"What's this?" Jaya said. "A wheel?"

  "Skiver stole one of my ...items," Alaeron said. "Something I'm studying. Just like he stole that disc he tried to gamble away at the tavern last night. He won't give this one back unless I tell him a story about my time in Numeria."

  "Did you ever consider just asking him about his adventures, Skiver?" Jaya sounded more amused than outraged, which was disappointing. "Without the element of extortion?"

  "Where's the fun in that?" Skiver said. "I'm a betting man, and this way, even a conversation has stakes."

  "What's to stop you just stealing them again, then?" Jaya said. "And keeping poor Alaeron on the hook forevermore?"

  Poor Alaeron. Well, that was something. Alaeron would have preferred her admiration over her pity, but pity would do in a pinch.

  "Oh, he didn't like it when I pilfered his toys," Skiver said. "He took steps, you see. He's got his bag so tricked out with traps even I wouldn't mess with it now. Anyone tries to pry in there without permission is apt to lose his hand, if not his sanity."

  "True," Alaeron said. He sighed. "Get me one of those water skins. If I'm going to be talking, I'll need it."

  Skiver fetched the water, and when he came back, he said to Jaya, "So here's what you missed, from the first story he told me—he went into this Silver Mount place with a friend of his, looking for treasures ..." Skiver recited the barest details of how Alaeron came by the relics from the Mount, but at least he didn't add any embellishments, or say Alaeron had been desperately in love with Zernebeth, or anything of the sort. Though having Jaya think of Alaeron as a romantic sort, perhaps one with a tragic loss in his past, might not be so bad. Since he couldn't study his relics anyway without risking Kormak's wrath, and he didn't have so much as a work table at his disposal to develop further mutagens, why not turn his mind toward more ...social interactions?

  "Well?" Skiver said, elbowing Alaeron in the ribs. "Let's hear it. How'd you come to leave Numeria with a satchel full of treasures, then?"

  "After I escaped the Mount ..." Alaeron began.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Escape from Numeria

  He piloted Zernebeth's walker back the way he'd come, racing up the roads toward the palace, making the whistle shriek and sending peasants diving out of the way. About halfway home, he began to wonder what he was in such a hurry for. He'd have to find some member of the League, he supposed, and let them know one of their number had perished in the Mount. And what would happen after that? Another member of the Technic League had died during Alaeron's time in Numeria. In attempting to fashion a weapon from some parts scavenged from the Mount, the arcanist had managed to melt the flesh off his bones, but lived on as little more than a screaming skeleton for fully half an hour. None of the League members, including Zernebeth, had bothered to put him out of his misery: instead, they'd taken notes on his condition, and once he was dead, they'd fallen upon his workshop like locusts sweeping over a field, squabbling over the various half-finished projects in his rooms. Zernebeth had come away with a metal staff topped by a copper ball at the end that shot bolts of red lightning, fusing whatever they struck—be it animal, vegetable, or mineral—into lumps of black glass.

  Alaeron doubted Zernebeth's fellows would mourn her death any more than they had the original owner of that staff. And what would happen to Alaeron? Zernebeth had been the closest thing he had to a friend, and she'd grudgingly let him help in her researches, but if another League member took responsibility for him, Alaeron might find himself tasked to make explosives all day and all night again, as he'd done to prove his worth in the first place, or even used as a pawn in some complex stratagem, if he ended up in the care of one of the more politically-minded members of the League.

  And then what would happen to the relics Zernebeth had died for?

  Back at the palace, Alaeron did his best to act normally, hurrying down the broad and filthy corridors with an expression of intense distraction on his face, as if he were contemplating vast and weighty subjects. (Which he was. Like how to keep his hands on the relics.) He unlocked the door to Zernebeth's rooms and slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind him. He hurried to Zernebeth's workshop—

  Where a captain of the Technic League named Gannix was waiting, flipping through a sheaf of his dead colleague's notes. Gannix's head was shaved bald, and rumor had it chunks of his skull had been replaced by metal plates. Half his face was covered by a chrome-rimmed prosthetic lens that replaced an eye he'd lost in an accident—though rumor had it the lens didn't give him sight, exactly, but some other, stranger sense. His missing left hand had been replaced by a seven-fingered claw made of skymetal and decorated with pulsing red gems. He wore the leather and fur popular at court that year (and, Alaeron assumed, all years), and had a chain whip coiled on the belt at his waist. Alaeron had seen the whip in action once. At the push of a button, the links of chain would stiffen into an unbreakable staff, crackling with white sparks that left burns on anyone who fell under the weapon's onslaught. Gannix was considered overly impulsive and sadistic even by the standards of the League, but he'd braved the depths of the Silver Mount and survived many times, so his standing was high.

