Fate's Edge

“You have a house?”
    He nodded. “You’ll like it.”
    Audrey rolled to her feet. “Well, I better get on with opening the lock then.”
    “What is it with you and houses?” Kaldar asked.
    “We moved a lot when I was little,” she said, examining the last lock. “I lost count of how many places we lived. We never owned any of them. I want a place of our own. Okay, you might have to help me with this. I need an extra hand.”
    They fiddled with the lock for almost ten minutes. Finally, it clicked. The vault door swung open with a whisper. Lights flared inside one by one, weak but revealing enough to illuminate a long, rectangular room. Gold coins lay here and there, piled in casual heaps. Priceless art hung on the walls, under thick glass. Gadgets and statues from both worlds stood, each on its own pedestal, backlit by colored lamps. To the right, a huge ruby sat under glass, like a drop of blood-colored ice.
    “Best date ever,” Audrey whispered.
    Kaldar clicked a small wheel on his spyglass and surveyed the room through it. No additional defenses. He clicked the wheel again.
    “Nothing. Either Morell is using something the Mirror had no knowledge of, or he didn’t bother putting heavy internal alarm systems inside the vault. Shall we take a chance?”
    Audrey nodded. “You take me to such interesting places, Master Mar.”
    “I strive to please.”
    Audrey held her breath. They stepped forward in unison.
    Nothing.
    She exhaled.
    “Twelve minutes,” Kaldar said, checking his watch. “We need to move.”
    It took them almost ten minutes to find the diffusers. They waited in the same wooden box Audrey had originally stolen. She opened it and stared at the twin bracelets. The source of all her problems. Dread washed over her in a cold wave.
    Kaldar pulled out the fakes from his backpack.
    “This is it,” she said. “This is what my brother and Gnome died for.”
    He crouched by her.
    “I wish I could rewind time and go back to when my father asked me to take this job. I wish I had told him no.”
    “Then we would have never met.” He pulled her to him and kissed her.
    “I wish it was done,” Audrey said softly. “I wish we were free and clear. I have this awful feeling that something will go wrong.” Apprehension had churned in her stomach ever since Helena d’Amry walked into that ballroom. Her instincts warned Audrey that things wouldn’t go as planned, and she’d learned long ago to trust her intuition. It had saved her more than once from being caught, and now it was screaming at her to get out. But they were in, and until the auction concluded tomorrow, they couldn’t leave.
    “I know,” Kaldar told her. “I have it, too. We’ll be fine.” Audrey looked at the diffusers. An irrational urge to smash them swelled in her.
    “Come on,” Kaldar said. “Let’s replace them and be done. We have ten minutes till the spider makes the guards run around again.”
    They swapped the bracelets, put the box back on its pedestal, and left the vault.
     
    MORNING came far too quickly for Audrey’s taste. Last night, after Kaldar kissed her, both of them hanging on the sheer wall, she climbed back to her room, changed her clothes, and got into bed.
    And then she stayed awake. She rolled on her side, on her stomach, on her side again. She flipped the pillow until both sides of it were too hot to sleep on.
    She finally fell asleep and woke up at the first light, tired and groggy. Cerise had lent her a gown, a complicated twisted affair of blue that took forever to put on, but at least the skirt was wide enough that she could run in it, and the pleats hid the dagger Gaston had given her.
    They just had to get through today. Just get through.
    A servant brought a breakfast tray. She forced herself to eat some of the fruit and a small piece of some sweet pastry. Low blood sugar was bad in their business.
    A knock sounded through the door leading to Cerise’s quarters.
    “Come in!”
    Cerise stepped into her room carrying an odd collection of buckles and belts, attached to an oblong metal disk. About four inches wide and six inches long, the disk bore the complex ornamentation of the Weird that usually meant there were high-magic gears inside.
    “What’s this for?”
    “An emergency escape harness.” Cerise handed her the harness. “Think of it as a parachute. Kaldar has this too, more than one. They come standard issue on most missions. You never know when you have to dive off a