Honor Among Thieves (15 page)

Hanging in the alcove was an elven skeleton, a
delicate marvel of luminous pink crystal.

Rhendish brushed his fingertips over the ribcage as a
bard might sweep the strings of a harp. Faint music touched the
air, like echoes of fairy bells or the memory of childhood
laughter.

Beneath the eerie sound lay one no human ears could
hear. The sound of magic vibrated through the crystal—a magic as
familiar to Honor as her own heartbeat. Surely these bones could
belong to none but her twin-born sister.

“Asteria,” she whispered.

The adept waited until the heartbreaking sound died
away before speaking.

“No, my dear. Your sister is very much alive.”

That wasn’t possible. “But who. . . How . . .”

He spread his hands in a gesture of apology. “I’m
afraid that some of the details of your history altered somewhat in
the telling. There was a tribunal meeting in your forest grove, and
it ended in blood before the traitor was named. That much is true.
But that winter night occurred years ago. You have been with me
ever since.”

Not seasons.
Years.

The room tilted and swam as Honor struggled to take
this in. She wanted to deny it, but she could not.

“As you pointed out,” Rhendish said, “the living
crystal that is elven bone grows. It is amazing to me how swiftly
it grows, and how intelligently. Truly marvelous, what the proper
application of alchemical knowledge and the passage of a few short
years can accomplish.”

A terrible possibility stirred amid the whirl and
tangle of Honor’s thoughts. What this her crystal shadow, born of
her bone?

“Ah, you see it now,” Rhendish said in tones rounded
with satisfaction. “But you’re not yet sure you believe.”

He reached for the skeleton and lifted one delicate
hand as if he were a courtier about to honor a lady with a
kiss.

Honor’s hand lifted in a mirror-true reflection of
the crystal bones.

The adept dropped both the compulsion and the
skeletal hand. “I will restore your sword arm now,” he said. “The
rest you will have to earn.”

Horror pounded Honor in crushing waves. She could do
nothing to resist this, nothing to fight against the magic that
held her captive.

Magic.
. . .

Of course! Why had she not seen it before?

The strange compulsions, the crystal ring that placed
a target on Muldonny, the grim experiments Rhendish had worked on
her—these were not the work of alchemy. Whatever he claimed to be,
whatever face he showed the world, Rhendish was a sorcerer.

And there was no magic that elven crystal could not
focus and magnify.

It occurred to Honor that there was a
lot
of
elven crystal in this room.

She darted toward the worktable and snatched up
sharp, slender metal tool.

Perhaps Rhendish would force her to thrust it into
her own heart. Perhaps he would hit the tool with a burst of
sorcerous lightning and shock her into immobility. Perhaps she
would slip past his guard and plunge the metal into his eye, ending
his life and with it, her only hope of restoration.

Honor lunged at the adept, determined to break his
hold on her whatever the cost.

Rhendish lifted one hand in a swift, sharp
gesture.

Compulsion slammed into her, stopping her as suddenly
and effectively as an invisible wall.

Honor’s first impulse was to fight it. Instead, she
opened herself to the adept’s magic, drew it deeper into her
being.

Agony seared through her, bone and sinew. Honor
dropped to her knees as the weapon fell from nerveless fingers.

She was wrong. Foolish. The sorcerer’s magic was too
crude, too harsh, too powerful, too alien. No elf could ever sing
in tune with such magic.

And yet, elves could gather energy from starlight.
From bonfires, even blizzards.

She did not have to assimilate Rhendish’s magic. She
only had to use it.

The compulsion was still an overwhelming, discordant
noise, but surely it contained familiar notes. Honor found one,
drew it out in a thin stream, and sent it toward the pale rose
skeleton.

For a moment she was back in the Starsingers grove,
among a chorus of elves attuned to starlight. She gathered energy,
focused it, shared it and received it back in a cycle that went on
and on until every elf in the clearing sang with silent power.

Slender crystal arms rose, delicate crystal fingers
encircled the adept’s throat.

Tightened.

Rhendish’s eyes widened in shock. He tugged at the
skeletal hands for a few moments—the instinctive struggle of any
trapped creature—before he remembered who he was, and what he could
do.

