23 – Cheat Code

As Ward spoke the words of power, their shadowy shapes rolling off his tongue and into the air with ease, they echoed around the room, reverberating and multiplying into a harmonic crescendo that seemed to rattle the shadows out of the corners, nooks, and crannies of the spire room. As the darkness intensified, and strange ghostly lights flickered in the space between the waking world and whatever place the phantoms of the past were pulled from, Ward glanced at Lisa and Haley.

He was surprised to see Lisa covering her ears in much the same manner as Haley. Were the words of power in his Reveal Secrets spell too much for her? He supposed it was likely if she’d never had a refinement; the spell had done a number on him the first time he’d cast it. As the echoing clamor of the words faded, Haley lowered her hands and whispered, “Watch the shadows, Lisa.”

Lisa slowly uncovered her ears and peered into the swirling masses of shadows, and Ward followed suit. A strange, blue-tinted glow came into being at the heart of the swirling shadows closest to the door and gradually brightened, expanding into the ghostly shape of a phantom man. He was young, with elf-like pointed ears, and wore a leather vest adorned with beads and feathers. He knelt on the ground just inches from the door and deftly prodded at the floor with the tip of a delicate, slender-bladed knife.

“Look!” Lisa gasped, leaning closer to watch what he was doing. Ward grabbed her wrist, afraid she might get lost in the moment and approach one of the deadly blade-posts.

“Just let it play out.” Ward also squatted to better see what the phantom was doing. “He’s prying up a floor panel!” The elfin fellow set aside a small square of the metallic flooring and then reached into the opening, twisting a recessed brass knob until the hiss of steam sounded from somewhere beneath the floor. Then he crawled, on all fours, to the first circular plate and right past it—it never erupted from the floor.

Ward and his companions watched the fellow move in a random-seeming zig-zag across the room, pausing five more times to remove floor panels and twist hidden knobs. When he deactivated the final one, just a few feet from the far door, a resounding series of clicks echoed through the room, and the phantom pumped his knife in the air. A moment later, echoing out of some aetheric abyss, his voice sounded in a whoop of joy.

As suddenly as they appeared, the shadows faded, and the tower’s glowing lamp resumed its eerie, pale luminescence. “He disarmed them!” Lisa cried.

Ward nodded. “Yep. I think I marked them all mentally, but did you guys pay attention? I don’t want to mess it up—”

“I think I should do it, Ward.” Haley had already produced a slender knife from her boot and was kneeling on the floor, inching toward the spot where the first panel had been.

“Why?” Ward knew she was more agile than he, but there wasn’t any reason he couldn’t crawl around on a floor.

“Because if I make a mistake, I’m confident I can leap back before the nearby posts erupt to slice me to bits.”

“She has a point, Ward. You’ve seen how she can move.” As she spoke, Ward realized he was still holding Lisa’s wrist, and he uncurled his fingers.

“Yeah. Just be careful.”

“I will.” Haley’s voice was terse with concentration as she delicately dragged the point of her knife over the metal floor, looking for some sign of the hidden seam. After a minute, she straightened and frowned. “Does anyone have a sharper blade? A finer point?”

Lisa turned to her pack. “Just a minute! I have an excellent little knife in my nail grooming kit.” While she looked through her belongings, she added, “Ward, that spell was incredible! Does it always show what you need?”

“Nope. It reveals a secret; sometimes it’s not the secret you want.”

“Still…incredible!” She sat back from her pack, a small, turquoise-colored leather package in her hands. She unsnapped it and pulled out a delicate, pearl-handled little knife about the size of Ward’s pinky. “Here, Haley. Try this.”

Haley sheathed her little dagger and took the tiny knife, smiling. “It’s very nice!” When she turned back to the floor, gently gliding the paper-thin blade over the floor, it visibly caught on something. Haley hissed excitedly, probing the hidden seam until she found a spot where the tiny blade could sink further in. With a bit of gentle prodding, she wriggled the plate up enough to grasp it with her fingernails and lift it off the hidden compartment. “Yes!” Haley reached into the little recessed compartment and twisted something, eliciting a hiss of steam.

