Short Story – “Ten Lockpicks”
Barmi let out a length of foul language that would put the most seaborn sailors to shame. Another pick had broken in the lock, taking his total to four. He threw it with the others, shattered on the ground below, as he rummaged about in his satchel for the next one. The gnome was persistent, always had been, but his sister was not so keen on the challenge. Tallya stood beneath him, carefully balancing her brother on the tops of her shoulders so he could more easily reach the lock to the vault door. It had been almost an hour now, which in her opinion, was about fifty-nine minutes more than this job should have taken.
‘The blasted door is protected with an arcane lock,’ Barmi muttered. ‘A bloody good one too. This is going to take some skill. Remarkable skill.’
‘So, you’ve said,’ replied Tallya. ‘Listen, Barmi, maybe we should just leave it? It’s only a matter of time before we get noticed?’
‘I’m not leaving after all that trouble you took to sneak us in!’ Barmi shot back at her, leaning closer to the keyhole. ‘You’ve been casing the stone keep for months, and this is about the only chance we’re going to get at this.’
‘Yes, but—’ she stopped mid-sentence. The sound of sudden approaching footsteps caught her ear. In a moment, she had slipped Barmi down, breaking yet another of the picks in doing so, and was rushing him over to one of the nearby pillars to hide. Her brother may be better at breaking locks, but she was better at hiding. She concealed them beneath a black cloak and slapped a hand over his mouth to prevent his objections from reaching the approaching strangers.
‘I almost had it!’ he barked through muffled gasps. ‘Damn it, Tallya.’
‘They almost had us, you mean!’ she hissed. ‘Now quiet down, brother.’
None other than Lord Rosevale himself came waddling into their view, accompanied by two of his house’s guards. Their red cloaks flapped gently behind them as they moved, but Tallya was more concerned with their armour. It was black and battered, letting her know they were well-experienced in a fight. They carried blunt, heavy maces, as was the tradition for the arbitrators in Tressa, and looked as if they were just itching to use them.
‘Well, it has not been opened.’ Lord Rosevale spoke in his booming voice as he approached the vault door. It was fairly typical looking as far as vault doors go. Large, yes, circular, indeed, and made of standard thick steel that did the job of keeping thieves out. Taking a relieved breath, Lord Rosevale approached the archetypal vault with an outstretched hand.
Tallya’s eyes lit up when the lord’s fingers brushed against the metal. In a second, the magic that kept the vault sealed presented itself in a stark blue light which lit up the room. Various runes and writings, beautifully patterned into the shape of a mighty shield, woke up at his touch and presented themselves for inspection. That was the arcane lock, Tallya knew, made to keep even the most daring of thieves away. The lord looked pleased with himself, smiling smugly, and smiled wider still when he looked down and saw the handful of broken lockpicks.
‘Foolish thieves.’ He turned back to his guards. ‘I would have given them more credit for getting this far, but it seems those idiots failed to realise that the vault was protected by magic. My grandfather, Garnamere Rosevale, cast this arcane lock himself and believe me when I say he was the strongest of mages. I would wager the gold inside this very vault that they have fled from the keep now and returned to whatever hovel will have them.’
‘Does that mean you do not wish us to conduct a search, sir?’ One of the guards relaxed, his grip loosening on the handle of his sword without the presence of immediate danger to keep him sharp.
‘Yes, a search must still be conducted.’ Lord Rosevale pushed past them, idly playing with his slight moustache as his brain turned. ‘They clearly do not possess the phrase needed to open the door, but there may be ways to find it in other parts of the keep. Tell your guards to be on alert and begin searching from room to room. Ensure you check the shadows and instruct your men to carry a strong light. They may very well be whispers, and I will not be stolen from by any of those professional felons.’
Their voices became whispers, which then became distant echoes, and a minute later, they were gone. Tallya sighed. That was that, then. There were only two ways to break a magical lock, as any good thief knew, and they were to either know the passphrase beforehand, which they didn’t, or to possess a magical spell that could overpower the magic of the lock. She turned to her brother with a sigh, ‘I’m sorry, Barmi, it looks like—’ but he wasn’t there.
‘Help me up to the lock.’ Barmi was back at the vault door, the next pair of lockpicks in his hand. ‘I’ll get it this time. I’m sure of it.’
