Chapter 55 - Personality of a Dancer

  When I get back, both Rworg and Finna are sleeping. Finna nestles at Rworg’s side, head resting on his arm. Rworg is sleeping on his back, other arm dangled over his eyes. I try to move quietly, but Finna twitches awake as I step into the shadow of the trunk.

  She opens an eye and rises up. “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing,” I say, sitting down next to where Rworg is sleeping. The shadow has moved and one of his legs is out in the sun. “Should we move that?”

  “Yeah. Just do it. He won’t wake up. The guy sleeps like a corpse.”

  She’s right. I lift the leg and hoist it back into the shadow, placing his ankle on top of his other ankle. He makes a small noise, but that’s it.

  “That’s why I use him as a pillow,” Finna says. Her cheeks are pale rosy and she avoids my gaze. “Don’t tell him that, though.”

  I let her avoid my gaze, peering into the sky. “Thanks for the tip. I always thought he looks too lumpy for a pillow.”

  “Your brain is lumpy, coming up with only vomit-spewing ideas one after another.”

  I chuckle. She has a point, even if the metaphor is a bit mixed. “Next one will not have anything to do with teratomes. Promise.”

  Finna harrumphs and stands up. She yawns and cracks her neck, then lifts her arms up and pulls on her wrist with her other hand, angling almost perpendicular to one side and then the other. Dropping her arms, she grabs on to her legs and pulls her torso to touch her knees, dark hair swiping the black stone under her feet.

  “How can you do that?” I ask. “I mean, who are you? Can all thieves in Tenorsbridge fold themselves in half?”

  She grunts, head still between her legs. She pulls with her arms, cracking down one more time, before standing up and throwing her hair back from her face. “I was training to be a dancer, but it was stupid. They said I don’t have the personality for it. So I started doing something else.”

  “What kind of personality do you need to be a dancer?”

  “The kind that doesn’t break a teacher’s nose for correcting their pose too many times.”

  “That does seem a bit harsh, to be frank.”

  “Want to get your nose broken, too?”

  I chuckle and raise both hands in the air. I’m smiling and the gesture is to show I understand she’s joking, but maybe it’s still good to have something between us, just in case.

  She drops to squat, resting her elbows on her knees, hands pushed into her hair. “He had it coming. Total bastard in other ways, too. Astaroth took him out at the end.”

  “Sulphurspew? I met him! He’s a weird guy.”

  Finna throws me a dirty look. “He’s decent. One of the few good and honest people in the whole city.”

  I sit down too, stretching one leg ahead of me. It’s not a bad idea, with all the running we have been doing and will soon be doing again. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?”

  “Know many people called Astaroth Sulphurspew?” she asks. “But ok, fine, he is weird. But fair too, and that’s what matters.”

  It’s funny to know Finna and Astaroth seem to have some sort of history. Although in hindsight, it sort of makes sense. “Do fair and honest people usually take out dance teachers? I met him and thought he was just a merchant.”

  “He is. But sometimes a merchant also looks out for the little people and sometimes a teacher tries to sell his pupils to be carted off somewhere. No one was sad when he fell off a balcony.”

  She mentions it so casually. I didn’t know this kind of stuff happened in the city, but I guess it makes sense. Ral always said the cities are the actual dangerous places and living in the village is easy and simple.

  “That kind of stuff is in the past now. They can stop all that in the future, if they want,” Finna says, dropping to sit on her butt.

  The Mountain Ride. They can just stop people falling off balconies or put down a mattress or something. Though actually, I’m more shocked by the idea that someone would be trying to sell people than by them falling off a balcony. I might put down some spikes instead. “Is that how…?” I let the question hang.

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  “Yeah, Lictor nabbed me.”

  “Go ahead,” Rworg says. He sits up, pushing down one hand on the ground. “The sun was in my eyes, but now that I woke, you should tell the story.”

  “It’s not that interesting. Except I did see how they got the thing. That was pretty odd.”

  “What?” both Rworg and I say at the same time.

  Finna leans one way and then the another, as we press closer to her from both sides.

  “The elf is going to miss it,” Rworg says, rubbing his hands together at her. “I will tease him the rest of the way.”

  “You have to tell us,” I say too, reaching a hand to grab her shoulder.

  She slaps Rworg on the forehead and kicks at my hand, slapping it aside. “Keep your pants on and get out of my face. I’ll tell you, damn.”

  Rworg rubs at his forehead and sits back down. “We will behave. Please.”

  “Fine. But only because it is hilarious that the Peacock will miss it.”

  I’m not a storyteller, so shut up. I’ll just tell it how it went.

