The Dream Thief, Kari Kilgore [reading well TXT] 📗

She'd doubted such a simple device could be effective, but Loretta had come to rely on it over time. As soon as a guard walked into the hidden room around the corner of the porch, the corner that faced the Fog, and closed the door, a wire flipped the glass around. When the door opened, it was reset.

Such devices, scattered throughout the house inside and out, were the simplest parts of Loretta's life. She gathered up her leather delivery bags embroidered with fine gold threads and carried them into the kitchen

The kitchen seemed far grander than a woman from the rugged and rural Northlands, especially one who lived alone, could justify. Loretta was an unnaturally quick study. Her clients demanded a certain appearance, even in places they would rarely see.

The most important facade was one of the most subtle.

When she opened the cabinet to get out her cafei mug, Loretta reached past a large bottle of Crumble. A dish sat on the stone countertop with tiny silver spoons made just for that purpose laid out in a holder nearby.

She encouraged her guards and visitors alike to use her supply, and they did so without hesitation. She even made her pills available to the guards, telling them she didn't want them to ever worry about forgetting them or trying to stretch out the time between doses on her account.

The real reason was Loretta hadn't taken Crumble herself for many years. Having a fluctuating supply of it was just another way she avoided drawing attention to herself. Someone, probably Rhysto, had helped himself to a large supply of both forms.

Cafei in hand, Loretta slid the pantry door into the wall, stopping to light the hanging gaslight before she closed it behind her.

This was another unusual extravagance in her small house, a pantry large enough for two or more people to walk into. The large variety of food was certainly nice after a childhood and young adult life full of worry about where her next meal was coming from. Only Loretta and one other person knew the true value of the space.

She stood two paces in front of the lamp and slowly pulled it down to her chest level. Before raising it again, she flipped what looked like a useless brass ornament on the front from horizontal to vertical. She raised the lamp up to its normal position just above her head.

The floor under her feet looked like nothing more than the shorter pieces of wood used in a utility space until several of them started to sink. The motion was smooth enough that not a drop of Loretta's cafei spilled. The relatively new technology of hydraulics was responsible for her slow descent through the jagged hole in her pantry floor.

Loretta made a mental note to pay a visit to her grandmother in the blasted Northlands as soon as she could get Rhysto and his spies off her trail. Adding a guard station to her back porch suddenly seemed a lot more important, as did a few more security devices.

When the moving floor sank into a matching hole in the basement, Loretta started a lamp within her arm's reach and well within the light from the one in the pantry. She had several lamps down here, but she hardly ever lit more than one. The gleaming copper floor, walls, and ceiling reflected more than enough to light her way.

She stepped off and pushed a bronze button on the copper column nearest to her, and the floor moved back up into place. She could hear the counterweights shifting to keep everything from moving too fast, but only as the slightest whisper.

That was one trick neither Rhysto nor anyone else would likely figure out or be able to defeat. The weights were keyed to Loretta's own body weight.

Even if someone else knew how to activate the moving floor, it would not respond to someone much heavier or lighter than her. She had no intention of sharing the secret of the built-in override with her guards or anyone else.

The other secrets underneath her modest little house were far too valuable to take that risk.

The basement was as large as the first floor, and at the moment it was emptier than Loretta would have liked. Copper-wrapped shelves lined most of the walls, and a huge table covered with gold took up most of the center of the room. That was one exception to the solid copper used everywhere else.

The table had inlays of various other metals: bronze, copper, and electrum primarily, in nine concentric circles with bars of lead pointing to their centers.

Loretta knew essentially how the various arrangements worked, functioning as specific targets all inside the larger one of the house itself, but she preferred to let her grandmother worry about of that. They worked, and that was her only concern.

A far bigger concern was the dwindling supply of objects on all those shelves. Loretta counted seven distasteful curios waiting to be delivered to the collections of her enthusiastic clients. That was only a few days' work if all went smoothly, and this was the part she had no trouble at all letting Rhysto learn all about.

He could watch her make deliveries all day and all night. Gathering new inventory once this modest supply ran out would be a much bigger problem.

Loretta finished her cafei, wishing she'd brought more down here with her. This was the hardest part of shifting from delivery to building inventory, at least before Rhysto's little intrusion. Changing her sleep schedule wasn't as easy as it had been just a few years ago. That was the whole point of these days off to help adjust.

A very late night and a long sleep had done her a favor, but she still had to stay up later than usual while finishing these remaining deliveries. She put the empty cup and delivery bags down and walked over to the wall opposite the hanging lamp.

The shelves here were kept empty