Temple Hill (14 page)

“This craftsmanship is exquisite,” Lhasha said admiringly. “I mean it, Fendel. Truly amazing work. You’re the best.” She gave him another kiss on the forehead. Corin wasn’t certain, but he thought he caught the gnome blushing. It was hard to tell beneath the soot and grime that seemed to permanently cover his face.

“So,” Lhasha continued, “this can get us onto the roof. Then what?”

Fendel jammed his finger down on the blueprint.

“All of these warehouses have a few ventilation chimneys in the roof. It helps cut down on smells and odors in the agricultural warehouses. If there’s ever a fire, it gives the smoke somewhere to escape, so that it doesn’t get trapped in the building and damage all the goods. Also helps keep them a little cooler in the summer.”

“That’s right,” Corin said, nodding in agreement. “I remember one summer we were sent to guard a spice shipment at one of these warehouses. You could see little streams of light coming down during the day through those things.” After a brief second he added, “But they had metal screens on them to keep the birds out.”

“True,” the gnome admitted. “The screen shouldn’t be a problem. I can lend you a pair of metal shears that will slice through the mesh like thread. But a lot of the screens are reinforced by iron bars, to keep people like you out.”

“So how do we get by those?” Lhasha asked on cue. “Don’t keep us in suspense, Fendel. I know you’ve already thought this out.”

“Another little invention of mine. I call it the Bar Spreader. Not the catchiest name, but it gets the point across.”

Lhasha and Corin waited patiently while Fendel hunted through bis collections of gadgets.

“Here we go,” he said after a few minutes. “You just

attach these clamps onto adjacent bars, and start twisting with this handle. That turns the screw, and forces the clamps farther away from each other. Turn the handle enough times, and it’ll bend the bars—no matter what they’re made of.”

Fendel gave Corin the quick once over, then added. “It wasn’t designed for someone your size, my broad shouldered friend. The spreader will bend the bars enough for Lhasha to slip through, but you might have a tight squeeze.”

“Maybe I should just go in alone,” Lhasha said. “Corin can wait for me on the roof.”

Corin flatly refused.

“I still think this is a trap. We only go if I’m with you every step of the way.”

The gnome squinted one eye and tilted his head to the side, measuring the warrior’s girth.

“You should fit, Corin—barely—but you won’t be able to wear any armor.”

“Just so long as I can bring my sword.”

“Anything else you need to show us?” Lhasha asked.

“Sorry, Lhasha. This is kind of spur of the moment. I don’t have much else. If I had a tenday to put something together …” After a brief pause, the gnome snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute! There is one more thing. Not an invention exactly, but it might come in useful.”

From his belt the gnome pulled a large, oddly shaped earring carved from a solid chunk of grayish white stone.

“Jewelry?” Lhasha said, a little taken aback. “You know I love to make an impression, Fendel. But that thing….”

“Not much for style,” Fendel admitted. “But its not for parties. The earring is carved from a very rare kind of gemstone I, uh, stumbled across. Audimite, I call it.”

“I still don’t understand.”

“Audimite has some rather unique properties.” He handed the earring to Lhasha. “Go stand on the far side of the room, and clasp this to your ear. Corin and I will stay here.”

Lhasha did as she was told.

Fendel put a hand on Corin’s shoulder and pulled him down so that the gnome was able to bring his mouth close to the taller man’s ear. The gnome leaned in so far that Corin could actually feel hot breath tickling the tiny hairs inside his ear. In a voice that was so faint it was almost imagined, Fendel whispered, “I think Lhasha’s gaining weight.”

From the other side of the room, Lhasha shouted out an indignant response.Tm in the best shape of my life, you blind old coot!”

“You heard that?” Corin exclaimed in disbelief. Even with the acute hearing of her elf heritage there was no way Lhasha should have been able to pick up Fendel’s voice from that distance.

“Yeah I heard it, and I hear you, too. No need to shout.”

“I wasn’t shouting,” Corin answered in a calm voice.

“You’re still shouting,” Lhasha countered. “You’re so loud you’re going to make my ears bleed!”

“Lhasha-love,” Fendel said, still whispering. “The Audimite amplifies sounds. Take the earring off.”