  So, there I was, robbing the council. Wizards are easy marks if you don’t try to steal anything too hot. And with that, I mean stuff that is actually on fire. But most of the time, they don’t even realize something’s gone. I once stole all the silverware from the same wizard three times. He just kept replacing them.

  Anyway.

  I had been keeping my eye on the Council Building. All the rumors say that the vaults in there are full of stuff that the wizards locked away because it’s too dangerous or expensive or both. Some wizards pay stupid amounts for dangerous wizard crap, and it’s not my problem if they blow up their stupid wizard-selves by messing around with it. Better for everyone, I’d say.

  The problem is that the whole place was warded. If you went close, it made you feel weird, made your hair stand on end. Most people didn’t notice it, but I did. It was just some detection stuff, but I didn’t know it back then and obviously didn’t want to risk it. I’m not completely stupid.

  Now, as I said, there I was when the warding stopped working. I was on a rooftop, checking in on the building when the prickling and the pressure stopped. Like someone had blown out a candle. The guards kept leaning on their spears, dozing off. No one started shouting or running around inside the building from what I could see.

  I know an opportunity when I see one. A thief that doesn’t goes hungry. So I climbed in and went looking.

  What do you mean you want more details? I told you to shut up. Shut up.

  Inside, it was quiet. There were some guards here and there, but I just went around them. Dumb as bricks, like all guards.

  I passed by so much stuff I would have taken otherwise. I’ve had a full crew, we could have carried out sacks of swag by the dozen, but I wasn’t interested in some fancy candlesticks. Those I could keep stealing from some ordinary wizard. I wanted something special. Something that you couldn’t get from anywhere else.

  People hide their most important things either on the top floor in their office or in the basement, behind a thick door. The top floor had lights and people were moving there, so that was out of the question. And the rumors always talk of the vaults being underground, so I worked my way down to the bottom floor.

  The big hall was just a big hall at this point. They used it for lectures and ceremonies and stuff. A janitor was sweeping the place, a real janitor. The kind who sweeps. There was still stuff in the hall, chairs and tables and other stuff, so I hid. I was going to cross the room quick and try to find some stairs going down, but something happened.

  A guy appeared in the middle of the room. There was a crackle and a flash and a shwoop. Like a sound when something gets sucked into something.

  ”Shwoop,” Rworg says, trying it out. “Hmm.”

  ”Shwoop,” I say.

  You really get hung up on the most irrelevant crap, do you? You want to know what he brought with him?

  Yeah, the thing. The Mountain Ride.

  The guy was this old guy, face pulled tight on his skull. His skin was so white it looked like marble. He was wearing a robe, not a bathrobe like the Tenorsbridge wizards wear, but a proper thick one. Runes all over, and I mean it. It made the Janitor cloaks look plain.

  “Lark, I need you for something,” he said to the guy sweeping the place.

  “Uh, me?” he said, or something similar. He was real young and must have been pretty confused. Still, people appearing out of thin air in Tenorsbridge is not that uncommon after all, so he just walked up to the old guy, broom in hand.

  I stayed hidden, obviously. I thought about running away right then and there, but got too curious. This had to be the reason the wards dropped. Something monumental was going on, even if I didn’t know how big. But think about, this was the moment they got the bloody thing handed to them. Just handed over by some old guy!

  Still, figuring that out came only later. At that moment I just thought that if I start running now, I’m sure to run into a bunch of people running in the opposite direction coming to find out what the heck is going on. It was better to stay put for a moment and wait for the confusion to start.

  “Come closer. I’ll show you how this works. Something unprecedented has happened,” the guy said.

  “There is a spot I haven’t cleaned yet. It’s going to bother me a lot if I don’t,” the janitor said. He tried to get back to sweeping, but the old guy grabbed hold of his hand and touched the pyramid again.

  You know what happened. It flashed, and nothing else.

  “Whoa,” Lark said. “We’re back. Was that real? The stuff with the Kerthar?”

  “Yes. You have fifteen minutes before people come. Please, touch the device as many times as you want and find things out for yourself.”

  “It did all seemed really important. I guess I should try to do something about it?”

  “I know you will, Lark,” the guy said, and disappeared. He just winked out, like a paper being folded in half real fast.

  ”Shwoop,” Rworg says, under his breath.

  Don’t you start all that again. And it was more like shwip this time. Other way around, you know?

  Anyway, fifteen minutes was a long time for me to work with. I didn’t know how he knew, but if you can appear into the middle of Tenorsbridge and bring a weird pyramid with you, it’s a pretty safe bet you would know when people are going to come looking. I could get in and out while everyone was still running around, questioning a damn janitor who didn’t know anything about anything.

  I was wrong about the last part. He did end up knowing a lot.