Paragon - Book I

Girl on Fire

They are tearing through the place, checking wardrobes and drawers, floorboards and bookshelves. Keno has opened another door in the study while Allayria cases the bedroom. She has gone over every bit of space she can get to, pressing and prodding for secrets hidden from the eye, but the room yields nothing.

She's beginning to think she might be better served starting on the dining room when Keno's voice wafts in through the doorway.

"Get over here."

She looks up. "What about the dining room?"

"Leave it for now; I need you to open this safe."

"A safe?" Allayria echoes, peering through the door. "You need my help opening it?"

"Yes," he replies and she hunkers down next to him. "First thing's first: can you just take the door off?"

She looks down at the small, black box and lifts a hand, scratching the air as if to peel something back, but the door does not oblige. She tries again, and then presses a hand to the surface. It's cool and smooth like metal, but she feels no answering hum from it, no call of potential. She stares at the thing, afraid for a wild moment that something has gone wrong with her Skilling.

"I figured that would be the case," Keno sighs. "Ok, try the lock."

She places a hand on the silver slab and feels, with a surge of relief, a tinging response.

"It's metal," she says.

"Don't rip the lock off," he orders. "Just move the pick around."

She manually tries, but it is stuck. She pulls the lockpick out and inserts it again, clumsily shifting, angling for room.

"The metal in this thing, it's too thick," he says. "Everything is clunky and mashed together. You shouldn't be able to unlock the door with a key much less, a lockpick..."

"Unless you can manipulate the metal levers with Skill," Allayria says, feeling them in there, bulky and unmoving.

"Right."

"So why can't I rip the lock off?"

Keno points to a small slip of red on the corner of the device.

"I don't know if you've ever seen anything like that, but it's what they put on locks with trip wires in them. If you don't activate them the right way it triggers and you'll get a face full of fire and bits of whatever you were looking for."

"Well, shit."

Keno shrugs.

"It's not all bad—if this safe is fitted with a wire that means there must be something good in there," he looks up at her. "Maybe a key to something, like a crazy-ass library on an island somewhere..."

She glances up at him.

"You think so?"

"Yeah. See what you can do. I'll keep an eye out on the door."

She places a hand on the lock. She doesn't want to tell Keno, but she hasn't done something like this before. The closest thing would be when she tried to separate one metal from a different metal for fun, and that had required great concentration, not to mention gave her a ringing headache for several hours after.

So she closes her eyes and feels the metal. She tries to search through her fingertips the inner workings of the lock, pulling a little here, tugging a little there. The lock makes strange clicking noises as she does so, protesting at the smallest movements.

"Think of it as a puzzle with different levers being pressed at different times to elicit a positive response," Keno murmurs from behind her. "With often-used locks like this, there are always tell-tale signs of which levers get pressed."