Hadrian woke up with a bright light in his eyes. He suspected it might be morning, but it turned out to be the dazzling brilliance of the moon reflected off the ocean below. He was facing down, dangling from a rope that was pulling him upward at the waist with short unpleasant jerks.

“You awake?” Royce called from somewhere above. His voice was strained and out of breath.

“I think so.”

“What do you mean you think so? You’re talking.”

“Maybe I’m dead.”

“I wouldn’t bother pulling you up if you were dead. Now, grab hold of that line and pull yourself the rest of the way. I’m tired.”

Hadrian twisted himself and caught hold of the rope attached to his waist. As he did he noticed he had a ringing in his ears and his head was throbbing. Reaching up he felt bandages.

“Can you climb the rope?” Royce called.

Hadrian pulled and found nothing wrong with his arms or back or legs. “I think so.”

“Okay. See if you can get up. I’m gonna rest a bit.”

Hadrian gritted his teeth against the pounding in his head that only increased as he exerted himself. Using feet wrapped around the rope and the old-fashioned hand-over-hand method, Hadrian scaled the twenty or thirty feet to where Royce waited. The thief extended a hand and helped Hadrian climb up onto a broad ledge of rock.

“By Mar, you’re heavy,” Royce said.

“What happened?”

“I didn’t cut the rope.”

“I didn’t say you did.” Hadrian was rubbing the back of his head where a big bump had grown.

“If I had wanted you dead—“

“I’m not accusing you, Royce.”

The thief scowled at him with angry eyes.

“I’m not—but what did happen?”

The anchor on my side came free the moment you started your swing. You fell and the other rope caught you. Then you swung back and clapped your head on the wall. You’ve been out ever since.

“How did my head get wrapped?”

“I wrapped it,” Royce said his voice still irritated. “You were bleeding. Skull wounds are awful that way. What else was I going to do?”

“I’m not complaining.”

“Sounds like it.”

“I’m just confused. How did you wrap my head before pulling me up?”

“I didn’t. I had to climb down, swing over to where you were dangling like a fish on a line. Then I had to stop the bleeding. I wrapped and cleaned you up—all while the two of us dangled in midair. I now know how a spider feels wrapping a fly. Then because you were still breathing but not waking up, and we have a schedule to meet. I used that dwarven pulley system to start hauling you up.

“How far up did you…” Hadrian, looked around.

His first thought was how luxurious the ledge was that they were sitting on. An instant later he knew it couldn’t be a ledge. Too big, too broad. Leaning back Hadrian looked past Royce and saw a span of rock that ran all the way to the South Tower. “We’re on the bridge?”

“Just so you know,” Royce said. “I was using that same anchor for support when you pulled it. I fell, too. I was able to catch myself, but you weren’t the only one to take a spill.”

“It’s okay, Royce. Really.”

Royce glared. The man was angrier than Hadrian had seen him in years.

Hadrian couldn’t understand it.

Royce shook his head. “It’s not okay.” Then his eyes focused on the bandages around Hadrian’s head. “It’s not at all okay.”

Hadrian found it a bit hard to believe that he was standing on the bridge. After a month of looking up at it and framing that seemingly thin span as an impossible goal—here they were. In less than two days, he and Royce had done what—after weeks of trying—a city full of some of the most capable people in the world were unable to achieve.

Tur Del Fur lay below them, dark and empty. Hadrian could finally see the entire story revealed. From the flat and barren tabletop of the West Echo plateau, the pale white of the cliffs appeared as a violent gash cutting down in the wall of rock. Zigzagging to-and-fro across the cliff, the greenery of the many tiers dressed the wound giving it color and life in its journey to the sea. More than that, Hadrian could see the pattern left behind by the towers’ creators. Circles, invisible from the ground, radiated out from Drumindor’s base as if it was the center of a great quarry. Hadrian had assumed the cliffs were natural and the tiers added to them. Now he saw that the cliffs had been created when the whole of the point had been mined away leaving the two towers at the bottom of a great quarry. The tiers were merely extensions of the road. Berling’s Way was just that, the route he and his workers took to get to the bottom and back out. Tur Del Fur wasn’t a natural paradise, the whole of Terlando Bay and the cliffs that surrounded it were merely the remains of a construction site. The rolkins, temples, mansions, and shops were all added after-thoughts.

