A Stone Rolls into Hell
If I combed the continent from end to end, I might dig up another one or two like him. But there's no time.
As it happened, Roomdrax was sitting in Bulta Prison, which made him easy enough to reach.
"If I die and meet Sana on the other side, she'll grab me by the collar before anything else."
I'd wondered why Chyo—who never much cared whether a man was bad, good, or merely strange—was so reluctant about Roomdrax. Apparently it came down to a sense of duty as my aunt.
"Keep it a secret from Mom, then."
"She'll be watching. She sees everything."
"Auntie. Right now you're taking a commission from me. Be my aunt or be Chyo the information broker—pick one and stick to it."
She was the one always telling me to keep official business and personal matters separate, yet it was Chyo whose own line between the two kept blurring as the days went by.
Chyo deliberated for a long while, then sighed and asked,
"Bulta Prison is still beyond me."
"You can do it, Auntie."
"If I'm caught, you'll be in danger too. You know as well as I do that the torture in Bulta Prison isn't something willpower alone can hold out against."
Chyo was speaking as though failure were already assumed. She feared that if she failed and was taken, everything she knew about me would come pouring out. It didn't suit her, the woman who was always so sure of herself—and the reason for her hesitation was written plainly on her face.
It's because of me. I've become Chyo's weakness.
I was the only niece her sister had left behind in this world, and Chyo's love flowed toward me all the same.
"Auntie, I believe you'll succeed."
I gave her the best reassurance I had.
"And where does this faith with no evidence come from? I believe I told you not to trust people so easily?"
"It isn't baseless."
I drew out the report I had prepared in advance and held it out to her. It documented, down to the smallest detail, how Chyorny had been built and how it would grow—every stage investigated and set down on paper. I'd written it so that someday, when Chyo set down her memoirs of Chyorny, it might prove useful.
Out of the hope that such a day would come.
I had never imagined I would be showing it to her now.
"Have a look."
When I held the papers out, Chyo accepted them with visible reluctance. Her eyes darted rapidly left and right.
The report told a single story. The number of people seeking out Chyorny was climbing at a steep rate. It might have looked like a modest achievement, but the pace of that growth stood out.
"See, Auntie? This is your potential."
Without a word of reply, Chyo kept her gaze fixed on the pages I had written. Her fingertip traced the line charting Chyorny's projected rise—the one surging from the bottom left of the page to the top right. Where the line ended, her finger was trembling, ever so slightly.
"You're certain it will really come to this?"
Of course. This was the future I had seen with my own eyes, heard with my own ears, and lived through myself. I nodded without a shred of doubt.
"And our Chyorny will grow into something that could stop a war—or start one?"
Beneath the graph, I had written out what Chyorny would go on to do. The sentences were phrased as predictions, but every one of them was something Chyo had done in the past.
"It will become something that can save thousands of lives—or take them."
Chyo lifted only her eyes to look at me.
"You... hah, no. I'm not even going to ask."
She let out a long sigh and rubbed her face with her hand, once, twice. At last, the gaze that had been pinned to the report turned on me.
"Really?"
I was the one who had proposed this, but I hadn't expected her to accept so easily. I'd assumed she would agonize over it for at least a day or two!
"We're doing it. Let's go see whether this Bulta Prison burns—or needs putting out."
Chyo's eyes were on fire, burning with nothing but raw passion for fuel.
"I'll infiltrate it myself."
A few days later, Chyo came to me with a plan. Naturally, it had her breaking into the prison personally—Chyorny did not yet hold a single talent to rival her.
The sooner she found people to help her, the better.
I left the matter of staffing Chyorny to Chyo and turned my full attention to our plan.
"How exactly do you intend to sneak in?"
"The front door. I'll grab one of the guards at shift change, take his uniform, and stroll in like I'd just stepped out and forgotten something."
"Won't that be dangerous?"
"The very idea of pulling a swindler out of Bulta Prison is dangerous."
I mulled it over, then added,
"It would be best if he were new. They hired a fresh instructor only a week ago, so as long as you're built alike, the disguise should pass without trouble."
"They check eye color, I hear."
"I'll find a craftsman who makes glass eyes."
We talked through every problem we could foresee, working out a solution for each as we went.
"I need money."
"You can't do the job without funds, after all. How much?"
Chyo held out a slip of paper with a figure written on it. I'd wondered why she wouldn't simply say the number aloud—then I saw it was a considerable sum.
"It isn't money to be squandered. To start with, I'll need to teleport to the region where Bulta Prison stands."
Teleportation was a crucial means of transport linking the major cities, but a single trip cost a small fortune, so ordinary people never used it.
"You know they log your identity every time you use a teleport."
"Exactly. That's what I've been turning over. Without a teleport, the job will drag on terribly—and you said this was urgent."
A way for her to ride a teleport without exposing herself. One idea came to me.
"I'll go with you. You'll travel as my maid, standing in for Jenice. Once we've teleported to the city near Bulta Prison, I'll stay behind there."
Since only those with verified identities could use a teleport, following my suggestion was plainly the right move.
"Will you be all right?"
Chyo looked none too pleased, but she couldn't come up with anything better.
