by Tim Pratt
But as far as he could see through the hole, the box contained nothing but a folded sheet of parchment resting atop a small object wrapped in cloth.
There was such a thing as being too cautious, and in truth, Alaeron's elaborate precautions were just an attempt to offset his natural tendency to leap in without looking. You couldn't make bombs and mix acids and dismantle ancient relics for a living if you were overly worried about preserving your own life, limbs, and sanity. He'd crawled into many a barrow, burglarized many a library, and mixed many an unknown substance just to see what would happen, and if he hadn't grown a bit paranoid about the League's attempts to kill him, he'd likely still be leading such a reckless life, trusting in his own quick thinking and reflexes to keep him from coming to serious harm.
He'd rather hated traveling the world and adventuring when he was in the midst of it, but now, sitting here in his laboratory examining the treasures he'd won on those expeditions, he sometimes missed the excitement.
Alaeron took a chisel and hammer and prised off the top of the box. He lifted out the parchment, which was sealed with a blob of wax marked with the impression of a cogwheel, the Technic League's symbol. The wrapped parcel made him more curious—mysterious objects were, in a very real sense, his reason to live—but it was probably better to see what the letter had to say first.
He read it, stared at the wrapped parcel, read the letter again, then folded it carefully and put the lid back on the box. After that he descended through the laboratory's cellar, opened a panel in a false wall, deactivated the traps ahead by pressing the proper stones in the wall in the proper sequence, continued along a subterranean tunnel, reset the traps by pulling a concealed lever, and emerged through a similar hidden door into the basement of an empty house he owned some blocks away from his laboratory. From there he went out into the street, found one of the loitering street children who could be trusted to perform simple tasks for small coins, and sent the boy with a message to Alaeron's friend Skiver.
The message was simple: "Come quickly. I've just received a letter from a dead woman."
Chapter Two
Dead Letter
Read this." Alaeron thrust the parchment toward Skiver, who sat lounging in one of the overstuffed chairs in the laboratory's living area.
Skiver looked at the parchment in Alaeron's hand, wrinkled his nose, and said, "You know I only like reading debt sheets and crooked contracts. Never saw the need for anything else. Why don't you tell me what it's all about? You talk faster than I read anyway."
Alaeron paced up and down, the parchment still clutched in his hand, worry and doubt and excitement and curiosity all at war within him. "Did I ever tell you about a woman named Zernebeth?"
Skiver nodded, his sharp, narrow face thoughtful. "Sure. A witch from the northern barbarian lands, your old boss in the Technic League. You said she was less evil than the usual run of bastards up there. She took you into that—what do you call it?—the Steel Hill—"
"Silver Mount," Alaeron said. "The largest fragment of...whatever it was that came down in the Rain of Stars. A structure taller than any tower you've ever seen, honeycombed with deadly mysteries and world-shaking secrets."
"Right, that one. She got herself killed while you two were exploring the Mount, and you ran off with the treasures she found, and that's what set the League to chasing you all this time."
"More or less." Alaeron would have phrased it a bit differently, stressing his reluctance to leave Zernebeth behind in the Mount, and his intention to honor her memory by studying the artifacts she'd found instead of letting her hated, treacherous rivals in the League loot her belongings for their personal gain. He was still haunted by dreams where he saw Zernebeth pierced by the eldritch lightnings that flickered throughout the strange chamber they'd breached together in the Mount, her body contorted in horrible agonies, his only thought to escape with the treasures before he joined her in death.
Except, apparently...
"Zernebeth sent me a letter," he said, stopping in his pacing to stare down at his feet.
"What, something she wrote before she died?" Skiver said. "And you got it just now? She should've invested in a better messenger."
"No. It...if this is true, if it's not a trick, Zernebeth is alive." He held up the parchment and cleared his throat. "It says:
Dearest Alaeron,
You will be surprised to hear from me, as you believe me to be dead. (I will not say I entirely forgive you for leaving me behind in that ghastly, wondrous place. You had every reason to believe my cause was hopeless, I know, but I like to think that, if our positions had been reversed, I would have tried to save you, or at least sought help, instead of merely fleeing for my own life. But that is neither here nor there; what is done is done, and it may all be for the best, strangely enough.)
I did not die. I was...preserved, I suppose. Put into a kind of stasis. The preservation field might have been a safety mechanism built into the Mount to protect its original occupants in the case of catastrophic disaster, some precaution that we inadvertently triggered. After the lightning surged through me, I became frozen in time—I did not breathe, my heart did not beat, my hair did not grow, I did not age, and I was not conscious in the usual sense.
I did, however, have dreams, of a sort. Meaningless, but diverting—perhaps I'll tell you about them when I see you in person.
I was discovered by other members of the League some time after your successful escape. (And well done, killing Gannix on your way out. He was a terrible arcanist, better at politics than the mystical and mysterious arts, and the only good ideas he ever had were the ones he stole. We have much more salutary leadership in the League now.) An expedition into the Mount uncovered the chamber where I hung, suspended in the air, caught up in a web of blue light. At great personal risk to life and limb—because some value the love of knowledge over self-preservation, Alaeron—those explorers deactivated the machinery in the walls (mostly by cutting the walls open and looting the skymetal wire inside), and I was freed. They carried my still-unconscious form out of the Mount, and back to the League's laboratories in Starfall, where I was nursed back to health by several well-trained medical slaves.
