There wasn't as much smoke as he would have liked. Still it did its job. He hid underneath one of the tables nearest to the doorway as the two guards rushed down to confront the large fire growing on the other side of the room. As they thundered past him, shouting to one another he slipped behind them and back up the stairs. Soon he came to the large door they had been guarding. It was carved from the same wood as the walls around it, and had a large metal handle with a keyhole beneath it. He tried pushing on the door, but it didn't budge. He peeked in the crack between the door and the wall. He could see the metal latch holding it closed. The noise of the guards shouting behind him was growing quieter. He turned to look back. They must have gotten the fire out quickly, soon they would be done investigating the room.

His hands scrambled around his sweater pockets and belt for a moment before settling upon his knife. He pulled it out from the leather sheath on his belt. The blade was fairly long for a knife and had a file cut into the spine of the blade. He slipped the blade into the crack and tried to push the latch upward but there was no give in that direction. He risked a moment to peek back over his shoulder. The guards were still talking down below, their voices muffled. He whispered to himself,

“Oh, Teshi let this work.”

He tried remembering the deserts he had grown up in. He pictured sun heating up barren expanses of stone, the gritty wind that blew the wandering sand dunes around, and the sweet smell of the fragrant bushes that grew up around the muddy springs scattered throughout the land. He then tried picturing the lock inside the door, how the mechanism would work, and how he could open it.

Nothing.

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Teshi’s magic didn’t flow through him to flip the mechanism, or show how it was designed. Just like it hadn’t before, every time he had tried. He gave a quiet sigh, then muttered,

“Worth a shot, suppose we’ll do this the long way.”

Pushing the knife up he used the backside and began to file at the latch. The metal was hard, but so was the file. After a few minutes he had cut about halfway through. He looked up again and listened down the hall. He was fairly sure no one could hear the file grinding back and forth. They were still talking in muffled voices down below. Now there were more than two voices. He began filing faster.

Soon the latch gave way. He pushed gently on the door and it swung back into the room. He ducked inside and closed the door behind him.

The room was about as big as the hollow below, however this one was filled with waist high cases made from glass and wood. It was illuminated by only one or two crystals, making it dimmer than the hallway outside. The opposite wall was covered in barred windows letting in soft ambient light from the tree outside. There was another locked door that must have led out to a balcony. To his left was a large filing cabinet behind a desk. He walked over and opened a drawer. It was filled with thin wooden tablets marked with letters and directions, showing where each record was.

He closed the drawer then got to the side and began to push it towards the door. The heavy cabinet slid slowly across the floor, gauging a track into the polished wooden floor. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he pushed and strained to get the cabinet into place, blocking the door. As soon as the door was sufficiently covered he sank down to the floor and sat for a moment, leaning against the cabinet and catching his breath. Then he opened a drawer and began rifling through the tablets.