‘Uh, didn’t you hear lord prim?’ Tallya pointed down the long room. ‘It’s a magical lock. We won’t be able to beat it without a passphrase?’
‘Codswallop!’ Barmi jumped up at the vault door himself, using its various groves as tentative footholds to reach the keyholes. Tallya raised an eyebrow as he climbed a little, then slipped. The gnome rushed to meet him, allowing Barmi to use her as a stool again. ‘I just need a bit more time!’ he pressed. ‘I almost had it.’
‘You’re crazy?’ she replied. ‘No. We’ve been here long enough already!’
‘Come on, just a little longer. You know what dad used to say.’
She moaned, and they spoke their late father’s words in unison. ‘The greater the lock, the larger the prize.’
‘If you’re so dead set on this, Barmi.’ Tallya grabbed hold of his feet to steady him. ‘That lord did say there might be a clue as to how to break the arcane seal. Perhaps we should just go and find it?’
‘Nah,’ he shrugged her off. ‘We don’t need it.’
‘Kind of seems like with do?’
There was a crack, followed by Barmi adding another pair of broken lockpicks to the floor’s collection. In the following minutes, Tallya’s only comfort lay in the fact that the guards would not look for them there. Lord Rosevale had seemed pretty confident in his lock, and with good reason because it worked. After all, the gnomes were not common thieves. They were members of the city’s most prominent guild of thieves. The Whispers of Tressa — the exact type of thieves he was concerned about, trained in the art of larceny with abilities proven time and time again. If they couldn’t get into the lock, few probably could.
‘Why won’t you let this go?’ Tallya asked him after the ninth pick had broken. ‘I’m here to support you, Barmi, but this is becoming madness.’
‘I’ve never met a lock I couldn’t pick.’
‘You’ve never met a magical lock.’
‘No,’ he replied sullenly. ‘It has never met me.’
‘Listen, let’s take a break, go into the keep and see if we can find some clue as to how to break it!’ Tallya shifted him up a little. She was beginning to get uncomfortable. ‘Lord Rosevale himself said that something might be hidden in plain sight. We can’t get more of an endorsement than that?’
‘No!’ Barmi hopped off her, landing nimbly on the floor. ‘You don’t understand, Tallya.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Tallya moved a little closer towards him. ‘What don’t I understand exactly?’
‘You’re good at thievery,’ he replied. ‘You know, the hiding, pickpocketing, and just like being a thief. Me? I’m only really good at picking locks.’ He stared down at the final set in his hands. Once broken, he’d be hard-pressed to have another go at the lock. ‘Dad said that you could get through any lock if you were lucky enough and skilled enough. I can do it, I promise.’
‘You don’t need to do that.’ She placed a caring hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged her off. ‘Sometimes we just fail at things. I’ve had my bad days too, Barmi.’
‘That’s now what dad would say.’ Barmi turned to her. ‘I need more lockpicks. Or something that could serve as a lockpick.’
No, Tallya thought; dad would say a good thief gets in and out of a job before anyone is aware there was a theft. The pair had been here so long that the guards were searching room to room before they had even had the chance to touch anything valuable. They were way past their point of a comfortable stay. Yet, Barmi wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave until he got this door open. It left Tallya with two choices. Drag him out kicking and screaming, probably getting the both of them killed by the Hangman of Tressa or helping him to break the stupid lock.
‘Okay,’ she sighed, moving towards the other end of the room. ‘I’m going to find more lockpicks or something that can be used as a lockpick. You stay here and break through the door.’ Tallya turned to him with a playful finger. ‘Don’t steal anything while I’m gone.’
‘I won’t.’ Barmi nodded at her. ‘Hurry back, though. We don’t have much time!’
The shadows are usually a thief’s best friend, but the guards were smarter than that and had lit the keep up like the morning sun. As Tallya rushed through the pristine and extravagant hallways of the keep — past several paintings that could serve as compensation should they not get into the vault — she found herself having to duck beneath tables or leap behind statues and curtains to avoid being spotted by one of the many guards now patrolling the corridors. Fortunately, she was a gnome, which meant sneaking past unsuspecting humans was made easier thanks to her natural abilities of magic. At difficult junctions, she would throw a small noise across the hall, like a falling pebble, or make a light flicker for a second. Slight tricks that kept those searchers momentarily distracted for her to slip by.
