He had no choice. He moved.
Finn pushed Colm through the door of the Crystallarium and into the corridor beyond. The rogue didn’t bother checking to see if anyone was there, moving quickly, surely, leading Colm by the dagger at his neck. Colm considered calling for help, crying out, but it didn’t seem as if there was anyone around to hear him. It was as if the entire castle had been deserted.
“Where is everyone?” he choked out.
“Fast asleep by now,” Finn said, then forced Colm through another set of doors and down a staircase, careful to stay close to him, mirroring his movements. They took a few more turns before ending up in a familiar hallway. Colm had been here before, of course. His very first day. Finn shoved Colm forward until they were standing at a door with only one lock.
The one lock.
“All right,” the rogue said, voice soft but still tinged with a threat. “I’m going to take a step back, and you are going to turn around and we are going to have a talk, rogue to rogue. Understood?”
Colm nodded. Then he felt the tip of the knife ease off. He turned to see Finn, dagger in hand, leaning against the far wall, but not far enough that he couldn’t easily tackle Colm if he tried to run. Colm scanned the rogue’s cloak, looking for the bulge or outline of the crystal that had brought them back here. “You know why we’re here?” Finn asked.
Colm nodded. He had a really good idea, at least.
“But you don’t know what it took to get here. How long I’ve waited. What I’ve done. All for a shot at that.” He pointed to the door. PROPERTY OF TYE THWODIN. KEEP OUT. Colm shook his head. He looked at the door and then back at Finn.
The rogue shook his head. “An impossible lock with only one key, guarding what just might be the greatest hoard any creature alive has ever collected, and more than any one man has a right to.” The corners of Finn’s mouth worked into a frown. “Of course, the only way to get hold of that key is to pull it off Tye Thwodin’s decapitated body. So, not being in the decapitation business personally, I made a deal with an unsavory character. A Mr. Gutshank. Prickly fellow, even as far as orc chiefs go, but he has a long history of having his dungeons looted by a certain hammer-toting guild master and was more than happy to negotiate. Tye Thwodin’s head . . . in exchange for the key around his neck.”
“Finn, listen,” Colm said, taking a step closer, but the rogue tipped the knife toward him.
“I’m teaching you something. Please, Colm. Pay attention. This is important. Now getting the treasure and getting away with the treasure are two different things. Rule number thirty-five. And I knew once it was discovered that I was at least partially responsible for Tye Thwodin’s premature expiration, I would be hunted by his faithful dog. So I had to get rid of Grahm Wolfe as well. Unfortunately that man is obnoxiously hard to kill.”
Colm thought about the first time he had seen Master Wolfe. Being chased by a pack of orcs through the forests outside the castle. Maybe they were some of the same orcs Master Wolfe and the others were battling in the dungeon right now. There was also the conversation Colm had overheard the night before. The night Finn had come to his rescue.
One of many times Finn had come to his rescue.
“Of course, Grahm Wolfe wasn’t my only worry,” Finn continued. “I had to ensure that the other trainees and masters would be indisposed. I also figured I would need someone strong to help me load the wagon once I made it through the door. Fortunately, the promise of immense wealth is more than enough to convince a castle’s cook to quit his day job and become a thief, but not before he suffuses the day’s stew with a sleeping draft. In fact, our good friend Fungus should be hitching the wagons as we speak.”
Finn twirled the dagger in his hand. Colm looked at the sword hanging by the rogue’s side. He wondered . . . if he was quick, quicker than he’d ever been before, if maybe he could pull it free before Finn realized what was happening. Except he knew how fast Finn was. He knew what the rogue was capable of. At least he thought he did.
