Free The Destruction of the Books by Mel Odom Page B

force Raisho to give up sunk. He wouldn’t have been too badly disappointed if the locks had proven too much for Raisho. The dweller forced himself up again, crouching on trembling knees as he went down the steps. Once on the main deck, he joined Raisho at the door.
    “I see that Herby isn’t the only one with dubious skills,” Juhg whispered.
    Shrugging, Raisho replied, “A knack. Something I picked up in me youth. Merely a passin’ fancy.” He drew his cutlass again, then pushed against the door.
    Juhg remained to one side of the door. His heart seemed like it was going to explode. He fully expected something to rush at them from the darkness of the captain’s quarters.
    “Can ye see anythin’?” Raisho whispered.
    A dweller’s vision at night, like an elf’s and a dwarf’s, was better than a human’s. That was one compensation the Old Ones had endowed the other races with after providing humans with such a capacity for reproducing and tastes for conquering and exploring. At least, Vodel Haug had put forth that possibility in his Treatise on the Races: The Lasting Impact of Wars and Poetry.
    Hesitantly, Juhg peered into the cabin. “No goblins,” he announced.
    “Good.” Raisho strode into the room with his blade in his fist. “Come on.”
    Juhg forced himself to follow. Cold wind blew in from the sea and crossed the back of his neck. He shivered.
    Raisho lifted the glass on the lantern hanging on the wall.
    “What are you doing?” Juhg demanded.
    “I can’t search this room in the dark.” Raisho pulled up the wick.
    Hurriedly, Juhg closed the door and stood with his back to it. He watched in disbelief as Raisho used his own tinderbox to light the lantern.
    Yellow light filled the room and brought Raisho’s face out of the darkness in gleaming relief. Smoke twisted in tiny threads up to the cabin’s low ceiling and pooled there briefly before spreading and thinning away. Cargiff oil wasn’t completely smoke-free. After spending hours trapped in a room lit by lanterns aboard Windchaser, Juhg wistfully remembered the sweet smell of glimmerworm juice that lighted the halls within the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Now, however, he was glad for the oil stink because it helped cover up the stench of the goblin captain’s quarters.
    Buckets of bones and refuse sat at the foot of the captain’s unmade bed. Weapons adorned the wall, and Juhg knew from past experience that goblin commanders and leaders all had stories to tell of the weapons in the creatures’ possession, of how the goblin had killed warriors in glorious battle. Most of the weapons came from junk the goblins picked up and passed off as trophies of war. Cloaks and outerwear lay strewn across the room and filled four sea chests.
    Raisho wasted no time searching the room. The young warrior plowed through the personal belongings in short order.
    Juhg took a more sedate approach, even though a screaming voice in the back of his mind kept worrying him with the possibility of discovery. He didn’t cover as much of the room as Raisho did, but he was thorough. Unfortunately, that thoroughness required coming in contact with the crawling vermin that lived within the goblin captain’s things.
    “I don’t see how these creatures can live like this.” Raisho dusted an army of insects from his clothing. The bugs crunched underfoot. “If’n I was a bug, I’d choose somewheres else to live, I would.”
    “Ships are worse than the houses goblins choose to live in,” Juhg said. “Goblinkin can move from house to house, abandoning each in turn, or live out in the forest if the tribe chooses. But a ship is a considerable investment.” He shook meal weevils from a pile of garments. “Goblins won’t just leave a ship because they’re too hard to replace. The creatures don’t build them, and dweller slaves don’t know enough to build them.”
    Raisho glowered at the room. “There’s no book here.”
    “There are often hiding places.” Juhg