from the others, yet they all worked together to power the whole.
It was breathtakingly beautiful.
Beautiful for a thing that was, Rags suspected, controlling the arrows trying to kill him.
Rags reached in, pinching one of the visible gears between his fingers. The mechanism made a wrenching sound as it ground to a halt. The steady thwip thwip thwip of arrows slowed. From the door below, he heard a clunk, the telltale sound of a bolt slipping free of its hole.
“Shh,” Rags whispered hopefully, lulling the gears to sleep. “Shush now, there you go.” The gear fought against his hold. When he let go, the mechanism stuttered back to life. Arrows began firing again. The door relocked.
Rags couldn’t stay up here to hold the door open and slip through it at the same time. He had to jam the mechanism. Or break it. Do something permanent, so he’d have time to shinny back down, race through the door, and not be shot.
Bend one of the gears, and he’d throw the whole thing out of whack. Rags reached gingerly for another cog, less solid and thick than the first he’d grabbed. A skin-thin sheet of hammered silver. He pinched it between forefinger and thumb, then tried to pry up the edge before it disappeared under the toothy advance of another gear.
The metal fell apart under his hand. Something nipped his finger and Rags yelped, pulling back.
A tiny silver beetle had attached itself to the webbing of his hand, metal mandibles clenched around his flesh. At his touch, the disc had dissolved into a mass of insects, scuttling through the clockwork and buzzing angrily at Rags for his invasion. He reached to crush the beetle biting his hand and it opened its shell, metal wings beating a rapid reprimand. Rags shook his hand, smashing it against the wall in retaliation.
The beetle’s humming stuttered, then increased in volume. Bright red drops of blood welled and dribbled down Rags’s wrist. He smashed his palm into the wall, slamming the bug against the stone over and over.
Finally, it fell in a flutter of silver. Rags didn’t pause to watch it drop between the arrows. He turned back to the gears, beetles swarming in the machinery without gumming up the works.
Another example of dirty fae magic.
Oh, a simple murder chamber with arrows and locks is too easy, Rags imagined them saying. What’s the point of a trap that doesn’t fight back every chance it gets?
Unfortunately, there were no fae left to curse.
So Rags did the sensible thing: grabbed a nearby rock, rolled his sleeve down to protect his bleeding hand, and plunged both rock and hand into the beetle-infested nightmare.
Easy—if you don’t mind pain. A good thief could turn his impediments against themselves, spin obstruction into a way to the prize.
Rags wasn’t much, but he was a good thief.
With the crunch of splintering metal and a plaintive whine, the machinery ground to a slow halt.
Rags heard the door’s bolt slide back once again. The volley of arrows died, replaced by yawning silence in the tunnel. The last of the beetles fell, twitched, stilled.
Rags crept to the edge of the alcove and climbed down the way he’d come.
On the floor amid the scattered black shafts of the arrows lay the first beetle, the one that had bitten him.
“Could be worth something,” Rags told himself, and pocketed it.
But the door was open, and that was more important. Heavy stone he didn’t trust not to fall as he darted underneath, feeling foolish but relieved when the slab didn’t hurtle down to crush him.
On the other side, Rags popped the mirror from his pocket and notified Morien that he was taking a break. Much needed. Completely justified. He’d opened two doors already.
“It’s three, actually.”
Rags hadn’t realized his eyes were closed until Morien’s voice alerted Rags to his presence.
The sorcerer was holding out an apple. Rags took it and bit into it, didn’t ask where it’d come from.
“What d’you mean, three?”
“Had you not located the switch, you would have continued your descent into a bottomless pit, indefinitely,” Morien said coolly. “That too was one of the doors. Now finish that apple. You’ll need your strength.”
Like Morien needed to tell a Cheapsider not to waste food.
But there was something off about the fruit. Sweet at first, it had a bitter aftertaste that lingered, and it was too rejuvenating to be a normal, nonmagic apple. Rags hated to think of the trouble he’d gone to to avoid being poisoned by fae arrows if he was