Page 101 of Realm Breaker (Realm Breaker 1)

“And what am I? A milkmaid?” Sorasa smirked, once at Andry and then at the Brothers. They sneered, turning tail with a dramatic spin of their robes. Steel flashed beneath, their swords naked with no sheaths. “Like I said, a joke. They’re waiting to get me alone, make me an offer again. All so I can refuseagain.”

Sorasa declined to elaborate.

Dom cared more for the stone tiles beneath them, flat and worn, making up the raised the dais of the altar. He scuffed a boot over them.

“There’s more beneath us,” he said sharply.

“Nothing gets past you, Elder,” Sorasa said, waving them all past the chipped altar. The dogs panted in their wake, watching with baleful eyes. Andry stooped to give one a scratch.

He caught Corayne watching and shrugged. “A criminal dog is still a dog.”

A narrow stair hid behind the altar, cramped between the dais and the exterior wall. Another image of Tiber, his mouth spilling coins, loomed over the stairway. Sorasa gave him a familiar pat on the nose as she descended the steps. Corayne did the same, hoping for a blessing.

A square chamber, once a crypt, opened up below. Three of the walls had long rectangular openings, vaults for coffins. They were blissfully empty. Corayne swallowed, put off by the vaults, but at least no skeletons leered in the dim light.

On the only flat wall, a single torch burned, off center against the brick and mortar. When it flickered, Corayne could make out something like a doorway, nearly blending into the wall, visible only at the edges where it couldn’t lie completely flush.

But Sorasa didn’t go to the door. Instead she reached into one of the vaults, never hesitating, and rapped her knuckles on the back wall inside. It sounded like wood. After a hasty second, it slid back, and a pair of eyes appeared where a body once rotted.

“Five—” Sorasa said to the eyes, then stopped herself and checked their number. Valtik was still upstairs. “Four. The witch is mingling.”

“You know the rules: no more than two,” came a raspy reply. The eyes darted. They were green and watery, surrounded by fat, pink flesh.

Sorasa bent closer. “Since when have rules meant anything around here?”

Before the eyes could answer, another voice sounded behind the sliding panel.

“Is that Sarn I hear?” a male voice said.

The eyes rolled. Before Sorasa could say another word, the panel snapped back into place, slamming shut.

Dom rumbled out a low laugh. “You have that effect on most people.”

There was a grinding, a gear turning somewhere in the wall as a pair of latches pinged open. Corayne jumped when the door in the brick wall swung forward, heavy on great iron hinges. The chamber beyond was long, well lit by torches and streams of daylight.

Sorasa smiled in the Elder’s face, or as close as she could reach. “I certainly do,” she said, passing into the next room with a bounce in her step.

The original crypt extended the length of the church above, set with fat, cobwebbed columns and high, flat windows to bring in at least some natural light. It shifted, blue and white with the passing clouds. There were more vaults along the walls, all stuffed with crates, tools, and food stores, as well as miles of parchment and gallons of many-colored inks.

Corayne looked it over, noting wood blocks that looked suspiciously like printing stamps, not to mention several cast-iron molds. Her eyes narrowed.

We’re in a forger’s workshop.

“Charlon Armont,” Sorasa said, approaching the stubby young man bent over a workbench. She said his name with the characteristic Madrentine flourish, words swooping. “So nice to see you.”

He looked up, one eye exaggerated by a magnifying glass. The other was mud brown, like the thick hair held back from his face by a tight braid. He straightened, revealing a strongman’s gut and broad, rounded shoulders. He had the build of a laborer, sturdy as a wall. But his hands were thin and delicate, skillful. His skin was pale, unnaturally so, as if he spent most daylight hours down in the crypt.It’s probably true,Corayne thought.

“Don’t lie, Sarn. You’re too good at it; it unnerves me,” he said, lowering his eyeglass to let it dangle from the cord around his neck. Without looking down, he swept the papers on his desk into a box, hiding the contents from sight. Corayne tried to catch some of it, but he moved too quickly. “It isn’t like you to come with company. Especially this kind of company,” he added, eyeing the rest of them. His curiosity deepened as he glanced from Andry to Dom to Corayne, taking their measure.

Corayne did the same. Armont didn’t look older than twenty, his face unlined by age, his skin smooth as marble and the color of honeyed milk.

His assistant, the owner of the green eyes, wavered nearby. She was small with a frizzy head of sandy hair. Charlon dismissed her with a nod, and she made herself scarce. The brick door shut behind her, the gears above it now clearly visible. It even had padlocks and a broad bar to be lowered into place.

He looks ready for a siege,Corayne thought.

“Strange days,” Sorasa answered, her hands spread wide. Both her palms were as tattooed as her fingers. On her right hand, the sun; on the left, the crescent moon.

Charlon nodded. He removed the glass, shoving it into the tool belt around his wide-set hips. He looked like a bull.A very nervous bull.“Indeed, there’s been odd talk.”

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