Inside the Safe
“
T
he third lock! He's got the third lock!”
Resting his cramping hands, Wick looked up to find an umbrella of faces peering down at him. The animosity was gone from them. It felt like they were all on the same team, all sharing the same expectations.
Unless I fail
, Wick thought.
Then it's the chute for sure.
“Hey, halfer,” the man with the eye patch said, “let me buy you a drink. You can't keep working at that so hard without a drink. Utald, it's on me.” He flipped a coin into the air.
Utald unlimbered an arm and snatched the coin from the air as effortlessly as a falcon taking a dove. He tested the coin between his teeth, then shoved it into a coin purse.
“What'll you have, halfer?” the barkeep asked.
“Razalistynberry wine,” Wick said, grateful to have the drink.
“That's a sissy drink,” one of the big mercenaries grumbled. “You should get you a shot of busthead. That'll settle your nerves just fine.”
“Just the wine, please,” Wick said. Then he thought about the response he should have made. He frowned and glared up at the mercenary. “Who are you calling a sissy? I'm not just a thief. I'm an assassin, too. Maybe you want to remember that before you go to sleep tonight and don't wake up in the morning.”
The tavern's patrons broke out laughing, and slammed their fists against the counter.
“He's got you there, Jolker!”
Quick as lightning, though, Jolker pulled his sword and had it tucked under Wick's chin.
“You might have a care there, halfer,” the mercenary growled. He jabbed Wick hard enough with the sword to make him step back. “Won't be any trouble to snuff you out with the candle before I got to bed tonight.”
Wick froze, leaning uncomfortably back.
“Jolker,” a calm voice said.
Heads turned toward the voice.
In the lantern light, Quarrel stood there with a bow drawn. The arrowhead nocked on the bow gleamed.
“Sheath that sword,” Quarrel said.
“And if I don't?” Jolker asked.
A thin smile curved Quarrel's mouth. “At this distance, this arrowhead will split your head like a melon.” He paused. “I won't miss.”
But people on either side of the big mercenary drew back. Just in case.
“You're taking a part in this?” Jolker asked. “Normally you don't involve yourself in anything that goes on here outside of a job.”
“One,” Quarrel counted evenly. “Two.” The arrowhead never wavered.
Cursing, Jolker took his sword back. He grabbed up his tankard and abandoned the counter.
“You just made a big mistake, Quarrel,” Jolker snarled. “A
big
mistake!” He left the tavern.
Trembling, Wick accepted the mug of razalistynberry wine from Utald. He tried to drink without spilling it all over himself, and for the most part managed that. As he put the mug on the bar, the little Librarian wondered what Quarrel thought he was doing, and why the young man had taken part in the argument. But Wick was already starting to not think so badly of Quarrel.
“Go on then, halfer, let's see if you can defeat Lusylle,” Utald challenged.
Taking a deep breath, Wick turned back to the safe. In seconds, he'd worked through the fourth and fifth locks. Neither had been anything special, and there had been no further tricks.
Click!
Ratchet!
Covered in sweat despite the chill that pervaded the room, Wick gripped the final lever and shifted the last spring.
“He's done it!”
“The halfer's done it!”
“Utald, whatever you've got hidden in that safe will never be safe again!”
A look of unease pulled at the barkeep's face. He took a step forward just as Wick gripped the doorframe and set himself to pull.
“Wait!” Utald commanded.
“Wait?” Wick echoed.
“Wait!” Utald repeated, stepping back.
That's not a good sign
, Wick thought, stepping back himself.
“Why wait?” Krok asked.
Utald was silent for a moment. “Because the safe may be booby-trapped.”
“âMay be?' You don't know?”
Scratching self-consciously at the back of his neck, Utald shook his head. “No.”
“Why don't you know?”
“I don't know what's in there. It's not my safe. I stole it.”
Wick looked at the big man in disbelief. “What?”
Utald shrugged. “I wasn't always a barkeep. I used to be with a group of bandits. We attacked a caravan and took everything they had.” He nodded toward the safe. “That was one of the things they had.”
“When was this?” Krok asked.
“Twenty-seven years ago. More or less.” Utald looked at the safe. “I just kept it around, you know, in case I ever found someone that could open it.”
“But you put it in the bar.”
Utald nodded. “It made a good conversation piece, didn't it? Besides, I figured that sooner or later I would learn its secret.”
“Do you know who the safe belonged to?”
“Could have been the caravan master's.”
“I never heard of no caravan master carrying a safe like this,” someone said.
“Or it could have been a wizard's,” Utald said.
The tavern crowd drew back. “There could be anything in there,” someone said. “Maybe even something the wizard wanted to get shut of. Maybe a monster. Or some undead thing that kept following him around.”
Tense, the crowd took another step back.
Wick was suddenly aware that he was standing there alone. He slid his fingers around the doorframe, no longer prepared to swing it wide, but rather to slam it shut.
“Open it,” Krok commanded.
“It is open,” Wick insisted.
Krok drew a heavy two-handed sword. He gestured toward the safe. “Pull the door open.”
Wick leaned on the door, hoping that if anything was inside it was dead or didn't know it had been released. He shook his head.
“Do it, halfer,” Krok commanded.
“I'm a thief,” Wick said. “Not a warrior.”