  He grunted when Alaeron entered. "You. Zernebeth's boy. You were there when she died?"

  Alaeron swallowed. "Ah, yes, sir, I was assisting her ..."

  Gannix laughed, a sound like clashing gears. "Remind me never to let you assist me, then. We'd assumed you were dead too." He shook his head, mouth twisted in distaste. "Now we'll have to figure out what to do with you."

  "How did you know about Zernebeth?" Alaeron said, then belatedly added, "Sir?"

  "I keep track of my people," Gannix said sternly, eyes narrowed. Alaeron bowed his head. He wondered what that meant, exactly. Some device implanted in Zernebeth's body? A little vial of living tissue scraped from the inside of her cheek, kept on Gannix's shelf, that curled up and turned black when she died? It could be anything. Alaeron was reasonably sure they didn't have any way to track him—Zernebeth's opinion of him had been reasonably high, but for the most part he was considered barely a step above a servant, just a useful outsider from whom the League might wring some work. Hardly worth the effort of surveillance. "Was anything recovered from the Mount on this ill-advised expedition?"

  This was the moment of truth; or, more accurately, the moment of lies. "No, sir. We unsealed a chamber, full of bones and black glass, and were just beginning to investigate when ...it was lightning, of a sort, that took her. I think she triggered some device."

  Gannix grunted. "Very well. We'll have someone go in and recover her, and investigate this device. Anything that can kill someone as well-warded as Zernebeth could be a useful tool." He rolled up the notes and tucked them into his sleeve, then stepped around the table.

  I got away with it, Alaeron thought.

  The captain started toward the door, then paused. "Oh," he said. "Strip."

  "Sir?"

  Gannix's hand strayed to his coiled whip. Alaeron didn't ask another question, just shrugged out of his coat and handed it to Gannix. The captain rifled through his pockets, lining up the various bottles and vials on the table. He didn't take any of them, but Alaeron assumed that was only because he knew they'd be worthless to him—except in rare cases, an alchemist's potions wouldn't work on anyone other than the alchemist himself, as they were specially attuned to their creator's aura and drew a certain degree of power from the alchemist's own life force.

  Alaeron stripped off the rest of his clothes, and Gannix sorted through those, too, emptying Alaeron's coin pouch into his hand and then slipping that money up his sleeve, too. It wouldn't quite leave Alaeron penniless—he had some funds hidden in his bedroom/closet—but the casual, open theft was a humiliation. As one of the richest men in Numeria, Gannix had no reason to steal from Alaeron, except for the captain's own amusement.

  When Alaeron was completely naked, Gannix slipped on a pair of thin black gloves and subjected him to a body search as horrifying as it was thorough, then tossed the soiled gloves onto the stone floor.

  "Fine," the captain said. "Shame you didn't try to pilfer something. I like a little ambition in my lickspittles." Alaeron was silent; he knew if he'd been found with a relic from the Mount, the captain would have given him over to some of the League researchers as experimental fodder—he'd done the same with a slave suspected of stealing a teacup.

  There was a pounding at the door, and Gannix opened it to let in a number of slaves while Alaeron hurriedly dressed. "Help these scum clear out Zernebeth's rooms, boy," Gannix said. "Report to me when you're done and we'll see about a new assignment for you."

  "Of course," Alaeron said. "I'm happy to serve any way I can."

