12. The Wada: Through the Dome of the Stock Exchange

When I returned to the Den, Rolg was not there. It was already afternoon, and I guessed that he must be in some tavern playing cards, or taking his usual walk to “stretch his game leg”. I took a nap, and slept so well that I only woke up when my master shook my shoulder and said:

“Wake up, Draen. How are you feeling?”

I opened my eyes and stretched as I replied:

“Couldn’t be better! Shall we go already?”

Yal shook his head.

“No, not yet. At midnight, in an hour. And, at three o’clock, we’ll go into the building. I brought you dinner, are you hungry?”

“I’m starving!” I confirmed. As a matter of fact, apart from the morning biscuits, I hadn’t eaten anything.

I gobbled down the cheese bread and the orange almost without chewing, while Yal dropped into a chair and commented:

“Today has been a hellish day. The boss at the print shop made us work until nine. Honestly, I thought I was going to have to make up an excuse to get out on time.”

“Why was there so much work?” I asked, my mouth full.

“Oh. Lots of stuff, urgent forms, various orders, and the like. Hey, easy, Mor-eldal, chew or you’ll choke.”

I rolled my eyes, but ate more slowly, and asked:

“Where is Rolg?”

“An old friend of his is sick, so he went to his house to take care of him,” Yal explained.

I felt a surge of empathy and complained:

“The Cold One is worse than hunger. Say, Yal, how are we gonna get into the Stock Exchange?”

Yal’s eyes smiled and twinkled.

“Through the dome.”

The dome, I repeated to myself. And my eyes widened.

“The round roof from above? And no one will see us?”

He shrugged.

“Korther has it all planned out. He knows where the traps are, how to disable them, and… well, we both don’t have to worry about anything.”

I frowned.

“But, then… what are we going to do?”

Yal looked at me, amused.

“Korther shall lead the way, I shall lower you from above with a rope, and you, Mor-eldal, will steal the Wada.”

I was startled.

“Me?”

I still could not quite understand what he wanted me to do, but the idea of being lowered by a rope from such a high dome fascinated me. I continued to chew more and more slowly. Yal smiled at me.

“Don’t worry: it’ll be a breeze. But, if things go wrong, remember the saying of the thieves.”

I nodded firmly.

“He who steals and runs away, may live to steal another day,” I said. And I struck the table with my hand, shouting, “Onward! Let’s steal the Wada from that hitmen-hirer nail-pincher!”

Yal gasped and hissed:

“Keep your voice down, for the Spirits’ sake!”

I gave him an innocent pout followed by an enthusiastic smile and finished the orange slices.

When we heard the twelve bells, Yal took his bag with the rope, and we went out to the park which was just in front of the Passion Flower Hospital in the Riskel Quarter. We passed the Stock Exchange, and Yal grabbed me by the neck to keep me from looking at the building with too much interest. It had been a spring-like afternoon, so the snow had melted completely, and there were still people walking along Artisan Street. However, in Passion Flower Park, everything was dark and deserted.

The Great Temple had just rung the first bell when Yal sat down on a bench and I followed suit.

“What now?” I muttered.

He replied:

“We wait.”

So we waited, and for a good while, until we saw a figure appear on the narrow path. It was not a guard; otherwise, he would have carried a lantern.

“Yal?”

“Sir,” my master replied. And he stood up; so did I.

“You brought hoods, I hope,” the kap whispered.

“We have them,” Yal assured.

There was a silence during which Korther seemed to think. Then he turned to me, and I thought I saw a smile in the darkness.

“How’s that flu going, lad?”

“Swept it away,” I assured him. “So… shall we go?”

Korther turned to scan the back of the alley and whispered:

“When you get inside, Draen, don’t touch anything without asking my permission or I’ll put you on a boat and sell you to a Tassian slaver…without asking your permission, you understand me?”

I looked at him in horror at first, then I made an annoyed pout.

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” He beckoned us through the shadows, “Follow me at a distance.”

