Ahmundi's room was bathed in bright yet eerie acid-green light, radiating from the chandelier on the ceiling and tall, cylindrical lamps made of faceted crystal set at intervals along the walls. Piles of books huddled between them, humbly awaiting a shelf.
Magenta curtains smothered every window. The bed and wardrobe had been shunted into the far corners, making way for a large wooden table cluttered with rolls of parchment and curious paraphernalia, and what appeared to be an enormous, misshapen, slightly deflated ball made of strips of thick cowhide sewn together, sitting next to the table. It could probably house all three of them snugly inside with its size.
Meya scrunched up her eyes against the unnatural, disorienting lighting, then shot its occupant a quizzical look,
"Why dun you use normal lamps, milord?"
Ahmundi nodded towards the mysterious leather ball. He closed the door behind the girls, led them to his worktable, then rested his hand atop his invention.
"Flammable air from the old mines." He smoothed his hand lovingly down its patchwork surface, his eyes sparkling with enthusiasm and pride, "I think we can use it as fuel. If only we can stuff it into a smaller container."
"Why?" asked Arinel as she tore her eyes away from the assortment of gauges, pumps and tubes on the tabletop. Ahmundi shrugged,
"Mother asked Hasif to invent a way to carry a large amount of fuel inside this basket, said it's a top-secret request from King Alden."
He bent down with a sigh and picked up a wicker basket, setting it on the table for the girls to examine,
"She's probably finding a way to harness the light energy of the green crystals, turn it into movement. But I think we're relying too much on the Hasifs and their green crystals, so I'm working on my own method."
"So, this is your container?" asked Meya, holding a metal tube roughly the shape and size of a bundled-up baby she'd retrieved from the floor beside the table. One end was rounded, the other end was a bottleneck. Ahmundi nodded, then sighed and propped his arms on the table, his head bowed,
"I've been testing with normal air. Works quite well. But problem is I dunno how safe it would be with flammable gas. If it's small enough. Or holds enough." He stared ahead with a frown, eyes dark with desperation, "I must see Hasif's work. I must know what I'm up against."
Silence fell. Meya watched Ahmundi's hands on the tabletop curl into fists. She turned and shared a look with Arinel, and saw pain in her eyes as they arrived at the same conclusion.
Ahmundi's lab was his own bedroom. He kept the curtains closed at all times. He didn't dare call himself an alchemist, and he was forced to squirrel supplies from Hasif's lab to further his own experiments, locking himself away in a race against time to best his mother's alchemist.
If Hyacinth was the opposite of Latakia when it came to men and women, his predicament was probably not much different from Arinel's. Possibly worse.
And if he was spurred into action seeing Hasif's growing power, that meant her shadow over the Hyacinth seat was not a benign shade.
Arinel pursed her lips and reached out her hand, but before she could touch Ahmundi's arm, he resurfaced with that little rueful smile, glancing between the two young women,
"Well, that's my story. What about you two? Why are you spying on her?"
The two spies blinked, then shared another look. Meya studied Ahmundi as she weighed her options. The lad had shared top-secret news with them, showed off his invention and pretty much laid bare his motive to two complete strangers, just because they were similarly working against Hasif.
He badly needed something from them, that much was clear. Although it was just as likely a ruse to gain their trust and waylay them, and he might have actually been here on his mother's—or worse, Hasif's—orders to sabotage them, Meya heard the honesty in his words, saw the despair and long-suffering in his smile. And she decided, once again, on the kinder alternative.
"Four of our friends are missing. Three are Greeneyes. Your mother thinks they've been kidnapped by traffickers for their eyes, but we think Healer Hasif might've something to do with it." She leaned in, her voice lowered,
"Lord Coris sent a letter to your mother asking about them, and we got a reply from Healer Hasif, saying they're under her care. But this morning, your mother and Healer Hasif said they'd never seen the letter. Dun you think 'tis fishy?"
Ahmundi frowned and churned his lips, then nodded slowly,
"Yes. It is odd." He said carefully, pinching the curl of flesh on his chin, "All letters addressed to Mother passes through Hasif. She's Mother's personal advisor."