“The problem was the key itself,” Finn continued, reaching into his cloak and removing his own lockpick set, dropping it on the ground between them. “Orcs aren’t exactly honorable, and though we had an agreement, there was always a very good chance they would turn on me as well, and I would be left with nothing—not even my life. But then you came along, Colm Candorly, and I realized that I didn’t need Tye Thwodin’s key anymore. I just needed him out of the way. All of them out of the way. And so, with an excuse for the masters to accompany their charges into a dungeon of my own choosing, I simply had to switch the crystals and make sure I escaped when the orcs came barging in. And bring you along, of course. You are the key.” He nodded toward the door barring the way to Tye Thwodin’s fortune.
“So that’s it, then?” Colm said bitterly. “You led them all into a trap, but you saved me because you need me to do what you can’t?”
“Partly. But also because I made you a promise too. You and your sister. Your whole family. So did you. Don’t you see, Colm? This is your chance. Forget those rotten, trap-ridden dungeons. There’s enough coin in that room to provide for your family for the rest of their lives. And your children’s. And their children’s. Why risk your life for Tye Thwodin, giving him half of whatever you find? I’m offering you precisely what you signed on for. One lock. One door. And then we are both kings.”
Colm shook his head. “And what makes you think I can pick that lock any better than you can?”
He caught the flash of silver and gold as Finn smiled. “Because you already have.” The rogue kicked the leather pouch that held his lockpicks, and it skidded across the floor to Colm’s feet. Colm turned and looked at the silver-plated mechanism set into the door.
It suddenly hit him. That’s where he had seen it before.
The impossible lock. Except Finn was right. He had done it once before, using something as ordinary as a hairpin. The one that was still in his pants pocket. The lock on the treasury door was identical to the one on the chest in Finn’s workshop. Colm remembered what Finn had told him the first time they came down here. “Failed attempts to pick it can result in death by half a dozen means.”
Finn’s voice shifted. For the last ten minutes, he had spoken with that icy confidence that Colm had first mistaken for charm. Now it softened into the voice he had used all those afternoons in his workshop. The one that had convinced Colm to take the journey out of Felhaven in the first place. It was the voice of the man Colm had come to trust. Still, Colm didn’t move.
Finn sighed. “Did I ever tell you how I got this scar?” he asked.
“You told me lots of things,” Colm said. He tried to be still, to listen for footsteps, voices, anything that would suggest it was more than just the two of them down here. But they really did seem to be alone. Finn reached up and stroked the curving path of white tissue that stopped at his chin.
“I wasn’t much older than you when I became a thief. And I wouldn’t just pick pockets. I’d steal anything. Food. Horses. Jewels. I was good at it too. Good enough to get noticed by others who made a scoundrel’s living. I eventually joined up with a gang, cutthroats and mercenaries. One day whispers came in that there was a man traveling through town with more gold than he could carry. An adventurer. A dungeoneer. So the group I was traveling with decided we’d lighten his load. Tracked him to a tavern where he was already half drunk. But it soon became clear that we weren’t simply going to pick his pockets. We were going to take everything he had. He was dangerous—you could tell just by looking at him, hulking and battle-scarred and well armed. Odds were, if we robbed him he’d hunt us down and have our heads, but it was too much gold to pass up. We couldn’t leave him alive. So one of us would sneak up behind this man and slit his throat. Then the rest of us would empty his bags.”
“So, what? You killed him?”
Finn shook his head. “I was supposed to. But I had never killed anyone before. So I panicked and warned the man instead, just as the rest of the g
ang came for him. He grabbed his hammer and smashed the first thief’s face in like a melon. Then the whole tavern exploded. Everybody fighting everybody. The other thieves turned on me for turning on them, and one of them gave me this.” Finn pointed to his cheek, then took a long, shuddering breath. “I could have died that day. I nearly did. And when it was all over, do you know what that man did, the one I warned? The one whose life I saved? He gave me a single piece of silver. Just one. Then he grabbed his sacks full of treasure and left me bleeding on the floor.
“Just imagine it, Colm. Years and years of dungeoneering. Half of every trove, stash, and hoard. Piles of gold ripped from the hands of worthy adventurers and deposited here. Probably the greatest fortune that has ever been amassed by one man, and all he can give me for saving his life is one measly little coin?” Finn pressed his hand to his face, covering the scar. Or most of it.
