword with a flourish, and
struck a heroic pose.

And waited.

At last he heard slow, soft steps
climbing the observatory's spiral stair, a tread far too light for
a clockwork guard.

"Foolish things, clockwork," the
adept muttered. "Unreliable. They rust in the sea air, take on the
occasional murderous rage."

The unmistakable click of a crossbow
sounded behind him. Tymion stiffened and began to turn toward this
new threat.

"Two assassination attempts in one
morning seems a bit excessive, don't you thi—"

Shock clutched his throat with
invisible hands, cutting off his words and breath. Tymion had his
share of whimsical moments, but never could he have imagined
this
, not in a thousand
years.

His most unexpected guest pressed a
lever. The crossbow sang a single deadly note.

Tymion staggered back, clutching at
the bolt in his chest. His legs struck the edge of the giant
astrolabe in the room's center. He fell back onto the enormous
disk, twitching and gasping like a landed fish.

He'd spent months marking the
position of the stars on this astrolabe's curving grid. Years, so
many years, devoted to charting the night skies. There was still so
much to do, to learn.

He pushed aside his charts with an
increasingly feeble hand. His apprentices complained loudly enough
about his handwriting when they transcribed his readings. Blood
stains would discomfit them utterly.

And there seemed to be a great deal
of blood. Well, it would have to do, wouldn't it?

The adept wiped one hand across his
sodden tunic and with his own blood wrote a name and a warning amid
the stars.

* * *

When his men burst into the
observatory, weapons drawn, nothing awaited them but Tymion's still
form and the ruins of a clockwork guard. The hilt of the
alchemist's own dagger rose from his silent chest.

They stared at the bloody name on
the astrolabe.