They now had access to both towers, but stayed with the north one as they were already there and crossing the bridge was an unnecessary risk. With the moonrise, the open span felt as exposed to watching eyes as a barren field to a pair of deer.

“Well, at least I can see it, that’s something,” Royce said as the two approached the place where the bridge met the tower. At the intersection was an elaborate sheltered porch created from a series of six pillars and their accompanying vaulted arches that nested one within the next. The arches, each decorated with dwarven symbols, telescoped down creating an alcove at the center of which was at least the outline of a door.

It wasn’t a normal door. The thing was made of stone, lacked hinges, had no massive nails studding the face, and most terrifying of all, no key hole, latch, knob, or handle. The only hint that it was a door came from the grooved outline that depicted a small set of double doors with a half moon curve at the top.

Royce studied the door for a long moment, then placed his hand to the center and pushed. Then he pushed again. Then Royce did nothing for a long time, and Hadrian felt his heart sink.

Eleven hours later, they were still on the bridge.

By then the sun was directly overhead and Hadrian opened his little pouch to search for more to eat. They hadn’t brought much. Food and water was heavy and they had needed to be light. Neither expected to require more than a few bites. This was only supposed to take a few hours. As the night had dragged on the excitement and fear of discovery faded into boredom. Hadrian walked the length of the bridge several times, then slept in the meager shade of the multi-tiered archway to the door allowed. Royce, who was back in his cloak and hood, had stood, sat, paced and felt the surface of the doors at both ends of the bridge. Each were identical right down to their impenetrability.

“Want a jerky stick?” Hadrian asked holding one up like Royce was a dog.

Royce who sat at the North Tower door just glared at him.

“You know a little nourishment might help. I personally can’t think on an empty stomach. Can’t really do much on an empty stomach, really.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“Thirsty? We have a little water left.”

“I’m not thirsty, either.”

“You’ve got to drink, Royce. You’re sitting in the sun in a black cloak. That’s how they make game pies you know. They cover a bunch of songbirds with a blanket of crust, toss in a few mushrooms and bake. And up here you do sort a look like a blackbird.”

“That’s not how they make game pie.” Royce told him. “If you did it that way there’d be feathers. The meat is pre-cooked into a stew then added to the pie.”

Hadrian nodded. “You might be right about that.”

“Will you please shut up, I’m trying to think.”

Hadrian took a bite of the pork jerky, which had been spiced up with pineapple juice, brown sugar, and rum. It tasted wonderful, and he suspected would have even if he wasn’t trapped with a limited amount of food. Push come to pull, however, he’d have traded it for a game pie. “You’ve been thinking for nearly half a day and haven’t gotten anywhere. You realize we’ve only got about eight hours left to get away.”

Royce faced him with a look that explained in painful detail that he knew all this and did not appreciate the recap.

Hadrian took another bite. He made it a small one. He needed to make the meal last. He sat with his back to the door, his legs stretched out. Hadrian’s feet were now in the sun and getting hot. The never-ending wind helped, but the constant burning light was bothersome when he couldn’t escape it. Also distressing was that he was able to eat in peace. Hadrian had never been to a coast where gulls did not fill the air with their constant kaws and squeaky door squeals. Normally, he’d be fighting them off in order to have his meal, but not that day. And it wasn’t like they were too high up. The birds used to be there—the face of the bridge had plenty of white splotches. Now there was only the constant howl of the wind. The silence was absolutely creepy. What do they know that we don’t?

“I have gotten somewhere,” Royce said.

“You have?”

Royce leaned back and waved an arm at the entirely of the nested porch. “This is a combination lock with six tumblers, and the code to enter is a date.”

Hadrian stared at him certain Royce made all that up. “You can you read dwarven runes?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so,” Hadrian said. “Care to explain how you figured all that you just said?”

