Jasper’s poor humor, however, turned out a blessing in the end, for when Meggins tossed the key to Ilbei, the sergeant went immediately to set it into the lock.
“I still wouldn’t do that,” Jasper said, which, of course, made Ilbei stop yet again to roll his eyes and glare at him.
“Dragon’s teeth, Jasper, what now?”
“Did you check to see if there are spell-cancelling runes on it?”
“Ya know I didn’t. Ya was standin right there.”
“Well, you should check, you know. Because if it doesn’t have them, and there is a magical trap, it will still go off.”
“Then why didn’t ya say that when ya said I should try a key?”
“I didn’t say try
a
key. I said to try
the
key, meaning that you find it and confirm it is correct by checking that it has runes on it that might dispel a magic lock.”
“Well, why didn’t ya say all that the first time?”
“I was trying not to bore you with the details. I know how you hate them.”
“Jasper, I swear, you’re goin to be the one what drives me straight into the daft house where the burnt-out mages and the broke-minded blank folks go.” He once again backed away from the chest, this time approaching Jasper with the key.
“Well, I don’t think that’s how mental disorders work,” Jasper said, but he took the key and fell silent while he looked at it. “Yes, that’s exactly what it does. I was right, by the way: it was a more powerful spell. It’s still lightning, but much better. I don’t think you would have survived.”
“So what do I do?”
Jasper stepped past him and casually opened the lock, turning back when he was done and presenting both lock and key to Ilbei. “Just open it.”
Meggins and Kaige were both smart enough to keep their laughter to themselves.
Still cautious, Ilbei borrowed Kaige’s sword. He slipped it into the latch, then threw the chest open. Everyone, even Jasper, made a point of cowering in advance of any explosion that might be on the way. Nothing blew up. The lid swung open easily, and Ilbei leaned forward, too distrusting of magic now to risk looking directly inside. He frowned at what he could see: two squat clay jars with wide mouths corked by broad, flat stoppers the size of lily pads. Feeling less intimidated, he crept forward and looked in earnest. Inside, lying in a space made for it in the bottom of the chest, was a steel rod, thick as a piton and twice as long. On the left was a strange sort of rack made of copper, a miniature version of the grill, but this one had small, flat loops projecting from it like little shelves, five loops across, five rows each. There were places where the copper glimmered gold. Last was a short length of copper wire, no thicker gauge than the links in Ilbei’s chainmail. And that was it.
Ilbei leaned over the chest and studied the contents for a while, his bushy eyebrows low over his eyes and a harrumph sounding in his chest. He straightened and turned back to the rest of them, all eagerly awaiting the news of what he’d found. He shrugged. “Some kind of contraption. Ain’t much to look at, to tell it true. Whole lot of fuss fer nothin.”
Jasper didn’t appear satisfied with that answer. “It
is
too much fuss for nothing,” he said, and came to have a look of his own. He also harrumphed, though his had a much different sound than Ilbei’s had. He bent down and removed one of the wide, flat-topped corks. He wiggled the jar, which was difficult as it was set into a slot made to secure it well. He leaned closer and took a whiff. He replaced the cork and opened the other one, glancing in it and taking a whiff as he had the first. He jerked away quickly, his face contorting as if by bitter medicine, his eyelids fluttering. He recorked the jar and turned a satisfied expression to Ilbei.
Ilbei waited for him to say it, but he didn’t, so he had to ask. “So what is it, son? Don’t just stand there like the dog what finally ate the cat. Speak up, boy.”
“Someone is counterfeiting coins.”
“In here?”
“Yes, in here. That contraption, as you called it, is for electroplating. And unless I miss my guess, that first jar contains gold salts.”
“Gold salts? I ain’t never heard of such a thing. What kinda fool would eat somethin like that, and what’s it got to do with fakin coins?”
“Well, you say you can smell metal with that finely tuned nose of yours, why don’t you come verify it?” Jasper turned back to the chest and uncorked the first jar again. Ilbei moved beside him and leaned down, peering inside. It was filled half-full with a dark fluid, almost black but with a touch of color like cognac or red wine. He sniffed the air tentatively.