She didn’t feel good about lying to Barmi, but as the older sibling, she was responsible for looking after him. So, she had gone out of the room, not searching for lockpicks as he’d asked, but in search of the passphrase. The first problem would be getting it, but the bigger concern would be using it without his knowledge.
As any good thief was to do before stealing the valuables of a person in the higher courts, the pair of gnomes had investigated the keep thoroughly. That meant sneaking in at night and making mental maps of the layout, knowing where the valuables would be, knowing where the guards patrolled, and knowing the best way to leave in a hurry. As she’d been steadying her brother for the second time, she’d been thinking about where a passphrase could be hiding. It had taken her a few minutes, but Tallya remembered something from her first night entering the keep alone when she had thought hard about it. She had seen a thing that had lain dormant in her mind, waiting to be of use, but now it could connect with something Lord Rosevale had said earlier.
His great-grandfather, Garnamere, had created the arcane lock.
It’s funny because in all that time scouting out the keep, Tallya had only seen Garnamere once. When she rounded the next corner, she came face to face with the old brute. His likeness was cast in a painting that hung at the top of the many staircases in the stone keep. The once lord of Tressa stared down at her with unkind eyes and only resembled his great-grandson in one particular way — the weedy moustache that he also, no doubt, liked to fidget with when he was thinking hard.
Tallya, keeping an ear out for approaching sounds, jumped nimbly up to the banister and studied the painting. Garnamere’s name stood out in bold on the plaque, on top of his birth year and the eventual year of his death. The man had lived for a grand total of sixty years, some sixty years ago. Tallya ignored all that, though. Beneath the name and the dates, there was a phrase — no doubt a quote from the man himself — A better man than I would carry his gold to bed. She had no idea what that meant, but that wasn’t the point. That sounded like a passphrase if ever she’d heard one.
The gnome had been a thief for a good decade and had learnt a few things, especially concerning the poncy families that liked to run things in the city. Their possessions were so valuable that they couldn’t simply pass them down as a father would pass down a sword on his deathbed. With that much gold, there was always a fear that some undesirable soul would take it. This often led them to do irrational things in the light of trying to be rational. Powerful fathers would hide clues that, because of their own arrogance, they assumed only their next of kin could figure out. They would hide this stuff in plain sight and hope that no one else could figure it out. If these wealthy families loved nothing more, it was family secrets and keeping them alive. Even if they were stupid.
There was no doubt, not one, that Tallya had found the passphrase.
With the key in mind, the gnome rushed back towards the vault. She was perhaps a little more careless than what was proper of a thief to her talents, but she was worried about Barmi. By now, the last lockpick would’ve broken, and he wouldn’t be in the best of moods. The guards were still none the wiser of her, mainly because all of the rooms had been searched by this point, and, thanks to overheard conversations as she rushed by, they’d assumed the thieves had given up and gone home. But would Barmi do something reckless?
Tallya swung the door shut behind her, fastening the bolt, and quickly fell to her knees in breathy rasps. She needed a moment to catch her breath. The gnome didn’t dare look up the corridor to the vault. The gnome stayed put on her knees for the moment, trying to think, as she took deep breaths, at how she could give her brother the answer without giving her brother the answer.
‘Tallya is that you!?’
She’d whisper it and blame the lock opening as a delayed action on the part of her brother.
‘I did it!’
Or perhaps it would be easier to pretend the door was still locked and get him to try with another instrument, maybe a piece of one of the broken lockp…she paused, her pointed ears went up, and her eyes went wide. Pushing off her knees to a stand and turning slowly, she was still breathing awkwardly when she found herself facing the vault and her brother again at the other end of the room.
Barmi was sitting with a big grin on his face, idly twirling the last, the tenth, set of lockpicks nimbly around his fingers. There was a small, golden crown on his head, pearls around his neck, and so many rings on his fingers it looked like he was wearing gauntlets. The gnome had sat between the two rooms on the frame of the door, which was now very much open and ready to receive visitors. Beyond him lay a treasure trove of gold and jewels that any king would gasp at.
Tallya wiped the sweat from her eyes as she approached, mouth hung open and agape. ‘But…how? It was a magical door?’
‘You can get through any lock if you’re lucky enough and skilled enough.’ Somehow, Barmi’s grin just grew wider. ‘I told you I could do it!’
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