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Chapter 065: Beneath the Mine
"We go tonight," Rhea said.It was the middle of the night, and the room above the tavern was stifling with candle smoke. Osric Wane's black book lay open on the table. Tomas had spread his map of Cinderfall across the planks beside it, a hand-drawn thing in brown ink with a dozen crosses and a stain of tea in one corner. Nobody had slept. Mira sat on the floor against the wall, knees up, with the knife in her lap, and hadn't spoken in an hour."The Warden inspector arrives within the week," Rhea went on. "Grayle said so. Once he's here, the Deep is sealed and we've no more chances. If Osric is alive, he won't be for long." She tapped the map. "Two groups. A diversion, and a way in.""I'll be the diversion," said Edric, at once."You'll have dinner with Steward Grayle.""Same thing.""Bram and I will set a fire at the smelter," Rhea continued. "A small one. Enough to draw half the guards and all the bells." She looked at Ethan. "That leaves you. Where's the way in?"He bent over the m
Chapter 064: The Tally Clerk
The tour of the Deep Level was fixed for noon.Edric arranged it over breakfast, in the dim common room of the tavern, with a pot of tar-black tea and an enormous appetite for theatrics. He sent a note across the road to the Tally House on the thickest paper he owned. It requested, in the most gracious terms, that Lord Thornwick be shown the lower workings of the Dorn seam by Steward Grayle himself, at his earliest convenience, and with the appropriate respect. Ethan, watching over the rim of his cup, thought it sounded exactly like a man who had never been refused in his life.Which, to be fair, it was."He'll say yes," Edric said, buttering a roll with enormous satisfaction. "Fear makes people polite. And he's frightened of me. Not for any reason. I simply look like a man who might have a cousin at court.""Do you?""Three. All dreadful." He took a bite. "Rhea, you'll take the east door. Bram on the west. Tomas, you stay here and read something. And you, my dear boy," he pointed his
Chapter 063: Mira's Sister
He caught her at the corner of the last lane before the gate.It took Scurry and every point of Agility he had. She was fast, faster than any thief had a right to be, and Hush swallowed the sound of her boots on the cinders so that she ran through the dusk like a ghost. He followed by her pulse alone. Down a side alley, over a heap of slag, through a gap in a rotten fence. At the bottom of a short flight of steps, she crouched in the lee of a wall with her back to him and her eyes on the iron gate sixty paces ahead, and he came up beside her in two bounds and put a hand on her shoulder.She spun.The knife came out of her sleeve so fast that he barely saw it. It stopped a thumb's breadth from his throat. Her face was white and fierce and absolutely steady."Don't," she said, very low. "Don't shout. Don't touch me. I'll cut you.""I know you will.""Then why are you here?""Because you're about to walk into a mine with forty guards and a bell that can be heard for a mile.""That's none
Chapter 062: Cinderfall
"State your business," said the guard at the gate.He was young, with a sallow face and a green jerkin that didn't fit him, and he said it to the space about a foot to the left of Edric's head. Ethan, standing three paces behind with a satchel of papers clutched to his chest, kept his own eyes on the cinders.[Dorn Guard Tam Rudd. Human. Level 9. True attitude: Empty. Unwilling.]Unwilling. It was a strange word to find on a man with a crossbow. Ethan tucked it away."My business," said Edric, with magnificent hauteur, "is with your master's coal. I am Lord Edric Thornwick, of the Frostmere Thornwicks. I am told Dorn Holdings has a very fine seam at the Deep Level, and a very poor grasp of how to sell it." He lifted his cane and pointed it at the guard's chest. "I intend to remedy both."The guard blinked."You'll want the Tally House," he said. "The steward handles visitors.""Of course I will. Lead on."They went through the gate in a little clump, Edric tapping ahead, Rhea and Bram
Chapter 061: The Long Run
On the third night, Ethan finally spent his points.He did it lying on his back in the bottom of the sled, under a mountain of furs, with the dogs snoring in their traces and the stars wheeling slowly overhead. The northern sky was vast and black and full of cold light. Beside him, Edric was snoring through a mouthful of blanket. Rhea sat upright at the tail, with a bare sword across her knees, watching the road behind them.He opened the window. Eighteen unspent points glowed in the corner of it, steady as candles.Fast. Watching.It was the answer he'd given on a barrel in a stable yard, months ago. It was still the right one. But it wasn't the only thing he needed now, and he knew it. He had been thrown across a ring by a girl he loved and nearly drowned under a lake. His ribs ached every time he breathed.He put eight into Agility. Four into Perception. Three into Strength. Three into Endurance.[STRENGTH 16. AGILITY 28. PERCEPTION 22. ENDURANCE 21.]The change was quieter than he
Chapter 060: Exile
She raised her hand.It was the slowest thing he had ever watched. Her fingers opened, one at a time, white to the wrist, and frost bloomed across her palm in a crystal flower. Her eyes were on his. They were enormous. They did not look away.Forgive me, they said."Do it," Ethan said, very quietly.The lake went black.It wasn't a blow. It was a wall. A tower of blue-white ice leaped from the surface at his feet and took him in the chest like a falling beam, and the world turned over. He felt his ribs bend. He felt the air leave him in a single white gasp. Then he was flying, over the ring, over the rail, a sack of bones in a storm of glittering shards, and the ice rushed up toward him with the whole sky behind it.Flinch.The crack of the strike hit him a half-second late. He hung in the air, rigid, a perfect target, a hammer in his fist and his mouth open on a shout that wouldn't come. Below him the ice went by like a river. He saw the pennants on the Ward pavilion. He saw Hesk's f
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