a fine place to secure a precious relic, but Corin couldn’t guess where to begin. He saw no sign of Avery, either. The gentleman was well and truly gone. Corin cursed, showing aggravation to hide his fear, and moved deeper among the passageways.
Corin stepped into one of the storage vaults at random, out of sight, and stood for some time straining to hear any useful noise over the pounding of his heart. He could imagine the distant clang and crash of weapons, but he heard nothing else at all. No footsteps. No voices. No pursuit.
Perhaps Kellen was winning.
Corin dashed the thought. It was not worth hoping for. Kellen the Coward? Cruel though the reputation was, a soldier didn’t win such a name through battle prowess. Corin forced down the hope and focused on making the yeoman’s sacrifice worthwhile.
For now, he was mostly hiding. The catacombs made an excellent place for that. Strange magic flames provided some illumination at every crossing corridor, but shadows lay heavy between them, and the darkness in the vaults was almost complete. Only Corin’s well-trained eyes allowed him to recognize the shapes of crates and shelves.
The darkness made for excellent hiding but lousy searching. So, too, the extent of the catacombs, which at a glance seemed to cover at least as much ground as the sprawling mansion. Corin could easily have spent days searching among the vaults before he could find the one that held his object.
But it was not so difficult a thing as that. He knew that Ephitel had moved quickly, rushing from the dungeons to his home and then back to the palace. If he’d come into the cellars, he would not have wandered far or aimlessly. He would have chosen some special vault, or one that was nearby and handy.
Corin didn’t dare return to the rooms nearest the stairs, but they seemed unlikely candidates anyway. Too easily accessed. Corin set his hope on a more secure stronghold and, still straining his ears for any recognizable noise, he set off deeper into the gloom.
He’d made two turns in his first hasty flight, just to get out of sight, but now that he was farther from the stairs, he worked his way back toward the central corridor. That did seem the most likely. As he approached it, he paused again and again, expecting some sign of searchers, but there was none. He peeked around the corner when he reached it, then eased his stolen sword within its sheath and slipped onto that path.
No one met him, but at the next room he passed, he felt a little thrill of vindication. While the doors of the others stood open through empty stone archways, the rooms along this hall were sealed with iron doors. He felt the pockets of his cloak, searching out the flimsy lockpicks he’d borrowed from Parkyr, and tried them against the first door he came to.
The lock’s mechanism was not a complicated one, but it was heavily made and tough to turn. Corin quickly found the combination to the lock’s tumblers, but when he tried to turn the lock, Parkyr’s miniature tension wrench snapped across its middle. For one long, miserable moment Corin stood staring down at the easiest lock he’d ever failed to open. Then he remembered the torn handle of old man Bryer’s tin cup. He found it in a pocket of his cloak and bent it to the task. With a little force and an unfortunate metallic skreek, the heavy iron door fell open.
Corin darted into the room and pushed the door very nearly closed. He dropped the tin handle into the gap to keep the door from closing all the way, then turned away from the door and waited for his eyes to adjust.
What he found, to his surprise, was paper. Stacks and stacks of the stuff. Most of it was tied in bundles, wrapped in coarser parchment and bound with twine, but nearer to the door he found some open packages. Paper. Expensive material, by the feel of it. Soft and thin. Corin might have expected it for some manner of counterfeiting—perhaps to draft more of those writs of provender—but the sheets were too small. Any given piece was barely larger than Corin’s hand.
He wasted no time puzzling over it now. His goal was to find the sword, and it wasn’t in this room. The corridor outside was still deserted. Corin was able to force the next lock much more quickly, but inside that room he found