“Hell yeah, Haley!” Ward clapped his hands once, startling Lisa, still kneeling by her pack.

“Now,” Haley probed along the metal floor with her fingers, “the next was this way, right?”

“Yeah,” Ward pointed to the space right in the center of three plates to Haley’s left, “Right in there between those three. Go slowly!”

“I will, I will.” Haley sucked her lip between her teeth as she concentrated, inching toward the spot.

She slowly made her way, moving far more delicately than the phantom Ward’s spell had revealed, and Ward glanced at Lisa. “You never told us about your time in the catacombs. You didn’t gain anything of value?”

“I never said that! My two little partners—remember when we split up?” Ward nodded, and she continued, “They helped me to solve a puzzle where we had to slide stones onto weighted plates in the correct order. Liam—that was the young man—was a genius at math and saw the conclusion before I’d even figured out how the puzzle worked. When we had the stones in the proper places, a door opened, revealing a chest and a marble stair.”

“Yeah?” Ward held his breath as Haley began probing with Lisa’s little knife.

“Yep. In the chest were a handful of gems, a spell page, and a runed dagger. I took the spell, Liam the knife, and Kym a larger share of the gems.”

“That’s it?”

“Sadly, yes. The stairway wound up and up, and the next thing we knew, we were stumbling through a cave mouth onto a hillside overlooking Tarnish!” Ward heard another hiss of steam as she finished speaking and realized Haley had disarmed the second set of posts. Lisa laughed almost musically. “Four to go! Nice work, Haley!”

Ward nodded at the encouragement, then added, “The next one is straight toward the door, between the next two plates.”

“Right.” Haley crawled that way on her stomach.

“Ward,” Lisa said, also raptly watching Haley, “you realize how potent that spell is, yes? A master tinkerer or a jack with locating abilities might be able to solve a puzzle like this, but most others, most people, would wind up doing something foolhardy like what we were contemplating—rushing through the room to try to open the door in time. People like that tend to disappear in the challenges.”

“Heh.” Ward squatted down, then plopped onto his butt, leaning against the wall. At Haley’s current rate, it would be half an hour before she closed the sixth valve. “Back in the day, my friends and I would have called it a cheat code.”

“Cheat sounds about right! If—well, if you’ll have me, I hope we can try more challenges together! This is only my second, and to meet someone with your talents—” She paused abruptly, locking her wide, emerald eyes onto his. “And friends. Haley is amazing, and, Ward, I won’t deny that one of us might have lost our lives in the last room if not for your…other friend.”

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“Grace.”

“Right. Grace. My point is that I feel fortunate. If I’d come into the spire alone, the challenges might not have been as severe, but a room like this—a deadly puzzle? This room would have been my end.”

“I mean, you could always stop doing challenges.” Ward winked to show he knew the suggestion was foolish.

“So you won’t have me?” She stretched out a hand, her fingers hovering near his wrist before she pulled it back.

“Relax. I didn’t say that.” Before he could say more, he saw Haley stop moving, lying flat on her stomach. “You good, Haley? You need a break?”

“No! I’ll just lie here a moment until my hands stop shaking.” She followed her words with a soft snort, and Ward knew she was mostly teasing.

Ward looked back at Lisa and was surprised to see Grace on the other side of her, silently leaning against the wall with her arms folded. When their eyes met, he smiled. “You have something you wanted to say, Grace?”

Lisa jerked her head around and inhaled sharply as Grace spoke, “What do you bring to the table, Lisa?”

“I…” She paused, licked her lips, and turned to Ward, clearly caught off guard.

“I mean,” Grace pressed, “you talk a big game. You say you’re ‘trained for this’ and ‘trained for that.’ You mention your tutor and this organization you work for, but then…then, you get caught off guard by seeing Ward on a ship. You murder a man—sloppily. You shake when you confront Ward with a pistol. You did well with the wind spell earlier, but those clockwork spiders surely threw you off. I noticed you didn’t even get your rapier into a guard position before you were swarmed. I think you owe it to Ward to tell him the bare truth—what is it you bring to the table?”

