Chapter 14
CHAPTER 14
“Y ou can take the rest of the day off,” Bertrand said a couple hours later as he waved me out of the mew. “A bear attack is enough to rattle anyone, least of all a little thing like you.”
I couldn’t even be offended by his assessment. Not when I still felt the tremors of shock, could still see the bear’s teeth as its open maw shot toward me. “Thanks, Bertrand.”
Our journey back had gone quickly, with Duncan rebuffing his older brother’s attempts to prolong the trip. Even when Heinrich chalked it up to him being a sore loser in their contest rather than the fact that we’d just been attacked by a fucking bear, Duncan hadn’t budged. His only concern was getting me safely away from the forest and the reach of his evil brother. My chest still warmed at the thought, despite the many times I’d reminded myself that letting him grow on me was a grave mistake I would live to regret.
“Bah. Go get warm. Be back early tomorrow.” He turned his back on me, bent over his ledger. Bonnie fluttered down and landed beside him, snatching his quill pen right out of his fingers, then flew out of reach.
“Cheeky girl!” He shook a fist at her, and she dropped the quill, right at his feet. I hurried forward and scooped it up, handing it to him. He raised his bushy white eyebrows at me. “What are you still doing here?”
I smiled and backed up. “Just leaving, boss.”
I could have gone back to our little hut, curled under a blanket and hid from the world. But…I had a lockpick to make. And if I went back, Moll would not want me to leave.
“What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her, right Fetch?”
He tipped his head this way and that. Maybe in agreement?
Trudging my way back through the shroud between Little Alabaster and The Smudge, I stopped only to grab a hot bit of food from one of the street vendors—I was starving, and it would settle the nerves. I hoped.
A hand pie full of slow-roasted meat, vegetables and…cheese? I handed over the copper pennies, then wolfed the food back, offering a bit of pastry to Fetch. “Good, right?”
From there, it was on to Smitty’s, and I was hoping he might be able to help me.
I knocked on the heavy wooden door to the forge.
“Go away!” Smitty bellowed. “I’m working!”
“It’s me…Ella. I was hoping we could trade again?”
I needed to save the majority of my coin for the precious metals and gears I needed for the lockpick.
The door was yanked open and Smitty stared out at me, as covered in coal soot as ever. “Why didn’t you just come in?”
I smiled at the grumpy welcome. “I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“Bah. What do you need?” He shut the door behind me and the warmth immediately sunk into my bones. I let out a heavy sigh.
“I’m making something that is going to take a lot of gears, and maybe a gemstone.”
His eyes widened. “Gemstones? You got one?”
I shook my head, regretting that I’d used all mine.
“No, not yet. Nothing precious, just something that will refract light.”
He grunted. “Maybe you want the jeweler, Jinkens, down the street? He’s got all that piddly ass small shit.”
I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. “Maybe? But I think the actual…” I paused, not wanting to get him in trouble if I got caught, “the thing holding all of it, I need to make out of iron, so it’s good and strong.”
Another grunt. “Show me.”
He handed me a piece of chalk from his apron pocket and pointed to the floor. I bent and sketched out the design of the lockpick. How I thought the gears should go, and where the gemstone would sit so it would pull light into the keyhole making it easy to see the tumblers.
The design was such that it folded to look nothing like a lockpick and would fit flat in my pocket. And, if I got myself into a situation where I had to pull it out… “See, then it would just look like a woman’s vanity, packing along a reflecting mirror to…” I shrugged, “I don’t know, see if her makeup is smeared?”
Smitty crouched beside me. “I’m not going to ask why you need a lockpick like this. If you can make it, it should unlock…anything that I’ve ever seen.”
I swallowed hard. “It’s a commission piece.”
“For the O’Donnellys?”
I shrugged, anxiety spiking. I wanted to trust him, but I was no fool. “I… Maybe.”
He huffed a laugh. “Well, the metal you need, most of it’ll be in the scrap bin. But I’d go to Jinkens first, see if he has the gears and a cheap gem. If I were you, that is.”
Which is how I ended up dickering over four gears and a rough piece of ice rock crystal that I’d still need to shape to get the light.
“A hundred pieces.” Jinkens pulled his wire jeweler’s loupe away from his eye so he could look down his nose better at me.
I laughed and turned my back. “Not a chance. That ice crystal is rough. It might, might be worth forty pieces shaped! And the gears are used, look at the teeth on them! Half worn!”
Jinkens sniffed and put his loupe back over his eyes as he picked up the ice crystal. “The weight?—”
“Is too much for what I asked for.” I tapped my fingers on the glass case. “I asked for half that size, no more than an inch square chunk, which would be worth twenty pieces, and that’s if I’m being generous.”
Back and forth we went until he agreed to cut the crystal in half and sell me the bigger of the two chunks for thirty-five gold pieces. The gears I got for four pieces each. The bag of coins the O’Donnellys had given me was lighter, but I had what I needed.
Hopefully.
Back at the forge, Smitty watched me as I pulled out the metal I needed from the scrap heap and showed him. “How much?”
“Make me another knife.” He leaned back on his stool. “I’ve already sold the other two.”
I sighed, nodded and got to work. At least I knew exactly what he wanted, and I was able to knock the knife out faster than the first two. The hammer rose and fell in a rhythm that had me moving in a trance as my mind worked over the details of the lockpick.
Sweat rolled down my back and face, and my arms ached, but I had the third knife for Smitty in his hands before the dinner hour chimed.
Which left me only a few short hours before curfew to work on the lockpick.
I went right to it, laying out my pieces of metal, the gem and the gears. I used a tiny hammer this time, the work more intricate as I worked my way to the finished product. Tiny punches for the rivets, tiny taps to set the screws in later, tiny welds, everything was small.
The space where the cut gemstone went was next. A small slot shaped like a ‘V’ so the gem sat in the top and would pull light in—no matter how little—to assist the process of working through the tumblers in the lock.
I made to grab for the ice crystal, I just had to shape it, only to find that it was already done.
Smitty handed it off to me, perfectly shaped and polished so it sat deep in the ‘V’ looking more like a diamond than an ice crystal–it was so smooth and perfect. His already ruddy cheeks pinked further. “I was getting bored. That fit?”
“Thanks, Smitty.” I swiped a hand across my brow. No doubt I was covered in coal ash, just like him. I set the gemstone in and then locked it down with a couple of thin wires woven across the top like a net.
I flipped it over, so that the gem disappeared and all that I was left with was a flat polished iron box that when I opened it, a reflective surface showed me a slightly distorted version of my face. Maybe enough to check makeup?
Molly would love it. Which was partly how I’d come up with the idea, thinking about how best to hide a lockpick. No man would even bother to look at a woman’s purse, full of bobby pins and lipstick.
“Curfew’s coming, girl.” Smitty took a step toward the door. “You be careful with the O’Donnellys. Assuming they’re your clients. They’ve got trouble with the crown, you hear? And you work for the crown so…be careful.”
Without another word, he shut the door behind himself and I was left with just the glowing embers of the coal fire. I flicked my hands over my newest invention, and it slid back into the shape of a perfect lockpick.
A lockpick for smugglers that had beef with Heinrich? That made it a little sweeter, I had to admit.
A lockpick I was going to bet mine and Molly’s lives on.
No pressure, no pressure at all.