Free The Wicked Day by Christopher Bunn Page B

Posle.
    The house was a dark, cramped sort of place, with narrow passages and doors that let into several rooms that looked uncared for: a dirty scullery piled with crockery and garbage, a room filled with what looked and smelled like sacks of dried fish, and several others in various states of disarray. They only spared these a hasty glance, for it seemed that no one was on the ground floor.
    “Quickly now,” said Owain.
    They rushed up the stairs and found themselves standing in a hallway. Arodilac grinned at them from the other end of the hall. A figure lay slumped at his feet.
    “Pull that sock down,” said Owain.
    “Sorry.”
    Hoon knelt at the keyhole of a door, a bit of wire twisting in his fingers. Two other doors stood flung open, revealing stairs up to an attic through one and a smelly bedroom through the other.
    “In here,” said Hoon. “Fat man. Dodged in quicker’n a pig on market day. I couldn’t get my hands on him, blast it. The lad got this one smart enough, but I think what we wants is behind this door.”
    “Break it down,” rumbled Bordeall.
    Hoon shook his head. “Nice oak, this. Built more’n thick. You’d need a proper axe an’ a good sweat at it. Stone frame an’ lintel too. This ain’t normal house construction here. Someone’s gone to trouble.”
    He bent back to the keyhole, but with no luck.
    “Er, if I could have a go.”
    Posle plucked the wire from Hoon’s fingers and knelt beside him. He scrubbed at his face beneath the sock and then probed at the keyhole. Behind the door, there came a faint noise. It sounded like wood scraping together. Something heavy grating against the floor.
    “Hurry!” said Owain.
    And then metal clicked in the keyhole. The knob turned and they flung open the door, trampling poor Posle in the process. A fat man glanced up, sweating, his eyes wide and his mouth gaping. He was in the process of dragging an enormous chest across the floor toward a large mirror hanging on the wall.
    “You can’t—you can’t!” gasped the man.
    “Get him!” said Owain.
    It was probably due to the fact that they all reached for him at the same moment—except for Posle, of course, who had only managed to sit up by that time and wonder dizzily what had fallen on his head—but they got in each other’s way, and the fat man, evidently deciding that the chest was not worth it, hopped backward and dove through the mirror. At least, that’s what it looked like. There was an odd sort of ripple in the glass and the next moment the fat man was gone. The air whispered.
    “A warded gate,” gasped Posle, having got his breath back. “It’s how we—it’s how the Guild guards the entrances to the Silentman’s court. I don’t know how to use ‘em, my lord. I don’t— bless my heart—I don’t! Only the real Guild toffs know, an’ they ain’t many of them.”
    “Stone take it!”
    Owain rapped on the mirror with his knuckles. It seemed hard enough. Glass. Just a mirror. His eyes glared back at him through the holes in the sock. “With luck, though, what we came for is in the chest. Our fat friend certainly seemed determined to take it with him. But we’ve no time to fiddle with locks. Bordeall, you and Posle get that chest back to the barracks on the double. The rest of us’ll have a quick look around before the Guild turns up in force. Arodilac, go downstairs and get Varden.”
    But other than a small leather sack of coins—triumphantly discovered in the bedroom closet by Arodilac—there was nothing else to be found in the house in the remaining minutes Owain allowed. They found dust and a great deal of grime. Varden was convinced the walls had something to hide and began knocking holes in them with his cudgel.
    “There’s gold in these walls here, cap’n,” said Varden, bashing another hole. “Can’t you jest smell it? I can smell it.”
    “That’s enough,” said Owain. “We need to go. We’re out of time.”
    The four men slipped away into the