Chapter 45 40. The Vault

Once Tifse and Safraxi’s business was concluded, they spent some time in the temple to rest before returning to the palace, long after sundown. Night was the best time to investigate the location of the coins, and they would even pass by Alstif’s office on the way to the bedroom.

Safraxi had finally noticed Tifse’s coldmark was growing too, during their time together in the evening. She wasn’t sure exactly why Tifse hadn’t told her, but the dragon was also past the point of caring about her own coldmark growing. She’d just be a white dragon. It would suck losing her shiny… beautiful… sapphire-like scales, but it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

She was still a dragon, and it wasn’t even really identifiable as a coldmark anymore with how big it had gotten, especially with the lighter patches all over her body from her burns. She just looked like a calico cat for now, but a dragon. Tifse must feel the same if she hadn’t brought it up, right?

As they passed through the palace Safraxi’s attention was grabbed as a whiff of the stench of bitter oils and ointments hit her nose. The coins had been through here, and recently. “Go get Magli, Idami too if she wants to come. They finally moved the gold.”

Tifse’s expression went from an absent sort of contentedness on her dragon’s back to serious in an instant. “Got it. I’ll try and be quick. Don’t draw too much attention.” She leapt down from her dragon’s back and tore out of the hall into a side passage, toward her bedroom.

Safraxi nodded and began following the scent, attempting to do so as casually as possible. If she looked like a dog following a trail that would certainly raise eyebrows. Instead she did her best to keep her head at a level height as she wandered through the halls, until coming to he main garden. The scent was harder to track here. There was plenty of air movement out here, and the more definite trail she’d been able to follow until now had wafted away. With so many flowering plants distracting her in here, it definitely wouldn’t be easy to pick up again either.

She started around the edges and the entrances, swapping back to her rat form, Fraxi once again, so she wouldn’t be as easy to spot in the dark, even donning her helmet so her white furred head wouldn’t stick out so brightly in the moonlight. Eventually, she completed a full loop without finding any further signs of the smell, which meant it had to be somewhere in the garden. It was rather bold to leave a vault out in the open like this. Then again, people might suspect less? What kind of weird backwards logic was that though?

Tifse, Magli, and Idami crept out of the eastern doorway about five minutes later. Safraxi was still combing the sides of the courtyard for any signs of the scent, or a passage, or anything. “Who the hell keeps a vault in a garden?”

“Well, my dad I guess.” Tifse sighed. “You’re sure it’s here?”

“Yeah, the coins came in but never left, or at least not out of another entrance. Problem is, the wind dispersed the scent too much. Can’t figure out where in the courtyard they went.” She continued her pacing along the walls.

“Could be something else. Maybe he handed them off to a servant here and they took it to the vault back through the door he entered?” Magli joined them in their examination of the outer walls anyway.

“No, it’s right here.” Idami taunted from the center. There was a smirk in her voice. “Why’d you assume it’s at the edge?” All heads turned to the orange dragon. She was next to the old steel statue of Ulovis, pointing to it with a claw. “The marble here doesn’t match the marble around it, and the grout is newer, or even absent onnnnn this tile.” She tapped a claw on one adjacent to the statue. “It was probably installed more recently than the rest of the tiles.”

“How the hell…?” Safraxi stalked back up to her aunt and squinted at the statue and the courtyard tiles around it. “I can’t see the difference.”

“Did you already forget? I was a stonemason’s apprentice for a few years before I got thrown in the pit.” Idami hooked a claw under the edge of the tile without grout and lifted. It ascended up from the surrounding tiles without any apparent difficulty, and as it did so was revealed to be much thinner than its neighbors, and hiding a set of tracks which continued underneath the statue. “Shove the statue over.” She set the tile aside and made space.

Safraxi stared at her in shock for a moment before complying. The tracks were smooth and well oiled, and the statue slid over so easily that her augmented dragon strength wasn’t even required to move it. Once the statue was gone, a staircase revealed itself, down into the earth below the courtyard.

“That fucker…” Tifse stared down the hole in astonishment. “He kicked me out of the courtyard when I slept out here so many times! And why? Just so he could go check on- on his things?” She clenched her fists, shaking with rage. “He even locked me in my room one time for sleeping out here! That bastard! I- I’ll-”

Safraxi interrupted her rider by pulling her into a hug. “Hey, we’re already working on fucking him over. Try and keep a cool head, Pipsqueak.” She planted a itty-bitty lick on the fox’s head with her little rat tongue.