Lhasha did as she was told.

“How’s this?” Fendel asked in a normal voice.

“Much better,” she replied, rubbing her ear where the earring had been. “I thought Corin was going to blow my eardrums out.”

“Yes, there are some dangers to using audimite, but if you need to eavesdrop from a safe distance, it can be pretty handy.”

“Sorcery,” Corin said. “Are you a cleric of Gond, or a wizard in disguise?”

“Oh, I assure you,” Fendel said with a sly smile, “I’m a legitimate follower of the Wonderbringer. There’s nothing in Gond’s teachings that forbids us from working something of the magi’s art into our creations. The High Artificer might not approve, but he rarely approves of anything I do anyway.”

From the first time he’d seen Fendel’s odd farming contraption, Corin had suspected something more than simple mechanical engineering in the gnome’s work. For a brief second, Corin let his mind turn to thoughts of the metal hand Fendel had promised him. He had been skeptical about the possible results, but if the wizened inventor planned to infuse the creation with some type of magical enchantment….

Lhasha brought the warrior’s thoughts back to the here and now by quickly, and none too subtly, changing the topic from the role of wizardry in Fendel’s craft. “The sooner we get started the better. Corin and I will go to the warehouse tonight.”

“And then on to Cormyr,” Fendel pointedly added.

With a sigh Lhasha consented.”And then on to Cormyr. As soon as we get paid, of course.”

Fendel was right about one thing, anyway. The Elversult guards assigned to patrol the perimeter of the Caravan district were asleep at their posts. Corin felt like kicking them as he and Lhasha walked past. Their disregard for duty sickened him.

Using the directions provided by the nameless employer from the Weeping Griffin, Lhasha led the way through the rows of warehouses that made up the Caravan district. A few were tiny, little more them storage sheds, but most were enormous buildings like the one they planned to break into. The warehouses were primarily owned by the various merchant guilds that operated in Elversult—individual merchants could then rent space from the guild to store their inventory. Some were still owned privately, by wealthy families or organizations rich enough and powerful enough to resist the pressure of the merchant guilds to sell their holdings.

From personal experience as a hired guard, Corin knew that most of the buildings held little that was of value to the common thief. Huge shipments of raw goods filled the warehouses; worthless to etnyone but the guild artisans and

craftsmen who would transform them into a finished product. If somebody stole the raw goods, the only buyers would be the same guild merchants who had imported the product in the first place. They wouldn’t be likely to pay for the same goods twice.

To further protect against thieves, every shipment coming in to or going out of the guild controlled warehouses was meticulously inventoried and cataloged to verify a chain of ownership, making it virtually impossible to sell stolen goods in any measurable quantity. In the Caravan district forged documents, bribed customs officials, and counterfeit goods were the new tools of the crook. In Elversult’s new culture of legitimate business, embezzlement was a much more efficient method of making a dishonest profit than simple robbery.

Theft was still a concern for some who operated warehouses within the district. Since Yanseldara had come to power, the smuggling trade in Elversult had fallen on hard times. Yet there was still enough illegal goods coming into the city to require significant storage facilities. Many of the privately owned warehouses were stocked with addictive spices, banned poisons, stolen gems or jewelry, slaves, and other contraband. The Purple Masks and the Cult of the Dragon had many operatives posing as humble merchants, operatives who preferred not to leave a detailed paper trail for Elversult officials to stumble across.

The underground activities of Elversult’s criminal element were the only ones who really still needed to guard against burglars. They knew the city guards were useless, but they usually had no trouble coming up with their own mercenaries to watch over their inventory. Corin suspected the building Lhasha and he were breaking into was one of these illegal, and heavily guarded, warehouses.

This is it,” Lhasha whispered, setting the pack she had slung over her shoulder on the ground. “Keep watch while I pop Fendel’s contraption together.”

In the silence of the night the soft clicks, as Lhasha joined the individual sections of Fendel’s collapsible ladder together, seemed conspicuously loud. Nobody came to investigate. In less than a minute she was done. She pressed the trigger on the bottom section, and the rungs popped out with a loud snap.

“Try to keep up,” she said with a slight smile.