Meya shared another look with Arinel, then cast her eyes to the eerie crystal lamps around the room.
"These green crystals, milord. D'you have any idea what they are?"
Ahmundi followed her lead. As their eyes met, his eyes widened. He had definitely noticed the acid-green sheen shared by her glowing irises and the light of Hyacinth's women. Arinel's blue eyes grew large as her face paled.
"Oh, Freda. You don't seriously think—" She whispered. Ahmundi gritted his teeth, shaking his head slowly,
"I've been inside Hasif's lab dozens of times. She doesn't work on the green crystals in there. She has a secret chamber, but try as I might, I can't break in. Might have something to do with her being a Greeneye."
"Hasif's a Greeneye?" Meya exclaimed, then slapped her forehead as she remembered the rainbow sheen of the sequins on Lasralein's headdress.
"Of course! Her circlet! She's wearing Lattis. No wonder they knew to use Lattis shackles with me. She must've warned them I could escape. So this is why you're so eager to work with us? Because I'm a Greeneye?"
Meya shot Ahmundi an accusing look. Ahmundi shrugged and hitched up his forced smile again, unperturbed.
"Well, I've tried everything. Got nothing to lose. You might have better luck than me."
He confessed simply. Although Meya was a tad annoyed with his somewhat racist motive, that heavy air of despair he gave out was probably the main perpetrator, not genuine disdain.
"We need someone to distract Hasif, and you need to follow me into the lab." She wagged a finger in the air as she calculated, then spun around to Arinel, "Milady, d'you think you can talk alchemy with her for a while? What's her specialty, milord?"
"Well, green crystals, of course." Ahmundi shrugged, "But she's also a healer, so there's that."
Arinel pursed her lips, thinking hard.
"Perhaps I could pretend to discuss anesthesia with her. But how do we discuss alchemy outside her lab?" She muttered, frowning.
"What if you ask her for a tour of the herb garden or something? You have one here?" Meya turned to Ahmundi, who nodded enthusiastically.
"Yeah. The botanical gardens outside of town at the qanats." He pointed a thumb behind him, then rubbed his hands together, eyes sparkling with glee,
"If you could lure her out there, we'd have plenty of time to snoop around. We'd better hurry, then—the sun's already set. Say you're bored and want to kill time or something."
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Ahmundi seemed satisfied, but Meya remembered yet another catch,
"Does Healer Hasif know you're sympathetic to Greeneyes?" She turned to Arinel, who went pale.
"She saw Jerald and I pretending to be the arresting party. And I've stood by for a month while you masqueraded as me. I've no idea what she might have deduced from those." She mumbled, fearful.
"Maybe if you go through Mother? If Mother orders Hasif to be your guide, she's got no reason to refuse, has she?" Ahmundi suggested. Meya nodded as she fingered Coris's ruby brooch.
"Amoriah's busy talking with the Baron right now. She prolly won't think much about it. Anything to get more of us out of her hair."
She rambled out her thoughts, hoping to harness the scattered possibilities in her head, settling on one vivid scenario she could picture and follow, like the strategist she must be in Coris's absence,
"But if Hasif suspects Arinel, she'd destroy all evidence before leaving. So we mustn't give her any time to act. Milady—" Arinel straightened up. "—You go straight to Amoriah. Soon as she calls for Hasif, milord—We sneak inside her lab. If she returns, we bolt ourselves inside."
Her two accomplices nodded, which wasn't surprising in Arinel's case, but Ahmundi was unnervingly unperturbed. Meya leaned closer, staring deeper into his eyes,
"We've only got one chance. We dunno if we'll find anything." Meya narrowed her eyes, "Are you sure about this, milord?"
Again with that bitter grin from Ahmundi. He waved a dismissive hand,
"Oh, I'll live. Mother needs someone to marry a Hasif girl."
He laughed, a laugh that soon petered away when none of them laughed along, leaving him to scratch his head and steer the topic clear of his troubled life he wasn't yet ready to face. He gestured at Meya,
"Better worry about yourself, I'd say. You're Lady Hadrian, and Mother trusts Hasif more than anyone else. If we get caught, she could cut ties with Hadrian for this."