Unseen threads of magic slipped from the room in
search of the clockwork guards. Honor gathered the threads into a
single cord and sent her own will coursing through it.

Four guards clanked into the room. They dropped to
one knee before Honor and raised mailed fists to their chests in a
gesture of fealty.

Honor turned toward the blue-faced adept.

“Release him, sister,” she said.

Crystal fingers came away from Rhendish’s throat,
crystal arms dropped to the skeleton’s sides. The gentle tinkle of
bone against bone sounded like distant, faintly mocking
laughter.

The silence that followed was broken only by
Rhendish’s rasping breaths. To his credit, he faced Honor without
flinching, and he offered neither pleas nor blustering threats.

Of course, the effects of his near-throttling could
have a lot to do with the latter.

“You need my help,” he said at last. “You haven’t
begun to understand how much, or in how many ways.”

Honor could find no words to refute this. “You will
restore my sword arm now,” she said, tossing his words back at him.
“As for the rest, it would appear that we both have a great deal to
learn.”

Return the Thorn to the cabin where you were born.
The elves will find you there and answer the questions you must
have.

Fox had read the note a hundred times since he found
it tucked in his mother’s locket. A hundred more before he showed
it to his friends.

They responded with enthusiasm, each for reasons of
their own. Vishni, of course, was eager to pursue a new tale.
Delgar confessed that he was still shaken by his experience with
the Thorn, still drawn by the seductive lure of so much power. He
wanted the dagger safely away and in the hands of elves who were
too stone-deaf to hear its song. Avidan put aside his new-found
clarity along with his blue alchemist tunic, returning to his pale
green clothing and his dreams of faerie lands.

Planning for a trip required far more than Fox would
have supposed, and he was more than happy to leave the details to
Delgar.

He left his friends to their work and sought a quiet
place to think. Several twisting tunnels later, he sank down to the
stone floor and closed his eyes. Delgar and Avidan’s voices
followed him, mercifully muted to distant echoes.

“Who peed in your porridge?”

Fox jolted with surprise. Vishni stood over him, her
Book of Exile tucked under one arm and a wry expression on her
pretty face.

The fairy shook her head. “Human males,” she said
succinctly, “are idiots.”

Fox conceded the point with a shrug. Whatever the
specifics of Vishni’s observation might be, he had no quarrel with
the overall concept.

“She’s not worth mooning over, you know.”

He stared at Vishni for a long moment before her
meaning set in.

“It’s not like that.”

“It never is.”She plunked down beside him. “Tell
Vishni all about it,” she crooned in a voice that, it seemed to
Fox, was only half mocking.

He’d wanted to tell the others about Honor, but he
wasn’t sure how much he should tell them. Of all his friends,
Vishni had the most creatively devious mind. If anyone could help
him sort through his tangled thoughts, it would be the fairy.

And his thoughts were very, very tangled.

They’d done a good thing, an important thing, in
getting the Thorn away from both Rhendish and Muldonny. Even
Delgar, who coveted the dagger on a physical level, believed that
returning the dagger to the elves was a worthy quest.

On the other hand, they’d all been fooled and
manipulated by a clockwork elf, the half-living creation of their
most determined foe. No matter how worthy the result might be, it
grated on Fox that he’d been doing the adept’s bidding.

On the other hand, this journey could save elven
lives. Knowing the adept as he did, Fox doubted Rhendish would be
content to stop with one clockwork elf.

A memory slipped into his mind like the sudden
appearance of a ghost. He knew with chilling certainty that those
delicate bones amid Rhendish’s curiosities were not, as he had
assumed, a macabre work of art, but the mortal remains of a
murdered elf.

But what about the locket? The adepts had hunted down
and slain anyone associated with Eldreath. If Fox was right about
the inscription on his mother’s locket, Rhendish needed no other
reason to seek Fox’s death. Fox might end up leading him to the
forest elves. That was a risk too large to take.

On the other hand, the desire to learn the truth of
his heritage and destiny burned in Fox like a three-day thirst. For
that reason alone, he would consider all the risks of the journey
worth taking.