“I—”

She stopped short as another hiss echoed through the chamber, and Haley called out, “Halfway!”

“I’ll make sure she knows where the next one is,” Grace said. “Lisa, please be honest with Ward. He’s a good, fair man."

As Grace walked over to Haley, stepping on the metal plates like she hadn’t a care in a world, Lisa gawked for a moment, then shook her head and turned to Ward. “I haven’t lied, Ward. I’m afraid I’ve purposefully been a little misleading with my phrasing, however. I have been trained in all the ways I say, but I’m very inexperienced. That’s the truth. I’ve spent a thousand afternoons practicing with my rapier but never fought anyone for real. I’ve cultivated mana—more than you might think, but my spells are, for the most part, parlor tricks. I have studied a great deal, though, and I know I can be of use—I’m a historian. More than that, I think, if things get bad, I’m someone you can rely on.”

Suddenly, Grace was there again, leaning close to Lisa’s ear. “Doesn’t that feel better?”

“Ack!” Lisa flinched away. “I liked you better when you were contrite!”

“Well, if you’re going to be working with us, you better get to know all my sides. So, if I understand you correctly, you were raised a spoiled rich girl, and, sometime into your late twenties, you got the itch for adventure?”

“It’s…well, it’s partially like that, but my father was training me for a reason! He wanted me to join the Oathbound! He wanted me to make a difference in the world.”

“’Wanted’?” Grace pressed.

“He was killed last year.”

“Four!” Haley cried as another hiss sounded beneath the floor.

“Hold still!” Grace called. “I’ll guide you to the next one.”

As she traipsed over to Haley, Ward nodded after her. “She has a nearly perfect memory.”

“Nearly?”

Ward grunted in the affirmative, folding his arms over his chest. “She can’t remember words of power. And,” he added, wondering if he should be spilling Grace’s secrets, “she can only remember things I see and hear.”

“But since you saw the vision your spell produced, she can remember exactly where the hidden compartments were!” Lisa looked at Ward, her eyes eager and bright. “It’s like…it’s the perfect combination!”

“So,” Grace asked, now sitting on the floor facing Ward and Lisa, her back to Haley, “since so much of your motivation seems to rest on your relationship with your father, Lisa, do you mind telling us how he died? Who killed him?”

“I’m not sure, but I suspect it was an agent of the Circle of Thorns. My tutor, Doctor Thiel, is convinced of it. He’s the one who sent me to Tarnish; I was meant to find information about a man my father had been corresponding with.”

“Anyone we might know?” Ward had been content, letting Grace lead the “interrogation,” but Lisa’s latest revelation had piqued his interest.

“A man named Yates. Sonder—”

“Are you kidding me?” Ward hissed, glancing toward Haley to see if she’d heard. Luckily, she was most of the way across the room, and Lisa had been speaking softly. He leaned closer to Lisa and whispered, “Don’t say that name again. Not yet. He’s the man who killed Haley’s parents. He’s her cousin.”

Lisa’s eyes widened, and she frowned, shaking her head. “But…” She trailed off, clearly bothered by something. “No, no, that can’t be—”

“What?”

“I watched him for a month before I entered the catacombs. I found no evidence that he was with the Circle. I was going to write him off as a coincidental contact—someone my father had been dealing with for business affairs unrelated to his investigations into the Circle. When I came out of the catacombs and got word from another member of the Oathbound about Nevkin’s activities with the artifact, I put,” she glanced at Haley, “him out of my mind. I’m so sorry…”

“So, again,” Grace remarked dryly, “you demonstrate a serious lack of ability. That guy was about as dirty as they come and—”

“I understand you don’t like me,” Lisa snapped, cutting her off. “I understand I put the wrong foot forward with you. Can we not try to be charitable going forward? I watched that man closely, and all I saw was a hard-working businessman with his fingers in many pies—stables, orchards, mines, and even some local politics.”