The new information left Meya stunned.
Of course. How could she have forgotten?
She avoided their eyes, her heart pounding in dread. Just as it was back in Jaise, she was gambling Hadrian's interests in Coris's absence. What if she lost the bet? She was no longer just Meya Hild—she was Lady Hadrian. The fallout wouldn't stop at her.
A bell rang inside her head.
Jaise.
Yes. Jaise. Winterwen owed us. Perhaps this would be her chance to make good on her promise. But Ahmundi—He certainly won't like this.
Meya sneaked a glance at Lord Hyacinth, chewing her lips.
"If my hunch is correct, and Hasif really is a Greeneye trafficker, we might have a powerful ally who could make Amoriah see sense."
She said heavily, then met Ahmundi's puzzled look,
"But that depends on how far you're willing to go to get rid of Hasif. Of course, Hyacinth's never in real harm, so long as your mother does what's right by Greeneyes. And curbing Hasif's power might actually keep your mother's throne safe. But still, 'tis treason against your mother and your town."
Ahmundi frowned, tilting his head back and forth as he considered it,
"Maybe it doesn't have to be. What are you suggesting?"
Meya licked her dry lips and took a deep breath,
"Is Hyacinth dependent on Jaise for anything?"
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Meya pressed her eye up against the keyhole as sunlight ebbed out of the room behind her. A servant scurried across the length of the hallway leading away from Hasif's lab, lighting oil lamps mounted on the walls. Every now and then, alchemists in flowing purple robes would walk by, some alone and some in pairs, headed for dinner in the Great Hall. Yet, Lasralein Hasif was not among them.
It had been a quarter-hour since Meya and Ahmundi parted with Arinel. She and the Lord Hyacinth headed for the unused room near Lasralein's lab to lie in wait, whereas the Lady Crosset rushed off to find Lady Hyacinth.
Lady Hyacinth was still under the impression that Meya had set off with the sunset, headed for the Pleasure Lane with Coris and Gillian, her two guards in tow. The change in their plans, however, left them no choice but to put the guards to sleep and stuff them into the wardrobe in the Hadrians' guest quarters, so Meya would be free to sneak off and help Arinel spy on Healer Hasif.
At long last, clattering footsteps echoed towards them, then a servant boy turned the corner into the hallway, hurrying towards Lasralein's door. He knocked. Lasralein's muffled voice must have answered, for he then announced Lady Hyacinth had summoned for her.
There was a pause, then the double doors opened and Lasralein emerged looking annoyed, a length of chains coiled around her arm, and Meya made a fist in silent celebration. Lasralein produced a ring with four keys, jamming one into each corresponding hole on the left-side door. Top, middle, bottom. Then, as the final precaution, she uncoiled the chains from her arm, knotted them around the door handles, then sealed them with a padlock.
Meya readied her sweaty hand on the doorknob as she pushed her face harder against the keyhole. She strained her eyeball against the confines of the narrow field of vision she'd had to work with, following Lasralein as she stalked past their door, the servant boy tailing two steps behind. She waited until they have disappeared behind the corner and their footsteps have faded to silence, before turning the doorknob. The two troublemakers spilled out onto the hallway, then scrambled for Lasralein's door.
As Meya fell panting against the wooden double doors, breathless from the thrill, Ahmundi bent down and pulled a ring of keys out from his sleeve, slotting one into the padlock on the chains. It popped open with one sharp turn.
"Doesn't she ever change her locks? All this time, she never noticed you nicking her stuff?" Meya asked as she pulled the heavy chains out from the door handles. Ahmundi had knelt down to open the bottom lock.
"Told you, her lab's just a front." Clack! Ahmundi straightened up with a sigh and slotted another key into the middle lock, "She mostly works in the secret lab." Clack! He stretched up on tippy-toes and strained for the top lock, "And she barely uses the stuff I took anyway, because our experiments are very different."
Clack!
