Villains by Necessity (19 page)

The Groink turned around with a suspicious snort, but Arcie had already padded silently forward and was lurking in the shadows nearby, birchwood dagger in hand, hardly daring to breathe. A moment passed, then the Groink began retracing its steps, looking back and forth in the shadows and along the walls while the other stood by a small wooden door, belching to itself thoughtfully and picking its nose.

Arcie gave a mental sigh. He didn't like having to do this, it really was sort of infringing on Sam's territory, but the Groink was between him and that door. He shifted position slightly and threw the dagger with all his strength into the back of the Groink's neck. His aim and strength were nowhere close to Sam's, but at this range it was hard to miss. The Groink gurgled and fell over, and the one at the far end of the hall pricked up its hairy ears in suspicion.

"One gone down, thought Arcie, ducking back into the shadows after retrieving the dagger. "But now yon other knows as something's amiss. "

The Groink padded back up the hallway and inspected its dead comrade, then took the pike from the dead body, as well as the helmet that seemed to be some mark of rank. Quickly exchanging these for his own, it began peering about into the shadows, poking around with its pike. Arcie slipped past the back of the creature, ducked into the doorway, and swiftly unlocked it with one of the keys.

As the Groink turned with a snort toward the sound, Arcie shoved open the door and ducked in, slamming it behind him and locking it.

He noticed his hand was sore as the scene shifted around him. There was a small hole in the heel of his palm, with a stain around it. He tsked thoughtfully.

There must have been a needle trap on the door ... Behind him, the barred door had vanished. His hand was hurting pretty bad now, and he felt a bit weak. The room seemed to be spinning.

Damn, he thought to himself, as he sank to his knees. I didn't even get as far as Kimi did. Will mine dead corpse just materialize outside? Will they be upset? Will they bury me? Will Sam notice I've gotten Groink blood all over one o' his favorite daggers?

The Groinks must have known about the trap on the door. The trap was fairly complex and hard to see.

Groinks were stupid. The Groinks probably ran the risk of getting tagged by such a trap, even if they only had existence when someone came to take the Test. Therefore, they must have taken some measures to protect themselves. An antidote. They'd had no pouches, no pockets, just the dirty clothing and weapons ...

And a ring of keys.

Arcie felt his throat starting to close up and the humming tingle that was spreading up his arm reaching for his heart. With his good hand he fumbled with the keyring, hardly daring to hope ... keys all too heavy, solid, but... he struggled, collapsing, and managed to pull the thick brass ring in half. A fine gray powder poured from the hollow therein, onto the floor. He just barely had the strength to roll over and press his tongue to it, as the room filled with red spots and a loud buzzing...

When he came to, every muscle ached, and his tongue was still coated with a layer of fine powder. The rest that had spilled was gone ... he could only assume he'd eaten it. At least he could move, and as he stood, he violently and colorfully expressed his unhappiness with the nausea and agony that ran through his body. That finished, he found a wall to sit against, shaking and occasionally dryheaving, to wait for his insides to calm down.

His current visible means of support was a wall ascending into shadow. The discomfort seemed to be subsiding, and he silently thanked whatever dead gods once looked out for thieves and villains. He could continue on now, though he didn't much want to. No other passages ... the only way out was up. About forty feet up, the wall became smooth; at forty-five feet a rope hung a short distance from the wall.

"Climbing," he groaned. "This must be where Kimi fell. I hates climbing. So undignified." But he sighed, and rubbed his hands and flexed his toes. "Best get it over with, then."

He scanned the walls. They were mortared stone, easy enough. He set his fingers and stretched up, then got back down again, and took his boots off. He gagged again, made a mental note to wash his feet, and then once again grabbed fingerholds, dug his nimble toes into lower cracks, and began climbing.

"The trick in wall climbing," he muttered to himself, as he used a catclaw, a small metal hook and loop that was part of every thiefs tools, "is not to lose yer momentum.

If ye pause and hang, yer fingers get sore, rocks work loose, and ye falls, thump. Or splat." His dislike of walls wasn't just for reasons of dignity... he often wasn't tall enough to reach handholds, and his body was a bit dense for this sort of thing. Sam was the best wall-crawler he knew of alive today, but there had been some far better in his old Guild. He reached the edge of the rough part of the wall without too many stumbles and saw the rope hanging nearby. He had to hammer the catclaw deep into the smooth part of the stone, pull himself up, trust his weight to it while he hand-walked his height up the smooth wall, reached for the rope ... then suddenly drew back.