Royce looked over with the face of a card player who had his hand called, but wasn’t bluffing. “There are six archways set one within another, like a lock. Each is adorned with individual symbols. The first is made up of twelve symbols, the second of thirty-one. There are twelve full moons in a year, and thirty-one days in a lunar cycle. Drumindor is purged of pressure once every full moon, putting it on a lunar schedule. As a result the first tumbler with twelve options is the month; the second with thirty-on choices is the day of a specific date. That leaves four remaining tumblers to represent the year. The combination is a date.

“It makes perfect sense. Six variables makes the lock hard to decipher, but also hard to remember for those who need to. And what good is a secret lock if you write it down. Using a date, solves the problem eloquently. It could be the year of their first ruler’s coronation, or something far more obscure, but still a date every dwarf would know, but no one else would.”

“So all we need do is figure out the most significant date to the dwarfs or at least to the builders of Drumindor and—”

“No,” Royce shook his hood. “The combination has been changed.”

“Changed? How do you know? How do you even know it can be changed?”

“The system is excellent and having worked it out it seems hard to accept that they did not employ it at all they’re doors. If that’s true and if the codes to get in were permanent, then the dwarfs could have opened the door at the base of the South Tower. It’s impossible to believe that after hundreds of years only Gravis knew the entrance code.” Royce shook his hood. “No, Gravis changed the locks right after entering.”

“So we need to figure out what date he would have used.”

“Exactly.” Royce nodded. “I limited it to three possibilities. His birthday, the date Drumindor was finished, or the day he was let go from his employment at Drumindor. Do you know when Drumindor was finished or Gravis’s birth date?”

Hadrian shook his head.

“Neither do I, nor can we find out, so we might as well ignore those. As for when he was let go we can take a stab at that. Albert came to us with the job three weeks and five days ago. If Lord Byron took action the same day he fired Gravis, then by the time Byron spoke to Lady Constance, and by the time she arranged for a courier, it would have taken at least a day. If she used the traditional route—which seems likely as that is how she came here—the message would have taken four or five days. That means Gravis Berling was exiled from Drumindor very likely one month and six days ago—within a three day margin of error.”

“That’s great,” Hadrian said. He stood up walked out from underneath, bending over until her was free of the overhang. Then he turned around and studied the doorway. “Now, if one of us could read dwarven runes, we’d be all set.”

“We might not need to,” Royce replied. “Calendars begin on Wintertide, the day with the least amount of sunlight.”

“Why is that do you think?” Hadrian asked. “Why not Summersrule—the longest day?”

Royce shrugged. “Hope, I suppose.”

“Hope?”

“Desperate people hope for a new start. Be pretty pessimistic to be enjoying long warm summer days and look forward to a new start of diminishing days and the bleak cold of winter.”

“Suppose you’re right.”

“Now the question is, do dwarves read right-to-left or left-to-right. Given our selections are in the form of a rainbow-arch-format we can safely eliminate a top-down or down-up issue. The list will be from one side to the other starting and ending at the floor.”

“And do you know which side dwarfs start reading from?”

“Not a clue, how about you?”

“Don’t look at me I’m…” Hadrian stared at the entrance.

“What?” Royce asked.

“Which archway was it that you think shows the month?”

“This little inside one.” Royce pointed. “It has twelve symbols.”

Hadrian took a step closer and studied the markings. They weren’t entirely abstract, they were each little stylized pictures. Starting on the right and going left, Hadrian saw a diamond shape, a snowflake, a dog, angled vertical lines starting at the top but not touching the bottom, what might be a rabbit, a pair of horizontal shapes like ingots, a circle with lines radiating out, a snake shape, a single ingot shape, wavy angled lines, a vulture, and three ingots.

“They read right to left,” Hadrian said.

“How do you know that?”

“Sloan the bartender at that hidden dwarven pub said we had just finished up the Snow Moon and this coming full moon would be the Wolf Moon. There’s three moons in a season. If they start their calendar at Wintertide, the third month would be that one there that looks like a wolf—third from the right.”

Royce nodded. “You’re not nearly as dumb as everyone says.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Okay, then if they read right to left. Then the year is also easy. We just count the symbols. Two, nine, nine, and zero.”