"I'll say I've fallen ill and gone away to convalesce. There's a fine hot spring in the city near Bulta Prison, after all. Once we've teleported, it's another two days' journey to the prison itself. And then?"
I didn't press her with any more questions. I trusted Chyo—and I chose to believe she trusted me just as much.
"Three days. Within three days I'll make contact with the man, and if he's willing to come out, I'll send word."
We put our heads together, stripping out every risk we could find.
"Oh, and Diana."
"Yes? Go ahead."
"Dangerous or not, it still has to be done. Right?"
One moment she had been the head of Chyorny; the next, Chyo was my aunt again.
"Yes. I mean to see it through even if it is dangerous—and with you beside me, it won't be."
Chyo's expression turned hard to read. Happy and sad all at once, it made my chest tighten just to watch, and I looked away.
"Now hear my side of the plan. For when Roomdrax agrees to come out."
Under the Ehrenberg name, I intended to send the guards of Bulta Prison a lavish spread of food and wine. Father had often sent tokens of encouragement to those serving in state institutions while he lived, so it would raise no eyebrows.
We can simply say I sent them while taking the cure at the springs nearby.
The guards of Bulta Prison were buckling under their crushing workload, and years of minding the continent's most vicious criminals had left them worn thin and sharp-tempered. Perhaps that was why so many of them drank; slipping up on duty after a drink was hardly a rarity. I remembered Dayson grumbling his way through an internal investigation over exactly that.
"We'll send the wine. And they will drink it—count on it."
"Then once the guards are drunk, I make my move."
"Are you confident you can stay hidden for three whole days?"
"You just see that wine ready to send."
The brimming, self-assured Chyo was back. She pulled out the money pouch she'd stowed away in the drawer.
"And what if the man comes out and bolts?"
Chyo asked as she tucked the pouch into her coat. Perhaps because I was involved, she was double- and triple-checking every step in a way quite unlike herself.
Keep tapping a stone bridge that many times and it'll crack right through, you know.
Still, this was serious business; we owed each other a proper accounting of our safety. I laid out my thinking for her, calm and even.
"The moment he reads that letter, he'll try to meet me. At least once."
I had stuffed the letter for Roomdrax full of every lure I knew he couldn't resist.
I did promise to show him the kingdom's sacred relic.
The sacred relic of the kingdom—a thing that existed only in legend—was kept in the deepest recess of the royal palace. Only the King and Queen could ever lay eyes on it, and even then, only on the day of the grand royal wedding. That fact was a closely guarded secret: every subject of the kingdom knew the relic existed, but when and before whom it might be seen was shared among the royal family alone.
Could some tremendous power be sealed away inside it?
The thought made me snort before I could help it. I couldn't say how things had stood in the Age of Fairies, but the relic passed down and revered through the generations was, by now, a symbol—nothing more, and nothing less.
A lump of rock. A piece of scrap metal, that's all it is.
And yet, for reasons of his own, Roomdrax had shown an outsized interest in the kingdom's sacred relic. It was why he had come to the kingdom again and again. Every past visit to the palace, he had arrived disguised as another man. I learned only afterward that Roomdrax had been there at all, and though I had it investigated, no treasure had gone missing from the royal house.
He risked his neck slipping in and out, and yet stole nothing.
Because he couldn't steal it, that's all.
I came to one conclusion: the thing Roomdrax wanted was the relic—the single object in the palace kept in a place no one could ever reach. My grounds were simple. His movements had crept steadily closer to where the relic lay.
I'm right about this.
So the moment he read my letter, Roomdrax would come to see me. At least once.
After all, he's a man who simply must lay eyes on the kingdom's sacred relic.
Counting down the days until Roomdrax and I would meet, I slid open the back of the drawer. My fingers found the edge of the contract he and I would one day sign.
Wait for me, Your Highness Cassion. The moment Roomdrax is here, I'll hand Twilight Mansion straight to you.
Roomdrax Balancino lay on a bed hard as rock, one ankle hooked over his raised knee, rocking idly as he killed time.
A year now since he'd been locked up in Bulta Prison.
Dull as dishwater. Maybe it's time I got out.
A year was more than long enough to have shown patience. And by now, surely, the public outcry had quieted down.
Roomdrax sketched the interior of Bulta Prison in his head. A full year imprisoned, and still the map wasn't finished—blank patches yawned all over it.
I could use some help. Is there anyone?
He racked his brain, but no face came to mind. He was midway through the thought that he'd wasted his life when—
Tok. Rrrrumble—
Roomdrax's swaying foot stopped dead. That sound had been made deliberately; of that there was no doubt. He rolled only his eyes toward its source.
A single stone lay on the floor.
Pretending to stretch, Roomdrax sat up and drifted toward the small window set into the floor. The little hatch through which meals were passed stood slightly ajar—and in front of it, the stone.
Roomdrax slid his hand out and closed his fingers around it, then examined the stone with meticulous care.
Who threw this?
It had never once crossed his mind that the stone might have simply rolled in on its own. Loose, useless stones did not go tumbling about Bulta Prison, and a floor hatch that opened for nothing but mealtimes did not swing open by itself.
And above all—this stone isn't from this region.
Someone had come looking for him. Roomdrax was certain of it.