While portions of Silver Mount are surprisingly hospitable to our kind, that particular section of the Mount was apparently not designed with humanoids in mind, and the stasis process interacted in negative ways with my physiology. I was not entirely undamaged, as I'm sure you saw before you ran away—I lost a fair bit of blood before I was frozen in time, and after I was rescued, the chirurgeons were unable to save my left arm. (I do not feel the loss too keenly; I have made certain improvements.)
My fortunes have risen since I returned. Those who are lost in the Mount for years do not generally return, so I was an object of much curiosity at court. I had a private meeting with the Black Sovereign (long may he reign), and I told him of my experiences, and the insights I believe it gave me into the true nature of the Mount—he was mostly impressed I'd come out alive, but I'm content to have impressed him at all. The Sovereign's approval is hardly necessary—we in the League have our sphere, and the Sovereign has his own, and they overlap only incidentally—but things do go more smoothly in the capital when the League and the royal court make common cause. My newfound notoriety at court and the rather forthright tactics I used to recover the property that was stolen by the other captains after my "death" put me in a position to seize leadership of the League. Of course, all captains of the Technic League are equal—but you might say I am the most equal.
I find myself ill-suited to administration, I admit, but being the de facto head of the League allows me to pursue those projects I find most worthwhile without having to worry about coddling anyone else's cherished ideas or delicate egos; indeed, a certain brutality and dismissiveness is expected in one who holds my position. I have never been cruel by nature, but I find that my natural indifference to, and related dearth of respect for, my underlings serves me well.
&nb
sp; Let me come to my point. My fellow captains are all formidable, I admit, but they are avaricious schemers, every one, and they are useless to me now. I need clear-eyed thinkers who burn with a passion to understand, and to uncover mysteries for the sake of knowledge itself, not for the power that knowledge might buy. In other words, Alaeron, I need you. I have an expeditionary project that you would be perfect to spearhead. I can trust no one else.
In return for this service—as if the opportunity alone wouldn't be payment enough—I can make sure that no minion of the League will ever attempt to stick a spearhead through you again. Without condoning your theft, desertion, and betrayal, I am willing to forgive them, and extend to you full amnesty for your past crimes against the League and Numeria. You will no longer be hunted by assassins. You can even keep the trifles you stole. There are better ones buried in this land. That is not faith, or supposition, or educated guess; I know. (We can make you wealthy, too, of course, if you survive the expedition. But you never cared much for money, and if you've started caring about it since last we spoke, I suggest you tear up this letter and forget I ever sent it, and continue to dodge assassins as best you can. I won't send more from the League, but I won't stop anyone else from doing so unless I get something in return—Gannix had friends, and if I'm going to annoy them to make your life easier, I want recompense.)
If you intend to join me, inform the messenger who brought this letter, and I will make the proper preparations for your arrival. You will have to make your own way rather than traveling with the messenger, however—he moves quickly, using methods that might not be comfortable for you. I'm not sure how many more trips he can survive, honestly, but he is a good experimental subject regarding the effectiveness of certain peculiar relics we've discovered recently. I look forward to your reply; I trust you'll send the correct one.
Your mentor, whom you left for dead,
Z
Postscript: I've included a little trifle to remind you of the wonders you could find here in Numeria. I discovered a cache of a dozen, only a few of which appear operable—the others are either broken or somehow disabled. Perhaps if you pick apart this one, you can figure out how to fix the others. They are precious, but I can spare one for my favorite runaway apprentice, and it could even help with your journey. (The applications for travel will be obvious to you, though whether that's why they were made, I couldn't say—perhaps they were meant for punishment, or storage, or as party favors for children. Who knows?) Remember: miraculous items like this are commonplace here, and I intend to send you in search of something miraculous even by local standards.
"That's all." Alaeron folded the parchment and tucked it away.
"It wasn't bad," Skiver said thoughtfully. "Until that bit about ‘your mentor, whom you left for dead'—that was rather direct, but then, she probably knows you're easily distracted and don't always pick up more subtle..."
Skiver's voice went on, but Alaeron wasn't paying attention anymore. He was thinking about the object Zernebeth had sent in the box to tempt him. He'd looked at it, but he hadn't actually touched it yet. The device was a cube, about three inches to each side—just a little too big to fit comfortably in the palm of his hand—with a raised red button in the center of one side. The cube was heavier than an equivalent volume of solid lead, but only slightly. He would have to push the button sometime, obviously, but he was still a little worried it would explode and destroy, oh, perhaps the whole city. The Technic League had never gone in for subtlety before, and the idea of them sending a fake letter from his dead mentor seemed rather baroque as an assassination plot, but anything was possible.
"—her handwriting?" Skiver said.
"Hmm?"
"Do you recognize Zernebeth's handwriting?" he said patiently.
