The Thief
By The Inspector
Chapter 11
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Disclaimer: You know I don't own anything here. Why do you keep asking? Oh well, I'll say it again. I don't own, I don't make money, don't sue me. This is all for fun. Thanks.
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Author's Note: As you can see from the summary change, I have decided to go with my instinct and allow myself a little Bakura/Ryou. But do not worry, I'm not going to change the style I've been writing this and suddenly have them all over each other. Not even a kiss until the last chapter.
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"We will have to wait until midnight," Kaiba said, motioning for everyone to unload their burden. "So we might as well eat now."
Kura sat in the sand while Odion began to prepare dinner and Ryou scampered around looking for enough dry wood to burn. He didn't bother himself to help either of them, he had more pressing issues on his mind. He thought of asking Kaiba what exactly they were up to out in the middle of nowhere, but they weren't on good enough speaking terms for Kura to bring himself to say anything. So he took a nap instead.
The dream he had had the other night returned. In his dream, Kura walked up cold stone steps to a small room with white marble walls. There were no windows, but moonlight came in from somewhere and illuminated the woman waiting there. She was wearing a long linen dress that fell like water to the floor. Her face kept shifting in and out of form and Kura couldn't get a good enough look at her, though he felt as though he should know her.
"Who brings you here?" the woman asked as Kura stepped into the room. Her voice rumbled like the purr of a large cat.
"I bring myself," Kura replied.
She leaned over the table and looked at Kura, her eyes turning from brown to yellow and back as she inspected him. "Do you come to offer or to take?"
Kura licked his lips, finding his mouth suddenly dry. "To take," he whispered.
The woman smiled, her sharp teeth flashing in the silver light, and she opened a scroll to add Kura's name to a long list. After a moment, she added a little mark next to his name. "We shall see," she said.
Kura woke a moment later and was pleased to find that Odion had dinner ready.
Dinner was eaten by the light of the moon and then everyone sat around waiting for midnight to come. Even Ryou was uncharacteristically in an untalkative mood. Finally Kaiba asked Kura to tell them the story of Bakura and the Thunderbolts, but Kura refused.
"Bakura gains his immortality, but loses his brother," Kura said sourly, "He wins the prize and as a result his brother dies. Shadi receives his gift, a river stone dipped in the waters of immortality, but at the cost of others. Bakura steals the thunderbolts to show off, and he becomes permanently scared." Kura ran his fingers over the side of his face, close to his eye. "Here. He burns the land and causes the Earth and Sky to argue again. It is a tale about the consequences of getting what you want and I don't like it." Kura turned away in a huff and silence regained the camp.
"Did you know," Kura said suddenly to Kaiba, "That when you think someone is very intelligent, you say he is clever enough to steal Horus's Gift?"
Kaiba shrugged. "No, I didn't," he replied. "Is it just said among your mother's people?"
Kura shook his head, the ends of his hair whipping him in the face. "I don't know," he said, "But I do know what happened if you tried to steal Horus's Gift and were caught."
"I don't know what happens," Kaiba admitted, surprised at the gap in his extensive knowledge. But he didn't seem surprised that Kura knew. If there is one thing that most thieves keep track of it is crimes and the punishments dolled out for them.
"They threw you off the mountain," Kura said. Malik snickered, but Kura failed to find it humorous when he was about to try to steal the dammed thing.
"Maybe that's why your mother left Eddis," Kaiba teased, trying to lift Kura's gloomy mood. Kura figured that he had either gotten over his anger at him, or was pretending that he had for the sake of retrieving the stone.
"No," Kura stressed, "Not thrown as into exile." He dropped his hand in a long arc to show someone falling a great distance before they went 'splat'. "Threw as in over the edge of the mountain."
Malik winced loudly and turned slightly green. "Remind me never to visit Eddis," he said shuddering.
Everyone fell silent again. All that could be heard was the sounds of the river and the snapping of the wood in the fire. A good quarter of an hour passed, and then they heard the sound that Kaiba had been waiting for.
It was a change in the wash of the river behind them. Kaiba stood up to look, Kura right on his heals. As they watched, the river disappeared. The water flow stopped like a giant tap had been turned off by the gods themselves and the night echoed with the silence left behind by the river.
Kura stood shocked with his mouth hanging open for a long time as he realized that the phenomenon was caused by a reservoir and the water of the river flowed through a sluice in its dam. At the end of the summer, if the water in the reservoir was too low, then the sluice gate was closed and the river and waterfall literally disappeared. Kura shook his head in dumb wonder.
In the rock where the waterfall had been, there was a recessed doorway. The lintel of the doorway was the rock itself, but set into it were two granite pillars. Between the pillars was a door pierced by narrow slits that were wider in their middles and narrower at the ends. The river water still sprayed through the slits and dropped into the round pool that remained in the basin below.