Corin watched her ascend for a few brief seconds and knew she’d be waiting on the roof long before he even neared the top of ladder. She didn’t climb up, she glided. Every movement flowed into the next, each step up with a boot, each gloved hand reaching for the rung above— every action was part of a fluid, seamless whole.

Clad in what she referred to as her work outfit—all black, form fitting clothes that were a sharp contrast to her typical eye-catching ensembles—Lhasha quickly disappeared into the darkness that engulfed the top of the ladder. Corin knew she was still there, and still moving, but her graceful ascent allowed her to naturally blend into the soft shadows of the night.

After a moment’s delay, Corin followed with more difficulty. In part, his progress was slowed by his handicap, but even more debilitating was his fear of heights. Despite his best efforts not to look down, Corin was well aware of the empty space yawning beneath him. With each step up, he had to make sure both feet were firmly planted on rungs of the same level before he dared to release the grip of his one good hand. Even with his amputated arm wrapped tightly around the metal pole, he felt as if he was on the verge of toppling over each time he let go of the ladder to reach for the next rung. The sensation of the ladder wobbling beneath his awkward, jerky movements did little to alleviate his fears.

By the time he finally reached the top, Lhasha had used the shears to cut through the wire mesh over the ventilation chimney, and had already attached the spreader to the iron bars that blocked the opening. Corin could hear the groaning of the bars as the metal became fatigued from the stress being applied by Fendel’s invention.

Lhasha grunted softly with each turn of the screw, obviously it was hard, slow work. The air was still cool during these first few nights of the Sunsets, but Corin could see tiny beads of perspiration on Lhasha’s forehead, the result of her efforts to try to bend the iron bars.

“Glad you made it,” she said between breaths, noticing Corin standing above her. “Maybe you could give this contraption a try, while I collapse the ladder.”

Corin nodded, still a little winded from the climb up. It hadn’t been physically demanding, but he had been holding his breath virtually the whole way.

He turned his attention to the bar spreader. Lhasha had clamped it onto two of the bars as Fendel had shown them, now it was simply a matter of turning the handle. With only one hand, Corin couldn’t get the same leverage as Lhasha, but his superior strength more than compensated for the mechanical disadvantage. By the time Lhasha had the collapsible ladder stowed away in her backpack again, Corin had bent the bars enough to open a hole several feet wide. The mortars holding the iron bars in place had begun to crack and disintegrate into dust as the bars warped and twisted. Corin gave a few more turns to the handle to weaken the stone foundations holding the bars in place, then yanked the entire mess—the spreader and the bars it was clamped to—out of the ventilation chimney, sending a small shower of dust onto the warehouse floor fifty feet below.

“That should do,” Lhasha commented. With the bars removed, the chimney was easily wide enough for even Corin to slip through.

The chimney led them into the exposed rafters that crisscrossed the upper reaches of the warehouse, supporting the structure from inside. The floor below them was bustling with activity, even at this late hour—confinning Corin’s suspicions about the illicit nature of the inventory stored there. Lamps and torches from the warehouse floor provided a flickering, half-illumination of the roof. Not enough to expose Corin and Lhasha, but enough to allow Corin to see the narrow beams they would have to crawl across. Unfortunately for Corin, the dim glow also emphasized how far a fall it was from his precarious perch.

“Why don’t you wait here,” Lhasha whispered. “I’ll scout things out from up top.”

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Corin warned, wrapping his arms and legs tightly around an intersection of the beams. “Remember why you brought me.”

“Ill come back to get you before I head down to the floor,” Lhasha promised.

She set off along one of the narrow beams, and again Corin could only marvel at the self-assured ease with which she maneuvered through the rafters.

ŚŠŚ

Lhasha wasn’t even aware of the thousands of intricate movements her muscles made to keep her perfectly balanced on the four inch wide wooden struts fifty feet above the warehouse floor. Every step was instinctive, every compensating motion unconscious.

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Corin, clinging to the beams like a drowning man to a piece of jetsam in a storming sea. Lhasha allowed herself a quick

smile. She had seen him in action, she knew he wasn’t clumsy or awkward. Put a sword in his hand and Corin moved with the grace of a dancer, but get him more than ten feet off the ground….