Another hiss of steam sounded from across the room, and Haley, lying flat on her stomach, turned to grin in their direction. “Grace, can you show me the last one?”

Grace disappeared, and Ward watched her reappear near Haley, pointing at a spot on the floor. “Right here. Be careful not to stray too far to the left, or you’ll trigger that post there.”

“Got it,” Haley grunted, inching toward her.

“It’s a damn small world,” Ward sighed. “So many coincidences where you and us are concerned. It all makes sense, though, and my gut tells me you’re not lying. Is there anything else you want to come clean about?”

“Only that I’ve never met anyone else in the Oathbound—only Doctor Thiel and my father. Since Doctor Thiel officially inducted me, I’ve received some anonymous correspondence, but that’s all.”

“So the ‘influential’ member you know in Westview is—”

“Doctor Thiel.”

“All right. Fair enough.” Ward lowered his voice. “We’ll figure out what to do with that ‘Sonder’ information later. It might be a moot point; we sent Marshal Aldiss after him before we went looking for Nevkin.”

“Truly?” Lisa’s eyes widened. “Oh! That’s why you wanted to send correspondence to Tarnish!”

“That’s one reason.” Ward nodded, his eyes on Haley, watching her open the last secret compartment. “I also have a friend there.”

“Oh, of course. Will our success in this challenge, assuming we make it out, change your plans about traveling to Springsea?”

“Why would it?”

“I thought perhaps you’d like to seek out some other nearby challenges before moving on.”

Ward shook his head. “No. We already have more refinement potions to use, and they’ll push us toward new tiers. We need the ‘higher level’ worlds if we’re going to start finding the answers we’re seeking. I mean about anima, ' anima hearts’, pathways, and all that stuff. Haley and I—” Ward stopped himself short. He’d almost let it slip that he, too, was without anima. He covered by clearing his throat. “Haley and I need to figure out her situation. I don’t like that she’s walking around, doing dangerous things,” he nodded to where the younger woman currently lay prone amid more than two dozen death traps, “while she doesn’t have an ounce of anima.”

Lisa regarded Haley and nodded soberly. “Understood. And…me?”

“What? Oh, yeah, Grace already told you: you’re good with us as long as you’re not hiding anything.”

Grace appeared behind Lisa and leaned close, speaking into her ear with a playful grin, “Well, I didn’t say that exactly, but yeah. I’m good with you, Lisa. I can be charitable if you can.”

A hiss sounded, and this time, a series of deep, resonating clicks followed it. A moment later, a much larger panel slid aside at the center of the room, and a chest lifted out of the darkness, sitting there as though it had always been. “Yes! We did it!” Haley leaped to her feet, and Ward’s heart warmed at the massive smile on her face. Her dour, surly alter ego hadn’t shown her face since they’d entered the spire. Was it all due to the Gopah she’d been doing, or was the thrill of the challenge also bringing out her true spirit? He didn’t know, but he was glad about it.

“Let’s see what we got.” Ward stood and offered his hand to Lisa. She smiled and took it, allowing him to pull her up. She was lithe and agile, and he hardly felt the tug as she stood. Of course, he’d already helped her up a hundred times when they’d been on the ship practicing with their swords, but for some reason, this time, he noticed how her fingers pressed into his palm and her cheeks flushed slightly as she avoided his eye contact as she stood. Was there something there? If there was, he wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

They all walked toward the chest, and Ward tapped it with the toe of his boot. “You open it, Haley. You did more work on this one than the rest of us.” It felt good to say “the rest of us,” including Grace. His demon or angel, or whatever you wanted to call her, looked happy, standing beside Haley, watching as the young woman knelt before the chest, carefully examining it from every angle. Ward also walked around the chest, studying it, hoping Grace might catch something the rest of them would miss.

Haley sat back on her heels. “Looks safe.”

Grace nodded, “I agree.”

“I don’t see anything amiss,” Lisa added.

Ward stood behind Haley and rested his hand on her shoulder. “All right. Open it up. Let’s see what we got this time.”