Neb found himself reaching for his knife, his eyes already going to the ground to look for tracks as Aedric had taught him during scout training. He felt the momentary tickle of fear along his spine and forced himself to breathe.
Renard moved forward now, cautious, his eyes moving to and fro. Neb followed.
They reached the door, and Renard leaned around to look into the dark, yawning mouth and pause. He raised his right hand, and when it moved into the Whymer hand language, Neb could not follow it. Still, he took the hint and waited.
Renard vanished into the massive cave, and Neb studied the locking mechanisms. The only larger locks he’d seen were on the Keeper’s Gate they’d passed through to come here-those were the size of hay bales easily. These were smaller but still easily the size of a large man’s head. The levers and dials on the locks were pitted with age and weather, but when he put a tentative hand to one of them, it turned easily and quietly.
Whoever had left the door open had done so intentionally and had the necessary ciphers to do so.
Renard whistled from behind the door. “Stay clear,” he called out.
Slowly, the great door swung open and let sunlight spill into the tunnel until the shadows swallowed it.
Still, what they could see was bare.
“There’s no one home. Even the lamps are gone,” Renard said. “We’ll need light.”
They made makeshift torches with dried branches hacked from nearby scrub and advanced into Rufello’s Cave. Occasionally, they paused to listen, and at least twice, Renard left Neb behind with the light to creep forward and scout the dark. At the end of the corridor, it widened into a large cavern.
But still, it was empty. Completely empty.
Renard scratched his head. “This makes no sense. There have been no caravans. They would have passed beneath my watching eye.”
Neb looked at him and saw the consternation on his face. “Who else knew the ciphers?”
“Me,” Renard said, reslinging his rifle. “My father, certainly. A handful of others. dead with Windwir, I’ll wager.”
Neb thought for a moment. “Could they have come by a different direction?”
“If someone with the ciphers survived?” Renard cocked his head. “Surely, but why? The Wastes stretch on and on and on all around us. The sea is ten days’ root-run to the south, though the salt dunes near her make for hard going.” He stretched out his hands. “They’d have needed wagons for all of this, and there’s no way to get a wagon through the dunes. Hells,” he said, “there were wagons stored here, but not nearly enough to haul the supplies they’d stockpiled.”
A thought struck Neb. “What else was here?”
Renard shrugged and started listing them off. “Everything. Clothing. Nonperishables. Tools. Weapons. Maps.”
Anything needed to mount an expedition, Neb realized. And someone had let themselves in and helped themselves to it. And not just some of it-they had emptied the place. Renard had told him just days ago that the most dangerous predator in the Wastes was still man. Neb found himself wondering if perhaps this was simply the work of common thieves, though it did not explain the lock. Rufello locks were nearly impenetrable. Whoever had done this either had the ciphers or somehow knew a means for puzzling them out-something Neb could not fathom. The cipher on one lock might be possible over a stretch of time, but not five or six locks. It would take a lifetime.
Renard had hunkered down in thought, but now he straightened. “I want to give this a closer look.”
They started a new torch and went to opposite walls. Then, they walked slowly, shedding light onto the floor as they went, and Neb saw that the cavern wasn’t quite as empty as they’d perceived. Here and there, he saw spilled nails, splintered wood from crates now vanished, and at one point, even found a tattered robe wadded up and discarded. Still, nothing useful.
They moved slowly, methodically covering every span of the room, and just when they reached deepest, darkest corners, Neb came across the flour sack.
It had been dropped, apparently, and had burst, coating the floor with a quarter inch of fine white powder. When he came upon it, he nearly stepped into it but caught himself. Squinting, Neb looked down.
There in the flour, a footprint. He crouched and leaned over to examine it. “I’ve found something.”
He heard Renard coming and blinked again, cursing the guttering torch for toying with his eyesight. The dancing flames gave the footprint an inhuman cast-a shape like no boot or foot he’d seen. Except.
Neb’s brow furrowed. “A mechoservitor was here.”
Renard approached and crouched himself, studying the single footprint. “The Whymers don’t bring their toys into the Wastes,” he said.
Still, there it was, and Neb thought about Isaak and the others he’d spent so much time with these past seven or eight months. He recalled the flashing eye shutters, the hiss of vented steam, the pens flying across the paper, clutched in metal hands. “A mechoservitor could cipher the locks.”
Renard chuckled. “Why would a mechoservitor need supplies?”
It was a good question. “How many of these caches are there?”
“At least a dozen,” Renard said. “Scattered strategically, all under lock and stone.”
Neb nodded, suspicion growing within him. He was willing to wager that were they to find the others, they also would be empty of anything useful. He thought of the metal man that Isaak now pursued. It had run into the Wastes with purpose, moving as if it had a destination in mind. Moving too fast for men but not too fast for its own kind.
“There was too much here for one mechoservitor,” Renard observed. “It would’ve taken years to empty this cache.”
“Then it had help,” Neb said. Already, his brain stretched into speculation, but he couldn’t find a satisfactory reason why.
Renard shifted and extended the torch farther, the metal footprint taking on deeper shadows as he did. “It would’ve needed all the help it could get.” He stood. “Still, there was enough here to supply multiple expeditions. What use could a mechoservitor have for foodstuffs and tools?”
But Neb wasn’t convinced at this point that the supplies had been taken in order to use them. Another idea brewed beneath the surface, and he vocalized it in a quiet voice. “Maybe it didn’t need the supplies. Maybe it just needed us not to have them.”
But not us specifically, he realized. The Androfrancines or whoever else might come wandering into the Wastes relying on these caches to survive-and work-in this hostile place.
Still, for now there was no answer and nothing of use to them here in Rufello’s Cave.
But somewhere a day or two ahead of them, Neb suspected, the answer raced across the broken landscape, its bellows wheezing and its metal legs pumping.
“We should get running,” he said to Renard. “We’ve time to make up.”
Renard smiled, and for a moment, in the dancing light of their dying torches, Neb saw traces of a kin-wolf’s ferocity in the man’s eyes and teeth.
“Let’s run then,” Renard said.
And they did.
Vlad Li Tam
He lost all sense of anything but anguish, hot and white. He was not even sure of his own name until she called him by it.
“Vlad,” Ria said. “You closed your eyes.”
She leaned over him with a knife, and he started. The words that came out of him were a garbled shriek, snot and spittle flying. His beard was wet with tears.
Smiling, she withdrew. “No matter. We’re done for now.” She looked over the railing, but now that her knife was down, he looked away. He could not bear it. Still, her voice was full of pride. “Eight today, Vlad.”
Their victims were getting younger and younger. This last batch had just barely left their teens.