“Right, right.” Tifse groaned and nodded. “You should take the lead. You see better in the dark anyway.”

“I’ll keep watch, since I can’t fit down there.” Idami parked herself in front of the staircase. She was big enough that if she spread out she could block the view of the entrance from most angles.

“Might as well join you two, then.” Magli grunted and followed Safraxi and Tifse down into the dark.

Once they were far enough down that a magical light wouldn’t be visible, Tifse lit one up. It was a bit of a squeeze for Magli and Safraxi, they had to crouch down underneath the edge of the statue to go further in, but Tifse’s ears just brushed against the bottom. The stairwell went down almost twenty feet before they finally hit a reinforced wooden door. Safraxi tentatively reached out and turned the knob. “Locked. Magli, I still haven’t replaced my lockpicks. Mind if I…?”

“Here, Safraxi.” She passed her whole toolkit down to Tifse to be relayed to her. “Let’s see if you’ve kept up since our last lesson, eh?”

“Oh please, old lady. I’ve probably surpassed you.” She pulled out the lockpicks with a twirl and inserted them into the lock. Three seconds later the door was open, and she tossed the kit back to her sister. “Bam, beat that.”

“Another time.” As the group entered the room beyond the doe patted her sister on the head.

The room was filled completely with shelves of scrolls, ancient artifacts, even stacks of coins, much of it gold. As soon as the dragon laid eyes on the piles of coins she began scooping it all into her bag. “Even if we can’t find the recipe we can at least swipe his cash.” She’d have to count it all later, but she’d added at least seventy more gold, in addition to the twenty she’d paid him earlier. All in all it more than doubled her supply. She wouldn’t have to worry about cash for a long long while.

Tifse could only roll her eyes with a smile as her dragon fixated on the coins, and proceed with going through the shelves, searching for the scroll they’d come here to find. “A lot of these aren’t even in modern Stefaian.” She groaned as she went through them. “How are we supposed to tell which one we’re looking for?”

“Take them all for now.” Magli joined her. “Sounds like your old man would rather keep this in a dusty basement for his own pleasure and profit than share. If he’s found one bit of ancient technology he’s hoarding there must be others.” She pulled out a diagram from a protective leather tube, displaying some kind of stack of thin metal disks stacked on top of each other, and submerged in a liquid with filaments of metal coming off of the top and bottom. “I don’t know what this is but it probably was cool or something. They didn’t even use the modern alphabet before the freeze.”

“Well we can’t just take all of them. Without the protective cases they’ll be damaged, and we can’t just take them all, they’re too bulky.” She pulled out a box and opened it. Inside was an odd contraption with two pieces of cracked and worn round bits of glass, and metal wire connecting them with a bent bridge. “Oh, I remember him telling us about these. People put them on their face to see better or something? Lots of old paintings have people wearing them I guess.”

“How does glass and metal make you see better? Were they enchanted?” Safraxi squinted at the odd bit of crushed metal and glass.

“Maybe? He’s the expert, not me.” She closed the box and returned it to the shelf. “I think he has these organized by the site he found them in. He found the recipe before I was born, and before Tani was born, so it would have to be…” She slid past Magli and began reading the labels on the shelves. “The Hiurin site or Rustifin site I think? I… maybe didn’t listen to his lectures on ancient pre-freeze history and his expeditions as much as I should have.”

“It’s a start, Pipsqueak.” Safraxi patted her head and also began pulling them down. “That said, once we find it… what are we gonna do with it? Unless he has another copy in modern Stefaian somewhere, we won’t be able to read it. This shit is ancient.”

“How did all of this get lost in the first place?” Magli wondered at the many different scrolls she pulled down and examined. “I mean, how did no one just find this again after the Melt?”

“A lot of people don’t really understand how bad the Great Freeze actually was, you know?” Tifse sighed and shook her head. “The war between Apsu and Ninazu lasted nearly a century, and once Tiamat killed Ninazu it took generations afterwards to kill most of the ice serpents. That whole time, snow was building up, turning into glaciers miles deep. It completely buried ancient cities. The weight ground them into rubble. People had to go back to being nomadic, gathering their food day by day instead of farming, because anything they built would be buried in snow after a week. They say there were people who lived their whole lives without seeing the earth, only endless ice and snow.”

