Exploitable Weaknesses by Brian Keller (red queen free ebook txt) 📗

“You mean-?” Cooper quickly assured him, “Keep at it. We can live anywhere. We’ll just have them improve some other building close by and relocate when it’s ready. It just means we’ll be in here a little longer.” The boys looked dejected, so he added, “It’s a good idea; keeping the coin close. I’m glad you’ve worked out a solution for that.” Cooper took off his cloak and rolled his shoulders, “Who needs a break?” Both boys’ faces lit up with grins.

By lunchtime, the hole was almost big enough. They took turns eating while the other two continued to dig. After lunch, as others began returning to the site, they all took turns deepening the hole. When Birt announced that he was ready to show them what he’d been working on, they all felt relieved to put the tools down for a few minutes.

Birt had made a small hill, about the size of an overturned bushel basket, complete with an excavated concave area on the north side. It was bricked up with rocks to form a cliff, and in other places sticks had been pushed into the dirt to form walls, or fences. A few rocks had obviously been placed with a purpose in mind, since everything else was smoothed out dirt.

Cooper walked around the pile of dirt, inspecting it from every angle. Loryn spoke, “This looks amazing.” Birt puffed up slightly at the praise, “I think it actually does look pretty good. There’re quite a few things I’ll need to explain, but I think this gives a fair idea of how the quarry is arranged without saying a word.” Cooper pointed at an arrangement of sticks that were leaned up against the bricked “cliff” of the quarry, “Scaffolding?” Birt grinned and nodded, “I didn’t think it was worth spending the time to tie all those little sticks together. You get the idea.” Spen had a faint smile on his face as he followed Cooper, walking around the model of the quarry, “Brilliant. Is this something that’s usually done to display a location before a raid?” Cooper shook his head, “I’ve never seen anything like this… this is great.” He tore his eyes away from Birt’s handiwork, “Alright, Birt. Explain it.” For the next ten minutes Birt talked almost non-stop; guard positions, patrol routes, work locations, building and fence descriptions. He included information that he observed as well as things he guessed at. He explained that he felt confident in some of the guesswork, but was forthright about those parts that were outright assumptions. He finished with, “But I was only there for a couple hours during the day, while we negotiated a contracted rate for stone and shipment. Positioning and routes are likely to change quite a bit at night.” Loryn pointed to a circle of sticks, “That’s where the chained workers are kept at night? That’s what you said.” Birt nodded, “I can’t think of anything else that’d be used for.” Loryn continued, “Do you know where the door is? Or how it’s secured?” Birt shook his head, “I never got close enough to see and I didn’t want to seem overly interested.” He gestured to a more centralized location, towards the collection of rocks slightly off to one side, “We stayed here mostly.” He pointed to each rock, “Guardhouse, Foreman’s hut, stable, workman’s barracks.” Spen interjected, “Workmen?” Birt nodded, “There are several skilled stonemasons that work there. It looked like they oversee where the rock is being pulled from the cliff face and also supervise the work being done to shape the rock once it’s brought to the central work area.” Cooper asked, “I’m not asking for an exact number, but how many slaves were there? Just a rough estimate.” Birt started to object, then paused. He remained silent as his eyes lost their focus and looked up, shifting left and right as if to search the sky for the answer. Birt answered, “Maybe forty, could be more. No way of telling how many might be ours though. I only recognized a couple of them. One in particular.” They sat quietly for almost a minute before Cooper broke the silence, “We’ll go look tonight. We’ll need to agree on who goes and who stays.” Dailen shifted uncomfortably, “I’ll stay. I wasn’t selected for Assassin training… for good reason, I might add.” Birt started to speak, “I wasn’t chos-” Cooper interrupted, “You’re coming, Birt. You’re the only one of us that’s actually seen the place before.” Birt nodded and ducked his head. Spen replied firmly, “I’m going.” Loryn quickly added, “Me too.” Gaff took a breath, but Naro spoke first. He had turned to Balat, “Rock, paper, scissors?” Gaff spoke, “I was about to say that I’d stay behind. I’ve been out every day and several of the nights for the last week. I’m tired.”

Cooper continued to study the model that Birt had constructed. It reminded him that he really needed to find a good map of the city. This, in turn, reminded him of the Kalistos City map that took up almost one entire wall in the meeting room of the Kalistos Guild house. He and Kolrem had studied it when they’d been sent to Kalistos, to poach a target from another Guild’s city. On the one hand, he hoped that they’d find Kolrem in the quarry, but if Kolrem had been captured and put there, he’d likely have already escaped and had left the city. Spen interrupted his thoughts, “What time?” Cooper pulled his gaze away from the pile of dirt, his memories shifted to the background as he returned to the here-and-now, “An hour or so before dark. It’ll take us awhile to walk there and we can get a look from a distance while we select our observation points. No use in spending an hour stumbling in the dark just to find a place to sit.” Birt added, “In that case, we should leave right after supper time. It’s probably