"I wanted to get here a day early, to give you a chance to rest," Kaiba said, "But you moved so slow, that is now not possible. The water will begin to flow again just before dawn. You have to get out before that, as I believe the temple will flood quickly. I assume that you will need these." He pulled a soft piece of leather out of his pack and handed it to Kura.
Kura unwrapped the leather and recognized the tools of his trade. In fact… "These are mine."
"Yes," Kaiba said, "They are the ones that were taken from you when you were arrested. Not being a thief, I didn't know how to otherwise equip you properly."
Kura's stomach gave a great leap as though he had swallowed a live frog. "You already knew then?" Kura asked.
"Oh yes," Kaiba smirked, "The man you bragged to in the wineshop about your talents in thievery was an agent of mine. Not your casual informer."
Kura whistled soundlessly as he thought of the twists in this tale. Then he forced his mind back to the task at hand. "I need a light."
"Odion has one for you."
Kura looked behind him and saw Odion standing with a lamp in his hand. He gave it to Kura saying, "That's six hours of oil."
"Do you have a pry bar?" Kura asked. It was the only thing he didn't habitually carry with the rest of his tools because it was too big and heavy. Odion did have one and went back to his pack to fetch it while Kura waked down to the edge of the riverbank.
Standing in the remaining water that came up to his ankles, Kura turned his gaze away from the door to ask Kaiba, "Do you know if anyone has tried this before?"
Kaiba nodded. "I believe several attempts have been made," he said.
"And?" Kura prompted.
"No one came back."
"From inside?"
Kaiba shook his head. "At all. No one who has been inside has returned; no member of any party where someone when inside has ever returned either. I don't know how it might happen, but if you fail, we are all lost together." He smiled and waved one hand in a vague benediction.
"If my calculations are correct," Kaiba told Kura, "The water will stop for four nights in a row this year, and this is the second of them. Don't get yourself drowned on the first try."
Kura waited until Kaiba and Odion had disappeared back to the fire where Malik was poking the embers with a long stick before he started forward. He hadn't taken more than a few steps when he heard someone sloshing through the water after him.
Kura turned and lifted the lamp. The yellow light practically reflected off Ryou's silvery white hair and made him look almost ethereal.
Ryou hurried through the water, casting nervous glances back at the camp. "Here." Ryou took Kura's hand and placed something in it. He smiled. "For luck."
Kura watched Ryou dash back to camp and opened his hand. In it was a gold chain with a small lapis charm caught in the middle. A common symbol of luck among the people of Sounis. Bakura smirked. Stupid superstitions. He put Ryou's good luck charm over his head and shook his hair free.
Now, to business. The remaining water of the river was chilly and Kura splashed through it as quickly as he could to the entrance of the temple.
Kura stood before the door and examined it with a sharp eye. It was completely made of stone right down to the hinges. It was a smart move by the craftsman. Wood would have rotten and metal would have been worn away by time and the water. It would take stone a great deal longer. But there was no lock on the great doors.
Kura pushed against the doors, pushing not only against the weight of the door, but the weight of the water remaining behind it.
As Kura began to push the door open, he muttered a quick prayer to the god of thieves, his namesake. It was a superstition his grandfather had ingrained in him. Send up a prayer as you start your work and send up a prayer as you finish it, and leave a gift once a month on the alter of Bakura. Personally, Kura liked to leave earrings. His grandfather had left cloak pins.
Finally the door swung inward and more water rushed out. Kura moved inside and the heavy door swung closed behind him. He was soaked up to his waist, but the water on the stairs behind the doors was only three or four inches deep.
Kura scurried down the stairs and found himself in a small chamber. Examining the room, Kura realized it would be the first to fill when the river came back. Genius, really. And at least five hundred years old.
Across the room was another door, stone like the first, with a simple latch lock. The bars on the lower half of the door allowed the latch to be lifted from either side of the door and so Kura let it also swing shut behind him.
The corridor on the other side stretched in two directions and both were so narrow that Kura's shoulders brushed against the walls. Walls of solid irregularly jagged rock. Each tunnel ran ten feet before ending in a metal door with metal locks, unrusted and damaged by water and time.
The locks on the doors were complicated and it took Kura several minutes to get the door on the right open. Beyond the door was another corridor that ended in a door similar to the one Kura held open.
With a suffering sigh, Kura hunted around for something besides his foot to prop the door open. He really didn't want to waste his time to reopen it later when he was ready to get out.
There were no loose stones in the tunnel and Kura was loath to leave either his tool bag or pry bar behind to keep the door open. Finally, he removed one of his shoes. They were soaking wet and uncomfortably heavy anyway.
Kura wedged one of his shoes under the door so that it wouldn't shut and relock behind him, and tucked the other in his belt incase he should need it later.