Kimi, he thought to himself.

Something in that Wilderkin's expression on the mural warned him against grabbing for the safety of that convenient rope. He instead crawled up the smooth wall with extreme difficulty, fingernails and toenails bending in tiny cracks of stone, using a spare set of picks as pitons, every muscle straining. At last a suspicious outline in the stone offered itself. With a sigh of relief he triggered a hidden mechanism, ducked as a crossbow bolt whizzed out of the far wall and shattered near his ear, then pulled a latch and tumbled into a hidden passageway set in the wall.

He sat on the ledge of it, flexing his stiff fingers and toes and getting his breath back. Then he took out a candle, lit it with his tinderbox, and shone it up into the shadows from which the rope dangled.

High up in the shaft were wooden rafters. The rope hung from a large block of stone precariously balanced on one of these; a firm tug would send the block and rope and anyone climbing it crashing to the floor below. It must reset magically each time someone tried the Test ... and Kimi, while unlucky enough to fall, had at least not been pulped under that stone.

"Seeing that would have sent me running all the way back to Bariga," muttered Arcie. "Magical treasures or no. Pretty sneaky, Jasper," he said to himself, and turned and headed down the passageway, locating and disarming traps in the floor, walls, and ceiling as he went. They were difficult, but not impossible, and traps were Arcie's forte.

He came to the end of the passageway and found a small door. The door was very thoroughly locked, with so much brass, iron, and steep keeping it shut it looked like there was more metal than wood to it. There was another note pinned to it, in the strange, almost coded handwriting. It said: "Through here, but keep your ears open."

"Silly thing," snorted Arcie. "Mine ears are always open." He set to work on unlocking the door. There was a series of locks, padlocks, finesse combo locks, and even some concealed keyholes and sliding panels. It would have been an ideal thing to have in the Guild for the apprentices to practice on. Arcie poured fast glue on a few spring-loaded traps, dissolved a few catch mechanisms with a few drops of strong acid, and then set to work with picks and hooks to get the numerous locks to release their hold on the doorframe.

At last the final tumbler clicked into place, and he stepped cautiously into a small room. On a pedestal in the center was an orange chunk of crystal. It was about the size and shape of a slice of grapefruit, perfectly smooth and clear.

He walked over to it, inspected the pedestal for traps, and disarmed the pressure plate in the base with the use of a well-placed iron spike. The trap clicked, and he scooped the stone off its cushion and started to walk away when the faintest of sounds reached his ears. A faint rumbling noise, coming from ...

He threw himself flat as a huge block of stone whistled over his head, thrust with breakneck force from the wall by a huge spring trap. It shattered with a tremendous crash against the far wall, smashing itself and the wall into great piles of rubble.

Arcie got up shakily. There was a faint funny feeling about the top of his head. He reached up, uncertain, patted his hair, and looked. The corner of his leather cap was just visible underneath the rubble. The collision had revealed a secret passageway, maybe leading out. He stopped a moment to uncover the cap, now much the worse for wear, then turned to the passageway and crept down it cautiously.

It turned into a narrow squeeze tunnel, a tight tube of stone with light dimly visible at the end. He tried to go down it, but it closed in tight, and he backed out. He judged the width and paused.

He couldn't fit through it. It was like a drainpipe. But then what was he to do? Wait here until he grew so skinny he could slip through, while the world likely sublimated in the meantime? Or ... wait. He could fit through it, maybe, if he got rid of everything but his clothes. As Sam had speculated, a good portion of his bulk was equipment and money hidden in interior pockets.

He could get rid of some of that excess girth. There was even a small niche in the wall as if for the purpose of keeping his belongings.

Arcie sat and thought. This, he felt, was unfair. He wondered how long it would take him to slim enough, and whether the hunger would be worth it. He was already recovered from his nausea, and his empty stomach ached. He'd collected his possessions over years and years of a very profitable thieving career. Give it all up now, just for the sake of a rock, not even any magical treasures? No way.