“Hard to say if’n I’m smellin what’s in the jar or the gold all around.”
“Get closer, then. I really would like to know.”
“I would too,” came a voice from across the room. It was Cavendis, who was sitting up despite looking very pale.
Ilbei bent lower and sniffed close to the top of the jar. Sure enough, there was gold in the liquid somehow. “Well, that’s the strangest thing I ever heard of. Gold water?”
Jasper’s was the face of smugness. “In a manner of speaking, yes. I told you. It’s a technique called electroplating. The Conjurers Guild wrote a piece about it in their almanac several years back. A few of them were trying to figure out how to bond one metal to another, and they wanted it to be permanent, as if it were meant to be that way. It’s yet another idea taken from those poor, long-lost dwarves, although they say the dwarves somehow did it with fruit juice, as I recall. That was what had the conjurers confused. They ultimately gave the process up as lost—or rumor—as they simply couldn’t find the right combinations of fruit juice, and they couldn’t get powerful enough lightning bolts to work. They even had a Z-ranked conjurer blasting at it for a time, but nothing ever came of it, even with power of that magnitude working on it.”
“What happened to him, the Z?” Ilbei couldn’t help but ask. “That thing kill him?”
“Her. And no, she died of old age. She was four hundred and seven years old. Her passing was why they wrote the article.”
Ilbei rumbled some in his throat, regretting having been sucked into a worthless bit of history from his long-winded wizard. And besides, he didn’t understand much of what Jasper was telling him anyway. He couldn’t see the sense in talking about fruit juice and conjuring experiments just then. The one thing he did recognize, however, was that there was no need for counterfeiting in a place such as the one they were in.
“There weren’t no reason fer makin fake gold what with all this real gold lyin about like sand on a beach,” he said. “A man would do better to just pocket some of it if’n he were inclined to thievin. A thief don’t get half the penalty a counterfeiter does, so there weren’t no reason to risk it.” He noticed that Cavendis was glaring at the unconscious wizard lying bound and gagged at his side. It didn’t take the wily old veteran long to figure out what the look was for. “What’s the matter, Cavendis, yer man there somehow cheatin ya? Skimmin off the top? Has yer counterfeiter been right there under yer noble nose all along?”
“Spadebreaker, you have no idea what kind of trouble you’ve dug up down here. If there’s anyone you love out there in the whole wide world, you’ll never hide them well enough to protect them from what you’ve done.”
“Horrible as all that sounds, Milord, I reckon you’re in it deeper’n I am. I only run aground of ya. Fer yer part, you’re gonna have to take it up with Her Majesty herself, or with yer high Lady Mum back in South Mark if’n it turns out it’s her ya been crossin. Maybe you’ll get both of em havin at ya, you and that piece of villainy lyin there next to ya. None of them splinters is under my nails.”
“You better kill me, Sergeant. You won’t get better from the Queen. You’re in way over your station now.” The steadiness of his gaze, the certitude, made Ilbei think there might be more to the threat than he wanted to believe.
“I’m just a grunt doin my job. I was to come dig out what’s been plaguin these folks around here, find the Skewer and make things right. But turns out the plague is less about the Skewer than it is about you. I reckon I’ll trust my luck on Her Majesty’s justice landin fair when it all shakes out. If the gods is watchin, there ain’t no way a cheat like yerself comes out when it’s done, noble or no.”
“That depends upon which gods are watching, doesn’t it? But the truth is you won’t even get me out of here, Sergeant. Much less brought before the Queen.”
Ilbei ignored him. “Let’s get these lot ready to haul out of here,” Ilbei said, turning to his men. “Meggins, get His Lordship on his feet. Watch him, though. He’ll kick sideways like a mule. Kaige, you get that other one up and goin too. I didn’t kick him that hard; he’ll wake up.” Seeing them in motion, Ilbei went back into the small room where Mags lingered with the harpy.
“Mags,” he said as he entered, but silenced himself, seeing that she was trying to speak to the creature still strapped to Gangue’s grill. He smiled and let go some tension with his next breath. It was that kind of goodness that made facing the danger he’d been through worthwhile. People like Mags. Talking to a harpy. Sweet, silly, hopeful girl.