Hadrian shook his head. “That won’t work.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s the year in Imperial Reckoning. For dwarves it is the year two hundred and two thousand, nine hundred and eighty nine.”

Royce stared at him for a long moment as if unable to decide which question should come first.

Hadrian made it easy on him. “At the little pub they mentioned how the dwarven year differed from Imperial Reckoning. They say that was the day Eton first shined on Elan—Eton being the sun, I guess.”

“And you remembered the number?”

Hadrian shrugged. “You don’t spend time at bars. But trust me, knowing such bits of otherwise useless information comes in handy. One day some fella is going to wager a round on that very number and be devastated when I know it.”

“You live in a completely different reality, don’t you?”

“Compared to yours? I most certainly hope so.”

Royce looked back at the arches and frowned. “But there’s four arches. How do you write a six digit number with four choices?”

“Got me there.”

Royce studied the entrance. “Well, for one thing dwarves don’t have zero. At least, that’s what Auberon said. They also have one word for every number from one to a hundred. So what if they had one symbol, for two thousand, and another for two hundred. That gets us halfway.”

“But how do you write nine hundred and eighty-nine with two symbols?”

“They had no zero,” Royce said.

“There is no zero in nine hundred and eighty-nine.”

“I know, but I was wondering how do they indicate nothing?”

“Blank space maybe?”

Royce looked at Hadrian. “What is one take away one?”

“Nothing.”

“Or zero.” Royce said and sweeping a pointed finger indicated half of it. “Look at the outer four arches. Could be a thousand tiny symbols up to the keystone. Now look at the ones on the left side.”

Hadrian did and noticed a pattern. The little symbols on the left were mirror images of those on the right. None of the other two arches did that.

“The ones on the left are negative numbers,” Royce said.

Hadrian raised bewildered brows and it was the thief’s turn to explain.

“Remember how Dixon keeps the slate of money owed at the bar? How much is owed is a form of negative numbers. One plus a negative one is zero.”

“How do—“

“I have my own share of useless information, only I didn’t get mine in a tavern. Arcadius taught me all sorts of nonsense while I was his slave. Point is the last two digits would be the symbol for one hundred and the symbol for negative eleven. Or at least it could be. I mean I suppose it could also be a handful of other combinations that would represent the same thing. I just think for simplicity sake they would stick to a ten-base system. They are dwarves.”

Hadrian wasn’t certain what that all meant, but he was certain that, “It could also be a million other possibilities.”

“No,” Royce shook his head. “Not a million, at least. The sheer tools we have to work with to compose the tumblers limits the possibilities.”

“So what do we do, Mr. Thief?” Hadrian asked.

Royce looked down at the bay. “You’re right, we’re running out of time to get safely away. Let’s start with the month because that’s seems the sure bet. Then we’ll try the year. If we can’t get that, the city is doomed—short of Gravis popping his head out to see who is messing with his door, and us managing to trap it open with a toe. Honestly, as far as I see it, that’s our best chance. But if that doesn’t happen, we can try different days and hope to get lucky. I figure we’ll only get so many tries then the system will seal… or worse. If it does, we see how fast we can repel down and we run out of the city as fast as we can.”

With a deadly serious look, Royce pressed the wolf symbol. It recessed into the wall. Hadrian hadn’t a clue if that was good or bad, it was however, something, which was oh so better than nothing at all. Then Royce did the same to the four tiny rune symbols in the four outer arches.

Royce waited next to the door. Nothing more happened for a long time.

“So what do you think?” Hadrian asked. “We got the right symbols, or not?”

Royce shrugged. “Probably need to complete the series to find out.”

“So do that,” Hadrian told him. “Pick a symbol.”

Royce pondered the final archway. He choose the sixth symbol from the right and pushed. The moment he did, all the other depressed stone symbols popped back out, and there came a noticeable clap sound. Royce pushed on the door. Nothing happened.

“I think we got it wrong,” Hadrian said.

“And I don’t like the sound of that clap,” Royce said.

“Try another,” Hadrian said.

This time Royce pressed the seventh day. Again the slabs of stone snapped back and once more came the clap! except this time the tone was noticeabley higher, and Hadrian felt a tremor on the bridge.