Maybe he could make it with the loss of only a few things. He took off his morning-star, and set it in the niche. Then his cloak, and Sam's dagger, stained with Groink residue. He tried to sneak down the passageway again, nearly got stuck too tight to escape, and backed out with difficulty. He inspected his pouches again.

After much inner struggle he relinquished a sling, a pouch of miscellaneous objects, and an empty waterskin.

He thought for awhile, and divested himself of his rations and smoking paraphernalia, and another couple of pouches. All he had left now was his moneypouches, his thieves' tools, his pockets of coins and various knickknacks, a waterskin partly full of excellent Barigan whiskey, and the Citrine. He tried to stuff the other items into a pocket, but it was too full already with the various bulky loot he'd accumulated. And he was still too encumbered to pass through the far end of the squeeze tunnel.

"Bother," he muttered to himself.

With a sigh, he added the waterskin, pouches, tools and detachable pockets, and all his other knickknacks and treasures and paraphernalia to the pile in the niche.

Then, with a regretful nod, he held the stone in one hand and squirmed through the tunnel, on his belly, pushing his way along with his toes and free hand.

He came to the end and tumbled out in a bright flash of light, into a stink offish and moss. The others of his party looked up in surprise from where they had been pacing around the room.

The others saw the mural flash, saw Arcie stumble out, looking noticeably thinner. "Here!" Arcie greeted them angrily, holding the stone aloft. It was cold and heavy and icy smooth. "There weren't no magical treasures at all! Just this stupid rock! And I losted all my stuff!"

"That's no stupid rock, fool," retorted Valerie. "That is a Segment of the Key." Sam and Kaylana exchanged glances, and Blackmail gave Arcie silent applause as the Barigan looked at the Segment, stunned.

Just then, the mural flashed again, and an outline opened in it. Arcie gave a pleased exclamation and padded over to the niche in the mural. His things were piled safely inside.

"Och! I knew that Wilderkin were too much of a Hero to take all of a fellow thief's possessions," he told Sam smugly, "he were just too nice a guy."

Arcie reached into the niche, took hold of his belt of pouches-and jerked his hands back with lightning speed as a razor-sharp steel blade fell suddenly across the opening with a metallic clang.

Arcie's eyes were wide. He looked at his hands. They bled from where the skin on the backs of his fingers had been neatly sliced away, showing little white knobs of knuckle.

"Ye sneaky little bastard, Jasper," whispered Arcie.

"There is no honor among thieves." He curled up, cursing, as the pain hit.

"I'll get Kaylana over here to heal you," Sam said, and Arcie nodded weakly as he worked the chopper blade aside with shaking, bleeding hands to recover his possessions from the niche.

"She cared. She tried. In wyvern's blood she is remembered.

May the sun warm you, may the moon be your pathway, and the wind at your back. Spirit of fire, freedom of air, strength of earth and immortality of water go with you." Kaylana gently set the eggshell down next to Kimi's chest, where the young thief lay on the seacliff, eyes closed, hands folded. Seagulls mewled overhead, and Sam stepped forward.

"She was a strong young woman. She lasted when all the others gave out, and she gave her life in service to the cause of evil and freedom of the night. Tharzak, keep her blades ever keen. Hruul, hold her safe and hidden in your shadows." Sam paused, then added softly, "Azal ... carry her gently."

The name of the God of Death sent a faint chill through the air, which lingered even as Sam gently lay her rapier and dagger on her chest, and placed her cold hand over them. Sam stepped back, and Blackmail stepped forward. The dark silent knight did not speak, but gently touched the young woman's forehead with his gauntleted fingers, brushing the hair away. Then he too stepped back.

Valerie, feeling out of place, stood where she was. The others looked at her. "She had guts, I'll admit that. A pity." Nightshade croaked in agreement.

Arcie then stepped forward. "She were my student.

She were talented and cunning, but she left the Guild, not for greed, but for love. She lived a life that were free and her own, and she died trying to preserve that way of life what we all stand for. May all rogues now and forever remember Kimi Quelustan of Tailerand. May Baris and Bella keep ye cunning and quick, and may ye dance free forever beyond the final lock." Arcie gently set Kimi's lockpicks next to the dagger and rapier, and lay her other hand over them, then stepped back.