“The rune! Rune in charge is wicked bad, got them all worked up.”
“I’ve seen it.” Slate rose, looking around the earthlodge. Ifthey kept the prisoner here, perhaps there was something else useful. “At least, some of the magic, I think.”
“Wicked boss rune doing it. It’s bad, lady.”
Aha!A tangle of irregular shapes resolved itself into a familiar pile of weaponry. Caliban’s scabbarded sword was nearly buried under Brenner’s personal armory, and both pairs of boots.
I suppose they must not expect them to walk anywhere, then.
“What were you doing out here?” Slate asked, strapping knives to her belt.
“Oh, well, you know. Whole column of clocktaurs, so a couple gnoles go along.”
“What the hell’s a clocktaur?” Slate tried to belt the broadsword to her waist and smacked herself painfully on the ankle.
The gnole rolled its eyes at her. “God’s stripes, lady, where you been? You know, eight feet tall, coupla extra legs, made out of little fiddly machine bits?”
“A—you came with theClockwork Boys?”
My god. My god. It works for the Clockwork Boys.
I’ve found one of the enemy.
It didn’t look like much of an enemy. It looked like a lost dog that had wandered off and didn’t know how to get home.
The tattoo on her shoulder seemed to throb. “How are they made? How do you control them? What are they made of?”
“You get me out of here, lady, a gnole willbringyou a clocktaur! We don’t have time for this!”
“Right…right…” Slate grabbed for the next lump on the floor, picked it up…and paused.
It was a helmet.
Caliban didn’t wear a helmet.
She turned it in her hands, baffled. There was something familiar about it, but what was it doing here?
“Lady…!”
“Where’s this from?”
“God’s scat, lady, it was here when I got here. You want to know about the rugs, too?”
There was a shout from elsewhere in the village. It sounded like Caliban and it sounded like pain.
Slate peered out the flap of the door and thrust the helmet in front of her, into the moonlight.
It was a perfectly ordinary metal helm, round, with a short nose guard and a coat of arms stamped on the side. Slate had seen dozens of them. Hundreds. She’d looked down at the top of them from drainpipes and rooftops.
She’d had occasion to examine one most closely, recently, when the wearer had her pinned down in the Captain of the Guard’s office, while she sneezed and sneezed and sneezed.
She rubbed her nose and stared at the Dowager’s guardsman’s helmet.
She started laughing. She couldn’t help it.
Well. Now I know what happened to the last group they sent out, anyway.
She slid back inside the hut and dug through the gear on the floor. Swords, knives, a mapcase.
