Song of the Saurials - Kate Novak [50]
The bard looked up and laughed. "Giogi? That's who you expected to protect me from the Harpers? Ruskettle, have you taken leave of your senses?"
"Giogi has a friend called Cat who can keep you hidden. I thought you'd want to meet her."
"Why?"
"She's one of the copies that Phalse made of Alias," Olive explained.
Finder reached up and grabbed Olive's wrists. "What?" he shouted.
"You know-one of the twelve copies he made," Olive explained. "I found another one-Jade. We were friends, but Flattery killed her. He thought she was Cat. He was mad at Cat because he thought she'd betrayed him. She was his apprentice for a while, since she's a mage. Jade was a pickpocket-a good one, too. Anyway, Cat sided with Giogi against Flattery. He was horrible to her-Flattery, that is."
Finder sat on the pile of rock he'd been shifting. "Olive, I think I'm getting too old to keep up with you. If you have any more revelations, give them to me now, while I'm sitting down."
"Cat's going to have Giogi's baby next spring. So you'll be a grandfather, sort of, besides being an eleventh-generation great-granduncle."
Finder closed his eyes and began to rub his temples with his fingers.
"So how about heading for Immersea?" the halfling asked, hoping Finder would be more open to the suggestion in his shocked state.
Finder shook visibly and rose to his feet. "I need to get into my workshop first. Then we can discuss what to do next."
"Suppose whatever's set up housekeeping down here is between us and the workshop?" Olive protested.
"I'm not going to let some squatter keep me from my own home," the bard answered angrily.
"Finder, you've been in exile for two hundred years. It's not as if whatever it is didn't wait a decent interval before moving in."
The bard grinned slyly. "It's getting awfully late to be on the road. Olive," he said. "Wouldn't you rather have a bath and spend the night in a comfortable bed before we leave? I can get you that with the magic in my workshop."
Olive tried to fend off the temptation by imagining a ray of disintegration coming toward her.
"The door to the workshop is only about another hundred feet down this passage,"
Finder said.
Olive pictured the green ray of disintegration Flattery had used to destroy her friend Jade and did not reply.
"Then we wouldn't have to walk at all." Finder added. "I have copies of my spellbooks in my workshop. I can teleport us to Immersea."
Olive sighed at her own weakness. She slipped on her gloves, picked up her shovel once again, and started shifting dirt. Finder began to sing a dwarven mining tune as he returned to digging out the rocks. In spite of her annoyance with the bard's stubbornness and her fear of whatever lay beyond the obstructions, Olive hummed along in harmony. It was too hard to resist the power of Finder's voice.
They were both growing tired, so they worked more slowly. They'd been at it nearly an hour when Olive felt a flutter of air waft through her hair. "Got it!" she whispered down to the bard.
"Do you see anything?" Finder asked.
The halfling put her face near the flow of air and squinted. "It's too dark," she reported. Her talent for seeing in the dark had never been as well developed as most of her folk, but her other senses were sharp enough. "It feels warmer," she said, "and-phew! Your home's new tenant isn't much of a housekeeper. It smells like garbage."
Finder started working faster, excited by the nearness of their goal.
Olive slipped down to the floor to give the bard room to work. He piled stones up on either side of the tunnel to shore up the ceiling as he dug into the dirt.
Olive watched him wriggle like a snake into the hole he'd created and disappear.
If he wanted to go first, she had no objections. If there was something waiting on the other side, Finder was a bigger target and made a good shield.
"I need the torch," his muffled voice called out.
Olive took up Finder's torch and scrambled up to the hole. She thrust it through as far her halfling arm could reach and leaned it against the stones the bard had positioned. Finder