Kolim’s mother didn’t wait to hear the rest. Abruptly stepping back inside the bakery, she slammed the door shut. A moment later, however, Arvin heard a noise from one of the windows above as a shutter opened. Kolim leaned out of the window, waved, and dropped a ball-shaped knot attached to a short length of twine. Arvin caught the monkey’s fist and signed his thanks to Kolim in finger speech.
Easy going, Kolim signed back. The sound of his mother’s harangue came from somewhere behind the boy, and Kolim ducked back inside.
Arvin hefted the monkey’s fist. It looked identical to a nonmagical monkey’s fist-a round knot, trailing a short length of line, used to weight the end of a ship’s heaving line. But instead of having a lead ball at its center, this monkey’s fist contained a surprise-a compressed ball of powder taken from the gland of a gloomwing. To release it, the correct command word had to be spoken as the monkey’s fist was thrown. When it landed, the knot would immediately unravel, releasing the gloomwing’s powerful scent.
Arvin tucked the monkey’s fist into his pocket and glanced up at the sun, which was slowly sinking behind Hlondeth’s towers. There was one more stop he had to make before meeting Nicco. Fortunately, Lorin’s workshop was on the way to the execution pits. He hurried in that direction.
As he approached the locksmith’s workshop, he heard the sound of a file rasping against metal. Entering the shop, he found Lorin hunched over a bench, filing the pin mechanism of a brass padlock. The locksmith was a tall, skinny man with a wide forehead from which his short dark hair was combed straight back. The hair was tarred flat against his scalp, like that of a sailor, to keep it out of his eyes. Faded chevrons marked Lorin’s left forearm; he’d done his time in the militia years ago, serving as a guard in Hlondeth’s prisons. Rumor had it that he’d been working for the Guild even then, slipping lockpicks to prisoners the Guild wanted freed.
Lorin looked up as Arvin entered the workshop. He immediately set the file aside and rose, but held up a warning hand as Arvin strode forward. “Stop right there,” he said. “I heard about your warehouse. I’d rather not take any chances.”
Arvin halted. “Word travels fast. Did you have a chance to look at the key?”
“Yes.”
“And?” Arvin pulled ten gold pieces from his pocket and set them on the end of the workbench. Lorin made no move to pick them up.
“It was very interesting… but I don’t appreciate objects tainted with plague being brought to my workshop.”
Arvin placed ten more gold pieces on the bench. “Interesting in what way?”
“When I tossed it into the fire to cleanse the plague from it, an inscription appeared on the key.” He folded his arms across his chest and eyed the coins Arvin had set out, waiting.
“I didn’t know you could read,” Arvin said.
“I can’t. But there’s those in the Guild who can. And their services cost. The lorekeeper I consulted was equally as expensive.”
Arvin pulled his last eight gold pieces from his pocket and placed them with the others. “That’s all the coin I have-aside from three silver pieces.”
“It’ll do,” Lorin said. “With a consideration: a discount on the next thief catcher I buy from you of fifty gold pieces.”
Arvin hissed in frustration. “That’s an expensive rope,” he protested. “Cave fisher filament isn’t easy to come by-or to work with-and I go through at least a gallon of brandy stripping the stickiness from the ends. Then there’s the spell that has to be cast on the middle third of the rope, to hide the sticky residue…”
“Do you want to know what the inscription on the key said, or not?” Lorin asked.
Arvin sighed. “You’ll get your discount. But with my warehouse currently being… cleansed I’m not sure when I’ll be back in business.”
Lorin waved the protest aside. “You’ll manage.” Left unspoken was an implied threat. If Arvin didn’t supply a thief catcher in a reasonable amount of time, something unpleasant would happen. The Guild took a dim view of tardy deliveries.
Lorin turned and picked up a wooden tray that was slotted into several compartments, each holding a key. He pulled out the key Arvin had found in the cultist’s pocket and laid it on the workbench then wiped soot from his fingers. “What’s interesting is that you found this in the pocket of someone who died of plague,” he began. “The inscription on it reads ‘Keepers of the Flame.’ That’s a religious order-one that was active during the plague of ’17.”
“What god did they worship?” Arvin asked, certain the answer would be Talona.
Lorin laughed. “What god didn’t they worship? They were clerics of Chauntea, of Ilmater, of Helm, even of Talos-”
“So the key would have belonged to one of those clerics?”
Lorin nodded. “One of the duties the Keepers of the Flame were charged with was collecting and disposing of the corpses of those who died in the plague. They set up crematoriums all over the Reach.”
Arvin smiled grimly. It all fit. The cultists were attracted to places associated with disease-their use of the slaughterhouse and sewers were prime examples. Naulg had said he was in a building with burning walls, and the cultist had bragged about Talona’s faithful “rising from the ashes”-a boast he’d meant literally. No wonder he’d been smug. A crematorium, intended to put a stop to one plague, would serve as the starting point for another.
“Was one of those crematoriums in Hlondeth?” Arvin asked.
“Yes-and anyone who was living in the city in ’17 can tell you where it is. But that key is probably for a crematorium in another city. The one in Hlondeth had walls of solid stone, without a door or window anywhere in them.”
“Why would they build it like that?”
Lorin shook his head. “Nobody knows for sure, but the loremaster I consulted heard that the building contained a gate that opened onto the Plane of Fire. I suppose the clerics didn’t want anyone messing with that.”
“How did the clerics get inside?”
“They teleported-together with the corpses they were going to burn.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that. It eliminated the problem of having to haul bodies through the city in carts-and spreading the disease.”
Arvin frowned at the key. The Hlondeth crematorium must have had a door-possibly one cloaked in illusion. That no one had sought this door in fifty-six years was no surprise. Only a madman would want to break into a building in which plague victims had been housed, however briefly.
A madman-or someone with a mind seed in his head.
Lorin nodded at the key. “If I were you, I wouldn’t use it.”
Arvin picked up the key and slipped it into his pocket. “Don’t worry,” he told Lorin. “If I do enter the crematorium, I’ll be sure to take a cleric along.”
26 Kythorn, Sunset
The Plaza of Justice was a wide, cobblestoned expanse, large enough to accommodate several thousand people and encircled by a viaduct supported by serpent-shaped columns. From his vantage point on a rooftop just above the viaduct, Arvin could see down into the execution pits-two circular holes, each as wide as a large building. Inside each pit was an enormous serpent, its body so thick that a man would barely be able to encircle it with his arms. One was an adder, its venomous fangs capable of imparting a swift death. To this serpent were thrown the condemned deemed worthy of “mercy.” The other was a yellowish green constrictor, which squeezed the life out of its victims slowly. On rare occasions, it would skip this step and swallow its victims while they were still alive and thrashing.
Arching over each of the pits was a short stone ramp. Up these, the condemned were forced to march. Their final step was off the end of the ramp and into the pit below.