by Matt Forbeck
I put my hand on the plate and pushed in until I felt something click. Then I twisted it to the right. As I did, a door popped open in the side of the tree to my left. It slid to the side just a little, but that was enough for me to get my fingers between it and its frame and shove it farther around the stump on its rusted, circular rails. They screeched from the effort but gave way.
With the door shoved into its pocket, I poked my head in through the hole where it had been. A ladder ran down the center of the tree stump and into the darkness below. “Moira?” I asked.
I checked the ladder. It bore a layer of thick dust on it, except on the spots where a small set of hands and wiped it clean as they passed down.
“Moira.” I didn’t want her stabbing me in the gut as I made my way into the hideout below. Nothing worse than giving her a start when she’s already scared.
“Max?” a thin voice finally said from below. “Is that you?”
I couldn’t help grin at her words. “Yeah, it’s me. I’m coming right down.”
As the words left my lips, I heard someone come sprinting up behind me. Whoever it was, he’d decided that the time for stealth was over. He was probably afraid that once I went in the hole he’d never see me again.
I reached out for the ladder before me, and my attacker let loose a chilling scream. I spun about as I put my foot on the ladder and spotted the black-clad orc I’d seen in Moira’s place. The bastard had followed me all the way here.
Much as I admired his tenacity — and cursed the fact I hadn’t spotted him the entire time — I wasn’t about to let him run me through. Some people might have frozen up at the sight of this murderous figure rushing at them. Others might have wasted time fumbling for a wand or a gun. I did the simplest, easiest thing that leaped into my head.
I reached out and grabbed the door’s inside handle, then slammed it shut in the orc’s face.
He smashed into it with his shoulder, trying to dislodge it, but the damn thing held. Gütmann had built the thing way back when we’d started adventuring in the wild, and that dwarf knew his stonecraft. Once that door was shut, there was no way it was coming open.
Unless, of course, the orc figured out how to operate the outside latch.
I fumbled about in the near-total darkness of the tunnel, amazed that I could see anything at all. I found the interior bolt and slammed it home. It would take nothing short of an enchanted crowbar or an explosion to open the door now.
I realized two things then. First, there was a light coming up at me from below. When I’d had the door open, the sunlight outside had made the hole seem like it was pitch black, but with the sunlight gone, I could see the light emanating from the main chamber now. Second, if the assassin out there did have a way to blast open the door into the stump, I didn’t want to be anywhere near it when it happened.
I slid down the ladder, just like old times, and landed on the stone floor below. As I reached the bottom, the light there grew brighter, and I had to squint to see. Before my vision cleared, someone small and rough rushed at me and grabbed me about the knees.
“Max!” Moira said as she hugged my legs tight. “I’m so glad you’re here!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
I glanced around the place and couldn’t help but smile, even with that orc making a racket by banging on the false stump above me with his sword. If the idiot hadn’t been too proud to use a wand or a gun, he might have been able to shoot me before I’d shut that door. As it was, he was going to be swinging that blade of his for a long time before he did any sort of damage to that stump.
The hideout looked much like it had back when we’d built it. Danto and Gütmann had insisted on it from the start. “If we’re going to make a career out of this, we need a base of operations in the woods,” Gütmann said. “Someplace far from the Guard and safe from the zombies too.”
We all knew how hard it was to keep something from the Guard in Dragon City. They had absolute power there, after all, and many of them were damn fine wizards to boot. Worst of all, the Guard was rife with corruption, and we knew that if any of our gear or most precious treasures were found, they’d be confiscated on the spot, no questions asked.
Out in the wild, beyond the Great Circle, it might seem more dangerous, sure, but it was a danger we felt we could handle — with the proper preparations. At least the zombies wouldn’t rip us off, then try to kill us in our beds to cover it up.
So Gütmann had built the place with Danto’s magical help while the rest of us stood guard. It had started out as little more than a hole in the ground, but in his dwarf pride Gütmann had transformed it into as solid a sanctuary as you’d find in any section of the Stronghold. We’d rarely had to spend more than a night in the place, but through Moira, Nit had supplied us with enough dried food and barrels of water and ale to keep the whole group of us fed for over a week.
Getting the hideout set up had been the hard part. Once it was in place, there wasn’t a zombie around who stood a chance of getting into it, whether we were there to defend it or not. Our usual routine included slipping out of Dragon City near dusk, hoofing it out here as fast as we could go, and then hunkering down until the next morning, when the undead activity in the area was always at its lowest.
That had served us well for a long time. Still, I hadn’t missed the place much. Just the people I’d been there with.
“Good to see you too, Moira.” I patted her on the shoulder and extricated my legs from her embrace. “You’re not an easy person to find.”
She stepped back and gave me a friendly slug on my hip. “That was the point, wasn’t it?” she said. “I was trying not to be found.”
The orc up above chose that moment to unleash another barrage of blows on the false stump above us. Moira scowled up at me. “Don’t tell me you blew that for me.”