He walked away, and we followed him. We crossed the almost deserted Artisan Street and arrived at the back of the Stock Exchange. I glanced behind me, and the next thing I knew, Korther was gone.

“Where…?”

Yal hushed me, and after letting a group of singing drunks pass, he grabbed a ledge and climbed to the railing of a long balcony of the Stock Exchange. I hurried after him, and when I landed I saw Korther lurking near a door of the balcony. He was holding something in his hand, something which gave a slight glint. It intrigued me, but when I went to look, the door was already open.

Silent as cats we entered a dark room. There was no Moon, no Gem, no Candle, and the distant light from the street lamps barely made it in. Korther cast a very shy harmonic spell of light and walked to the only door in the room. He took out a key, examined it, shook his head, took another, inserted it in the lock, and turned it. A few moments later, we were walking down a luxurious corridor as if we were the masters of this imposing house. Korther seemed to know it by heart. He led us to another door, which he opened, and took us up the back stairs. We climbed at least three flights before the stairs stopped. When we got there Korther’s movements became slower and more conscientious. As I noticed, there were not only alarms on the doors, but also on the floor. Korther deactivated them step by step, until he took us into a huge office with a writing desk large enough to be used by ten people at once. He opened a window and whispered to Yal:

“You’ve got a handle there and one a bit further up. Tie yourself to the rope just in case. Then I’ll untie you from below. When you get to the dome, break the glass that’s right behind the Fortune Dragon statue. Understood?”

Yal nodded.

“Yes, sir.”

I thought I saw some nervousness in his answer. Korther patted him on the shoulder.

“So let’s get to work.”

Yal tied himself tightly, put my cap in the bag, in case it got away from me, and said:

“Wait here. Then Korther will tie you up, and I’ll help you upstairs.”

With some apprehension, I saw him disappear over the edge of the window. I wanted to look, but Korther stopped me until the rope was pulled taut. Then the kap untied the rope and fastened it around me quickly but firmly.

“Use the shadows and climb silently,” he said.

I wrapped myself in harmonic shadows and hoisted myself onto the window ledge. I was stupid: I looked down. And when I saw the ground so far away, I was so afraid that I closed my eyes and stammered a lullaby that my master once sang to me:

Survivor,

don’t be afraid.

The storm’s going away.

I’m here, you are not alone.

Don’t be afraid.

The storm is already gone.

Sleep peacefully, my child.

I felt the rope tighten and quickly looked for a grip without ceasing to repeat the lullaby to myself. For the last few meters, so to speak, it was Yal who pulled me up. When I arrived at the top, he hissed to me:

“You’re legend, Mor-eldal. Will you be quiet? I’d bet a siato that Korther heard you speak in the language of the dead.”

Very pale, I stopped mumbling my song and looked around. A rim perhaps a metre wide surrounded the whole dome, and at regular intervals stood the majestic statues of the Stock Exchange. Yal untied the string from one of these and pointed:

“The Fortune Dragon is right there.” I crouched close to him in front of one of the glass windows of the dome. As he brought out his instruments, I heard my master whisper, “Sari… What’s that song about? It sounded like a sinister abracadabra.”

I grimaced, and when I did not answer, Yal turned to me in puzzlement, and I cleared my throat.

“It’s a lullaby my master used to sing to me when I was little,” I replied.

Yal snorted softly and concentrated on breaking the glass. I helped him strengthen his silence spell, which basically just quieted the sound waves and reduced them to a small space. We managed to remove the glass panel, and Yal whispered to me:

“The shadows, Mor-eldal. Don’t forget.”

I quickly surrounded myself with harmonic shadows again, for the lights of the city could be treacherous. While he tied the rope to the Fortune Dragon, I stuck my head through the hole. There was nothing to be seen. How was I going to find the Wada in this darkness? I had never been in that hall before, but I had seen it from the outside and knew it was huge. Even with a harmonic light, I could spend hours looking for it. Unless Yal and Korther knew exactly where it was, which was very likely.