“He didn’t even recognize me, so many years later when he hired me. Even with the scar. I kept expecting it to come to him, but he simply doesn’t see it. Not the way you and I do. He thinks he’s entitled to it, half of everything. But you and I know better, Colm. We know that if you want your share, you have to fight for it. You have to bend the rules a little. Sometimes you even have to make sacrifices.”
“Not everybody’s like Tye Thwodin,” Colm said.
“No,” Finn said. “There are also people like your father, who toil away all their lives just to keep food in their children’s bellies, simply because the world has told them they aren’t allowed to hope for anything better. Seems a shame that one should prosper while the other one struggles so, don’t you think? But you . . . you could change all that. Just one lock. Almost as easy as picking a nobleman’s pocket. What do you say?”
Finn glanced down at the lockpicks by Colm’s feet, then back up. He had a pleading look in his eyes. And a dagger in his hand.
Colm nodded. “All right.”
“All right?” Finn echoed.
“All right,” Colm repeated. “You’re right. This is what I came for. I’ve just as much right to it as Tye Thwodin. As anyone. You promise to split it, and I promise to pick the lock and get us in.”
Finn put his hand over his heart. “You have my word.”
Colm nodded, then turned and looked closer at the lock. It really did look like the other’s twin, but Colm knew there was one important difference: The one in Finn’s workshop wouldn’t burn you or zap you or turn you to stone if you got it wrong.
Finn must have been thinking the same thing. “Remember, you have to undo each pin, every last one, or you won’t disarm it. It may feel like you’ve got it. You might even be able to open the door. But if you don’t get all of them, you’ll still trigger the fail-safe. Then it’s all over.”
Colm dropped to one knee and fished out Finn’s tools, laying them all out before him—then, with a subtle movement that any rogue would be proud of, he reached inside his pocket and removed his sister’s keepsake. He pressed close to the door so that Finn couldn’t see exactly what he was doing, holding one of Finn’s picks in one hand and the pin in the other. He felt the butterfly’s slender tail slip in easily, just as it had on the empty chest before.
Colm felt it, that same sensation as that day on the square, the day this had all started. That feeling of exhilaration and danger, the knot of worry twisting round inside him as he tried so desperately to convince himself that what he was doing was right, even as he untied the purse strings of strangers and slipped their coins into his own pocket. He closed his eyes, weaving the pick through the maze, trying to find his way. He sensed the first pin fall. He could feel Finn standing behind him.
“One giant circle, Colm Candorly. What goes around comes around. The orcs steal the gold from hardworking people, people like your family. The dungeoneers steal the gold from the orcs. Tye Thwodin steals the gold from his dungeoneers. You steal the gold back from him. It’s the first rule. The only rule, really.”
Colm maneuvered the pin, needling, digging in, till he felt the resistance give way. The second pin fell.
“You might feel guilty for a while, but I guarantee you, Tye Thwodin wouldn’t hesitate for a moment to take your hard-earned gold from you. And the rest of them . . . they are all the same. Besides, the moment you see what’s inside, you are going to forget all about the others. You will forget all about Tye Thwodin and Grahm Wolfe. You will forget all about the guild. You will look at those mountains of gold, and you will realize that every problem you and your family have ever had, every problem that you ever could have, is already solved.”
Colm flexed, tensed, felt the release. The third pin dropped.
“I knew it the moment I met you,” Finn whispered. “A pickpocket from a backwater village, down a finger, down on his luck, but destined for greatness. Someone who knows the true meaning of family, the most important thing, having someone you can count on. I knew you, of all people, would understand.”
There went the fourth. He could almost hear Finn’s quickened heartbeat behind him. If Colm remembered correctly, there were only five. But the fifth one was by far the hardest.
“I made a promise, Colm. I promised myself that when the opportunity came, I wouldn’t hesitate. I would take what was mine.”