“I think he’s a friend of yours.” Taking care not to scrape my head on the low ceiling, I moved over to one of the cots I’d spent way too many nights on and sat down. The fabric stretched over the frame still held, thanks to one of Danto’s preservation spells I was sure. I wondered just how long it might last.
Moira put her hands on her hips and glared at me. “My friends don’t bring orc assassins along with them to slaughter me.”
I sighed. “How did you know he’s an orc, Moira?”
She stiffened. “I, well, why wouldn’t he be? Who else is going to come knocking on the stump like that at this time of day?”
“Good point,” I said, “but let’s drop this game of yours, all right? I know you were at the Gütmanns’ place last night.”
The cocky look crumbled from Moira’s face, and she stared at the floor instead of me. “I didn’t mean for any of that —” She cut herself off and started again in a voice so quiet I had to strain to hear it, even in this small room. “Did any of them make it?”
I grimaced, and she covered her mouth and nose with her hands. I wanted to reach out and tell her it was all right, but it was the farthest thing in the world from that.
“What were you doing there?”
Moira put her hands at her side and steeled herself. As short as she was, it was easy to underestimate her, to mistake her for a child. She encouraged that, dressing far younger than she actually was and acting with all the responsibility of someone stuck perpetually in adolescence.
At that moment, though, I’d never seen her look so weary and worn, so old. She looked at me with those wide, green eyes of hers, and I could track every year of her life in them.
“I was just visiting them,” she said. “I don’t ever see them anymore since Anders died. After our last reunion, I figured it was time.”
I leaned forward on the cot. “Bellezza told me she sent you there on an errand last night.”
She winced at that. “I know. I should have told you. I just — Aren’t things still strange between you?”
“What were you doing there, Moira?”
She rubbed her heels together and stared at th
e floor. “It’s like you said. Bellezza sent me.”
“To do what?”
She looked up at me. “You don’t know?”
The orc smacked the stump upstairs another few times. I thought I might have heard something crack. I hoped it was his sword.
“Can we quit playing this game?” I said. “We don’t have the time for it.”
She gave me an uncertain shrug. “Doesn’t sound like we’re going anywhere until morning,” she said. “If he hangs around much longer, the zombies will take care of him for us, and we can just stroll out of here at dawn.”
“If you think he’s giving up, you’re a bigger fool than you try to come off as,” I said.
She dropped her jaw in shock. I ignored it.
“That guy slaughtered every member of Gütmann’s family. He’s as cold a killer as you’ll find in Dragon City. He’ll figure out a way to get in here, and if you haven’t told me what’s going on before then, I’m going to hand you over to him myself.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Moira’s eyes opened wider and brimmed with tears, but she could tell by the look on my face I wasn’t having any of it. “Fine,” she said with a snarl. “You think he won’t kill you too?”
“Oh, I know he will,” I said. “I just want the satisfaction of seeing him slice you to pieces first.”
She glared at me then, her innocent young thing facade crumbling away. “Fine, Max,” she said. “You want the truth? I’ll give it to you.”
I sat back on the cot and prepared myself to pick my way through her lies. Moira might have been a fantastic tomb robber, but she was terrible at telling the truth. Maybe the two things went hand in hand.
“I went there to deliver something to the Gütmanns at your girlfriend’s request.”
I opened my mouth to protest that Bellezza wasn’t my girlfriend and hadn’t been anything of the sort for the past decade, which she damn well knew. Then I realized that she was trying to get exactly that reaction from me to prove that I still had some feelings for the elf, no matter how deep I might have buried them under layers of dragonfire and denial. I shut my mouth again, even though I knew I was too late.
Moira gave me an evil smirk.
“What did you bring them?”
“The Gütmanns were dirty, Max. I know you loved them, but they were not good people.”
“Could you answer my damn question?”
“You need some context first.”
“Screw context,” I said. “Tell me what you brought them, and explain it later.”
“You’re going to want to —”
“You don’t get to tell me what I want!” I shouted loud enough for the echoes in the small room to set my ears ringing and put Moira back on her heels.
At least it shut her up, if only for a moment. I preferred the silence to having to listen to her avoid my questions.
“Fine,” she said. “If that’s how you want it.”
She walked over to a small chest set into the far corner of the room. It was old and battered, and I recognized it as one of the chests we’d used to carry our last bit of treasure back to Dragon City before the crew called it quits. I’d seen it in her apartment not so long ago.
She knelt in front of the chest and undid its lock with three taps of her fingers. She paused then and looked up at me. She looked like someone had punched her in the stomach. “You sure about this?”
“Open the damn chest.”
She lifted the lid on its well-oiled hinges. The way she built up to it, I’d expected whatever was inside to glow with poorly restrained power. No such luck.
She reached inside the chest, and I put my hand where I could get to my shoulder holster in an instant. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, but —
Okay, I didn’t trust her at that point, but I didn’t want her to know it. If she pulled anything dangerous out of that chest and pointed it at me, though, I was ready to pop a hole straight through her.
Instead, she pulled out an egg and held it up in front of her as if it were made of diamonds.
