“Bored?” Sarah said. “I’m bored out of my fucking mind. Amnesty or not, everyone in the underworld knows the Republic is watching me, and there isn’t much legitimate work for a one-armed arcanist. Lynnia pretends I earn my keep here, but truthfully it’s charity.” She let out a long sigh. “That’s the problem, Gyre. I don’t want charity from you, and I’m not sure what good I could do. If you need an arcanist, there’s a few still working I could recommend.”
“You’re the one I trust. And…” He paused, stomach twisting a little, and lowered his voice. “I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. But it’s possible that we might have a… solution for your problem.”
“A solution?” Sarah looked blank, and Gyre tapped his cheek just below his silver eye. Sarah’s eyes went very, very wide, and her voice was a whisper. “You’re not serious.”
“Like I said. It’s not for certain. But there’s a chance.”
“I’ll take it,” Sarah said. “When do we leave?”
“In the morning,” Gyre said. “But I need you to understand that if you’re getting into this, you’re going to be all the way in.”
“I always am,” Sarah said. At Gyre’s expression, she sobered slightly. “Just promise me this is a project that Yora would have approved of.”
“I like to think so,” Gyre said. “In concept, if not in execution.”
“Then I’m all the way in,” Sarah said. “I’ll ride herd on Lynnia’s shipment in the morning.”
“You trust her?” Elariel said.
They were in the square in front of the Tinker’s Gate, one of the half dozen in the southern face of the crater. The Tinker’s wasn’t the busiest, but the square that led into it was crowded enough, with several wagons and their teams loading up and a steady stream of riders and pedestrians. Gyre watched the northern entrance impatiently.
“Sarah?” He glanced at Elariel, who stood behind him in the shadow of a column and out of the press. “Absolutely.”
“You’ll have to tell her who I am,” Elariel said quietly. “What I am. She won’t…”
“She’ll probably want to ask you all kinds of questions,” Gyre said.
“I thought humans hated us,” Elariel said.
“Most humans, probably. They just believe what the Order tells them. But Sarah was one of us. Plus she’s an arcanist, and all arcanists are a little mad for anything Elder.” Gyre perked up. “Ah, here they come.”
At the other end of the square, traffic made way for a small caravan. Three hardshells, each pulling a substantial enclosed wagon, pushed through the mess of loadbirds and thickheads. The smaller animals instinctively gave the larger ones a wide berth.
The hardshells resembled a common tortoise, but enormously larger—the top of their curved shells was above Gyre’s head, and their own protruding head about level with his shoulder. Four massive legs, green-brown and dusty, were in slow but constant motion, moving the creature along at a gentle walk. Their scaled shells were painted in jaunty colors, the first one blue, the others red and green.
Hardshells couldn’t gallop like a loadbird, but they were tireless and fantastically strong and could live on almost any fodder. Their chief downside as beasts of burden was cost—the slow-breeding animals were always in high demand, and priced accordingly. The blue-painted one was on a simple lead tied to a ring in its nose and held by a sullen-looking young man. Wagon wheels creaked and rattled on the irregular ground of the square.
“Supposed to get a signature,” the boy said as he came over. He held up a sheet of paper.
“Of course.” Gyre signed with a flourish. “Any advice for handling them?”
“Just point ’em in the right direction and take a nap,” the boy said. “That’s about all there is to it.”
“Do they have names?”
“We call ’em Blue, Red, and Green,” he said. “But you can call ’em whatever you like—they don’t listen anyway.”
“Well,” Gyre said. “I promise to take good care of them.”
“Make soup out of ’em if you want, it’s no skin off my back. Long as I don’t have to clean up their shit anymore.” The boy yawned and wandered away.
Next to arrive was the rest of the gear Gyre had ordered at the outfitter’s shop, brought in a two-bird cart by an obsequious porter angling for a tip. Gyre was happy to oblige, and helped the man load the trunks into the front wagon, the hardshells watching them with chelonian disinterest. No sooner had the porter retreated, bowing gratefully, than Sarah arrived with another wagon, this one operated by a pair of decidedly less helpful teamsters.
She whistled at the sight of the hardshells and their burdens. “You weren’t kidding. This is quite an expedition.”
“Big bastards aren’t worth shit in the mountains,” one of the porters opined. “Better off with a thickhead every time.”
“Thanks,” Gyre said. “Just stack everything in the wagon.”
The load Sarah had escorted wasn’t the only one. Several more arrived over the course of the next half hour, attended by messengers from most of the city’s major alchemists. They contained chests of explosives packed carefully in unspun wool, barrels of quickheal in waxed paper packets, stacks of glowstones, tubes of glue and solvent, and every other product Deepfire’s best minds could come up with. Toward the end, a Moorcat Combine courier arrived with the bill, which was big enough to make Gyre wince. He counted out stacks of thalers into the uniformed young woman’s waiting trunk until she was satisfied, then hefted the now much lighter sack over his shoulder.
“So what’s the third wagon for?” Sarah said. The first held their gear and provisions for the journey, while the second was packed with alchemicals.
“You’ll see,” Gyre said. “Let’s get moving. The last thing we need is the Auxies deciding we’re the world’s most obvious smugglers.”
The blue-painted hardshell had three cushioned seats strapped to the forward slope of its shell. Gyre scrambled up, and Sarah took the seat beside him, nimble in spite of her missing arm. Gyre leaned over to offer his hand to Elariel, but she shook her head and got in the wagon behind them, where she could be out of sight.
Gyre gave the line attached to the tortoise’s nose a flip, making the ring jingle. That got it moving, and by gentle tugs he managed to point it in the right direction. Behind him, Red and Green lumbered into motion as well, trained to follow the leading wagon as the stablemaster had promised. Before too long, Deepfire’s modest gatehouse passed overhead, and they were on their way down the long, serpentine road.
It was already getting colder, away from the Pit—they’d hurry to descend from Deepfire’s artificial warmth to a more congenial altitude without spending too long in between. Gyre kept the rope in hand, but there wasn’t much to do. Blue followed the road, and the others followed Blue. Maybe the kid was right about a nap.
“Did Lynnia give you trouble?” Gyre asked Sarah as the city disappeared behind the mountain.