Alaeron blinked. "Oh." He opened the parchment and looked again. He'd seen Zernebeth scribble things many times—messy notes, peremptory orders, formulae, schematics, and so on—but it had been years...still, she had a distinctive way of writing, the letters strangely twisting and sinuous, doubtless a consequences of her being educated among the white witches of Irrisen instead of in the more civilized lands farther south. "Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm almost certain this is her writing."
"All right, then," Skiver said. "When do we leave for Numeria?"
Chapter Three
Many Rooms
Alaeron cocked his head. "Skiver, you can't come with me—you have a business here." Skiver owned a couple of taverns and a gambling hall and had inherited his late patron Ralen Vadim's smuggling business when the old man passed away from a mysterious wasting disease, probably contracted from one of the countless strange artifacts he'd kept in his vault—though it was possible Skiver had simply poisoned him. Alaeron had made a lot of poison for his friend back then.
"I have business interests," Skiver said, "and people who can look after them in my absence. They'll steal a bit from me while I'm away, of course, but I'm willing to take that as the cost of doing business. If you propose to stay in Numeria indefinitely, well, I don't know that I'm willing to move away forever, but as your friend it's the least I can do to see you get settled."
"You hate traveling."
"Not a bit. Broadens the mind. And fills up the coffers, in my experience. Come on, Alaeron. You know I love you like a brother—except my own brothers are pieces of shit to a one—and there's no one better when it comes to blowing things up or turning into a monster or finding useful things in ancient garbage heaps. But we both know you're, ah, occasionally not so good with human nature. I'm not saying you're gullible, exactly, just that...you're not so interested in people, and so you don't always notice when they're tightening a noose around your neck or using you for a human shield or a stepping stone to higher ground."
Alaeron scowled. "I think I have a keen understanding of human—"
"Jaya," Skiver said softly, and Alaeron winced.
"Yes, all right, Jaya." On the last journey Alaeron had undertaken with Skiver, they'd had a third member in their party, a beautiful archer named Jaya. Alaeron had entertained certain romantic and sentimental ideas about her, which Jaya had appeared to intermittently reciprocate...until they returned to Almas and Alaeron learned Jaya was a thief and confidence trickster who'd only been using him as a means to rescue her lover and partner from a difficult situation. "Point taken."
"This Zernebeth of yours doesn't seem all that—what's the word?—sophisticated when it comes to leading you around by the nose. She's more hammer than filleting knife. But still, I think you could use someone to look out for you."
Light dawned. "You just want to loot the treasures of Numeria!"
"I don't just want that. I want to look out for my friend Alaeron and loot the treasures of Numeria."
"Mmm. And suppose at some point you have to choose one over the other?"
He sighed. "It won't come to that, but if it did, yes, I'd save your life over grabbing a sack of treasure. I can always find other sacks of treasure—with your help, if you're alive to do the helping."
Alaeron scratched the small scar on his chin he'd gotten from an ill-timed chemical reaction. "It would be useful to have someone in Starfall I knew I could trust. The place is...well. To say it's a ‘nest of vipers' is needlessly rude to vipers."
"Imagine that!" Skiver said. "Me, the only man another man can trust. My old mother would never believe it."
"I suppose we should make travel plans." Alaeron chewed his lip, thinking. "The last time I went to Numeria I traveled with some pilgrims and crusaders bound for the Worldwound, up the River Road along the Sellen. They weren't the most pleasant companions—either irritatingly devout or crudely lusting for blood—but they made for a safe journey—"
"You let me take care of everything," Skiver said. "I helped make the plans for our last trip, and that worked out beautifully, didn't it?"
"Well..."
Skiver frowned. "We survived, anyway. You can't say we didn't survive."
"We did make it ba
ck alive. That is indisputable."
"And in full possession of all our limbs, no less. We'll make it there and back again just fine this time, too. You go visit your Kellid-who-walks-through-walls and tell him you'll be on your way, and I'll make the arrangements. We can depart in, oh, two or three days, depending."
"If you're sure..."
"I'm sure. And this time, we're going to travel in style."
∗ ∗ ∗
Alaeron didn't leave for the Succulent Eel immediately. Instead he took the strange cube Zernebeth had sent him out onto the grounds, safely surrounded by his walls. Most of his nonlethal outdoor space was given over to growing the various herbs and weeds and legumes and fungi he required for his alchemical efforts—making his own reagents was so much better than shopping at markets, both in terms of price and quality control—but he had a large cleared area of hard-packed dirt where he sometimes experimented with particularly volatile compounds. He set the cube in the center of the dirt circle and considered it for a moment.
Well, he had to do it sometime. He reached out and touched the button.
Or was it a button? He applied pressure, but the circle didn't move. The red metal was surprisingly cold, and his fingertip tingled sharply, as if being scraped by sharp and delicate filaments. He pulled his hand away, alarmed, and then noted with great interest that the surface of the button had changed. Where before it had been smooth, it was now marked with tiny, intricate black lines, swooping curves and whorls...Alaeron looked at the pattern of his fingerprint, and realized that it had been reproduced perfectly on the button.