I squinted at the egg. It was the size of my fist, and it seemed to be made of something an iridescent blue. It shimmered and shifted in the soft light of the glowglobes Danto had placed into each of the ceiling’s corners so many years ago. I’d never seen anything like it.
I mean, I’ve seen eggs before, all kinds of them. I’ve eaten my share of them too. This one, though, seemed like it was alive, as if the colors that shifted beneath its surface were some kind of fluid that pulsed through it like mystical blood through an enchanted heart.
Moira didn’t say a word. She just gazed at the egg with a mixture of lust and wonder and pride.
“What laid that?” I asked
She wrenched her eyes away from the egg’s shifting surface to look at me. “The Dragon,” she said.
I felt my stomach flip in dismay, even though I knew in my head what a transparent lie that was. “The Dragon’s male,” I said. “He’s not the kind to lay eggs.”
“Shows what you know, Max.” She returned to marveling at the egg. “Ideas like gender don’t mean a thing when you’re talking about the Imperial Dragon. Call it male if you like. Or female. Or neither. Or both.”
She brought the egg closer to her, and I could see its reflection shining in her eyes. “The fact is that the Dragon laid this.”
I gave up trying to wrap my head around that idea and decided to concede the point. Whether or not the Dragon laid this particular egg didn’t matter much to me at the moment. “Why did you bring it to the Gütmanns?”
“Haven’t you been paying attention? Belle told me to.”
I fought the urge to strangle her. I skipped right over the other obvious questions this raised, like how Bellezza had gotten her hand on the Dragon’s egg in the first place, and I stuck to what I wanted to know most. “And why did she do that?”
Moira shrugged. “Carsten and Guenter forced her to.”
“What, at gunpoint?”
Moira shook her head. “They had something on her, something she didn’t want anyone to know. She wanted out of the racket, and this was their price. She was only too happy to pay it.”
I rubbed my eyes. I was missing something obvious here, and Moira seemed to be enjoying making me figure it out.
I shrugged, defeated that way perhaps, but not yet done. “Can you knock it off with this little game of yours? Believe it or not, I came here to help you.”
“How much extra did you charge Bellezza because it was me?”
I groaned. “I’m not charging her a damn thing.”
She gazed at me in surprise, then accepted something and nodded. She held the egg up before her again. “This is where her dragon essence comes from.”
“I thought that stuff came from old scales and talon clippings. You know, things a grown dragon wouldn’t miss.”
“Sure, you can get it that way, but this stuff is one hundred percent pure, the best and finest you can find. Plus, if you only shave off a bit of the egg’s shell at a time, it regenerates fast. You don’t ever have to go hunting for more. Bellezza has been selling it to the Gütmann’s for years. She wanted out.”
“And they threatened to expose her if she quit.”
“Unless she gave them the egg.”
It made sense. If the egg was the source of the dragon essence Bellezza had been selling to Gütmann’s sons, then handing it over to them would remove any complaint they would have about her leaving the business. It would also remove the largest piece of evidence against Bellezza should her crimes be revealed, so that worked doubly well for her.
Of course, it had wound up with the sons, their sisters, and their mother dead, so something had gone wrong. Had they continued to try to blackmail her after that? Or had Bellezza simply decided she didn’t want to leave that loose end undone?
Or had it never gotten to their home?
“If you gave the egg to the Gütmanns, what’s it doing here?” I asked.
&n
bsp; Moira stared at me in silence for a moment. Just as she opened her mouth to respond, a terrible explosion sounded above us.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I dove forward and tried to shelter Moira with my body. Loose dirt and rock rained down from the ceiling, but the roof held. When Gütmann built something, he built it to last. It had outlived him by a decade, and it still survived the high-power attack that had just been thrown at it.
“I think our friend upstairs got tired of waiting for us to come out,” I said as the dust settled over us.
Moira stared up at me with wide, scared eyes. “Did the door hold?”
I glanced back toward where the ladder came down. I couldn’t tell. I didn’t see any sunlight streaming through, but we were under the canopy of the woods outside. It had already been growing dark when I’d gotten here.
I decided I couldn’t take any chances. I drew the scattergun and put it in my right hand, then scooped my wand up with my right. I thumbed back the gun’s hammer and pointed it straight at the bottom of the ladder. If the killer dropped down there, I’d knock a crater straight through him before his feet had the chance to touch the ground.
I risked a glance over at Moira. “You all right?”
She nodded at me, silent. She was all business now, a four-shot revolver clenched in her hands. I don’t know where she drew it from, but I’d seen her in action with it before. I was a better shot, but she was as fast as an elf on the trigger. She glared at the ladder, unblinking, as if she was willing the assassin to drop down to where we could shoot him.
Whatever mojo she might have had working in that direction though, the orc didn’t seem to feel compelled to comply. He didn’t come down the ladder or stick his head into the doorway. I didn’t even hear him out there grousing around and smacking the stump with his sword anymore. He’d gone quiet.
We stood there for a moment in silence. Sweat beaded up on my forehead and ran down into my eyes. I wiped it away with my sleeve.