Barefoot, Kura stepped down the corridor through the few inches of water that remained in the temple.
The thief was only halfway down the corridor when the lamplight revealed something incredibly noteworthy about the far door. It's surface was completely smooth. There was no way to open the door from his side.
"Gods," Kura said aloud, "Oh gods." He whirled around to the door behind him just in time to see the water push his shoe out from beneath the door and the door begin to swing closed.
Kura leapt-four giant steps-and threw himself face forward towards the closing door and slipped his fingers on his left hand into the jamb. The metal door bit into his fingers, making him wince, but he left them there until he could slip his other hand into the opening and force it back open.
Now Kura observed the inside of this door and found that it too was completely smooth. He had almost gotten himself trapped in a lockless corridor.
Quickly, Kura fled through the door and sat down with a great sigh of relief. As he sucked his injured fingers, he gave thought as what to do next.
First, he refused to go back to camp right now and tell Kaiba that he had almost gotten himself irretrievably stuck before he even reached the inner temple. Not that his death would have been immediate, had he been trapped. He wouldn't have died until morning when the river returned.
But there was no point in exploring the door without better means of keeping it open. So Kura decided to check the left door before he felt that he had waited enough time to return to camp.
Kura had lost the lamp, pry bar, and one of his shoes beyond the other door, but he didn't need a light to work by, he was used to working without it. Still, there was a nice dent across his first two fingers on his right hand and the tips felt numb. This made it difficult for him to open the lock, but he managed.
Once Kura had the door open, he carefully checked for a keyhole on the other side. Even then, he made sure that the keyhole he felt was real and not a blind hole drilled to deceive him. Only once he was sure it was real did he wedge his remaining shoe in the door opening and cross the threshold.
Everything was dark behind the door and without the lamp, Kura didn't know if this corridor ended the same as the last.
Kura dug his hands into the pockets of his trousers. One pocket had filled with water at one point and was soaked; the other was still fairly dry. Both had matches in them. Kura had picked up a package of sulfur matches at the inn the first night on the road and another six matches on the second night. The ones he made taken from Odion were wrapped in a scrap of oil paper and untouched by the water.
In his dry pocket, Kura also had a small knife with a folding blade that had belonged to the man sitting next to him at lunch one day, several pieces of leather thong, one longer piece of cotton twine, and the decorative pin Kaiba used to hook his cloak. He thought he had dropped it before his last bath, stupid man.
In the wet pocket were miscellaneous coins, two now moist pieces of dried beef, and Malik's comb. Kura idly wondered if he'd noticed that it was missing yet.
Kura put one of the pieces of beef in his mouth and chewed it while he pulled a match out of the oil paper and it lit.
Before him was another corridor of solid rock with another metal door at the end. Kura made his way forward into the corridor. When the match burned down to his fingers, be blew it out and continued in the dark.
The door at the end of the corridor was locked. Kura opened it, checked again for a keyhole, and let it close behind him. The floor in this corridor was uneven and he stubbed his toe once and placed his feet more carefully after.
Kura brushed his hands across the stone on his right side and touched something cold, hard, and completely smooth. Kura stopped and felt the corridor's side more carefully and lit a match to see what he had found.
It was Horusial Glass, obsidian, formed from quickly hardening molten lava rock. In ancient times it had been used for points on arrows and spears, and it was still used in jewelry and for the blades of decorative knives. The piece Kura had found in the wall was very large. It started a little above the floor and reached over Kura's head. It would have been very valuable if he'd had a way of prying it out of the wall to take home.
Kura walked on and lit another match, only to find himself at another intersection of corridors.
Kura walked through corridors all night, a maze hallowed out in the stone bluff. At one point, he ended back up at the other end of the trap he had almost fallen into. He lit a match, he only had seven left, and saw his pry bar and lamp laying on the floor where he had thrown them in his haste to stop the door from closing on him.
Holding the door open with his foot-it was heavy and pinched the skin-Kura pulled off his overshirt and wedged it firmly beneath the door. Then he pulled off his other shirt and added it to the pile, just in case.
Then, half naked and shivering in the cold air, Kura hurried into the trap and picked up his lost possessions (though no sign of his shoe) and scampered out again. Safe.
Some of the oil had spilled from the lamp, but there was plenty left. Kura lit it with one of his remaining matches and continued his exploration of the maze.
Personally, Kura wasn't sure what to make of the maze. It was unlike any temple he had ever seen. There was no alter, no places for offerings to be made, no statues of the gods, and no treasure room to store the valuable offerings. Kura would have sworn that the magus had been duped, if not for one thing.
At the back of the maze, farthest from the entrance, was a wider corridor, more finished than any of the others. It's floor was canted on one side and was the lowest point of the maze. The water that remained there was several inches deep, but not deep enough to cover all the bones that had settled there over the years and remained undisturbed as the Seshmu River drained away.