  After Gannix was gone, Alaeron gathered up his few possessions into his pack. He stopped in Zernebeth's workshop and filled his pockets with the most valuable (and portable) items he could find: samples of rare alchemical ingredients, vials of hallucinogenic fluids from the Mount, coils of skymetal wire—anything small and not too heavy. The slaves wouldn't say anything about his pilfering, or his departure; Alaeron's status at court was below that of the Technic League, but miles above that of a slave, and they wouldn't dare risk his ire, even though he'd shown them nothing but kindness. Or, to be more accurate, indifference—slavery as an institution was abhorrent, of course, but some of these individual slaves were subliterate savages.

  Alaeron walked as brazenly as he could out of the room and through the castle. It was early afternoon, but most of the court was still slumbering—Starfall was a nightlife sort of place—so apart from slaves, he had the place to himself. He stepped through the door to the courtyard where he'd left Zernebeth's walker—and where he'd left the relics, secreted beneath a trapped hidden panel near the machine's engine, where none of the superstitious slaves would dare to snoop.

  But the walker was a ruin: legs pried off, seat smashed to splinters, body reduced to boards, engine disassembled ...and relics gone. Alaeron stared at the wreckage, then grabbed a passing slave by the sleeve. "What happened here?"

  "The League, sir," she said, cringing away from him. "They came and took it apart. I had no hand in it!"

  Alaeron nodded and let her go. "Of course. Sorry," he muttered, but from the look on her face, he might as well have been speaking a foreign tongue. She scurried off, and Alaeron considered his options. Gannix's people had taken the walker's treasures as spoils, of course, but there was no reason to think Alaeron had been involved with hiding the artifacts—more likely they'd assume Zernebeth had been the one to secret the relics in the vehicle. The League guarded their projects jealously, from one another as much as from the outside world. Alaeron could simply return to his old mentor's rooms, cart off her possessions to Gannix's workshop, and then accept whatever new position they gave him. But how long before he'd be allowed near the Mount again? The League should have been men of science, but they were horribly superstitious and naturally suspicious, so treacherous themselves that they saw treachery everywhere. Many would probably assume Alaeron had murdered Zernebeth, and others would fear he was bad luck, or that the Silver Mount had taken a dislike to him. Realistically, he'd be stuck making bombs or scavenging around lesser dig sites in the Numerian hinterlands until someone casually murdered him for some imagined or actual slight. He'd been inside the Silver Mount once, and he didn't imagine he'd ever make it there again, unless he underwent the terrible tests of loyalty required to become a full-fledged member of the League.

  For a terrible moment, he considered it.

  But that would just mean becoming a monster, and working for worse monsters. Besides, he wanted those relics, the ones Zernebeth had died for. Those broken pieces had tried to join together. They were part of some shattered whole. The League would break them up, trade them for power and favors, find uses for them or simply destroy them in the testing process. They were only interested in the power the relics could give them—they didn't have Alaeron's burning need to understand, to see what they were for, not just what they could do.

  Which meant Alaeron had to steal them back.

  He returned to Zernebeth's quarters. The slaves were nearly done carting things off, but he grabbed a retort and an alembic so he'd have something to carry to Gannix's workshop. The captain was not the head of the Technic League—his superiors spent their time feasting and whoring and whispering in the Black Sovereign's ears—but he was in charge of several League members who went on expeditions to ruins, and he had apartments appropriate to his standing. Alaeron joined a group of slaves as they carried his dead mentor's treasures across a courtyard containing a fountain filled with poisonous quicksilver and on through a high archway that led to Gannix's rooms. The high-ceilinged, spacious suite would have been lavish if it hadn't been so cluttered and filthy, with huge glazed pots holding the bare stems of dead flowers, looted tapestries stained dark by decades of chemical fogs, and filthy furniture that would be impossible to clean with anything short of fire. Everywhere shelves and long worktables held broken bits of relics, along with scrolls, ledgers, tools, and dirty glassware.

  A disorderly laboratory, Alaeron thought, was the sign of a weak mind. Too bad Gannix wasn't weak in any other discernible way.

  The captain himself wasn't in evidence, so Alaeron followed the slaves carrying some of Zernebeth's more valuable items to the small room—really a closet, but larger than Alaeron's quarters—where Gannix kept his most prized items. Normally it was impregnable: the door was enchanted iron, the lock keyed specifically to Gannix's aura, the hinges recessed and inaccessible, and the inner walls covered in steel, so it wasn't possible to easily cut in through an adjoining wall. But Gannix had opened it so the slaves could do their work. Why not? None of them would dare steal from him—he would discover any theft, and the consequences would be considerably more unpleasant than mere torture and death. He probably assumed Alaeron would be similarly cowed.

