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two young, black-haired children on the gallery with a veiled woman. Her eyes were grey: another faie,
perhaps, and certainly a slave. She looked away quickly, whispering to her charges.
As they neared the archway at the back of the courtyard, Alec caught the scent of meat cooking, so
rich and strong that he paused again, savoring it. This time his handler cuffed him on the side of the head
and nearly yanked him off his feet by the chain.
They passed under the arch and down a short flight of marble stairs into a smaller courtyard. This one
was planted with trees and herbs, all ripe or gone brown with frost. On the far side stood a long stone
cottage decorated in the same style as the villa. The courtyard wall to the left of it featured a large,
elaborately carved fountain niche.
Lots of handholds there, thought Alec.
To his right he saw the entrance to yet another walled courtyard, where a large central fountain tinkled
and splashed in a broad white basin.
His guards hurried him across to the cottage and knocked at the door. Ahmol let them in.
There were no windows; instead, skylights let in the morning sun, illuminating a large workshop that
reminded Alec at once of Thero s rooms at the Orska House. It even smelled just as bad as they
sometimes did when the wizard made fire chips: a mix of hot copper, sulfur, and shit that made his eyes
smart.
The center of the room was dominated by a cylindrical brick furnace, which the Orska wizards called
an athanor. It was about four feet tall, with small windows near the top, through which the flames showed
like a pair of flickering yellow eyes. A big-bellied glass retort sealed with a clay plug sat atop it. Inside,
something that looked like dull green mud bubbled and roiled.
At the left end of the room, furthest from the door, stood a miniature pavilion painted with rings of
symbols he d never seen before. The right-hand wall was dominated by a brick forge. An array of iron
tongs and tools hung from hooks next to it, and baskets full of rough stones and thin rods of different
metals were lined up underneath these. Small ingots of gold and silver lay in neat stacks on a shelf.
Several small anvils took up a bench in the corner. A much larger one stood between the forge and the
athanor.
The remaining walls were lined with bookcases, workbenches, tall cabinets, and polished chests with
small, carefully labeled drawers. One table held a collection of glass vessels on iron stands. Some of
these were very like ones he d seen Nysander and Thero use. A large glass distillation vessel was
currently bubbling on a tripod over a brazier, half-full of a thick blue liquid. A long snout arched from the
top of the vessel, guiding drops of condensed steam into a white crucible.
The largest apparatus was comprised of a pear-shaped clay vessel sitting on a heavy wrought-iron
tripod. A crazy array of thin, curly copper tubes stuck up from the lid like a madwoman s hair. Some
kind of distillery, he supposed.
Overhead, hundreds of colorful cloth bags and strings of desiccated animals hung from the ceiling
beams. There were frogs, rats, birds, lizards, squirrels, rabbits, and even a few fingerling dragons among
the latter, he saw with a shudder of revulsion. Assorted skins and bones took up table space near an
inner door, which, like the little tent, was covered with strange symbols.
Alec rubbed his smarting eyes. There were other, more familiar instruments scattered about: a set of
brass sextants, a large brass astrolabe, chisels, saws.
One of his guards pulled him over to the large anvil and secured the end of his chain to a heavy ring on
its base. Giving it a good shake to show Alec how strong the lock was, they left him there and went out,
leaving the door to the garden slightly ajar.
When Alec was certain they were gone, he went back to his appraisal of the room. Those metal rods
could probably be used as weapons, and where there was an anvil, there must be hammers. If he could
just smash off the lock before anyone came back-
The chain was about only an arm span long, though, and try as he might, there was nothing within
reach. The anvil was far too heavy to drag. Still listening intently, he got down on his hands and knees,
looking for something, anything that he could use on the lock.
The floor was made of wide, bare planks, and he ran his fingers along each crevice as far as he could
reach, hoping to find a loose nail. He d nearly given up hope when one fingertip snagged on something
sharp. He picked frantically at it, peeling a fingernail back in the process, but at last pried out a thin metal
needle file as long as his hand.
Thank the Lightbearer! He crouched by the lock at the anvil and inspected the keyhole. It was large
enough. This could work!
He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment and took a deep breath to steady his nerves, then set to
work. He examined the padlock closely, looking for any sign of wards or traps. Among those he d been
made to practice on, some had holes where spring-primed needles could jab out, coated with some nasty
poison. He saw no signs of those, though, and set about probing delicately into the works with the sharp
tip of the file.
The lock was large and heavy, but of a simple design-probably no more than three tumblers to shift.
The file was a crude pick, but it was enough. One after the other, the tumblers clicked back. Alec pulled
the hasp loose and unhooked the end of the chain.
The sudden sound of clapping startled him so badly he dropped the lock and the file. Yhakobin stood
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