There were skulls worn thin as eggshells, longer bones like thighbones, and smaller curved ribs that poked one end out of the dark water. 'How long,' Kura wondered morosely, "Does it take bones to dissolve? Fifty years? One hundred years? How long have these bones been here and how many have disappeared before them?'
Kura trailed his fingers in the water and shivered at the cold. How could so many people have come searching without leaving a record? How could Horus's Gift have remained lost if so many knew to look for it in this place?
The light of Kura's lamp reflected off the water and he could see some of the smaller bones still hidden beneath the water, still arranged in the ghostly shape of a hand. He muttered a quick prayer for the souls of the dead thieves that had come before him and returned to the maze.
Kura wandered back to the corridor with the huge piece of obsidian, pausing to inspect it and thought of the hundreds of earrings, pendants, brooches, and spearpoints it would make. And then, the water started coming in.
The flame of Kura's lamp sputtered at the sudden increase of water and he remembered that time was a crucial element in this game. Odion had given him six hours of oil, but he had wandered around by match light for a long time. How much time did he have left?
Kura did a quick about face and headed for the exit, careful to keep his breathing even. Panic could make you do some stupid stuff and he did not want to end up in the trap by sheer stupidity.
Forcing himself not to panic, Kura hurried to get the lock open. Behind the door was a rising puddle that signaled the river's return. Kura ran to the next door, haste pushing him on ahead faster. Just ahead of him was the door he had held open with his shoe. Said shoe now pushed free by the water.
Kura unlocked the door and had to jump back to avoid being hit in the face by the door and the water surged in, pushing him backwards. Kura swung his arms for balance and fell back on his ass, the water coming up to his chest.
Scrambling to his feet, Kura hurried out the door and rushed to the last one. His wet hair whipped around his face as he pushed on the door, trying to force it open. The water against it made it hard and his arms ached with the strain. Finally it cracked open just enough for him to slip through and the door slammed shut with enough force to break bones.
Kura waded towards the shore, his clothes soaked. He didn't want to even think of how undignified he must look to the other campers. If they were awake. There was no sun in the sky yet, though the world rested in a twilight gray. In an hour it would be dawn.
"Kura!"
Kura barely heard the high-pitched cry before he was hit in the chest with a slightly frantic, squirmy bundle of Ryou. He had to take a step back to regain his balance and keep from dragging both of them under the water.
"I was so worried," Ryou squealed, clinging to Kura's neck.
"Hey, I'm a professional," Kura said as he led Ryou out of the water. "There's no need to worry. I know what I'm doing." He decided to not tell Ryou about almost getting stuck in the trap.
Kura fumbled for the chain around his neck. "Here, this is yours," he said, trying to get Ryou's charm untangled from his hair, but Ryou stopped him.
"Keep it until we're home," Ryou said with a small smile. "You can use the luck."
"Did you get it!?" Kaiba called from the bank.
Kura shook his head and sloshed up the bank, still supporting Ryou. "No," he said, very sullen and slightly embarrassed. "I couldn't find it. I couldn't find anything." Nothing but huge pieces of obsidian. "No alter, no treasure room, nothing but a maze of corridors."
Ryou went off to find dry clothes while Kura described the maze to Kaiba. "I haven't given up, though," Kura said when he saw look Kaiba gave him. "I still have two more nights."
Ryou came back a few minutes later, dressed in dry clothes and with a set for Kura. Odion was with him, having been woken up when the boy was searching for something to wear.
Now awake, Odion set about making an early breakfast. Kura scarfed down food his food in record speed and refused the coffee Ryou helped make. No matter how cute he was, Ryou's coffee was like mud and there was no way he was going to drink it.
Kura lay down after he ate, throwing his cloak over his head to keep out the morning light. He knew that he'd need as much rest as he could get to be ready for another night of the maze. He fell asleep just as the sun was rising.
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TBC
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Author's Notes: Answering Questions and Such
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Thank you to everyone who encouraged my to write this as my muses were dictating me! I think the muses would have killed me or refused to cooperate if I tried to go against them and it's nice to know I have your support.
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I have seen some confusion for the chapter entitled The Punishment. Kura was punished because Kaiba found their food bag empty and assumed that Kura ate everything (hence why he and Odion had to go to town for more food). Kura's smart remark didn't help the situation, but it wasn't why he was punished. Just wanted to clear that up. And yes, it was Malik who ate everything so that Kura got in trouble.
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Kelsey, is it weird that the whole time I read the book The Thief, I felt that Sophos and Gen should have gotten together? I guess it's just the slasher in me. Well, don't worry. I certainly don't intend to turn this into a gooey love story.
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Enjoy everyone!
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The Inspector
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