  But when it came to the things that fascinated him—that obsessed him—Alaeron was rarely cautious. During a lull in the flow of slaves, he darted into the room, eyes scanning the shelves. There were treasures aplenty, to be sure: a transparent globe full of crackling orange light, a great hammer with its head wrapped in silver wire, a gauntlet with a glowing bulb at the end of each finger, a helm covered in glass hemispheres bulging like the eyes of a spider, a serrated blade chained to the wall and straining against its bonds—but Alaeron wasn't here to plunder. (Besides, those had been here for a while, probably, and might be booby-trapped.) He just wanted the relics he'd carried with his own hands from the Silver Mount.

  And there they were, piled together haphazardly, not even separated in their protective mesh sacks. Sloppy, and dangerous besides. It was a wonder Gannix had survived this long; or, alternately, no wonder at all that he'd lost an eye and a hand in the course of his researches. In the Technic League, boldness was rewarded, but the distance between bold and dead was a narrow one. Alaeron plucked the relics from the shelf and secreted them in the pockets of his coat, moving a few of Zernebeth's newly relocated items around a bit to cover the gap.

  He stepped out of the strongroom ...and there was Gannix, ten feet away, cuffing a young male slave on the side of the head. Alaeron backed into the workshop quickly. What were the chances that Gannix would leave without looking in here first? Probably not good. Alaeron felt in his pockets for the extracts he'd prepared that morning before setting out with Zernebeth. Ah, yes, the sigil of a closed eye etched into a vial's stopper: that would do. He swallowed the extract, shivered at the slimy cold taste, then waited a moment. Alaeron held up his hands in front of his eyes. He couldn't see them. Invisibility. Wonderful stuff for an adventurer who wasn't that particular about who owned the relics he wanted to investigate.

  Alaeron stepped out of the room, taking a long route around Gannix—being invisible wouldn't make his footfalls silent, after all, or stop him from disturbing the air around him with his movements. But to his dismay, Gannix barked a last order at the slave and started for the door just as Alaeron was approaching the same exit. Alaeron paused ...and Gannix moved, quick as a mongoose, and seized Alaeron by the throat.

  "I see you," Gannix said in a singsong voice, and grinned. Half his teeth had been swapped for jeweled or metal replacements. "This artificial eye of mine isn't troubled by invisibility, boy."

  Gannix was squeezing hard enough to make black spots bloom in Alaeron's vision ...but the alchemist still had his hands free. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a simple folding pocket knife, teasing out the blade. He tried to jam it into Gannix's remaining human eye, but the captain turned his face away, so the blade scored his forehead, scraping against one of the metal plates in Gannix's skull and merely slashing across the eyeball rather than jamming in straight to his brain. Gannix screamed and dropped Alaeron, howling probably as much in outrage as in pain. He'd realize now that Alaeron had a certain fundamental difference from the slaves: the slaves didn't hit back.

  Gannix crouched, cupping his wounded eye, and shouting at the slaves to "Seize him, seize him!" But the slaves couldn't detect invisible people, so it was trivial to dash out of the room and into the palace itself.

  Time was very important now. Gannix would be coming for Alaeron soon, and even blinded, he had his more esoteric eye to hunt with. Worse, he'd mobilize the other members of the League—and the Gearsmen. Alaeron had to get out, and now.

  Fortunately, he'd considered the possibility that he might have to flee quickly, and with angry people in pursuit. Alaeron wasn't always cautious, but he wasn't entirely reckless, either, and the idea that the Technic League might turn on him had hardly been unforeseeable. He made his way out of the palace via several seldom-used passageways—shortcuts Zernebeth had shown him, cutting through old wine cellars and the hallway outside a sealed-off suite haunted by a noisy ghost. He shoved open a rusty door and emerged into the sun just as his invisibility spell faded, but fortunately, there was no one around to see him.