When Yal returned, he tied me up, filed the glass so the rope would not be damaged, and whispered to me:

“We’re waiting for the signal. Korther went downstairs to make sure the watchman took the sedative.”

Obviously, this one had taken it because, a moment later, Yal perceived the signal of a harmonic light flashing from the hall below.

“Now it’s your turn, sari. Don’t worry, you’re not going to fall: you’re tied up tight. Now, listen. I’m going to lower you a few feet. When I stop lowering you, start swinging, towards the side where I am. That’s where the Wada is, in a hollow in the wall; you can recognize it right away. You’ll probably need several tries. Don’t lose your temper. When you find the Wada, you’ll have to be very careful: as far as Korther knows, there are no alarms on it, but be on your guard. Normally, it hangs from a simple hook. Tie it up with the rope you have left, so it won’t fall. And take this knife, just in case: if the Wada is attached to something else, use it. If it’s wood or even iron, it will work, but be careful using it: it’s very sharp. When you get the Wada, just let yourself hang: I’ll be watching, don’t worry. And you send me a signal with three quick lights to confirm that you want me to pull you up. You got that?”

I swallowed and nodded.

“I think so.”

I heard him sigh.

“Well, go ahead.”

I passed through the hole with the rope stretched out and gradually descended into the darkness. It felt strange to descend from the dome of the Stock Exchange by a rope, especially knowing that I still had many meters to go to the bottom.

“I can’t see anything,” I muttered.

Fortunately, after a while, I managed to make out some shapes. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to know that I wasn’t in the Underground a thousand feet below.

Suddenly, I ceased to feel the vibrations of the rope and realized that I was no longer descending. Eyes wide open, I began to swing towards the place which Yal had indicated, but I did not do so with sufficient decision, and I remained miles away from what seemed to me to be the wall. After a moment, I heard a hissing sound, though I did not know whether it came from above or below. Then I breathed in deeply and breathed out:

“Courage, Mor-eldal, you can do it, come on, come on…”

I swung with more strength and finally touched the wall with my feet. It took me three more tries before I could hold on to something. Could it be the Wada? To be sure, I cast a very timid spell of harmonic light and heard another hiss. This time it was coming from below, no doubt about it. Korther was losing his patience, I guessed. In any case, what I saw assured me that the object I had just clutched was indeed the Wada: it was a small gold statue in the shape of a manticore woman with two gems in her eyes and even more gems encrusted here and there. I clung to the totem and moved the harmonic light down. There was a hook, indeed, and also… a spell on that same hook.

I frowned, and after a moment’s hesitation put my right hand on the hook. To my surprise, I recognized the pattern: it was a simple anti-theft trap which, when activated, gave a terrible shock. I was about to undo it, but I thought better of it and simply deactivated it because, according to Yal, it looked much more professional. Honestly, I thought, bewildered. I was hanging from a rope a mile off the ground, and I was thinking of professional art? Demons.

I lifted the Wada, not without some difficulty, for it was quite heavy. Fortunately, it was not very big. After a few shakes and struggles, I pulled it off the hook, tied it to the rope, clutched it to my chest, and finally, without taking time to think too much, I pulled my foot away from the hook that I had been using to hold onto the wall. I fell. Or at least I did at first. Then the rope tightened, and my breathing suddenly stopped before it quickened to a rapid pace again. It took me a moment to remember the next step: the signal.

Without letting go of the Wada, I performed three light spells in succession, and my heart leapt as soon as the dome began to close in. At last, I passed through the hole, and when my feet touched the solid stone of the ledge at the top, my legs buckled, and I scrambled to my hands and knees, though still tied. Yal asked me:

“Everything okay?”

“Everything okay,” I replied, with more confidence than I felt.

With quick precision, Yal untied the rope from the Fortune Dragon, tied it to the statue just above the window of the room we had climbed from, and lowered me down with the Wada. Korther was already waiting for me inside. He released me, secured the stolen object in his own bag, and tied the rope. A few moments later, my master landed inside.