“How did people even survive that?” Safraxi gaped at the story. She’d never really considered how long the freeze could have lasted.

“Something to ask your grandmother, I guess.” Tifse pulled an old rotting book out, nodded, and slid it into her bag before grabbing another. “Or one of your uncles. One of the original six dragons is supposed to still be alive, right?”

“Yeah, Takilnak is supposed to have been someone born during the freeze.” Idami let them know from above. “I got to meet him at my ceremony. They say he’s the oldest living thing in the world. I only ever saw his human form, he doesn’t have legs anymore in his dragon form. At that age its just easier to live in the water, he said.”

“Haven’t had the pleasure.” Safraxi shrugged. “Shit, we might have to ask Granny for help translating this even if we do find it. I’m not sure he keeps a translated one around at this point.” She slid another possible book into her bag.

“Yeah… I think we have all the probable ones now. That’s like, what, six scrolls and eight books we grabbed?” She double checked around the cramped cellar. “Okay, let’s go before anyone comes and finds us. With any luck, he won’t go down here again any time soon.”

“Um… Tifse, your sister is here. The nicer one.” Idami informed them all from above. “She’s asking to talk to you.”

The rider’s head shot up at the news. “Tani?”

“I don’t know her name.” Tifse could hear the eye roll in the dragon’s mental voice. “She’s just asking for you. Are you going to come or not?”

“I’m coming, I’m coming.” Tifse shoved her bag into Safraxi’s arms and began her cautious ascent back up the stairs. Tani was at the top of the stairs, staring into the darkness. She appeared antsy, like someone could come out and interrupt them at any moment.

“Tifse, we need to talk. Now.” The older fox crossed her arms. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for days, have you been dodging me?”

“W-what?” Tifse’s ears splayed back. “What’s that supposed to- I haven’t- what do you need to talk about?”

“About you ruining my engagement! And my life!” The taller fox seethed. “You and your dragon, in a matter of days, have dashed all of my plans! Do you understand me?”

“Woah, woah, hold on.” Tifse backed a step down the stairs, hands up to try and placate Tani. “Start from the top. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Please.”

“Of course you don’t. Every time I got to your room you weren’t there. You’re nowhere apparently. Why are you so hard to- forget it. Where you’ve been isn’t important.” Her sister shook her head and pinched her nose. “I fell in love while you were gone, you know? I was supposed to be married in just a few weeks. I was trying to invite you when I saw you before.”

“Oh, I’m… I’m sorry.” Tifse wilted at the news. Her relationship with Tani was far from perfect, but she was the only sister she had who she shared a mother with. Before meeting Audirei or Safraxi, Tani was the only person she could consider herself close to, even if their relationship was far from perfect. “What happened?”

“Father is using me as a bargaining chip for these upcoming negotiations. The other chieftain has a son my age.” She whimpered. “He gave his blessing for my marriage before, to someone I actually loved, but just… changed his mind after what you did. He needed to sweeten the pot for the negotiation, but he also said he needed the room in his budget for paying your dragon, so he couldn’t afford to give me away for free… He… he had my fiance hauled off somewhere when we argued.” She sniffled, eyes tearing up. “Tifse, you have to help me!” The words came out as another whimper.

Remorse pierced Tifse’s heart like a well placed dagger. “Shit… no no no, I- I’m so sorry!”

“You’re sorry? You’re sorry!” Tani’s voice rose into a screech. “You have to fix this, Tifse! I know you’re not supposed to be in the vault! You think you can just come in, fuck up my life, and then just leave my shattered life buried in the rubble of father’s ego? You need to fix this!”

“You’re right, you’re right I…” She wracked her mind for where else Alstif might have sent someone he wanted out of the way. “He’s not in the dungeons, is he?”

“No, I don’t know where he is…” Tani wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Please, you have to find him. If he’s hurt I-”

“No! No… I’ll find him.” She groaned. “Safraxi, we’ve got a complication.”

“Yeah, I heard. Can I come up?” The rat-dragon’s bright green eye peaked out from around the corner of the stairs.

“Right, right. Come up. Tani, this is my dragon.” Tifse patted her as she made it to the top.

The dragon awkwardly held a hand out to her rider’s sister. “Nice to meet you I guess, I’m Fraxi.”

Tani regarded the offered hand with uncertainty for a moment before shaking. “I am Tani. Tifse, I thought the orange one was your dragon.”

