In front of him a great bank of cabinets, gilded to match the walls and floor, stretched away in either direction until they were swallowed up in the blaze. Glauca didn’t need to look for the number stencilled on the door. He could have found cabinet thirty-seven blindfold. From inside his plain cotton shirt he drew a bunch of keys nearly the size of a man’s fist, hung on a stout steel chain; these days they bruised his chest, but he didn’t feel safe unless he was constantly aware of them pressing against his skin. He peered at them through the rock-crystal magnifying lens that was always folded inside his clenched left hand – it was unique, and the sum he’d spent on it was more than Senza would need to pay his army – until he saw the number 37 on the barrel of a slim brass key. He scrabbled it into the cabinet’s lock (his hands shook badly these days), turned it, pulled it out again and let the bunch go. It swung against his chest like some piece of siege equipment. Most reliable sources state that the first pack was designed and executed by the silversmith Ebbo, to the orders of Tandulias of Pyrrho.
What do You think about The Two Of Swords: Part 7?