Colm paused. He could feel the resistance, a subtle shock that vibrated up through the hairpin and into his fingertips, working its way along his arms and clear down his spine. He had felt it before. This next part was the toughest, but he knew what he needed to do. He felt the resistance give way.
Colm took a deep breath, then removed Celia’s hairpin, tucking it back into his pocket. He stood up and looked at Finn.
“Finished,” he said. The realization of what he was doing, what he’d done, made him dizzy, and he stumbled as he stood, but Finn caught him. Colm grabbed ahold of the rogue’s cloak for a moment to steady himself, then stepped back. Finn looked directly into his eyes, and Colm knew better than to look away.
Then, finally, a wry, wide grin spread over the rogue’s face. Finn tucked his dagger into his belt, then wrapped four fingers around the door’s steel handle. “You made the right choice,” he said.
He pulled the handle. He turned and looked at Colm.
Colm opened his hand to reveal the amethyst crystal he had just snatched from Finn’s cloak pocket.
“I know,” he said.
He watched the corner of the rogue’s mouth twitch, his eyes narrow and then explode in recognition. Saw him twist and try to pull away, except his right hand wouldn’t let go of the door. It was stuck to the handle, fingers already turning to stone.
Colm took a step backward, out of reach of Finn’s other hand, though the rogue made no effort to get to him. Instead he tried to pull his stone hand free of the door, but it was no use. The curse he had triggered by trying to open it with the last pin still in place worked its way up his arm to his elbow, spreading quickly to his shoulder and down his side. He tried desperately to pull away as it spread across his torso to his other half, turning him to solid rock, clothes, dagger, cloak, sword, everything. It covered him like a second skin. It was nearly to his neck.
Finn turned and stared at Colm, a mixture of surprise and despair, but mostly just disappointment. “Never make a promise you can’t keep,” he said.
“There’s a difference between can’t and won’t,” Colm replied.
The petrification spread down the rogue’s legs, to his feet, to the boots that looked much the same as the ones tucked behind a different door with even more locks, though none as dangerous and difficult as this. Almost his entire body was made of stone now.
“You’re going to make a great rogue someday,” Finn said. Then, as the curse inched up his neck, he managed to turn and face the door, the one he could never have opened on his own, and smiled as if he had. As if he were standing inside, looking at all the glorious gold. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” he whispered.
Finn blinked once.
And then it was over.
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br /> 17
UP IN FLAMES
Colm stood there for a moment, incapable of moving or speaking or even breathing, it seemed, just staring at the unblinking figure of Finn Argos, mottled gray like Grahm Wolfe’s eyes, cold as the stone walls all around.
“I’m sorry,” Colm said. “I know you, of all people, would understand.”
He quickly bent down and reached across Finn’s granite feet to grab the lockpick set and tuck it into his cloak alongside the hairpin and the crystal key. He knew he had to get back to the dungeon. There was no telling what had happened to his friends and the other masters. Of course, there was a chance they’d made it out—fought their way through. More likely, they had been taken prisoner. Even more likely still . . .
He had to hope. Trouble was, he wasn’t sure how to get back there. Finn had never taught him how to use the crystals, what to say. His only hope was that he would find someone, anyone, who hadn’t fallen victim to Finn’s sleeping potion. He wound his way up the stairs and back through the castle corridors, bursting into the great hall. He looked toward the dining hall and stopped cold.
There they all were, passed out across their tables, some on the floor, others propped against one another, chins wet with drool. If it weren’t for the syncopated hum of their breathing, Colm might have guessed them to be dead. Colm spotted the body of Master Merribell crumpled up halfway between the dining hall and the kitchen, robes bunched around her, snoring fitfully. In her hand was a vial of some kind, its contents emptied and staining the stones in front of her. A remedy or antidote, probably, except she hadn’t been able to take it in time. Maybe somebody had stopped her, or maybe Finn’s potion worked too quickly. Colm ran over to her and shook her, shouting in her ear, but it was no use.
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