“Anyway, Tani.” Fraxi pulled Tani’s attention back to her. “Are you going to tell Alstif about… this?” She gestured to the open vault.

“No! No. I see no reason to be loyal after what he did to my fiance and I.” She shook her head emphatically. “Your secret is safe with me.”

“Good, then let’s move this somewhere private. We’re going to Pipsqueak’s room.” She patted Tifse on the head and started closing the passage back up, once Magli was out. The extra weight in her bag wasn’t making it easy. So many extra coins had been stuffed into her hoard pouch in the bottom and they swung wildly any time she moved or bent over. It was an excellent problem to have. With this kind of coin she might actually be able to start and staff an orphanage for a good while. Maybe she could start robbing rich assholes to finance it? It was a satisfying means to a worthy end, something to keep in mind.

They all made their way back to the rider’s room in quick time, made sure there were no listeners, and gathered around as far from the door as they could. This time of night, even the seedy bar they’d gone to before was closed.

“So, where is this lover of yours?” Fraxi started. “Where would your dad sent him if not the dungeon?”

“I don’t know. He knows I could get into the dungeon to see him, so he must have put him somewhere else.” She curled up to be as small as she could on her sister’s bed, hiding her face in her knees.

“You got anything that belonged to him? I could try to sniff him out.” Safraxi stretched out on the rug at the foot of the bed. She wished so bad she could take her dragon form. She was so sick of having to talk to other people.

The upset fox shook her head fervently. “No. Father took the… token of affection he gave me. And his home is out of the city. We wouldn’t be able to get there quickly.”

“And we can’t risk taking too long on that when our plan is on a time limit…” Tifse groaned. “We need to get those texts translated and back here before negotiations conclude. Do we know someone for that?”

“Well… no. Doesn’t your dad have contacts for that? And what about your future brother in law or whatever?” Fraxi tilted her head in confusion.

“I’m not saying we abandon that, only that we… split up. You can’t go to any of my father’s contacts, they either wouldn’t work with you, or could even tell my dad what’s up.” Tifse pointed out, going through the alternatives in her mind. “You need to find a dragon old enough to speak those languages. Either Tiamat or her eldest, Takilnak was his name, right? Maybe he’s still in the city?”

“It’s possible.” Idami shrugged. “I… suppose if Safraxi and I need to find another dragon, we’re going back to Fellrock. I know she wanted to take me home anyway. Maybe we just have to do that sooner instead of later.”

“We’d have to go by boat. I’d be on a time limit getting back in time.” Safraxi grimaced. “It’ll take at least four, maybe five days to get to Fellrock by boat. Idami can’t fly yet. If I really pushed myself I could get back to Salifir in one day, but I’d be toast afterwards.”

“Then… I stay here, and I help Tani.” Tifse sighed. She hated the idea of being so far from Safraxi, especially with how much progress they’d been making lately, but she couldn’t leave her sister out to dry like this.

“What about me?” Magli shuffled uneasily. “I can help, but I’d rather-”

“Go with her.” Tifse insisted. “She’ll… she’ll want the help.” She didn’t want to say out loud that she was worried about Safraxi’s mental state without her, or Idami around. Magli would be the next best option now. The flight back could be brutal on the dragon if she did it alone.

“But you’d be alone, Pipsqueak. Who’s gonna help you out while we’re all gone?” Safraxi sat up from the floor to stare at the rider with concern. “We’ve never…”

“I know, Fraxi.” Tifse stepped up to her dragon and kissed her. It was their first time doing so lip to lip. Until now it had been Safraxi licking her like a dragon would, or her kissing Safraxi on the cheek or forehead. It didn’t feel quite right, for either of them. The rat form really was just a mask. Kissing it wasn’t the same as kissing her as a dragon, as her true self. “It’s only for a few days. You’ll have Magli and Idami, right? You can even… say hi to your family maybe.”

“Right… right.” Safraxi sighed and pulled the fox in tight. “We’ll find a boat first thing in the morning. I’ll drop a few gold on a quick departure if I have to.” She cringed at the idea. She’d just gotten so many gold and was already having to part with some. The world was cruel.

“And I’ll help Tani find her husband to-be in the morning.” Tifse sighed and settled into her dragon’s arms. After a moment, Safraxi shifted back to being a dragon and cradled the fox against her belly, wrapping a wing over her. If the two were going to be apart for a few days they needed to make tonight count.