They two stared at each other for a moment. Then speaking at the same time said. “The bridge is trapped.”

“We put in the wrong set of symbols…” Hadrian said.

“And the bridge falls,” Royce finished for him.

Hadrian looked over the side. “That would be bad.”

Royce promptly took out his hammer and drove three different pitons into the tower and the two attached ropes.

“Sure three is enough?” Hadrian asked.

“Of course not,” Royce said. “But how many would be?”

Royce began punching in the symbols again. And paused when he reached the last number.

“Ready?” he asked his fingers over the fifth symbol.

“No,” Hadrian said. “What if we have it wrong?”

“What do you mean?”

Hadrian looked around at the two towers and the bridge. “We do have it wrong!”

“Again—what do you mean?”

“Think about it, Gravis is about to destroy Drumindor. You don’t do that to something you love.”

“You do if you don’t want anyone else to have it.”

Hadrian rocked his head considering the thought. “Maybe, but let me ask you, if Gwen ran off with Dixon, would you kill her for it?”

“I’d kill Dixon.”

“Exactly!”

“Why are you always talking about Dixon and Gwen?”

“Shut up and listen,” Hadrian said. “Gravis was let go, but he and his wife lived rent free in their house for a week and a day before she died. You remember Auberon saying that?”

Royce nodded. “It’s not the loss of his job, it’s the loss of his wife he wants revenge for.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.”

Royce looked at Hadrian appearing perplexed. “Strange.”

“What is?”

“That you figured that out and I didn’t.”

“Because you think I’m stupid?”

“No, I never thought you were stupid. Intentionally naive to a fault, sure, but not stupid. No, its just that revenge is far more my native tongue.” Royce returned to the second archway. “A week and a day. There’s a full moon every four weeks and one day. The last full moon was the night I didn’t kill Lady Lillian. If Gravis was let go a week before we got the job, then his wife would have died the day we got the job—which was during the last full moon.”

“The Snow Moon,” Hadrian said.

Royce nodded and changed the wolf for the snowflake. Then he crouched down to the lower right symbol on the archway with thirty-one symbols. “Ready?”

Hadrian got near the wall and took up the slack on his rope. “Ready.”

Royce pressed the symbol.

Nothing happened.

They both waited for several seconds. There was no snapping back of symbols, no clap, no collapsing of the bridge. Nothing at all happened.

“Did you miss a symbol?” Hadrian asked.

Royce looked. “No there’s one for every archway.”

“Try the door.”

Royce placed his hands on the outline of the door and pushed.

Nothing.

“Now what?” Hadrian asked.

“Give me a minute,” Royce said. “Let me think.”

The minute stretched into hours.

Royce was certain they were close. In fact, he was positive the door was open. All he need was to turn the knob. Only he had no idea how to do that. The knowledge was beyond frustrating. The answer had to be a simple thing and yet it left him utterly defeated.

“Royce,” Hadrian said. “The sun is going down. We’re almost out of time. If we go right now, and run all the way, we might make it to the top of the cliff.”

“I’m so close!”

“You tried your best.”

“Bastard dwarves! By Mar I hate them!” With that he kicked the stone.

Click.

“You want to go down first or—”

“Quiet!” Royce said. He listened. “Did you hear it?”

“Here what?”

Royce faced the door and placed his hands on the face groping the surface in the area where his foot had struck. “It’s not perfect.”

“I’m certain the dwarves will be devastated to learn that.”

“It should be, but it isn’t. Not any more.”

“What you made a dent in the stone with your foot?”

“Pretty much, yes.” Royce let his hands read the tiny indention that hadn’t been there before. He pressed and the indention vanished. He pressed again. Click.

“Okay, I heard it that time,” Hadrian said, and joined him. “Door still doesn’t open?”

“Not yet,” Royce said. He felt out right to left and pressed again.

Click-clack. A new indention settled while the other popped back up.

“What does that mean?” Hadrian asked.

Royce grinned. “It means I have it.”

He pressed the indent and the stone popped back to smooth. Then Royce, using both thumbs depressed both spots at the same time. Click-clack-clunk!

The door gave way and swung inward.