“Almost ready,” Silgor called. “At least I think so. We had to dig a trifle to clear space for the bracing.”
“Just don’t clear so much that the whole cursed slab shifts again,” Pirvan called.
“I’ve learned that much,” Silgor replied. “Be easy.”
“Easy!” Grimsoar roared, loud enough to raise both echoes and dust. “Silgor, the next thing you learn about digging will be the first. Now are we going to climb out of here before the next coming of the dragons, or are we not?”
“Start climbing,” Silgor said. “And save your breath for that. We’re not going to-”
The longest groan yet came from the rubble. Grimsoar echoed the sound. He reminded Pirvan of a dying minotaur.
We’re both going to be dead humans if we don’t gamble that Silgor’s right, Pirvan thought. He pointed upward. “You heard him.”
“You should-” Grimsoar began.
“We don’t have time to argue, my friend. I can slip through a smaller passage than you, and I’ll be easier to pull out.” Apart from the fact that I haven’t come this far to have your blood on my hands!
Grimsoar’s speed had surprised many men, but until tonight not his friend Pirvan. The big man seemed to fly up the tunnel, casually snapping shoring timbers as if they were dry twigs. His feet vanished above, then a roar of triumph filled the hole, along with cheers.
Pirvan wasted no more time. When the cheers began, he was already halfway up the passage. Odd timbers clattered down and struck him on the head and shoulder. Splinters and sharp stones left sticking out added to the blood trickling across his greased skin and the smears he left behind. One large rock slid down and jammed itself under his chest; for a moment he wasn’t sure if he could pry it free or save his ribs if he tried to squeeze over it.
As the rock came free and slid on down into the shadows, the loudest groan of all came. Pirvan threw caution and several pieces of wood to the winds, and flung himself at the last spear’s-length of the slope. Only the grease let him slide upward until two strong hands gripped his wrists and heaved. Only the grip of those hands snatched him free of the hole, as the slab shifted and a score of stones larger than a man crashed into the hole. Before a thirsty man could have gulped a cup of water, anything bigger than a mouse would have been crushed into pulp, and the mouse stifled by the dust that poured up.
Pirvan was neither crushed nor stifled. He also drank no water. He lay on his back on the floor, and anxious hands thrust water at him. It dribbled out of the corner of his mouth, and finally someone noticed that his heart was beating but that his eyes were unseeing.
They lifted him on balks of timber and carried him out of the chamber.
Chapter 4
A rumbling, grumbling snore woke Pirvan. He sat up and tested head, ears, eyes, nose, and all his limbs. All were still attached and working.
He was sitting on a pallet in a low, whitewashed room that had the air of a recently and roughly cleaned cellar. Just beyond arm’s reach was another pallet, with Grimsoar One-Eye asleep on it. The big man’s head was shaved, and he wore a bandage over his scalp wound, but otherwise he looked quite healthy. His helpers had even bathed him, which was more than they had done for Pirvan. The thief stood up and prodded his comrade in the ribs with a bare toe.
“Uck,” was the reply.
Pirvan prodded harder. Grimsoar rolled over, until his back was turned to Pirvan. Pirvan contemplated the other thief’s back. The man had been a successful wrestler only a few years ago; his back was still slabs of rock-hard muscle.
Probably break a toe if I really kick him, the agile thief thought. Time for a bath before he wakes, I suspect.
Pirvan had no trouble arranging for a bath. The only problem was persuading Yanitzia not to attend him in it. Being in the presence of a hero seemed to have curious effects on women, which he would be glad to put to good use some other time. Unfortunately, all he wanted now, from woman or man, besides a clean body, was the full tale of what had gone awry in the matter of Lady Eskaia’s jewels.
He had no aversion to seeing them returned, but beyond that, his instincts told him that he had not learned as much as was either lawful or necessary.
When Pirvan returned to the chamber, feeling fully awake at last, as well as clean, Grimsoar One-Eye was likewise awake. He was also fully clothed, except for his eye patch, and putting away a substantial breakfast.
Pirvan reached for a sausage and got a rap on the knuckles for the effort.
“There’s only enough for me,” Grimsoar said. “When they came with this, you were in the bath, and no one knew when you’d be out. Not with Yanitzia in there with you.”
Pirvan snatched a hot roll from the wicker basket and munched on it. “Remind me not to save you, the next time you’re buried alive. Whatever the lady intended, she didn’t accomplish it.”
“Unlike you,” Grimsoar said. He gripped both of Pirvan’s hands in one large, greasy one. “I don’t know who sent you, or if you came by your own will. But I’m-oh, to the Abyss with all this pap. What is mine is yours, any time you ask for it.”
“Except your breakfast?”
“Well, a man needs to keep a little back-”
But Pirvan had snatched up a sausage and another roll, this time without getting his knuckles rapped. By the time he’d swallowed both, he knew what he wanted.
“Find out the truth about Lady Eskaia’s jewels.”
“Oh, that,” Grimsoar said. “Ask me something difficult.”
Pirvan fought his jaw back into position. “You know?”
“Yes. I was coming to tell you. That was why I was there last night. If I hadn’t thought you needed to know it, I certainly had better company in mind than a band of old thieves.”
Pirvan sat back on the pallet. “I think I’m going to throw you back in that hole and then push it in on top of you. You knew and didn’t tell-”
“Don’t gallop without tightening your girth,” Grimsoar quoted, holding up one plate-sized hand. “I only learned yesterday myself. Or perhaps I should say the night before.”
“A woman?”
“A cook’s maid at the Encuintras estate. I had in mind some night work there myself, and I was going to begin with her. But she was so eager to talk about the jewels that I didn’t hear a word about anything else.”
“Eager?”
“And frightened. Now, I don’t say this is the whole story, but if the half of it’s true, she has reason to be. And so do you.”
After Grimsoar finished, Pirvan had to agree. It seemed that Lady Eskaia had been appropriating jewels from her dowry to make up a ransom for her guard-maid Haimya’s betrothed. The gentleman was a prisoner of pirates on the Crater Gulf to the northeast, and Lady Eskaia was not going to be able to raise the ransom from her own allowance or her family’s funds. They barely approved of Haimya at all; they would never approve a substantial sum of money to ransom one who was, after all, a near stranger to House Encuintras.
Clearly, Pirvan’s night work had set the cat among the pigeons with a vengeance. From what Grimsoar had learned, Lady Eskaia and Haimya had covered their tracks for the moment, removing a few more jewels from the dower coffers to make it seem that these had been the thief’s goal. The family had informed the watch and the priests and tightened the guard on the house, but so far there had been neither scandal nor suspicion that the maid knew about.
What she did know was a rumor that Eskaia had a mage in her pay, to find the thief or avenge the theft or punish the thieves’ brotherhood or something portending bloodshed and dark dealings. Most likely, last night’s affair was the mage’s first achievement; it would not be the last.