“You're an assassin,” the troll said. “If something bad comes out of there, assassinate it.”
“Assassination, a good assassination,” Wick insisted, “takes time. Something done in the heat of the moment, that's murder. I'm not a murderer. Any unskilled person can do that.”
Utald scrambled over the bar, distancing himself from the safe.
“You've been curious about this for twenty-seven years,” Wick said, feeling somewhat angry that the barkeep wasn't doing the door chores himself. “Haven't you wanted to see what you stole all those years ago?”
“Sure,” the barkeep said, drawing a pair of long knives from somewhere on his person. “Open it up and let's have a look.”
Wick fidgeted, trying to think of a way to escape opening the safe.
“Do it now, halfer,” Krok said. “We're growing old waiting.”
Closing his eyes, terrified of what he was going to find, Wick swung the door wide. He let the iron door carry him with it, hoping to use it for cover, and closed his eyes tightly.
“Bless me,” Utald whispered in the stillness that followed, “for I am a rich man.”
Since he hadn't been struck dead (by lightning, fire, or a death bolt) or mauled to death (by a gargoyle, a dragon, or a banshee), Wick grew curious. Across the bar, the patrons stepped forward again and looked inside the safe in amazement.
“I've never seen one of those made out of gold,” one of them said.
“It looks comfortable,” another said.
“Do you really think it's worth a fortune?”
“You melt that gold down, if it's pure enough, and it'll keep Utald living easy for the rest of his life.”
“I don't know about that. You know how Utald is when he gets deep in his cups and gets around women. It's like closing your fist in a pool of water.”
“Or slow horses. Utald stays an inch away from the poor house because he has an eye for slow horses.”
Krok grinned. “Maybe you should pay to let people use it before you melt it down, Utald. Won't hurt the gold. I'll be your first customer.”
“No!” Utald leaped the counter with the vigor of a much younger man. “Nobody's sitting on that! Or doing anything else either! It's mine! I've dragged it around for twenty-seven years, and put it up here at the Tavern of Schemes!”
So curious he could no longer stand it, Wick looked around the door and into the safe. At first he thought the safe held a chair. Then, since it was made out of solid gold and encrusted with a few gems, he guessed that it was a throne. Hypnotized by the deep yellow luster of the gold, he peered more closely.
On deeper examination, he discovered that the chair had no seat. Well, actually, it only had part of a seat.
“It's a privy,” Wick said.
“Not
just
a privy,” Utald corrected. “It's a solid
gold
privy.
My
solid gold privy.”
Most of the people in the Tavern of Schemes broke out into laughter at Utald's good fortune, twenty-seven years in the making, and others cursed him for it. The barkeep didn't care. Overjoyed, Utald bought the whole tavern a round.
Â
Â
Later, mostly accepted into the fraternity of thieves, murderers, assassins, thieves, etc. that frequented the Tavern of Schemes, Wick drank razalistynberry wine and speculated on how the golden privy had gotten into the safe, and whom it had been intended for. No one knew for sure, and too many years had passed for Utald to remember whom it had been stolen from.
After they'd flushed the subject of the privy from their minds, the tavern's patrons told tales about past jobs and past employers. Wick listened to the stories
the men told. Of course, being the storyteller he was, Wick was soon telling them of his own adventures as a thief and assassin.
He told them about the time he'd stolen King Iakha's magic mirror that kept him from aging (a story borrowed from Hralbomm's Wing), and the way he'd tricked Northern Giants into letting him know where their lair was (from an unfinished story he'd started working on with Taurak Bleiyz as the main character), and how he'd assassinated a dragon by destroying its magical heart.
By the time Wick had walked the tavern crowd through the lava-filled antechamber of Shengharck's lair (Wick actually renamed the dragon and his own purposeful destruction of it, as well as working in a vengeful king who'd hired him to do the deedânot mentioning, of course, that the deed had been accomplished through sheer accident and not design), many of the men were sleeping at their tables or in their chairs.
Wick walked along the countertop much as he had back in Paunsel's in Greydawn Moors when he'd first gotten involved in the search for what had truly happened at the Battle of Fell's Keep back during the Cataclysm. He was slightly tipsy from the wine, for it was a good vintage, but not so much off his game that he wasn't already wondering where he should spend the night. Particularly since he wanted to wake up in the morning.
Then the door opened and four hard-eyed men walked into the tavern. All four of the men wore the open razor tattoo on their cheeks that marked them as members of the thieves' guild Wick had come to Wharf Rat's Warren to scout.
Quietly, the little Librarian walked to one end of the counter and made himself as invisible as he could. He didn't look at the thieves, but he kept track of them through his peripheral vision. He also noticed that Quarrel was keeping watch over them as well.
The Razor's Kiss guild members bellied up to the counter and ordered. “Hey, Utald. Where'd you get the privy?”
“Oh, this old thing?” Utald asked, jerking his hand back toward the privy in the safe. “I've had it for a long time.”
“I've never seen one before,” the tallest of the men said.
“They're rare and unique things, Vostin,” Utald agreed.
A sleek shadow slunk along the counter bottom beneath Wick's feet. The cat was huge, with tortoiseshell coloration and startling gray eyes. Just past Wick's feet, the animal sat on its haunches and gazed up at him in the way that only cats could.