They spent a few hours each day exploring the various districts of Ith. It seemed some regions of the metropolis remained untouched by the failed revolution and the Mage King’s onslaught. The enormous walls were not all as large as the first they had marched through, but the unseemly slabs of rock still dwarfed, in scale, any wall Renado had seen before.
In a way, after those eerie days among a city’s haunted populace with mythical overlords mere miles away, Ren could relate to the jittering paranoia of Darr, their peculiar guide. A few days after the scrapes and bruises earned in the cinders of Axar’s home had begun to heal, Darr took them into the dense streets of Pranan’s Hill. He showed Ren and his men the place where he had turned back, abandoning Lotha and her loyal followers to whatever fate awaited them.
That alleyway, where Darr’s cowardice had triumphed, became the epicenter of Ren’s search. Five days later… he had found not a single track of the sorceress, nor any word of the revolutionary leaders and the presumably late Axar.
Back at the Drinkhouse, Woodro became uncharacteristically sombre, one evening. His boasting tales and adventurous spirit were dampened, temporarily. Karsef sat to his left, topping up his cup for him with his good arm, while leaning back in a way that his slung arm would be more comfortable. It was Asar, who’s most recent scars were those earned in his captivity beside Lerran, Vanci, and the rest, in Sheld, who sat closest to Ren and watched him tinkering with the lock on Axar’s secret lockbox.
Renado paused, the narrow pin he’s been clenching held loosely in his hands. “It seems like a lifetime ago,” he said.
“What’s that?” Karsef asked.
“The glory days,” Woodro murmured. Could his façade of heroic warrior be any more like a stage character?
“Ren?” Asar questioned. “What was a lifetime ago?”
“What he said,” Ren decided with a smile. “When I fought my way through those Grey Brethren mercs to find my brother rotting in that cell.”
“And the fire!” Woodro said, his eyes lighting up. He eagerly swigged from a brown and black oryx horn with metal pins as supports. The narrow cup wouldn’t hold enough ale or beer to be worth it. Ren had no idea what distillations his friend had discovered at the Drinkhouse.
Ren scowled, comically, and went back to his task. The metal was worn and grey, but the lock had given him a week of obsession at the inn. He had lifted two pins in the lock once, only to turn away with anger when they had fallen upon a mistake with the third. He tinkered away at it while Asar scratched some hardened dirt off a corner of the tabletop. With a shake he hadn’t intended, Asar sent a shudder through the lockbox as Ren set to work on that third pin again. It popped into place. “Whoa! Shh! Shh—be still!” he exclaimed.
All those at the table froze. Ren delicately teased his thin wire deeper into the lock. There was a fourth pin. He could feel it, like an obstacle in the keyhole, and delicately worked it with the wire until it started to rise. He was starting to sweat, with every muscle in his arm clenched to keep his hand as unmoving as a mountain.
Click. He felt it, like an earthquake, as the last pin slid into place. “I got it,” he breathed. He lifted the top of the lockbox, and it squeaked on old hinges. Ren forced the lid up until it stopped, and then tossed away the wire he’d been using.
His friends—save Woodro—rose to their feet to see what lay inside. Gleaming in the light of a small, hanging lantern, was a small sea of silver coins. They were not Ith sovereigns, called crowns, but they weren’t the copper commoners either. Vagren coin, perhaps? It was Axar’s own private treasure store.
“There’s a page,” Karsef realized, pointing in.
Ren touched the cold coins and shoved them into one corner of the lockbox until he could pull out a rolled page. The seal, without sigil, was already broken, and the creases revealed the letter had already been read by the slain sorcerer.
The words, written with a dark grey ink, were small and neatly justified across the page. Renado read them in his head. ‘Axar of Ith. You don’t know us, nor will you. We are the faceless of the south, the stricken of the Orrish, the grey men and women beneath the Sky God. And you have sinned—by all the powers that be, you have sinned more than any man. In your own words, “Call forth fire from within the rock, and lay them low.” That’s right. We have your letters, received in Ellakar before there was a volcanic Mount Lukar. If given to the right people, or published in the right circles, you will be hunted off Gethra for your crimes. If you wish to preserve your secrecy, you will act now. You will sever your ties with any schemers in the Raderan heartland. And you will bring light to the people—by any means necessary. We will be in touch.’
“I can barely piece it together,” Ren admitted. He glanced at the barkeep, who had been leaning on the counter to watch them cracking open the strange box at last. “A cider. No, a beer.”
“One, coming up.”
“Two…” Woodro called, weakly. Karsef chuckled and poured him more from a small flask.
Asar had only glimpsed the letter’s contents. “Is this what we need?” he asked. “To bring back to Irrith in Vagren?”
Ren shook his head. “Doesn’t mention Lotha. We’re only half done.”
He folded up the letter and put it back in the lockbox. With his knife, he popped a few pieces off the lock mechanism, from the inside of the box. He had money, now, and some information, though he barely understood of what it spoke. He knew one thing at least: whatever Axar had done to make himself enemies of Irrith and Lotha, it had not been of his motivation.