And, considering his possible ancestry, that
single-mindedness worried him more than a little.

“How many ‘other hands’ are you up to?” Vishni
inquired.

Fox glanced down at her amused face. “Five or
six.”

“There are a lot of possibilities,” she said, “but
I’ll tell you what this isn’t about.”

“That’s a place to start.”

“Rhendish is not running a long con,” Vishni said
decisively. “If he wanted to find and destroy the northland forest
elves, he doesn’t need us to do it.”

Fox blinked. He hadn’t even thought in terms of a
long con. How could he have missed that?

“Explain.”

She blew out a breath in a short, derisive sputter.
“What,

if anything, in your ongoing conflict with Rhendish
has ever suggested that he’s capable of running a long con?”

“You have a point. So what’s his game?”

The fairy tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Rhendish
wanted to get the dagger away from Muldonny. Maybe because Muldonny
had ideas Rhendish didn’t like, maybe because Rhendish was trying
to avoid trouble with the elves. Or maybe he just didn’t like the
idea of a rival adapt holding onto so much power.”

“Maybe he wanted it for himself. Why else would Honor
take one of Delgar’s glass daggers with her when she returned to
Rhendish?”

“In that case, the story’s over,” Vishni said. “But
for the moment, let’s assume the elf is Rhendish’s creature and her
note to you was Rhendish’s idea. He arranged for us to take the
dagger off on a gallant quest. And in the process, he rids the city
of the most daring and clever band of thieves Sevrin has ever
known.” She grinned and brandished her book. “Or so the story
goes.”

“I suppose it could be that simple,” he murmured.

“Of course it could. You’re giving the adept far too
much credit. Sometimes overestimating your enemies is as dangerous
as underestimating them.”

Fox thought this over. It sounded reasonable, in a
twisted sort of way. “Did you know,” he said hesitantly, “that
Honor is—”

“A reasonably pretty machine? Don’t look so
surprised. I knew it almost from the beginning.”

He recalled the way she had jolted when she touched
the elf’s arm. Having seen the cold iron gears under that pale
skin, he understood why.

“You couldn’t have told me?”

Vishni shrugged. “That a living elf was also a
clockwork monster? You might have believed me, but I doubt it.”

In truth, Fox wasn’t sure what he believed.

“What if we’re wrong about Honor?” he said softly.
“What if she’s staying with Rhendish because she has no
choice?”

The fairy took a deep breath, let it out on a quick
huff. “What if we are? If we snatched her from Rhendish, he would
pursue. Our chances of getting the Thorn back to the forest elves
would be slim. And assuming there’s still a real elf somewhere
among those gears, this is what she would want us to do.”

Fox remembered the silent entreaty in Honor’s
winter-cloud eyes and found that he could not disagree.

The fairy rose and glowered down at Fox. “Are you
going to pack, or do you plan to let Delgar carry your supplies?
Because it’s only fair to warn you that I plan to make him carry
mine.”

A grin edged onto his face. “I wouldn’t have expected
anything less.”

Fox took the hand she offered and let her pull him to
his feet. The distant cacophony of voices sounded less discordant
now, and he felt the first stirrings of excitement. They were
leaving Sevrin on an adventure, a good and worthy quest.

And when he returned, he would rescue Honor from
Rhendish Manor.

This thought surprised him. The next insight was
equally startling: It didn’t much matter to him whether she was elf
or machine. He would save her, whatever that meant. Whatever that
took.

The decision felt right. He strode back toward the
Fox Den with a light step and a lighter heart.

Vishni watched him go, and gave him a merry wave and
smile when he looked back.

When at last he disappeared into the maze of tunnels,
the fairy settled down, opened her book, and began to write.

Contrary to human supposition, stories do not simply
“happen.” A story must be shaped and nurtured. If this exile’s
years in the mortal realm have taught her anything, it’s that a
true storysinger must lend her voice to a tale as it unfolds.

Villains, on the whole, are easily managed. Appeal
to their pride, or their greed, or even their earnest sense of how
the world should go and how people should think, and they will
perform like trained fleas in a miniature circus.