Meya let out a sigh of relief when the fourth key turned smoothly in the last lock. Ahmundi, however, remained tense. He grasped both door handles and pushed his way inside, Meya hot on his heels.
As Ahmundi pulled the doors close behind them, Meya handed him the chains and padlock then took the time to explore the room. Lasralein had left the lamps lit. Apparently, she'd thought she would be able to return soon.
The lab was roughly as large as the one room in Meya's cottage back in Crosset, with a worktable instead of a hearth-hole as the centerpiece, and shelves carrying books, scrolls, apparatuses, and labeled jars containing hazardous substances, instead of pots, pans, jars of pickle, strings of sausages and hunks of meat (from Meya's piglets) and loaves of bread.
Not a thing was out of place, except for the chair Lasralein must have been sitting on, her eye on the door, touching nothing. Ahmundi truly had been in here numerous times. This lab had probably barely seen experiments, at least not for a long time.
A heavy clunk resounded in the still air from Ahmundi snapping the padlock close. Meya turned to him as he advanced a step further into the room, his eyes trained on the shelves on the opposite wall,
"Now, the time for truth." He sighed, eyes narrowing. Meya hurried after him as he rounded the table towards the three-tiered shelves, then joined in when he set to work relocating their inhabitants onto the wall-length chest of drawers below. He didn't bother taking note of their places so they could erase their trail once their job was done. He really had meant for this to be his one last heist.
Now that the shelves had been cleared, a hair-thin, vertical gap appeared along the seemingly seamless adobe wall, once hidden behind books and jars. Five tiny round holes that could have fitted no rod thicker than a meat skewer had been drilled into the wall at intervals, all framed with a golden ring.
Ahmundi laid a tapered finger over the hole in the middle, rubbing the golden ring to a shine in frustration.
"These smug little holes have been taunting me for years." He muttered, "I bribed the castle's locksmith to make these for me, but for these, he's stumped."
He raised the ring of copied keys, then gestured it towards the peculiar keyhole with a chorus of jangles, shaking his head,
"He's never seen keyholes even remotely like these in his life. None of his mold keys would fit, so he couldn't get markings. Either Hasif commissioned a different locksmith for this door, or she crafted this lock herself."
Meya met his apprehensive gaze, then narrowed her eyes at the keyhole, thinking hard. Ahmundi had guessed that it might have something to do with Lasralein being a Greeneye. If Lasralein did indeed craft the locks herself, she could've used some sort of technique only Greeneyes would have been capable of, yet not an inherent skill any uninitiated Greeneye could manage...
Ahmundi mentioned mold keys. Meya had heard tales of lockpicks and thiefs from travelling bards. When the key was unavailable, locksmiths would ram a mold key into the keyhole and force it against the lock. The pins would leave markings on the mold key, which they could then use to craft the imitation key.
Meya raised her right pointer finger to her eyes. She still required heaps of practice to make herself a nose-bridge from scratch, but perhaps she could make herself a key with a mold in place to guide her flow.
As Ahmundi frowned in puzzlement, Meya pushed her fingertip up against the minuscule keyhole, then closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath. Letting out a long, sustained sigh, she opened her eyes and willed hot metal to gush out of her pores in a steady stream into the keyhole. Once the hole was filled, she allowed the silvery liquid to form a coat over her finger, creating a handle, then tugged out her finger once the metal had cooled and settled.
Beside her, Ahmundi let out a breath of awe. Meya glanced aside and met his magnified eyes, quivering behind his glasses, then took another deep breath as she closed both hands around the finger-shaped handle. So tiny was the hole, the key might just break in the lock if her strip of alloy was not strong enough to turn the weight of the deadbolt. But if her hunch was correct and this was how Lasralein did it, then this would have to work. Unless Lasralein subsisted on a diet rich in much hardier metal than she did, that was.
Very well, here goes nothing.
Whispering a silent prayer to Freda for a miracle, Meya turned the makeshift key.
Clack!
A single note like music from the Heights graced their ears. The gap in the wall widened slightly now that one of the deadbolts holding the halves of sliding wall together had tucked itself away in its nook. Four more to go, and they would be in.