“Aren’t we going to steal anything from the other rooms?” Yal muttered.

“Nothing else,” Korther asserted. “I am here for revenge, not for money.”

I didn’t know whether to believe him, because I had seen that his own bag was a little more swollen even before he had put the Wada in it… However, his tone of voice sounded convincing. Yal didn’t protest: he put the rope away, gave me my cap back, and we went back down to the first floor balcony without any trouble. Korther retrieved the knife, gave Yal a friendly pat, and whispered:

“Good job, boys.”

He jumped over the railing and disappeared into the shadows of a street. A few moments later, Yal and I left the balcony, too, and headed for the Cat Quarter. I felt the tension disappear almost immediately: we were now safe. And what’s more, we had accomplished our mission.

We were passing through the Esplanade at a leisurely pace when Yal blurted out:

“By the Four Spirits of Dawn…” And, in an almost inaudible whisper, he said in my ear, “Can you believe it, sari? This is the biggest theft in Estergat in years. Okay, we’re not going to get much out of it, since I already owed Korther a favor, because of the studies he paid for me. But now: no more debts!” He smiled broadly at me. “And you don’t know how happy a sajit can feel without debts.”

I smiled back at him, and as we started down Tarmil Avenue, a sudden thought occurred to me, and I jumped cheerfully.

“Are we going to celebrate?”

“Celebrate?” Yalet laughed out loud. “Well, why not? How do you want to celebrate?”

I bit my lip and suggested:

“With butter cookies?”

This time, Yal laughed heartily.

“I’ll buy you some in the morning,” he promised. “But don’t take too much liking to them, since they are expensive. Ah, by the way, I suppose, now that you’re recovered, you’ll go back to Miroki Fal.”

All my joy went to the bottom of a well. I let out a long sigh.

“Pfff… Do I really have to go back?”

“Is it so terrible?” he scoffed.

I shrugged.

“No. But the Nail-pincher is… I don’t know, he’s not a bad guy, but he’s really just as nail-pincher as his friends Shudi and Dalvrindo and the rest. Those people have gold coming out of their ears, and their hands are as sticky as Velirian glue. That’s what Yerris told me, and it’s true. And hey, Rux… he’s got a good heart, but he’s drier than a burned bone.” I concluded, “Actually, I’d much rather be with my friends or even at The Wind Rose. Can I really not wait a few more days? I stole the Wada,” I added as a strong argument.

Yal grunted.

“Speak lower, sari… It’s okay,” he relented. “I’ll tell him you need two more days of rest. But don’t let him see you running around the streets, or he’ll wonder what your ways of resting are. And on Youngday, you go back without fail, eh? Come on, don’t complain: you don’t realize how much you’ve learned with this job. Not everything can be learned on the street.”

I looked skeptical, but did not reply. I rubbed my left hand from the cold and put it in my pocket. Suddenly, I felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water on my head. My feather, I thought, dumbfounded. My yellow feather. It wasn’t in my pocket. Where could it have fallen?

I glanced discreetly at Yal as we walked, but I dared not say anything to him. Maybe I had dropped it on the street in the morning while selling the papers, or… or maybe in the hall of the Stock Exchange.

“Well done, Mor-eldal,” I murmured in Caeldric.

Yal looked at me.

“Did you say something?”

I shook my head. After a silence, I asked in a low voice:

“Elassar. If we’d gotten caught, they would have sent us to jail, wouldn’t they?”

“Uh… Yes, sari. I’d say they’d even send us to hard labor. For years. But it all worked out, and you did great, so tomorrow, I’ll buy you these cookies to celebrate, huh?”

I felt that he was smiling at me, and I gave him a hesitant smile that grew firmer as the memory of the cookies cheered me up. Well, I thought. The feather couldn’t have fallen into the Stock Exchange, and if it did, who would recognize it? Yerris, but he wasn’t there, and besides, he was a Black Dagger. Manras, Dil… and some other newsboy. No one else. Conclusion: everything had worked out just fine.