The harpy recoiled at his approach. The chains that bound her clanked against the ironwork grill as her body stiffened.
“Her name is Miasma,” Mags said.
“Whose? Hers?” One eyebrow lifted as he indicated the harpy with a thrust of his tatty beard. “Ya went and named her, a mean and nasty critter as that? That’s like namin an animal ya might have to eat one day.”
“No, I didn’t name her. It’s her name. She told me. She’s been here for seventeen hundred years. She’s their queen, and this was the first harpy wild on Kurr—well, not here but the steppes above Fall Pools, obviously.”
“She told ya all that, did she?” His eyes glimmered with the indulgence. He was polite enough not to laugh.
“Sergeant, I’m serious. That’s what she said.”
Ilbei saw the solemn look upon Mags’ face, so he continued to indulge her, scanning the harpy with a long, careful gaze. Nothing in the harpy’s countenance softened, no part of it shifting toward civility or an inclination for a chat. Ilbei turned skeptical eyes back to Mags. “I expect she’s pullin yer chain with that. She can’t be a lick over thirty-five, fer one, unless them human parts of hers don’t respond to the pull of time. Even a highborn sorcerer shows more years than that by eighty-five, and noble ladies, even bird ones, don’t spend no time in slaver caves, much less gettin tortured on lightnin racks.”
“Well, she’s telling the truth.”
“Oh, she is, is she? And how can ya tell?”
“I could see it in her eyes.”
“Mags, she’s spinnin stories what will get ya to cut her loose. Like as much, she’ll claw yer throat open the moment ya do. She’s even got reason to, if’n ya think on it.”
Mags shook her head. “No. She won’t. She just wants to go home.”
“Home? Ya mean down there where all them sawed-off harpies are? That home?”
“Yes, that one. It’s all the home she has now. And they’re her children.”
“By Hestra, now there’s a story fer ya.”
“It is, and it’s a terrible one. She told me some of it. Oh, Sergeant, it’s awful. We have to do something. We can’t leave them all like this.”
“Well, I’m inclined to agree with ya on that. Them sorry creatures down there is gonna be top of my report when we get back. No tellin what they’ll do about it, but I’ll wager some of them feel-good city folks will put up a preserve or somethin fer em somewhere, stuff em in and then all paw theirselves, cluckin and botherin to each other how kind and wonderful they are fer bein benefactors.”
“We can’t leave them and wait for that. Not now. Not if we’re taking … Ivan and your major out.”
“Why not? They been here this long. They’ll make it till I put in my report.”
Mags glanced to the harpy, Miasma as she claimed her name to be, and smiled, a patient thing, as if trying to convince the harpy not to give up on her. “If they, if Ivan is the keeper of order around here, what will happen in his absence? There are many other men here, and it’s at least four days back to Hast from here. Even healed, she can’t protect them all.”
A low hum issued from Ilbei’s throat as he considered that. He reckoned if the men did figure out Gangue was gone, and Cavendis—assuming they even knew the young lord was there, given that Ilbei didn’t get the impression he came around much—most of them would go straight to grabbing as much gold as they could carry and get out. The way piss-soaked Sett had told it, fear was the only thing holding them there, fear and the promise of a stone’s weight in gold. Near as Ilbei could figure, if the enforcement broke down, the miners would get off with well more than a stone’s weight each, making their contracts worth about as much as all the gold blowing in the wind. Which he remarked on.
“They most likely would run off with the gold,” he said.
“Most would,” Mags allowed. “But not all. Some of them do terrible things to her children, simply because they can. The gold has drawn only the worst kinds of men out here.” Her eyes seemed to glaze, but Ilbei saw that she was looking past him to where Gangue was being slapped awake by Kaige.
Ilbei grew irritated then. He couldn’t solve everything. He was only one man. “Listen up, Mags. Best we can do is get on out of here quick, before them others figure out Gangue is gone. Sooner we do, sooner we’ll get help back here to clear the rest of these fellers out. There ain’t no other way, and there ain’t no perfect solutions. The more we dawdle talkin, the worse off it might get. We get caught, nothin gets fixed at all.”